Sweet Social

Sweetening up your day with baking and decorating recipes and tutorials

Rainbow Cheesecake

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Ironically, my daughter is not a fan of cake (GASP!). She will take a few bites here and there, but she doesn’t loooooove it like I do. Haha, what? I love cake! All cakes. 😛

So, for her Birthday, she’ll typically request a tower of doughnuts or cheesecake. This year, she wanted both.  And she requested to help make a cheesecake. A rainbow cheesecake…nonetheless.

***She also took the photos for this tutorial (other than the images she is in) and I have left them unedited!

I’ve been making this cheesecake recipe for a few years now and it has always been a hit for our friends and family, so I thought I’d finally share it with you all! The great thing about cheesecake is the simplicity. It takes only a few minutes to prepare and then you just let it bake and let the baking God take over from there 😉

I usually make the traditional graham crust or oreo crumb crust, but a rainbow cake deserves a pink crust, of course! I couldn’t find any pink cookies anywhere, so we used Birthday cake flavoured Fruit Loops. They worked like a charm. Crushed them up and stirred it with some melted butter then baked it for a few minutes.

Pink crust magic!

Cheesecake ingredients are simple and quick to bring together. When I’m in a real rush, I don’t even cream the sugar and cheese…I just dump all the ingredients into a bowl and mix it all up until it’s smooth and creamy.

This time around, we divided the batter in a few bowls and Miss K coloured each to her liking with gel food colouring.

Mixing is her favourite part of anytime we are baking together. She’s been baking with me since she was about 2 years old. She always called herself a “maker”. I have an entire folder on my laptop dedicated to K in the kitchen. I might have to blog it sometime. It’s a special time when she and I are baking or making things together.

The colours were sure lots of fun!

Then we simply poured each colour in, one at a time. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to turn out, but it sure looked cool going into the oven. It wasn’t until way after (like maybe as I type this blog haha) that I realize I could’ve had a bit more fun and swirled it all together! Dang! So if you do attempt this and do swirl the batter, please report back to let me know how it turns out! 😉

If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll see a little video she made of us pouring the batter into the baking pan HERE .

I have always baked cheesecake in a water bath. Have you tried without? Does it turn out?

And THIS is how it looked once it was cut. And she was super stoked! Our guests were pretty impressed as well! Whoop!!!

Print
Rainbow Cheesecake

Ingredients

  • For the CRUST:
  • 1 1/4 cups of crushed cookies, cereal or graham cracker crumbs
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • For the CAKE:
  • 4 bricks of cream cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 6 large eggs
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream (whipping cream)
  • 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F
  2. For the crust: mix the graham crackers and the butter and pat the mixture down into the cake pan. Bake for 10 mins then allow to cool.
  3. For the cake: mix the cream cheese and sugar until smooth and fluffy.
  4. Add the eggs one at a time.
  5. Slowly pour in the heavy cream.
  6. Mix in the vanilla.
  7. Optional:To add the colours, divide the batter into a few bowls and colour with gel food colouring. Pour one colour at a time into the cake pan.
  8. Wrap the bottom of the pan in tin foil or plastic wrap
  9. Place the cake pan in a larger baking pan and fill the pan with 1" of boiling water,
  10. Bake the cheesecake for approximately 1 hour and 15 mins. It is done when still slightly giggly. Allow the cheesecake to cool in the oven (turned off, with the door slight open. This will help prevent the top of your cheesecake from cracking.
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Honey Crullers

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There’s always time for doughnuts. Especially, honey crullers because they are so quick to whip up. They are light with just the right amount of sweetness.

Just look at how pretty these Homemade versions are 😉

The best part is that making crullers only takes a few simple steps and just takes just a few minutes. It starts with simply boiling water, butter, and sugar.

Once the first few ingredients get to a rolling boil, add the flour in and stir over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Be sure to keep stirring as you don’t want to burn the flour mixture. This step helps to remove moisture from the dough.  Apparently, the trick to fluffly crullers is to remove as much moisture as you can during this stage.

Transfer the dough to a mixing bowl and let it rest for a few moments to cool off. Then beat the mixture to continue cooling the mixture.

Once the dough is mainly cooled off, add the eggs one at a time followed by the egg whites.

Fit a large star tip into a piping bag and pipe rounds of the dough onto parchment squares (approximately 3″x3″ cut parchment squares).

The dough should pipe out firm enough to keep their shape.

Heat your oil to 375 degF and place each piped cruller into the hot oil (with the parchment side up). The parchment will peel off almost immediately once the dough is in the hot oil. Remove the parchment and cook the doughnuts for about 3-4 minutes on each side then place the cooked crullers onto a cookie sheet or plate lined with paper towels to allow the grease to drain.

Let these beauties cool completely before dipping them in their honey glaze.

The glaze is also quick to make. All you need is milk or whipping cream, honey, and icing sugar. Mix the honey glaze in a small bowl and lightly dip each cruller. If the mixture is too thick, simply add more milk. If the mixture becomes too thin, simply add icing sugar until you reach the desired consistency.

Voila! They are pretty just as they are and delicious! BUTTTTTT, why not have some fun. Add your favourite toppings like almonds, toasted pecans, coconut, or whatever you dang well please! And then Enjoy!

Print
Honey Crullers

Ingredients

  • 1 cup water
  • 6 TBSP unsalted butter (I roughly cubed up just under 1/2 cup of butter)
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • light sprinkle of salt
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 large egg whites
  • Oil for frying
  • Glaze
  • 1 cup icing sugar
  • 2-3 TBSP pure honey
  • 4-6 TBSP whipping cream

Instructions

  1. In a heavy sauce pan, bring the water, butter, and sugar to a rapid boil. Once it’s rolling quite vigourously, add the flour. On medium heat, continue to cook and stir the dough for aboutt 4-5 minutes. You have to keep stirring to avoid burning the bottom. It is important to cook for at least 4 minutes to remove moisture from the dough. Apparently, the trick to fluffly doughnuts is to remove as much moisture as you can so you can add more eggs.
  2. Transfer the dough to your mixer and let it cool for a few minutes. Using a paddle attachment, mix the dough to help if cool down. Add one egg at a time until fully incorporated. Then mix in the egg whites one at a time. Once all the eggs have been added, the dough should be soft enough to pipe.
  3. Cut out about 12-15 parchment squares (3″x3″). Place a star tip into a piping bag and pipe out the dough onto parchment squares.
  4. Heat 2″ of oil in a pan to about 370 degF. Flip the doughnnuts into the hot oil and fry the, a few at a time for about 3-4 minutes on each side. The parchment paper will peel right off when placed in the hot oil. Be sure to remove these. Drain on a plate covered with paper towel then cool completely on a cooling rack.
  5. For the glaze, mix the ingredients together in a bowl and dip the doughnuts.
  6. I was able to pipe 15 doughnuts and there was enough glaze to lightly dip each doughnut.
/honey-crullers/

Workshops

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You’ve come to the right place if you want to learn cake or cookie decorating! I offer group workshops as well as private lessons and parties.

Below are upcoming dates for workshops. Feel free to email me to book your spot sweetsocialshop[at] gmail.com

Sugar Cookie Decorating Workshop

Learn how to make royal icing that won’t break a tooth, how to decorate using various techniques. Everything is provided: the cookies, the tools, and the icing. Just show up ready to have a blast! Bring an apron and a container to bring you cookies home, and a camera so you can photograph your work. Everyone goes home with the sugar cookies they hand decorated and recipes and instructions to take home. Cost is $75. Email sweetsocialshop [@] gmail. com to reserve your spot.

2018 Winter & Spring Workshops

  • Sunday February 4 from 10:30am to 12:30pm
  • March TBA (Ages 12-16)

Beginner Buttercream Cake Decorating Workshop

Come and learn the basics of cake decorating. Learn how to make swiss meringue buttercream, how to fill and mask your cakes smoothly. We’ll go over piping with butterceam, and learn how to make various buttercream flowers. This class is typically 3-4 hours, but may sometimes run a little over. Everything you’ll need is provided! The cakes, the tools, and of course, the butterceam. Please bring an apron and a container to take your cake home. Participants go home with a completed 5″ round filled cake (this will serve 10 people) and recipes and instructions to take home. Cost is $125. Email sweetsocialshop [@] gmail. com to reserve your spot.

2018 Winter & Spring Workshops

  • Sunday February 11 from 10:30am to 2:30pm
  • Saturday February 24 from 10:30am to 2:30pm

Beginner FONDANT Cake Decorating Workshop

Come and learn the basics of decorating with fondant. You will learn how to cover a pre-iced cake with fondant, create various fondant details. This class is typically 3 hours. Everything you’ll need is provided: the cakes, the tools, and of course, the fondant. Please bring an apron and a container to take your cake home. Participants go home with a completed 5″ round filled cake (this will serve 10 people) and recipes and instructions to take home. Cost is $150.

Dates TBA

Beginner SCULPTING Cake Decorating Workshop

Sculpt a 3D puppy dog with me and create a buttercream fur. You might not know whether to cuddle the cake or eat it! 😛 This is a 3-4 hour class, all supplies and materials are provided. You just need to bring an apron! Cost is $250.

Please stay tuned or email me to be put on a waiting list for more information.

Sweet Socials that will be perfect for any occasion and great for ages 6-106!

Socials are great if you don’t want lessons, but are looking for a fun get together. Grab a group of friends together and host a decorating party!

Socials are done in your home kitchen and parties can be hosted where you choose, so long as there is easy access for hand washing.

Pricing for parties and lessons vary, so feel free to contact me for more information, pricing, and availability. Contact Ailynn at sweetsocialshop [@]gmail.com to book!

Cookie Socials!

Cake Socials!

Ube Crinkle Cookies

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These little purple sweets would make a lovely gift for your cookie swaps this Christmas! They are soft, cakey-type cookies with an ever so slight crispy edge. It’s the perfect sweetness (not overly sweet at all) and the colour is super pretty!

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Ube (pronounced OO-BEH) is a Filipino sweet made from purple yams. Though I promise the cookies do not taste like yams haha. My family loves Ube, amongst many other sweets that remind us of the Philippines. I’ve only made Ube once before and because I didn’t have time to make it this time around, I cheated for this cookie recipe and used Ube Jam. Don’t worry, NEXT TIME I make these to share, I will use my homemade ube.  😉 For now, Ube extract and ube jam is good enough for this cookie. You should be able to find both of these at Asian and Filipino grocery stores.

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The cookie itself is very simple to bring together. It’s just like baking a regular cookie or cupcake batter. It starts with creaming sugars and butter together and then adding your egg and flavourings until everything is nice and fluffy…and then of course adding the dry ingredients at the end. See this lovely colour? No added food colouring needed, if you start with a yummy ube. I use my handy dandy cookie scoop to portion out the dough then chill the cookies for approximately 1 hour.

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Then just like a regular crinkle cookie, you roll the dough in icing sugar before baking. If you are impatient like me, you don’t have to chill the dough. By not chilling the dough, you may not really achieve a crinkly look. They would be more like whoopie pies! So, you could fill them with more Ube and call them Ube whoopie pies! OMG, why didn’t I think of that before writing this. Dang… next time on the blog, Ube whoopie pies 😛

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Dare I say these are lovelier than the chocolate crinkle cookies you might be used to.

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Print
Ube Crinkle Cookies

10 minutes

Yield: approx. 36 2" cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup + 1 TBSP all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg, room temperature
  • 1/2 cup ube halaya (or in this case, jam)
  • 2 tsp ube extract
  • *optional: a drop or two of purple food colouring if you would like a more vibrant purple cookie
  • Icing sugar for rolling the cookies in (optional, but would make them oh, so pretty!)

Instructions

  1. Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, cream together the butter and the sugars.
  2. Add the egg and mix until completely fluffy.
  3. Add the ube and the ube extract and mix until evenly combined.
  4. Add in the flour and baking powder and mix until just combined. Do not over mix.
  5. Scoop the cookies onto a baking sheet using a small ice cream scoop (approximately 1 TBSP) and let the dough chill for an hour in the fridge.
  6. Preheat the oven to 350 degF.
  7. Roll the cookies in icing sugar and bake the cookies at least 1" apart on a tray lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes.
/ube-crinkle-cookies/

This recipe has been slightly modified by the lovely Aikko of Bake Happy !

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Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

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I’m not the biggest fan of pumpkin pie… but that’s a little bit of a lie. I had a slice tonight at my good friend Shannon’s house and I did like it! So, I don’t know why I thought I didn’t like it. I suppose it’s because I’m not a squashy person 😛

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I know my family is not a fan of pumpkin, so I thought I’d disguise this year’s dessert with chocolate cake. I thought I was being tricky, but some were not easily fooled. Sigh, my picky family. Regardless, this is still one of my favourite seasonal cakes. About 10 years ago, I found this recipe in Country Living magazine. I’d long since lost that original recipe, but always had a variation of it in my recipe stash. And since I felt the need to produce something festive, I decided to whip up this cake.

Yes, it has a billion ingredients (really only a dozen), but it’s so worth it. The cake is always super soft and flavourful. I do suggest prepping it all so that you don’t forget anything.

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The results of your careful prep will yield a cake that is fluffy and perfect…just like all chocolate cakes should be. However, I do believe the added pumpkin puree adds moisture to this cake keeping it nice and soft.

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I filled this cake with a caramel buttercream. You could easily do up a cream cheese icing for this cake, but I was going to pour caramel all over this bad boy, so didn’t want it to be any richer than I was about to make it!

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Don’t you worry my friends. More on homemade caramel coming this week!

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Because the batter made sooooo many mini cupcakes, I split the cupcakes up between friends, co-workers, family and still had way too many left over! I might have considered halving this recipe, but it’s Thanksgiving here in Canada…I show my gratitude by baking for everyone I know.  😉

This recipe made me 3 layers of 5″ round cakes plus 5 dozen minis!!! This cake would make excellent Halloween cupcakes or even a 3D pumpkin shaped cake! What’s your favourite Thanksgiving or Halloween treat?

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*This recipe has been adapted from the original found in Country Living Magazine (2007).

Print
Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 Tbsp baking powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 Tbsp Pumpkin pie spice
  • 1/2 cup milk (whatever you have on hand)
  • 1/4 cup sour cream
  • 1 1/4 cup pumpkin purée
  • 1 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1½ cup dark brown sugar
  • 1½ cup granulated sugar
  • 5 large eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Prepare the cake pans with shortening and dust with flour, line cupcake tins. Preheat oven to 350 degF.
  2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon spice then set aside.
  3. Mix together the milk, sour cream, and pumpkin puree and set aside.
  4. In the bowl of the stand mixer, cream together the softened butter and both sugars. Mix on medium speed for about 4 minutes until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until fully combined then add in vanilla. Scrape the bottom of the bowl to make sure it is all evenly mixed.
  5. Alternately add in the flour mixture in 3 parts and milk/puree mixture in 2 parts, ending with the flour mixture. Start with 1/3 of the flour and mix for 30 seconds. Pour in 1/2 of the milk and puree mixture and mix for 1 minute. Continue pattern until all the ingredients are combined.
  6. Fill the prepared 5" cake pans and fill the min cupcake tins. Minis will bake for 12 minutes; cakes will bake for approximately 30 minutes depending on how full you filled the pans.
/chocolate-pumpkin-cake/

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, y’all!

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Unicorn Floaty Cake

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We had a pool party for my girl’s Birthday this year…and bought as many fun pool floaties we could find! So naturally, the cake HAD to be a pool floaty too! 😉

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If you don’t follow @aww.sam on instagram , you are missing out on a whole lot of fun! Last month she posted a fun flamingo floaty cake and it was just in time for our pool party Birthday celebration! You can find Sam’s tutorial for her cakes on her flippin fantastic blog . She detailed her cakes with fondant and since I’m on a fondant fast (haha) I decided to use white chocolate and buttercream. It’s quite a simple cake to make. Cross my heart.

The first thing you need to do is make a delicious batch of rice crispie treats. I made a regular batch (something like one bag of mini marshmallows, 5 cups of rice crispies, and some butter), but you can make a half batch to save you from having to munch on the delicous extras. 😉

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Quickly take about 1/3 of the batch and shape it into what will become the neck and the head of the unicorn. I chose to use rice crispy treats instead of fondant because no one likes a big hunk of fondant (I think). It’s also lighter and will reduce the risk of it weighing down or falling off your cake. Make sure to size up the height to your cake pans. Set that aside and let it dry up a bit. You can leave it overnight even if you want to.

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Next, bake your cake. I happen to have a 9″ donut pan. If you don’t have one of these,  you can simply bake 2 9″ rounds and carve the edges to be more rounded and cut a hole out in the center.

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While the icing is setting, make a wing template on wax or parchment paper.  The size of the wings will depend on the size of your cake. Melt white candy melts and trace and fill in the wing template. Make sure the candy is completely set before peeling off of the paper.

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I kept this cute cake simple by icing it with buttercream. You can tint the icing to any colour, but my girl wanted a white unicorn with Pegasus wings (aka an Alicorn) 😛 Place the head and neck piece onto the cake and ice it as well. Let the icing set in the fridge.

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You can smooth out the buttercream if you want, or leave it with a rustic homemade look and not worry about smooth buttercream. Whatever. Floats. Your. Floaty!

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Once the cake is set, I tinted two bowls of buttercream in different shades pinks and put the icing into a star tip fitted piping bag.

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I piped the mane and tail of the unicorn and sprinkled in some disco dust for some glitz.

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Before attaching the wings, cover the cake board with some blue and white buttercream for a “pool water effect”.

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Attach the wings to the cake by placing a little bit of butterceam behind the candy melts. I made sure the bottom was resting on the cake board as well, as I didn’t want to risk it falling off. Then I smeared some of the pink buttercream onto the wings to give it a little colour and texture.

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The only fondant I used was for the lashes (which you could easily just pipe on as well) and for the horn (you could substitute it with any soft candy like tootsie rolls, etc)…I also painted the horn gold with gold lustre.

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Ta! Da! Unicorn Floaty cake. I love when simple cakes bring lots of smiles, fun and deliciousness!

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I apologize in advance for the quality of my pics for this post. I decorated the cake at night (so had to use a dreaded flash) and then forgot to take a photo in the morning ACK! Lol.

Confetti Sugar Cookies

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Everyone needs a good soft sugar cookie recipe in their baking repertoire. There are many out there and I’ve tried about a dozen versions too. But, after several trials and tweaking this and that I finally baked the winning batch. These have crispy edges, soft middles, just the right amount of sprinkles and taste yummy!

These pretty little cookies don’t need any crazy ingredients and don’t call for cake mix like a lot of the other soft sugars sometimes ask for. Just grab your favourite sprinkles and off you bake!

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Who can resist sprinkles?! They make everything happier! Funner! Sweeter!

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The cookies whip up real quickly. I always use my handy dandy ice cream scoop vs a spoon. This way all the cookies are the same size. Not that size matters 😉

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The dough yields A LOT of cookies, so feel free to half the recipe, or you can always freeze the dough once it’s scooped or even freeze the cookies after they bake. I get between 30-36 cookies baked depending on how much raw cookie dough gets eaten before these are in the oven!

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My kiddo always comes running to the kitchen when she smells cookies baking. And these ones barely get a chance to completely cool before she starts munching on these pretties. confettisugarcookies5

With just the perfect amount of sprinkles, these cookies will be a favourite in your home too. They are crisp and golden around the edges and the bottom and soft in the middle. Just be sure not to over bake these and you’ll be a cookie hero! I think I bake these at least once a month and change up the sprinkles depending on the season! confettisugarcookies6

Print
Confetti Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs, room temp
  • 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp cream of tartar
  • 3/4 to 1 cup sprinkles

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degF and line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking sheets.
  2. With a stand mixer or electric hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until nice and fluffy. Add the eggs in one at time making sure each is mixed in completely. Add vanilla. The mixture should be pale and fluffly.
  3. Slowly add in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, soda and cream of tartar). Mix until evenly combined.
  4. Pour in the sprinkles and use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to fold it in the dough. I don't like to use a mixer for this part because it can crush the sprinkles.If you want you can even roll the cookies in more sprinkles if you feel like going crazy!
  5. Scoop or spoon the cookies onto the prepared baking sheets. Make sure there is at least 1" between each cookie.
  6. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. Do not over bake. The edges should be a very light golden colour.
/confetti-sugar-cookies/

Strawberry Cupcakes

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Early this week I took my mini out in the country for a strawberry picking date. It was so much fun. We sat under some questionable stormy skies with lots of thunder rolling in the distance, but were too busy looking down at the reddest berries to care about the storm we might have to drive through on the way home.

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It was worth it. The hat hair, the scary clouds, the spiders… all good. We ate berries in the car on the way home and decided that we would try to make cupcakes with them first…next would have to be strawberry milkshakes, of course.

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So, with a bit of tinkering through some of my current favourite cupcake recipes, we pureed the most ripe and brightest reddest berries we had.

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This recipe calls for the usual suspects of flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, oil (instead of butter for this time around), but instead of milk I used the pureed berries. Using strawberry puree made me really worry that the cake would be gummy and bake into some wet dense mess. No body wants gummy cake. Nobody.

I was pleasantly surprised when the batter turned into this gorgeous pink, sans food colouring! I think it helped that we chose to puree super ripe strawberries. They were so red inside and ridiculously sweet. If you’re strawberries aren’t as ripe, you may not get a lot of strawberry flavour :/ and if you don’t get this colour naturally, you may have to add some pink or red until the batter is the colour you want.

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Into cupcake liners they go. They puffed up nice and high, so be sure to fill them approximately 2/3 full or a touch more. Also, yes I know…I need a cupcake tin. I’ve had this same one for about 9 years now! And I only have the one at home. When I sold the shop, I left it all behind, some by accident lol. strawberry_cupcakes_5

22-24 minutes later…BAM! Perfectly pink strawberry cupcakes. They are moist, just the right density (I don’t like crumbly cupcakes that fall apart as you peel the wrapper…just no!). It was a light strawberry flavour, but definitely there. I think you could add some freeze dried strawberries or a strawberry oil flavouring if you want a more intense flavour.

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I didn’t want to mess around with buttercream, so we topped them with unsweetened fresh whipped cream. Delicious and perfect! strawberry_cupcakes_7

Print
Strawberry Cupcakes

Yield: 24-26 Standard size cupcakes

Ingredients

  • 3 cups cake flour, sifted
  • 1 3/4 cups sugar
  • 1 1/2 TBSP Baking Powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup + 1 TBSP canola oil
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 1/2 cups Fresh strawberry puree
  • 1 tsp lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degF and line muffin tins with cupcake liners.
  2. Puree the reddest and ripest fresh strawberries you can find! Mix in the lemon juice and set the mixture aside.
  3. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set it aside.
  4. In a large mixing bowl with a paddle attachment, mix together the sugar and oil until combined. Add the eggs one at a time and continue to mix until the sugar mixture is nicely combined. Add the vanilla.
  5. Add the half of the flour mixture and mix on low for 10 seconds; add all the strawberry puree and mix for 10-20 seconds. Add the last half of the flour and mix until just combined. Finish mixing with a rubber spatula if you need to.
  6. DO NOT over mix the batter, it will become very gummy if it is over mixed.
  7. *IF your batter is not as pink as you would like, make sure to add some pink or red food colouring.
  8. Scoop mixture into liners and bake or 22-24 minutes.
/strawberry-cupcakes/

I adapted this lovely recipe from Kayley at The Kitchen McCabe ‘s made from scratch strawberry cake . I was delighted to read her recipe had no jello mix or cake mix in it, but I changed the process of how it was mixed and slightly changed a few measurements too! It certainly had mixed reviews, so may the baking muses be with you as you try this recipe! Just remember, use the reddest, ripest strawberries you can find!

Oh yes and a little strawberry milkshake on the side never hurt anyone either! strawberry_cupcakes_13

Toad Stool Meringues

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I made these meringue mushrooms for a little fairy cake I decorated for my niece’s Birthday. Because you know, if you ever find a spotted red toadstool, it means a fairy is near by! These however were pink…strawberry and edible, making them more delicious than magical 😛

There’s various ways to make meringue (cookies). Sometimes I toast the sugar in the oven for a few minutes just to heat them up, but this time I did it a quick and simple way. Dump all the ingredients into the bowl and mix away! Whip up the egg whites, sugar, salt and cream or tartar until you get stiff peaks.

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Scoop the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a round tip. I used a pt 13 tip to pipe the stems. Make sure they are approximately the size of a nickel or a touch wider on the base and thinner as you get to the top (about 1-1.5″). Leave the peaks pointy. I piped out approximately 3 dozen stems.

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For the remaining egg white mixture, I added red powdered food colouring (you can use gel for sure) and I wanted some flavour so I added a couple of teaspoons of freeze-dried strawberry powder. Save just a table spoon of plain white meringue…we’ll use it for the polka dots!

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For the caps, I used a slightly larger round tip. This one was a pt 15.

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I piped the mounds making sure the base was a little wider than the base of the stems I just piped.

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Next, with the little bit of white meringue that you saved dab on little dots using a toothpick or small paintbrush.

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To get rid of any pointy parts, dip your finger in cold water and ever so lightly pat them down flat.

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Bake these cuties for about 1 hour  to 1 hour and 15 minutes. You know they’re done when they peel off the parchment with no effort.

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To attach the caps and stems, use a knife or skewer to poke a tiny hole under the caps.

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Then with some melted chocolate, pipe it in and around the hole of the cap.

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Pop the stem on and voila! The cutest little edible toad stools!

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Print
Toad Stool Meringues

Ingredients

  • 2 large egg whites
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
  • dash of salt
  • red gel or powdered food colouring
  • 2 tsp freeze-dried strawberry powder (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat Oven to 225° F. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Add all your ingredients to a mixing bowl and mix on high speed 5-6 min until you the mixture is stiff but still shiney.
  3. Fill one piping bag fitted with a round tip (I used a pt13) and pipe stems onto lined baking sheet. My stems were approx the diameter of a nickel.
  4. Set aside 1 tablespoon of the white meringue for the polka dots.
  5. Tint and flavour the remaining meringue and pipe the mushroom caps using a slightly larger round tip. I piped the base of the caps slightly wider than the base of the stems.
  6. With the white meringue you set aside, dab on the polka dots to the mushroom caps using a toothpick.
  7. To smooth the dots and the mushroom caps, dip your finger in water and gently press down on the points.
  8. Bake at 225˚F for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes. The meringues will peel off the parchment paper very easily when they are done. Let them cool completely before assembling.
  9. To assemble, make a small hole on the bottoms of the mushroom cap with a small knife or skewer. Pipe melted chocolate in the holes of the meringue then stick the bases into the holes. When the chocolate is set, store the mushrooms in a container. Do not refrigerate the meringues.
/toad-stool-meringues/

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Éclairs

by 1 Comment

There’s something about pretty little desserts that make me giddy. They’re just so cute and delicious. IMG_8230

Especially, when they look like such hard work (but really they’re not at all) and people say, “Woah! You made those?”

Why yes…yes, I did!

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And now I’m going to show you how to make them! I’ve been dreaming of making Éclairs for a while now. I always thought they’d take way too much time and was afraid they would flop. I read many many different recipes in books that I own and online. Pastry isn’t something I’ve dabbled in a lot, so I was pretty nervous. Until I watched a video from Joy of Baking . She made it look painless, so I mustered up the courage to try it out. Other than the few dozen times I had to lick my fingers while making these eclairs, it was ridiculously easy to make. I used Joy’s choux pastry recipe, but followed a different order in the steps of putting everything together.

First, I made the pastry cream filling. All you need are egg yolks, sugar, flour, milk, and your flavouring(s).

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Then I divided it into three bowls, because I wanted three different fillings. If you don’t have any flavourings you want to use, you can stick to the basic vanilla pastry cream…it’s lovely. I had  a passion fruit compound and pistachio extract I wanted to play with that I bought from Provisions .

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Then I wrapped them up and chilled them in the fridge. You could probably make the pastry cream the night before and save you a step the next day, but I’m a bake on the whim kind of gal.

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The choux pastry was just as quick and simple to make. Be sure to have your piping bag and tip ready as well as your baking pan lined. The process was super quick and required minimal ingredients: butter, water, flour, sugar, salt, and eggs.

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Most of the recipes I read called for a round tip to pipe out the pastry, but I used an open star tip, just to be different 😉 They baked up nice and pretty! Golden, crispy, hollow shells. Perfection.

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When it came time to filling these, there were a few option. You could cut them in half and pipe the filling in the center, but I don’t like the look of the eclairs cut in half. So, on the bottom side of the pastry, I took a small knife and carved out little holes in each one. The holes should be large enough to fit your piping tip for filling the shells.

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Once all the shells were filled with my flavoured pastry creams, I dipped them! Three different glazes, of course, because I like to make simple things a more complicated…naturally.

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Seriously, filling them was the tricky part for me. Pastry cream was everywhere and I was licking my fingers like a child. But, the end result was worth it. Pretty little pastries. They were just as delicious as they looked.

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Éclairs

Choux Pastry and Pastry Cream recipe from Joy of Baking . Remember to go watch her video. It will make it seem less intimidating.

Here’s what you need for the PASTRY CREAM :

  • 1 1/4 cups whole milk
  • 3 large egg yolks
  • 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 2 Tbsp cornstarch

Options for flavourings: 1 scraped vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract; chocolate, coffee, or any extract or compound you want to try.

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Whisk in the flour and cornstarch until it forms a paste.

2. In a medium sauce pan, bring the milk to a boil then slowly pour it into the egg mixture. Continue to whisk to avoid lumps forming. Our the entire mixture back into the sauce pan and bring it back to a boil. Be sure to keep whisking continuously. Once it’s boiling, whisk for another 30-60 seconds then remove it from the heat.

3. Add your flavouring. Pour the mixture into a bowl and cover the top with plastic wrap immediately to prevent a crust from forming. Let it cool to room temp then chill in the fridge until firm.

CHOUX PASTRY:
  • 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup  all purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp granulated white sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400degF.

2. In a bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and salt then set aside.

3. In a sauce pan, bring the butter and water to a boil. Remove from heat and add the flour mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until it’s combined. Bring the pan back to the heat and continue to stir the mixture until it comes together in a ball. This will take about 1-2 minutes. Removed from the heat.

4. Place the dough in a mixer and beat on low speed for about 2 minutes to cool the dough and release the steam. The slowly add the eggs and continue to mix until the batter comes together. It should look like a thick paste.

5. Place the dough into your piping bag with a round or star tip and pipe 3″ long pieces onto your lined pans. You should get about 12 3″ pieces.For an extra shine, you can brush the pastry with an egg wash before baking.

6. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degF then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degF and bake for 25 minutes more. The shells should be almost dry inside. To check split one with a knife.

Here’s what you need for the GLAZE :

For the quick colourful glazes in the photos, I simply mixed 1 cup of icing sugar with about 1 TBSP of milk until smooth. Then add food colour of choice. If the glaze is too runny, simply add more icing sugar. You want to make sure it’s thick enough to coat the tops, otherwise, the icing will run off the eclairs and be a sticky mess.

You could also dip the eclairs in chocolate ganache: Pour 1/2 cup of boiling hot heavy cream over 4 oz good quality chocolate. Let it rest for one minute then stir slowly until the mixture is thoroughly combine. Let it cool before dipping.

Once the Éclairs are filled and glazed, serve immediately or keep chilled. The longer they keep in the fridge, the softer the pastry gets. I like the fresh crisp.

Go make these and be happy!

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Striping Buttercream

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Cake decorating is going backwards in time…I think 😉 . I remember when I first started cake decorating, well before I opened the cake shop, I only decorated with buttercream and loved it. Loved the simplicity of it. Then some Duff guy 😀 came along and made fondant cakes “the must have centerpiece”. Of course, many of the most complicated cakes need fondant or modelling chocolate, but through it all, I always preferred a nice simply decorated cake.

Nowadays, my instagram feed is constantly and consistently showcasing cake decorators going back to playing with buttercream and I just LOVE IT! There are some super fun buttercream cakes out there designed by piping or combing or just straight up slathering on a bunch of coloured icing.

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Today, I thought I’d share a technique using a combing technique. I really like texturing icing and icing combs are the way to do it with ease. I haven’t seen this striping technique a lot, YET, so I had to really do some digging to see if there was an original creator for it. I wasn’t able to verify, but my inspiration comes from Tessa Huff , author of the book Layered and blogger at Style Sweet CA , who got her inspiration from NY cake designer Erica Obrien who happens to have a Craftsy class called Better Buttercream . The preview of the class looks so much fun, so be sure to check it out for more fun ideas!

I used 1 batch of my swiss meringue buttercream to fill and ice the 5″ round cakes. I set aside about 1/2 cup of the buttercream for the filling and 1/2 cup to tint yellow. The remaining buttercream I coloured pink. After filling the cakes I iced the cake smooth with the pink icing.

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Then I took the icing comb and ran it around the cake. Make sure to press into the cake hard enough and with even pressure. Set the cake in the fridge until the buttercream hardens (approximately 10-15 minutes).

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Once the icing was set, I used small angled spatula to smooth out the ridges. Next, I put the yellow buttercream in a piping bag and piped the yellow into the spaces.

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Once all the gaps have been filled, use a flat edge spatula to smooth out the buttercream.

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Voila! Clean colourful stripes!

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Super fun cake! Just think of all the different sizes of stripes you can do! I’m going to have to experiment now with various icing combs!

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Easter Candy Eggs

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Kenna loves “craft” time! And she gets especially excited when we are making something to share with our family and friends. She puts a lot of pride and effort when she is making something for someone other than herself. I  love this quality in my daughter…and I enjoy this quality time with her.

This year, we wanted to make candy eggs! I don’t have the patience to temper couverture chocolate on a regular day and I figured it might be a touch tricky to do so with my child in the kitchen, so I decided on candy melts. Besides, it’s all about the colour.

She got busted eating the candy just as we were getting started!!!

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Kenna decided on animal printed eggs because she says “it’s fashionable, mum”! At least I got some say in the colour combinations! I melted a couple candy colours at a time and we used paintbrushes to make the prints first. You could also pipe the patterns on. I used little zip lock bags and snipped the corner for stripes while Kenna painted her patterns on. Let the patterns set (it will only take a few minutes at room temperature or about a minute in the freezer).

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Once the candy was set, we melted more colours and smeared them over top of our animal prints. We wanted to make hollow eggs so we could fill them with candy, so we didn’t fill the molds all the way up with candy melts. If you don’t want to make 3D eggs, simply fill the entire mold with the melted candy.

Here’s how the shells turned out. Shiny, bright, and fun!

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Then of course, it was time for a break!

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I wasn’t planning on filling the eggs, but Kenna had the idea of filling them with Skittles. So, we made a quick run to the store! Once the shells were set, she filled them up and I piped a rim of chocolate around the edge of the egg and placed the matching side over top. I popped them into the freezer for a minute to let it set then used an x-acto knife to trim off any excess chocolate.

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It’s not really a 3D mold, but we made it work. They turned out pretty cute and she’s really excited to share these!

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If you can’t tell yet, we’re pretty excited for Easter now!

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What you’ll need:

  • Candy Melts
  • Egg Mold
  • Paint brushes and piping bags (or zip locks)
  • Candies for filling
  • Paper Grass
  • Recycled egg cartons

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Awesome Fur Tip- Video Tutorial

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We’re going back to old school cake decorating here. Buttercream icing and one piping tip! I remember decorating my first cake with the star tip. Remember those character pans that you had pipe a million stars on? Curse you star tip cakes! 😛

So, it was only natural that when my 6 1/2 year old asked to decorate a cake that I NOT torture her with the star tip! We celebrate Half Birthdays in this house, so it was perfect timing that she decorate a quick little cake for herself! The inspiration for this came from Olivia of Liv for Cake …who got her inspiration from Lyndsay of Coco Cake Land ! In fact, they’re the same cakes haha just different colour.  😉

teddycake24 My girl just loves her Teddy. She actually got him from a home during trick or treating a couple years ago. I need to find it’s twin because this poor guy has been cuddled and dragged and thrown around all around town. But, she loves him so.

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So, I made a momma cake…and she made the baby cake. We even have a video tutorial below! I’ll admit, I prefer to decorate buttercream cakes vs a fondant cakes any day…and the grass tip is pretty awesome. I could’ve tortured myself and used a star tip to make bear, but this one was more fun.

When I pipe buttercream to cover an entire cake, I don’t worry about my first coat of icing being perfect. Reason #1 why I like buttercream cakes: they don’t have to be perfect! The tip is Wilton 233/Ateco 133 and usually referred to as a grass or fur tip. They also have a giant version of this tip, but this size will do the trick for covering our 5″ cake and our mini 2″ cake (which is actually just a regular size cupcake).

teddycake29 You could also pipe the details of the bear face, bit to stay true to the inspiration, I made the little pieces the day before. Just remember to push toothpicks into the circles for the ears. For the Momma bear cake, I used about 1.5″ circle for the ears and 1″ for the baby ears. The snout for the momma bear was a 3″ circle and then I gently pulled the fondant for to make a slight oblong shape. I used a 1.5″ circle for the baby bear snout. For the eyes, I used whatever round tips I had laying around. Let them dry overnight so they don’t warp when being placed on the cake.

teddycake30 Here’s Kenna debuting her first cake decorating tutorial! It’s pretty friggen cute! Daddy and I may have watched this video a few times over.

She’s super proud of her of work and has asked to do more video…so, I guess she’ll be doing more of my video tutorials!

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TA-DA! A momma cake and a baby cake ♥

teddycake23 Do as Teddy says and “Eat Cake!”

teddycake22 Teddy was a delicious pink velvet cake. I’ll save this recipe as an exclusive recipe for pre-ordering my book…more on that soon! 😉 Happy caking! teddycake27

Quick cheat sheet list of what you’ll need:

  • 1- 5″ x 3″ round cake
  • 1 regular size cupcake
  • 1 batch of Swiss Meringue Buttercream for filling and decorating the cakes
  • Grass or Fur tip 233 Wilton or 133 Ateco
  • Food colouring to tint your buttercream and for the fondant ears, eyes, and nose
  • Small amount of fondant tinted for the ears, eyes, and snout
  • Various round tips for the ears, eyes, and snout
  • Serrated knife to cut and fill the cakes

Chocolate Cookie Sandwiches

by 1 Comment

Now these are the kind of sandwiches I can get on board with. Icing sandwiched between cookies. Yes please!

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I got home a little earlier from work than I normally do, so I whipped through together some dough and these pretty little cookie sandwiches were done in an hour and half. Decorated and all. It’s because I roll dough at super sonic speed to 1/8″.

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Then I cut the dough like a maniac…and pierce a little design on them for good measure. Not required, but I ended up poking them with a toothpick. Your choice. cookie_sandwich2

I like these cookies to be a touch soft so I bake them for about 8 minutes. IF you desire a crispier cookie, bake them a few minutes more…or roll them even thinner.

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Whilst the cookies are cooling, whip up the sugar frosting middles. Whipping up sugar frosting should only take a few minutes. The cookies will still be hot when you’re done making the frosting. Giving you enough time to tidy up your kitchen..unless you have kitchen fairies like I do. LOL. cookie_sandwich4

Once the cookies have cooled down, pipe some sugar frosting on the cookies and sandwich them up! 😉 cookie_sandwich5

Oops, back up. I dip the edges in sprinkles and THEN I sandwich them up. The sprinkles are optional of course, but why would you skip this fun step? It makes them look even prettier! cookie_sandwich6 Pretty, right?  Simple, right? Delicious, right? cookie_sandwich10

They make the cutest little treats for your Valentine(s).

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Print
Chocolate Cookie Sandwiches

Yield: 2 1/2 dozen Heart sandwiches (2.5" wide)

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour *
  • 1/3 cup cocoa powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg (large)
  • 2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mat.
  2. In a bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.
  3. With a stand mixer using a paddle attachment or with a hand mixer,cream together the butter and the sugar until fluffy then beat in the egg and vanilla.
  4. Slowly add in the flour and mix until a dough forms. *If the dough is too soft add a tablespoon of flour at at time until dough is firm enough for rolling.
  5. Roll the dough out to 1/8" and cut with heart cookie cutters.
  6. Option: pierce the cutouts with a toothpick to make a design.
  7. Make sure you place the cookies at least 1/4" apart from each other and bake for 8-10 minutes. Bake up to 3-4 minutes longer if you want crispy cookies.
  8. Cool the cookies for at least 10 minutes before frosting.

This recipe is slightly adapted from Brown Eyed Bakers verion of Homemade Oreos.

/chocolate-cookie-sandwiches/

For the Sugar Frosting Filling , you’ll need:

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 cups icing sugar (powdered sugar)

1 tablespoon whipping cream or evaporated milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

pink food colour (optional)

With an electric mixer, beat the butter until it is smooth. Add the icing sugar, milk, and vanilla. Mix medium speed for 2 minute until smooth. If the icing is too stiff, add a little more milk. If the icing is too soft add a few tablespoons of icing sugar until you reach the consistency soft enough to pipe. Add food colouring and tint to your liking.

Heart Maze Cookies

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These are pretty cool. I’m tooting the horn, yes. But, for real…they’re pretty ahhhh-mazing!

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I mean come on!!! You can actually play with your food! Who wouldn’t want to receive a cookie that’s also a game!? Hello? FUN!

The first you need to do is draw yourself a maze template according to the size of your cookie cutter. My heart cookie cutter is approximately 3″ tall x 3 3/4″ wide. I’ll post a photo of my maze drawing for you at the bottom so you can print it out and scale it to your cookie.

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I use my tried and true sugar cookie recipe and then covered each cookie in fondant. Remember to use a thin layer of jam or your favourite preserves (or even plain old piping gel) on your cookie so the fondant sticks.

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If you’re a freak like me, you can pipe the maze details by free hand. If on the other hand, you want your maze to be just right, place your sketch on top of your fondant covered cookie and using a sharp tool, like a pin, trace over your maze pressing into the cookie. The pressure should be heavy enough so you make the indent marks on the fondant underneath.

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This step makes it easier to pipe the lines with royal icing.

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Using a round tip #3 (wilton), pipe the maze onto the cookie. Let the icing dry before colouring in the centre heart with edible food colouring markers. The final detail is sticking a heard sprinkle at the starting point and making sure you have little silverettes or other round sprinkles that you can use to roll around the maze.

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I know…so cute right?

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I don’t know what’s more fun? Playing with these things or eating them. But, as my daughter and her BCF (best cousin forever) always say, “water is boring, eating is more fun!” 😛

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Right click to save the maze template and scale it according to the size of your cookie.

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It’s a Marshmallow world

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You now what’s friggen delicious? Soft, homemade, fluffly marshmallows. I have tried a few recipes and most them are very similar. I always tend to lean towards simple recipes because when I’m baking or making stuff, I just need to it be quick and delicious 😉 My go to recipe is one I found from Ina Garten. I use her recipe as the base and make variations to it according to the flavour of marshmallows I want to make.

This batch is a batch of strawberry marshmallows…and yes, they were dreamy.

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Making marshmallows is like being a kid again doing a science experiment in mom’s kitchen. Messes are allowed, but not recommended. It’s super cool to see the gelatin set. It happens quickly and feels weird. The only tricky part about making marshmallows is making sure the candy reaches the proper temp, so get thee a candy thermometer! The magic number for marshmallows is 240 degF.  Then you whip up this concoction and watching them fluff up as is simply magical.

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To get the strawberry flavour for these pretties, I used freeze dried strawberry powder. I prefer to use this type of flavouring because it also adds a touch of colour. If you use candy extracts, they will work just fine…you will just have to also add some food colouring.

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And this photo here should be enough to make you skip to the bottom of the post for the recipe. This recipe promises to give you fluffy and bouncy delightful little treats.

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Please…try and refrain from plunging your face into the marshmallow.

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Lastly sprinkle some more friggen SUGAR over the sugar based candy. It is technically candy right? I’m not 100% sure, but we’ll categorize this confection as such.

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The messy part actually comes when it’s time to cut these up. You can use cookie cutters to make them even more interesting. Just be sure to really coat the cutters with (Yep! You guessed it!) icing sugar as cutting marshmallows is sticky business.

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You can also cut them into traditional little squares. As you cut them, be sure to coat them in icing sugar and then shake off the excess. This will prevent them from sticking to one another.

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Fun strawberry shaped, strawberry flavoured fluffiness! They’re light and springy, soft and airy. In the summer, we toast these and squish them between homemade graham cracker cookies and chocolate. Homemade marshmallows toast and melt 1,000,000,000 times better than the store bought stuff.

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Since I was making these mid-winter, they went best in some frothy hot chocolate. The End.

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PS. Icing Sugar = Confectioner’s Sugar = Powdered Sugar

Print
Fluffy Homemade Marshmallows

Yield: approximately 3 to 4 dozen 1" pieces

Ingredients

  • 3 packets unflavored gelatin
  • 1 cup water (divided into 2 half cups)
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 cup clear corn syrup
  • 3-4 teaspoons of strawberry freeze-dried powder
  • Icing sugar for dusting

Instructions

  1. Prepare a 9" square pan by generously covering it with icing sugar. I line my pan with parchment for less mess and make sure to have loads of icing sugar on the bottom.
  2. I use a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. In your mixing bowl, combine the gelatin and 1/2 cup of cold water. Set it aside.
  3. In a 3 QT pot, add the sugar, corn syrup, freeze-dried strawberry powder and 1/2 cup of water. Over medium heat, cook until the syrup reaches 240 degF on a candy thermometer. Do not stir the mixture during this process to prevent sugar crystals from forming.
  4. Gently pour the sugar syrup into the mixing bowl with the gelatin. Whip on high for approximately 15 minutes or until the mixture is very thick and pillowy!
  5. ***If you don't want to use freeze-dried flavouring and decide to use candy extracts you can add it in now and mix for another minute.
  6. Pour the marshmallow into the icing sugar dusted pan. Quickly smooth the top and sift the top with more icing sugar. Let the marshmallow sit over night until it is set.
  7. The next day, lift the marshmallow out of the pan and cut into desired shapes. Coat them with icing sugar to prevent the from sticking to one another. Dust off any excess icing sugar before packaging them up.
  8. Wrapped up or stored in a tight container, these should keep at room temperature for up to two weeks (one week if you are in humid weather).

Recipe slightly adapted from Ina Garten Barefoot Contessa

/its-a-marshmallow-world/

Vanilla Cake

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Everyone’s mum or grandma has their secret vanilla cake recipe tucked away. My dad actually used to have one on a small recipe card and it haunts me to this day that I can no longer find it. Over the years of baking in the shop and tweaking recipe after recipe, I did narrow it down to a couple favourites. Here’s my favourite go-to vanilla cake.

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Print
Ailynn's Favourite Vanilla Cake

Yield: Two 9" cakes or Two 8" cakes plus a few cupcakes

Ingredients

  • 1 cup Butter, softened
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 4 Large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Pure vanilla extract
  • 3 cups All-purpose flour
  • 3 teaspoons Baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon Salt
  • 1 cup Buttermilk

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degF.
  2. Coat two 9" pans with shortening and dust with flour. You can also line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper.
  3. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside.
  4. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar and it has doubled in volume. The mixture will look pale and fluffy. This step can take up to 5 minutes at medium speed.
  5. Mix in the eggs one at a time then add the vanilla extract. The batter may start to separate or look curdled, just continue to mix until the mixture looks smooth.
  6. Add in 1/2 of the flour in and mix on low until just combined.
  7. Pour in the milk slowly and mix on low until it is fully incorporated.
  8. Add the remaining flour and mix on low until the batter has come together (approximately 1 minute).
  9. Divide the batter into your cake pans and bake for approximately 40-50 minutes. Check for doneness at 40 minutes by poking a skewer into the cake. If it comes out wet, continue to bake until the skewer comes out clean or with a few cake crumbs attached.
  10. Let the cakes cool in the pans for about 5-10 minutes before flipping them out of the pans onto a cooling rack.
/vanilla-cake/

Homemade Fleur de sel caramels

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I have this fancy salt. I only ever use it for caramel 😛

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If you have a little handy dandy kitchen helper who always wants to help “make” stuff, his or her little helping hands can mix ingredients in while you photograph. Ummm, yes…at home, we like to measure ingredients on the floor.

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Once all the ingredients are stirred together nicely, keep little people far away from the stove. I truly need to invest in a much larger pot as you can see, caramel making is like living dangerously. I never know if it’s going to boil over and if it ever did, I would be sorry. So, DON’T do like I do. Use a least a 5 QT pot and not a 3 QT like I always do. caramel2

Once it reaches the right temperature pour the hot, sugary mess out into your prepared pan. Let it set (I like to wait over night) but it should set in couple of hours before cutting. Oh and yes, the SALT! I sprinkle the salt on and lightly press it over top once the caramel starts to cool, but is still tacky on top. If you sprinkle it on to soon, it just dissolves because of heat.

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The most painful part of making caramels is wrapping them up. If I was going to keep it all for myself I wouldn’t bother, but I like to put myself through the painful process of cutting a million square wax paper pieces and wrapping the bazillion pieces of caramel…all.for.you.

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Happy eating and happy sharing! caramels7

Print
Homemade Fleur de sel caramels

Ingredients

  • 2 cups granulated white sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup butter
  • 2 cups whipping cream
  • 1 cup clear corn syrup
  • Fleur de sel for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Line a 9" square pan with parchment and set aside. I've also used a 7x11" pan for slightly thinner caramels.
  2. In a heavy 5-quart pot, add all the ingredients. Give it a couple little stirs then place over medium heat and bring to a boil.Do not stir or mix it once it starts to boil.
  3. Cook the candy mixture until the candy thermometer reaches 246°F.
  4. Carefully pour the hot caramel into the prepared pan. Let it cool until for an hour before sprinkling the fleur de sel. Let the caramel continue to cool until it is set.
  5. Cut into 1" squares or 1 1/2" x 1" rectangles and wrap the caramels in precut wax paper squares.
  6. The caramels will keep in the fridge for about 1 month. They will need to come to room temperature to enjoy soft chewy caramels.
/homemade-fleur-de-sel-caramels/

Caramel Pretzel Wands

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Yep, they’re as fun to make as you think they are 😉 caramel_pretzels7

And it all starts with some super delicious, homemade caramel… caramel_pretzels1

Add some melted chocolate, sprinkles of your choice and let the fun begin. caramel_pretzels2

Cut the caramel into thin strips. When I started wrapping the caramel it did pull, so you can actually wrap 2-3 pretzel batons with one strip of caramel. caramel_pretzels3 Wrap the caramel around the batons, like so. The blur in the video is Miss K’s tiny hands…I guess that’s the quality I get when I recruit my child to record me LOL.

caramel_pretzels5

Dip the pretzels into your melted chocolate and cover with pretty little sprinkles. caramel_pretzels6

They are super cute. You can decorate these for any occasion! Make them look like little Christmas trees or Princess wands, Wizard wands, and of course, Unicorn horns!!!

caramel_pretzels8

Videos: Piping Buttercream Flowers

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I really enjoy piping buttercream flowers. I actually prefer buttercream cake to fondant cakes, but that’s just me. After years of working with fondant, I know that some cake designs will just work better with fondant. But, if I can help it, buttercream is boss!

Below are a few quick little tutorials on how to pipe some basic buttercream flowers.

I typically use a flower nail to pipe the majority of flowers. Once you get better and faster, you’ll learn to skip flowernails and pipe directly onto cookies, cupcakes and even cakes.

First up is a ruffled blossom . You’ll need a flower nail, Wilton tip #104, wax paper cut into 2″ squares and some buttercream to practice with!

Next up is a butercream rose . You’ll need a flower nail, Wilton tip round tip#12 for the base and petal tip #104 for the petals, wax paper cut into 2″ squares and of course, buttercream!

Finally, my most favourite buttercream flower, the chrysanthemum . You’ll need a flower nail, Wilton tip round tip#12 for the base and curved tip #81 for the petals, wax paper cut into 2″ squares and you guessed it…buttercream!

Festive Doors

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Sugar cookies are one of my most favourite sweets to decorate. With just a couple of colours and basic steps, you’ll have some fanciful cookies on your plate!

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • A batch of my favourite sugar cookie dough ( click here for the recipe ).
  • Stiff consistency royal icing in white, red, and green
  • Runny consistency royal icing in white and red
  • Piping bags and one with a star tip 16 to pipe the wreaths
  • Silverettes (silver/gold ball sprinkles)
  • Silver and gold lustre dust.

Here’s a quick 4 step tutorial on creating Christmas doors. Royal icing cookies should dry in 24 hours. Be sure not to package them until the icing has fully set. Otherwise you’ll end up with smooshed wreaths!

These are so cute and perfect for your holiday cookie swaps or for gift giving.

Unicorn Bark

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Candy bark is perfect for any whimsical cake or cupcake design you have planned. Making candy decorations is simple and fun! You can even enlist your littles to help with this. Just be prepared for the usual finger licking!

You can pick as many colours of melting candy wafers as you like, but for this tutorial, I chose 3 colours. A base colour and then 2 drizzle colours.

You can leave the graffiti look, as above, but I like the marbled effect too.

Next choose the endless possibilities of chocolates, candies, and sprinkles to mix in. The more, the better! Be sure to press them in nicely otherwise they’ll just fall right off the tops after the candy has set.

Just before the candy melts have completely hardened, I like to take my spatula and score it for cleaner edges. You don’t have to do this part. If you don’t score the candy at this point, you’ll just have to break off the pieces making the more random in shapes and sizes.

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Unicorn Bark

Ingredients

  • 1 cup purple candy melts
  • ¼ cup dark blue candy melts
  • ¼ cup pink candy melts
  • Assorted candies and sprinkles
  • Small pan lined with parchment paper
  • Small icing spatula
  • Skewer

Instructions

  1. Line a baking pan with parchment paper.
  2. Melt all the chocolate and pour the purple candy melts onto the pan and spread out the chocolate over the pan to approximately ¼” thick or thinner.
  3. Next drizzle the blue and pink melted candy over the purple and lightly swirl them around with a skewer.
  4. Sprinkle on the candies and assorted sprinkles over top. Gently press them in and let the candy cool slightly at room temperature. When the candy begins to harden, score it with a spatula or knife so it will break off cleanly.
  5. Once completely hardened, use the pieces to decorate your cakes or cupcakes or package them up as is for a fun little treat.
/unicorn-bark/

Gingerbread Cookies

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It must be Christmas! Gingerbread cookie are a must during this time of year, but we don’t particularly like the rock hard cookies. I like my gingerbread cookies slightly chewy with crisp edges. This recipe was just right.

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Gingerbread Cookies

Yield: 2-3 dozen depending on cookie cutter size

Ingredients

  • 3 cups (less 2 tablespoons) all purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon ground ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon all spice
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup dark molasses

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degF and line baking pans with parchment paper.
  2. Sift together all the dry ingredients into a large bowl then set aside. Remembering to remove 2 tablespoons of flour when measuring. You'll use this flour later when rolling out the cookies.
  3. In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add in the molasses and mix until evenly combined. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined and ball of dough forms.
  4. Dust your rolling surface with flour and roll out the dough to preferred thickness. The thinner you roll them, the less time they will need baking, but these will likely be a crispy cookie. I try to roll my cookie dough between 1/8" and 1/4".
  5. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes.
/gingerbread-cookies/

Gingerbread cookies are fine without any additional icing, but if you want to pretty them up, you can whip up a batch of R oyal icing :

4 cups of icing sugar

2 tablespoons of meringue powder

1/4 luke warm water, more or less may be needed to achieve your desired piping consistency

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Let the above ingredients mix together in a stand mixer for 7-8 minutes. If the mixture is dry, add water. If the mixture becomes too runny, add icing sugar 1 tablespoon at a time until it thickens.

Let the icing harden over night before packaging up or storing the cookies.

Banana Cupcakes with Raspberry and Nutella Buttercream

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Why would you want just plain ol’ banana bread when you can have Banana cupcakes with raspberry buttercream or with silky hazelnut buttecream?!

I know. Everyone has their own favourite banana bread recipe. I have 2 or 3 myself, but this one is just right for cupcakes. It gives an ever so slight crunch on the top and perfectly dense and not soggy for the cake part.

See what I’m talking about? Golden on the tops. So pretty. Banana bread is practically a health food… minus the butter, the sugar, the flour. Hahaha! And you’re about to make it even better by adding raspberries to it 😉

Raspberry buttercream is my FAVOURITE! I’ll use it just about every  time I make someone something sweet. The best thing about swiss meringue buttercream is that it mixes well with just about any fruit, liqueur, jam, extract…you name it, it will go great with buttercream…

…Including Nutella! Swirl in as much or as little as you would like to get the perfect chocolatey-hazelnut flavour. And yes, you could mix in your favourite peanut butter too! Go…walk, don’t run, but make these as soon as you can. Why else do you have those bananas sitting around for?

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Banana Cupcakes

Yield: 14-18 Cupcakes

Ingredients

  • 4 medium bananas
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degF and line muffin tins with cupcake liners.
  2. In a medium sized bowl, mash the bananas and sprinkle the baking soda over top then set it aside.
  3. With a hand mixer or using a stand mixer, cream together the melted butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until thoroughly combined. Add the vanilla extract and the mashed bananas. Mix together at medium speed for approximately 1 minute.
  4. Add the flour and mix on low speed for approx. 30 seconds so the flour is nicely combined. Be careful not to over mix.
  5. Bake for approximately 22-24 minutes until the tops are a nice golden colour.
/banana-cupcakes-with-raspberry-and-nutella-buttecream/

Buttercream Recipe HERE !

Baked Vanilla Doughnuts

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These are my go to when I need a good cakey fix. Don’t worry, I have a most excellent fried doughnut that I’l share another day. This past summer for my daughter’s Birthday, we decided to do a cake doughnut tower instead of cake and cupcakes. First, because it’s super quick to whip up (and I didn’t feel like baking a big cake or boring cupcakes) and second because look at how cute these turned out!

The batter whips up ridiculously quick…faster than cake batter even. The important thing to remember is to get a good amount of vanilla beans in the batter. They make all the difference between vanilla doughnuts and VANILLA doughnuts!

Yes, you can just scoop the batter in, but I like to use a piping bag and pipe the rounds in the pans. It makes for everyone getting the same size doughnut 😉

Check these beauties out. Fluffy, cakey, and perfect!

Let them cool then dip them in this sugary and buttery mess. The glaze takes just a minute to make and can be flavoured and coloured however you like.

My daughter was going through a Shopkins phase this summer, so we HAD to decorate the doughnuts like D’lish Donut. I didn’t have blue heart sprinkles on hand (for shame) so I piped out little hearts using blue candy melts.

Add a little sparkle to theseEeeeee!!! So cute.

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Baked Vanilla Doughnuts

Yield: 12-18

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1-2 vanilla beans scraped (or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla bean powder)
  • 2 2/3 cups All-Purpose Flour
  • 1 cup milk (2% or whole)
  • ----
  • Sugar Glaze:
  • 2 cups confections (powdered) sugar
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3-4 Tablespoons milk
  • Food colouring
  • Mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl. If it is too thick, add a little milk until smoother, if the mixture is runny, add powdered sugar until a little thicker. Dip the doughnuts right away and place them on a cooling rack or pan. If the glaze gets cold, warm it slightly in the microwave until it is the proper consistency again,

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425 degF. Prepare the baking pans by lightly greasing with shortening and dusting with flour.
  2. With a mixer (stand or handheld) mix the sugar and butter and oil for 2 minutes on medium speed. Add the eggs one at a time, the vanilla and mix together until it has fluffed up some more. Approximately another 2 minutes.
  3. In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and vanilla beans. Add the flour mixture to the mixer and mix until just combined.
  4. Slowly pour in the milk and mix until combined. Do not over mix the batter.
  5. Spoon the batter into a piping bag (round tip is optional) and pipe the batter around the molds.
  6. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cool for a few minutes then flip the doughnuts out of the pans onto cooling racks.Glaze the doughnuts once they are completelycool.
/baked-vanilla-doughnuts/

Peanut Butter Icing

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I’ve heard of people who just eat peanut butter right out of the jar. Not in this house. It takes us FOREVER to finish a jar of peanut butter in our house. Sometimes, I’m not even sure why I buy it. However, last night, I had the strangest craving for peanut butter. Weird.

IMG_8978

I could’ve just taken a spoonful and been done with it, but I thought…well, I guess I could make peanut butter icing. Yah, that’s it! I’ll eat peanut butter icing. Just add some icing sugar, butter, and a couple splashes of milk! simple. Wait…what?

Now this swirly mess, I could eat. Buuuuut, something was missing. CHOCOLATE! There was nothing I could do. It was too late, the icing had been made. So, I fired up the oven and baked me a batch of chocolate cupcakes. I swear, it was all a blur. In less than 30 minutes, I had warm cupcakes ready for peanut butter icing. I used my handy dandy SUPER Simple and dark chocolate cake recipe…find it HERE !

Ahhh!!! Now this HIT the spot!!! I tell yah, peanut butter + chocolate cake = winner!!!

The icing made 2 cups which was enough for 2 dozen cupcakes. PERFECT. One cupcake for me, none for Kenna because she doesn’t even eat cake. Sent half to my brothers, although, his were not iced 😉 and then a plate went to our lovely neighbhours!

Oh my God. This was so good. I won’t need to fill my peanut butter craving for another year!

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Peanut Butter Icing

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 2 cups, powdered sugar
  • couple splashes of milk

Instructions

  1. Just mix everything together until smooth and creamy. Add milk a table spoon at a time until it is the consistency you want. If piping the icing on, make sure the icing is not too soft. If the icing gets too soft, simply add more powdered sugar until it gets a little stiffer.
  2. Chocolate Cake Recipe is HERE. Be sure to bake the cupcakes at 350 degF for 20 minutes.
/peanut-butter-icing/

Floral Roll Cake

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Roll cakes are the quickest cakes to bake. You’ll wonder why you don’t just stick to making everyone roll cakes because they bake up super fast and can be super pretty too!

The ingredients are simple, the method is quick (you don’t even have to use a mixer if you don’t want to), and the result is sweet. I like to fancy up roll cakes in the baking portion, so I don’t have to do a lot of decorating afterwards. To do this, I scoop a little bit of the cake batter out, colour it, and thicken it up to a piping consistency just by adding some flour. For this cake, I tinted about 1/4 cup with green food colouring and piped out some swirls on to cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

The cake only takes about 10 minutes to bake because it is so thin! While it’s baking, make sure you dust a dish cloth with icing sugar. You’ll need to flip your cake out onto it after it bakes. See how pretty it turns out?

Before you roll the cake in the dish cloth, you need to flip the cake over so that the design is against the cloth. While the cake is warm, quickly roll it and let it cool all rolled up.

Once the cake is completely cooled, unroll it and put a generous layer of your choice of buttercream or whipped cream. You can get even fancier and add some fresh fruit to the cake. Once the cake is all rolled up again, cut the ends off so you have a nice clean ends.

To dress this pretty little thang up, I quickly piped some buttercream flowers. Watch the video tutorials HERE!

The best part about these roll cakes is that you can pipe any design or pattern before baking and just leave it at that! Have fun making roll cakes! I think I’ll have to try one for every holiday now and play around with some fun patterns.

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Floral Roll Cake

Yield: 8 slices

Ingredients

  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 3 extra large eggs
  • 1/3 cup warm water
  • 2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 cup cake flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
  2. Line a shallow cookie sheet with parchment paper and lightly grease the parchement as well as the sides of the cookie sheet.
  3. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until they become a lighter shade of yellow (about 5 minutes by hand or 3 minutes with a mixer). Add the warm water and vanilla extract and beat together for another minute.
  4. While the wet mixture is mixing, sift together the cake flour and baking powder in another bowl. Gently add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and gently combine until smooth.
  5. Remove 1/4 cup of the batter and add green food colouring and a tsp of flour at a time until the mixture is thick enough to pipe. Place the coloured batter into a piping back and pipe swirls all around the parchment. If the batter is too runny, the detail will melt into each other, so make sure this batter is nice and thick.
  6. Bake the piped design for about 2 minutes. Do not over bake as it will burn very quickly. Remove the sheet from the oven and pour the remaing batter over the design . Bake for another 10-12 minutes. The cake is done when it springs back from a gentle touch.
  7. While the cake is baking, dust a tea towel with icing sugar and place on a cooling rack. When the cake is done baking, flip it out of the pan and peel back the parchment paper. Place the cake design down against the towel and roll it up. Keep the cake rolled until is fully cooled.
  8. Once the cake is cooled and you are ready to fill it with buttercream or whipped cream, unroll the cake and evenly spread a generous amount of icing. Roll the cake back up and cut off the ends to have clean edges. Place on a pretty little cake stand and serve 🙂
  9. To decorate it with buttercream flowers, see tutorials on piping here:
  10. Buttercream icing recipe here:
/floral-roll-cake/

Macarons

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Nothing was more of a pain in my keister than learning to make Macarons. There. I said it. But you should definitely still try to bake them 😉

When I first attempted to make macarons many years ago, I must have tried over a dozen times …and FAILED each and every single time. There was something about these things that just made me want to keep trying to make them perfect. It wasn’t until one Easter about 4 years ago that I finally got a recipe to work for me. The skies brightened up and I heard angels singing as I thanked the Lord that I FINALLY succeeded. That one time anyway. Then we went to Paris and I took a class at La Cuisine Paris and learned how to make macarons using an Italian Meringue method. And although the macarons were absolutely divine, the process was not for me.  So, I am sharing with you the method that I use at home and at the cake shop …the French meringue method.

Now, I’m not going to go into the science of making these things as you can go ahead a google all the hundreds of blogs that discuss “how to make the perfect macaron”. I’m just going to jump right in and show you how I make mine.

If you have a sensitivity to flour, these delectable cookies are perfect for you. Made with gluten-free ingredients! Just keep in mind that if you are making them at home and you have flour around, they are of course not 100% gluten free.

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Macarons

Yield: 2 dozen (or 48 single shells)

Ingredients

  • 85 grams  almond flour
  • 120 grams powdered sugar
  • 70 grams egg whites
  • 35 grams granulated sugar

Instructions

  1. Separate your egg whites from the yolks (save yolks for yummy lemon curd). Many macaron makers will tell you that one of the secrets to the perfect macaron is to age the whites (keep them covered and refrigerated for several days after they have been separated). I have tried aging whites from 1 day to a week. It seems to me that it never really made a difference from when I used fresh, so I leave this step to you.
  2. Sift together the almond flour and powdered sugar. I tend to need to sift 2 to 3 times. You want to make sure that there are no lumps of almond flour in your cookie so you get that nice smooth top.
  3. With a stand mixer, begin whipping the egg whites at high speed. After about 30 seconds when the whites get frothy, slowly add the granulated sugar. Whip to stiff peaks.
  4. Add your food colouring (gel or powdered) to the brightness you wish to achieve. The colour may fade when they bake, so be sure to bump up the intensity just a teeny tiny bit here.
  5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and prepare to put some muscle into this process. Pour half of your dry ingredients into the bowl and vigorously mix it with the egg whites with a rubber spatula. You are essentially deflating the meringue your stand mixer just took the time to make. “Macaronage” is the term you’ll read about in your macaron adventures…and some say this the make or break it part of your macaron making adventure.
  6. Add the remaining dry ingredients and continue mixing until the mixture is combined, shiny, and "flows like lava"= slowly, not runny.
  7. Preheat your oven to 300F.
  8. Pour the batter in your piping bag with a round tip attached to it. I usually put the piping bag in a tall glass while I do this.
  9. Pipe 1" rounds (or your desired size or shape of macarons) onto a baking pan lined with parchment or silicone baking mats (make sure they are grease free). Sprinkle the tops with crushed pistachios or oreos or smarties, etc. Then let them dry for at least 15 minutes. They are ready to go into the oven when the tops are no longer tacky.
  10. Now, in MY oven, I bake these for 20 minutes. They are done when you see feet (crinkly texture on the bottom of your cookies) and when you lift it off your parchment of silicone, the bottoms are smooth.
  11. Cool them and fill with your choice if flavoured ganache or buttercreams.
/macarons/

Looks simple right? Just 4 ingredients…not to scare you away, but such few ingredients had never given so much of a hard time. Fret not! The reason I am sharing this recipe with you is so you don’t actually have to bang your head against the wall anymore! This recipe is what I use for my clients’ dessert tables and for treats at home (Miss Kenna loves her macarons)!

Step 1. Separate your egg whites from the yolks (save yolks for yummy lemon curd). Many macaron makers will tell you that one of the secrets to the perfect macaron is to age the whites (keep them covered and refrigerated for several days after they have been separated). I have tried aging whites from 1 day to a week. It seems to me that it never really made a difference from when I used fresh, so I leave this step to you.

Step 2. Sift together the almond flour and powdered sugar. I tend to need to sift 2 to 3 times. You want to make sure that there are no lumps of almond flour in your cookie so you get that nice smooth top.

Step 3. With a stand mixer, begin whipping the egg whites at high speed. After about 30 seconds when the whites get frothy , slowly add the granulated sugar.

Step 4. This will take a few minutes, so hang tight. Mix on medium to high until you get stiff peak egg whites.

Step 5. I usually add my colour in at this point…and I stick to my ready available gel colours, but you can use powdered colour as well. The colour fades when they bake, so be sure to bump up the intensity just a teeny tiny bit here.

Step 6. Once you get the colour you want, remove the bowl from the mixer and prepare to put some muscle into this process. Pour half of your dry ingredients into the bowl and vigorously mix it with the egg whites with a rubber spatula. You are essentially deflating the meringue your stand mixer just took the time to make. “Macaronage” is the term you’ll read about in your macaron adventures…and some say this the make or break it part of your macaron making adventure.

Add the remaining dry ingredients and continue mixing until the mixture is combined, shiny, and “flows like lava”= slowly, not runny. If your mixture is runny, you have over mixed it and will just need to dry your shells for a longer period of time (they may also be more flat vs. puffy). Your mixture is under mixed , if you go to pipe your meringues and there is a peak left.

Step 100…or 7. Pour the batter in your piping bag with a round tip attached to it. I usually put the piping bag in a tall glass while I do this. It’s ever more tricky to do this while photographing!

Step 8…or 101. Pipe 1″ rounds (or your desired size of macarons) onto a baking pan lined with parchment or silicone baking mats (make sure they are grease free). I once made cookies the day before and didn’t wash the mats before baking macarons. Resulted in puffy macarons with no feet and a big undercooked mess and sobbing lady in the kitchen. NOT PRETTY. And it may or may not have been the time that I was making them for this particular blog post! Ha.

Again…very tricky to focus camera with one hand, press the shutter button, and pipe macarons in another.

Step 9 . Preheat your oven to 300 degF.

Step 10 . Let these beauties dry for at least 15 minutes. I have been impatient at times and don’t wait (I have been lucky some days and not so lucky other days). JUST WAIT. Walk away, do the dishes, sing a couple of songs, run around the block a couple times…let them sit. They are ready to go into the oven when the tops are no longer tacky. If there is one rule I follow for making macarons, it is this one. Just because the chances of them working out for me is 50/50 if I don’t wait.

Step 10A. Oops! Before you dry them, you can add wonderful things to the shells. Today, I added some lavender to half of the shells and crushed Smarties to the other half.

Step 11. Now, in MY oven, I bake these for 20 minutes. In our Giant convection oven at the shop it only takes 10 minutes. What I will say is that they are done when you see feet (crinkly texture on the bottom of your cookies) and when you  lift it off your parchment of silicone, the bottoms are smooth. What I have also learned is that if you over bake them, you can “age” the shells in a tightly sealed plastic container in the fridge or freezer. When you take them out to room temperature, they will have softened. It’s a strange magical quality. I  love it.

I filled the lavender macarons with some fresh lemon curd.

And for the smarties ones, I filled with some vanilla buttercream also with crushed smarties!

Yes, they can be a pain in the butt. Yes, some days you will be patting yourself on the back for a job well done and some days you will be victim to the ever popular macaron-mishaps. Dust yourself off and try again. These ridiculous little treats are worth it-most days!

Happy Macaroning, everyone!

And good luck you if you are just starting out on this journey 😉

Cake Gems

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These are a fanciful shaped version of a cake pop, minus the Popsicle stick! Although, adding a Popsicle stick to these gems would be fun!

People make cake pops all sorts of different ways. My favourite way is to crumble vanilla cake and mix it with cream cheese icing. You can use any cake flavour and any icing flavour you want. Some people even crush oreos and ball them up with icing. I just prefer cake 😉

I really liked using these gem moulds. They were super simple and worked like a charm. I think I may have to add these to the online store. To use them, melt your chocolate or candy melts and place about a 1/2 tsp in each cavity. Swirl the chocolate around to coat the entire mold or use a brush to push it up the sides. Next ball up the cake mixture and press it into each cavity.

Add more of the melted chocolate on the top and smooth it over, making sure the chocolate covers the cake well. A little angled spatula will do the trick wonderfully.

I am impatient, so I put the mold in the freezer for a few minutes. I also find they pop out much easier when frozen. The last thing to do, if you want a little bling on these gems is to add some gold leaf. Gold leaf is sensitive to even the lightest of breaths, so be gentle when placing them on the gems and be swift about it. A very light dab of water on the tops of each gem will help the gold leaf stay on if you find they are not sticking well enough.

You can pop these gems on cakes or cupcakes or package them up on their own to give as pretty little gifts! Enjoy!

Favourite Sugar Cookie Dough

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Rolled out sugar cookies are perfect for any occasion. When you bake these, the scent of vanilla and freshly baked cookies will fill your home. Good luck getting around to decorating them, because these are yummy on their own and they tend to get swiped from the cooling rack by quick little hands.

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Sugar Cookie Dough

Yield: approximately 2-3 dozen cookies depending on cookie cutter size.

Ingredients

  • 1 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

  1. With a stand mixer or hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Then mix in the egg and vanilla extract.
  2. Add 2 1/2 cups of flour and the baking powder and mix until combined. Slowly add the remaining flour until a dough ball forms. Do not add all the flour at once as you may not need a full three cups.
  3. Roll the dough between 1/8" and 1/4" and cut out cookies. Chill the cut cookies for approximately 15 minutes in the fridge (not necessary, but this can help so the cookie doesn't lose it's shape.
  4. Bake on baking sheet lined with parchment paper at 350 deg F for approximate 10 minutes. Bake a minute or two longer if you like crispy sugar cookies.
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7 Layer Chocolate Cake

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It’s almost midnight. The kids are asleep. You have a craving for all sorts of chocolate. You open the fridge door and find whipping cream. You have the sudden urge to be naughty…Naturally, you would start to bake a cake, right? No? Wait. What were you thinking of doing?! 😉

I wanted the chocolatey-est chocolate cake I could produce in the fastest time possible with basic ingredients on hand close to midnight. The cake took 5 minutes to prep and only 35 minutes to bake. While it was baking, I made the fillings and frosting: chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, and chocolate sugar frosting. So, I’d say that was pretty reasonable….sort of. Look, I wasn’t thinking straight, but let Me indulge YOU.

Now, I’m not going to lie. I made this all just before midnight and then I couldn’t sleep for the next four hours because I got wired on caffine and chocolate…neither of which ever affect me like so, but WOW! I could not sleep. So, take note…do not make this in the middle of the night when you are craving chocolate like nobody’s business.

All I’m saying though, is that you NEED to make this cake. Because the next day, after the sugar coma has lifted…you find this in your refrigerator waiting to be devoured.

Ken was so cute. He thought this cake was for Father’s Day!!! Bhahahahaha. I mean, sure…after I eat my share of it, the rest can be for “Father’s” Day 😉

I was kind. We each had a slice for breakfast. Or I should say, brunch since I woke up at 11!!!! Whoops. Like I said, sugar coma. And that was just from a few licks of icing, ganache, mousse, etc, etc.

I regret none of it. At least my chocolate craving has been FIXED, for the MOMENT.

And see? There’s plenty left for Father’s Day!

Well, after I have another slice anyway!!! 🙂

I might even save you a piece too.

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7 Layer Chocolate Cake

Yield: 2 8" round cakes

Ingredients

  • 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 cup cocoa powder
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 TBSP instant espresso powder dissolved in 1 cup Hot water
  • 1/2 butter, melted then slightly cooled
  • 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 tsp white vinegar

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 8" or 9" round pans. Set aside.
  2. In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the milk and lemon juice. Set aside.
  3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Give it a quick mix to combine.
  4. In a large measuring cup, whisk together, the eggs, milk, espresso mixture, melted butter, and vanilla. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and mix on medium speed for about 30 seconds; add the vinegar and continue to mix for another minute. Pour batter evenly into prepared pans. I find that when I use the 8" pans, I have enough batter left over for about 4-6 standard size cupcakes
  5. Bake approximately 35-40 minutes (18-20 minutes for cupcakes) or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in the pans for approximately 10 minutes before flipping out the cakes to continue cooling on a wire racks. Cool completely before filling and icing.
  6. To assemble the 7 layers, torte each cake in half. The layers from bottom to top will be as follows: cake, chocolate frosting, cake, ganache, cake, mousse, cake then the entire cake frosted.
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Chocolate Mousse

(makes approx 3 cups)

7 oz. good quality chocolate (milk or dark or both), melted and slighted cooled

1 cup whipping cream

1 Tbsp sugar

1/4 cup hot water

2 TBSP cocoa powder

1 tbsp Nutella (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or over a double boiler then set aside to cool.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whip the cream and sugar until stiff peaks form. While the cream is being whipped, dissolve the cocoa powder in the hot water. Once the cream has formed stiff peaks, gently fold in the melted chocolate and cocoa powder mixture.  Refrigerate until firm and ready to use.

Chocolate Ganache

(makes approx 1 1/2 cups)

Here’s what you need:

1 cup whipping cream

8 oz. good quality chocolate, chopped (use more if you want it to be richer)

1 Tbsp unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Place your chopped chocolate in a large heat proof bowl. About the chocolate, please don’t use coating/melting chocolate or chocolate bars. Go out and get yourself the good stuff, like Valrhona, Guittard, or even Callebaut.

2. Bring your whipping cream to a light rolling boil, stir in the butter and let it melt. Pour the milk over the chopped chocolate and let it rest for about 2 minutes then stir it together until it comes together.

3. Cool at room temperature for 15 minutes then refrigerate until the texture is firm enough to spread. If the mixture is left in the refrigerator for too long or over night, simply set at room temperature until the texture is spreadable.

Chocolate Sugar Frosting

(makes approx 3 cups)

Here’s what you need:

1 cup butter, softened at room temp

3 1/2 cups confectioners (icing or powdered) sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

5 Tbsp Milk

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix until smooth. If you mix the icing at too high a speed or for too long will result in a airy frosting. Although this is nice and light, too many air bubbles will make it difficult to frost your cake. Keep the frosting covered at room temperature until ready to frost your cake.

Buttercream

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Silky, rich and buttery…just how buttercream is supposed to be.  This is my go to buttercream for cakes and cupcakes. It’s just right for wedding cakes because it’s not overly sweet and perfect for carved cakes because when refrigerated, the buttercream hardens making it easier for covering with fondant.

Note: I always let refrigerated cakes sit at room temperature for a few hours so that the buttercream softens.

One batch only takes me about 10-15 minutes to make from start to finish.

Leave a brick of butter out at room temp for a few hours. Over a double boiler, whisk together egg whites and sugar, over simmering water. Once the egg and sugar mixture feels hot and the sugar has dissolved (it will feel smooth between your fingers) remove it from the heat and whip it at high speed.

The egg whites will look thick and fluffy, like meringue. Add the butter slowly and continue to whip at medium speed. Part way through, the mixture MAY start to look curdled. Don’t worry, it will come together. Once all the butter has been added, switch to your paddle attachment and continue to mix at low speed until the buttercream is smooth.

The great thing about Swiss buttercream is that it can take on flavours easily. We’ve come up with dozens of different flavours over the years, but raspberry has always been the most popular. All you need are some fresh or frozen raspberries (pureed). I just take a fork and mash out the berries and mix it  with the buttercream.

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Buttercream

Ingredients

  • 1 lb unsalted butter, cubed and at room temp
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 5 egg whites
  • vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. In a small pot, bring water to a boil then reduce to a simmer.
  2. Whisk together egg whites and sugar in another boil and place over the simmering water. Heat the mixture until it feels hot to the touch and you can no longer feel the sugar grains between your fingers. This will take under 5 minutes depending on how much steam there is. Be sure to whisk the mixture constantly so you don't end up with scrambled eggs.
  3. Pour the egg/sugar mixture into your stand mixer. You can use a hand mixer as well. Whip at high speed until it is a thick, white fluffy marshmallow like texture.
  4. Reduce to medium speed and slowly add one cube of butter at a time. Continue until all the butter has been added. Sometimes, the mixture starts to look curdled. It doesn't always happen, but if it does, do not worry. The buttercream is not ruined. You can switch to a paddle attachment and simply continue to mix until it becomes smooth. *If you find that you have been mixing for a long time and the mixture is not smooth, put the bowl over a steam bath to warm up the buttercream then mix it again. Be careful not to melt it.
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BUTTERCREAM FLAVOUR VARIATIONS

Chocolate buttercream : Add your favourite chocolate syrup until desired flavour is achieved

Chocolate hazelnut buttercream : Mix in chocolate hazelnut spread (eg. Nutella brand) until desired flavour is achieved.

Mango buttercream: Mix in approximately 2-3 tablespoons of mango pulp puree (eg. Alphonso mango pulp) for each 1 cup of buttercream.

Mocha buttercream : Dissolve 3 teaspoons of instant espresso powder with 1 teaspoons hot water then mix it with 1 tablespoon of chocolate syrup.

Peanut butter buttercream: Mix in smooth peanut butter until desired flavour is achieved.

Raspberry buttercream: Mix in 2-3 tablespoons of crushed fresh or frozen raspberries to the buttercream. If using frozen raspberries make sure it has been thawed and slightly warmed before mixing in.

Strawberry buttercream: You can use fresh or frozen strawberries as I did with the raspberries or you can mix in approximately 2-3 tablespoons of Strawberry preserves for each cup of buttercream.

Some notes about using and storing buttercream:

1. Yes, you must use butter. Do not use margarine.

2. When separating the egg whites, be careful to not get any yolks in the mixture.

3. Use grease free bowls and paddles. Any trace of fat (such as butter or egg yolks) before you actually add butter will prevent the meringue from whipping up to the fluffy marshmallow consistency.

4. STORING buttercream. It’s generally safe on your counter for up to 24 hours. You should refrigerate your cake/cupcakes and left over icing. Bring cakes to room temperature at least 4-5 hours before serving. Buttercream right out of the fridge is stiff and you will not be able to spread it. Before icing your cake, gently warm the buttercream in the microwave for a few seconds at a time until you get it back to the soft, silky stage. Be careful not to melt it. Once it is melted, you can not bring it back to a spreadable form.