Valentine's Day cookies

Here are some Valentine's Day cookies. I made some chocolate chip (not pictured) oatmeal raisin, and sugar cookie.

For the sugar cookies, I made the dough, rolled the dough out, chilled the dough and then cut out the shapes and baked them. While the cookies were cooling I made the royal icing. I piped the border around each cookie and then I took some royal icing and thinned it out with some water, to make a royal icing flood for the cookies. I then added the thinned out royal icing (flood) and spread it onto the cookies evenly with a toothpick. I let them dry overnight.

That same night I made some chocolate cameos. I bought this really cool candy cameo mold, so I used that as my chocolate mold. I had vanilla bark and chocolate bark. I melted some vanilla bark and used that for the facial features, I took a toothpick and made sure to only fill those areas with the white vanilla bark, then I popped the candy mold into the fridge. I added some pink pedal food coloring dust into the remaining white bark to make pink and then melted some chocolate bark.

After the facial feature layer was firm, I added the background color. I did a few chocolate backgrounds and a few pink. My favorite was the pink. And then I popped the mold back into the fridge. They firmed up very quickly, so I popped them out of the mold and put them into a container.

The next morning I decorated the cookies. I used a few different techniques and I'm happy with how they turned out.

Oatmeal raisin cookies

Cherry blossom themed birthday cake.

Here is a photo of a cherry blossom birthday cake that I did for my sister. The cake was red velvet and the frosting was cream cheese. I had many many many struggles with this cake, from the consistency of the frosting to the leveling of the cakes, to the homemade fondant, to the tearing and cracking of the fondant. I am not very proud of this cake. I did like the way the cherry blossoms came out though.

Marshmallow fondant tutorial

Here's a tutorial on how to make your own marshmallow fondant. The tutorial will save you alot of money, but it is extremely time consuming and may lead to arthritis of the hands.. just kidding.. kind of.




Start out with marshmallows, powdered sugar and water. The shortening is for kneading .

Add marshmallows and water into a microwave safe bowl and microwave, stir, microwave, stir. microwave, stir, until the mixture looks like fluff.

Here is your melted marshmallow mixture

Add enough powdered sugar for the mixture to come together.

Add some more powdered sugar. Keeping on adding until mixture is somewhat malable.

Pour some powdered sugar onto the counter with the shortening and then take the marshmallow mixture, place onto of the powedered sugar. Make sure your hands are completely clean and then coat your hands in a thin layer of shortening, to prevent the marshmallow mixture from sticking to your hands. Then start to knead. This should only take you about.... 4 hours.

I take small sections and add the powdered sugar until I've reached the texture that I want. And then repeat.

My finished fondant, before it has been colored

You will need tons of paper towels. Not a hand towel, because they have lint. A clean paper towel after every hand wash. Wash your hands often, so that the fondant is free of clumps of powdered sugar. I went though a whole roll and I washed my hands about 50 times.

After hurricane fondant. During the fondant coloring process, I kept what I wasn't coloring or working on covered, under a bowl, because fondant dries out very quick. Can you spot Kaspa? Hint, look at the pile of paper towels.

Finished Fondant.

cake board tutorial

Here's a tutorial on how to make your own cake board. This tutorial will save you about 10 bucks. All I had to buy was the board for a dollar at a dollar store.

You will need:
*A foam board that you can buy at the dollar store (I only needed one because my board is small)
*Spray adhesive
*Glue stick
*Scissors or a razor blade for cutting the rounds
*A plate or cake pan to trace your rounds as big as you want your board to be
*A pencil or pen to trace the rounds on your board
*Tin foil to cover your stacked rounds

Start off by tracing 3 rounds (however big that you want them) on a foam board

Use a razor or scissors to cut the traced out rounds

Spray and stack the rounds

Cut a piece of tin foil to cover your stacked rounds (I only needed one piece, but if your board is bigger than 10 inches, you going to need to overlay another piece of tin foil)

Cut the tin foil in a round, with an inch bigger than the board. Glue the side of the board that is going to be facing up, make sure you smooth out any bumps and place tin foil covered side down

Cut 1 1/2in cuts along the round of tin foil

Glue the strips of tin foil and fold the tin foil along the cake board

Finished cake board. Next you cover your board in fondant and add a ribbon for a border. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.. and cheap!

A 2012 count calorie brownie to welcome the new year!

What better way to end the year than with a final fix, before your sent off to food rehab in 2012? I decided to make a monster dessert. This baby is a brownie spooning with some cookie dough, covered under a blanket of chocolate ganche and this was the result of that situation. Keep your scale hidden underground for a few days after this one.

Brownie recipe
1 1/4 c flour
1 ts salt
2 Tb coco powder
11 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 sticks butter (cubed)
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
5 eggs
2 ts vanilla


Over a double boiler melt your chocolate and cubed butter. Once the chocolate and butter is smooth, add your sugars and take off the heat. Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mixture and mix well. Then add the other 2 eggs and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix your flour, salt and coco powder. Sprinkle the flour mixture over your chocolate mixture and fold it into the chocolate mixture, being sure not to overwork the batter.

Chocolate chip cookie dough recipe
1 1/8 c flour
1/2 ts baking soda
1/2 ts salt
1 stick butter (room temp)
3/8 c white sugar
3/8 c brown sugar
1/2 ts vanilla
1 egg
1 c chocolate chips

Cream your room temperature butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Mix in your egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix your flour, baking soda and salt.

Add your flour mixture into your butter mixture.

Add your chocolate chips.

Chocolate ganche recipe
12 oz chocolate
1 c heavy cream

Over a double broiler melt your chocolate and cream together, stir until shiny and smooth. Take off the heat. You can use the ganche several different ways. We are going to use this ganche right away.

Steps...
Make your brownie batter and cookie dough batter

Butter a 9x13 baking dish and lay parchment paper in the pan

Pour your brownie mixture into the pan

Scoop out your cookie dough and lay on top of the brownie batter, softly push the down a bit.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes to 1 hr.

Cool the brownie and once the brownie is cool, make your ganche and pour the ganche over your brownie.

Let the ganche set and then cut your brownies.

Enjoy!

And so it begins

Starting my brownie batter off with some chocolate and butter

I added some eggs to my chocolate mixture and in another bowl mixed my dry ingredients together. Then I folded my dry into the wet mixture.

Now I'm starting my chocolate chip cookie dough by creaming my sugars and my butter

I have my dry to the left (flour, baking soda, salt) and my wet (butter, sugar, egg, vanilla) to the right.


My cookie dough batter

Poured my brownie mix into my buttered and parchment papered baking dish

Then I scooped my cookie dough over the brownie batter

The baked cookie, brownie beast

Just when you thought that you had escaped the gluttony, dun dun dun... BAM! chocolate ganche.

On the 13th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, one Italian rum cake

Here are some photos of the steps in making an Italian rum cake. I made the cake for Christmas Eve. My family has Italian food on Christmas Eve every year, so the cake perfectly suited the occasion. There are also some photos of Christmas.

The egg yolk and sugar mixture to the left and the egg white mixture to the right

The finished batter with the egg white mixture and cake flour folded into the egg yolk mix

My cake pans filled

My pastry cream that I made the day prior. Chocolate and Vanilla



The rum syrup

My baked and cooled cakes

Sponge cake, brushed with the rum syrup, layered with the pastry cream

crumb coated with whipped frosting

Finished cake!

Everyone seemed to like the cake

Front house decorated

Cosmo eating his Christmas Eve dinner

Lasagna, eggplant parm, meatballs and sausage and my amazing homemade garlic bread

I thought that my gift was the most hilarious Christmas photo, everyone in their snuggies!

The tree

Kaspy yawning

The prime rib for Christmas dinner