The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Okay, so call me crazy.

Halloween is barely over and I’ve already started listening to Christmas music and thinking of menu ideas.

I can’t help it! Christmas is my absolute hands-down favourite time of the year. Not because of the presents, not because of any of the “commercialized stuff”, but because of these 5 things:

1. Snow. I effing love it. Can’t get enough of it.
2. Decorations. Everything looks so pretty with all the lights and garlands and ornaments.
3. Getting together with all sorts of people.  Especially people you maybe don’t see so often. I love it!
4. Getting to snuggle up on a cold night in a big blanket drinking hot chocolate while watching Christmas movies.
5. FOOD! Who doesn’t love the food aspect of Christmas.

Christmas just makes me so happy. There is no other time of year when I am happier or in a better mood. I busted out the ol’ classic Christmas tunes today and guess what? No really, guess! IT SNOWED! Seriously man, it snowed like crazy. Maybe it was just for 2 minutes, but it snowed none the less. And it got me all shivery inside with excitement and happiness and wonderful feelings. So that’s when I got down to the business of starting to plan the menus. This is something I do every year and it brings me so much joy! And then when I finally start making all the things I planned it’s sort of a bitter-sweet ordeal. I get to make the delicious wonderful things and then eat them, but it also means that it’s either super close to Christmas day or already is. And that makes me happy and sad at the same time because I know that it means that the next day it will all be over and time to take down all the decorations! So sad.

But this year it also means something else bitter-sweet. After new years I will be leaving home and heading to school. Sure it’s only 5 hours away, but that’s a long way! Not as close as my last school was where I could just go home every weekend if I wanted to. But guess what school I am going to? That’s right! Pastry school! And I couldn’t be more excited about that fact. I can’t wait for Christmas. And I can’t wait to start school.

This is going to be a wonderful holiday season. I can just feel it.

Oh yeah! And here is my first draft of what I plan on making (most things with mom!) for Christmas and the holidays in general!

Christmas Menu

December 25th Breakfast

Crisp corn flapjacks w warmed maple syrup and butter
thick cut applewood smoked bacon
scrambled eggs
(with cream cheese and chives)
fruit salad
(banana, mango, apple, peach, pear, dragon fruit, passion fruit juice)
cherry cheese danish

December 25th Dinner

rosemary & garlic turkey
(basted with butter and dotted with garlic and rosemary)
apple walnut stuffing
(traditional stuffing with apples and chopped walnuts)
garlic & artichoke mashed potatoes
sautéed corn w shallots
pull apart soft and buttery home-made dinner rolls
cranberry-cherry sauce
(my twist on a classic cranberry sauce. A hint of cherry sweetness and lime zest)

Cookies and Breads

shortbread cookies
(mom’s classic with glacee cherries)
gingerbread cookies
nanaimo bars
cinnamon bread

All of which I will include recipes for slowly but surely!

Oh man I am so excited for Christmas!

The Best Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache Frosting

Today I needed to make some quick cupcakes for…well, just because I wanted to! ha. So I made the old classic stand-by, the best chocolate cupcakes recipe. And just let me give you a little tip. And keep this near and dear to your heart. If you don’t use a good quality cocoa in this recipe, it will turn out sub-par. Trust me. I’ve done many tests and trials. Try to use a full out cocoa powder that is really dark in colour and smells like strong chocolate. It will give it a much deeper and richer flavour. Also make sure to use natural cocoa powder and not alkalized or ‘dutch processed’ cocoa (dutch processed, or alkalized cocoa has been processed with an alkali to neutralize the acids in it. So when you use a natural cocoa powder that still has its acids, it reacts with the baking soda in the recipe to help it rise in the oven. This is what makes this recipe so good. Perhaps I should edit it to specifically say natural cocoa powder..hmm..)

The cocoa that I use is from a natural foods store. It’s called Ambrosia Natural Foods and I buy their big bags of cocoa whenever I’m in the area It just tastes much better than anything like Hershey’s or your store brand since most of those are dutch processed (well, they are in my area anyways). But hey! That’s just my tastebuds talking. They like a deeper chocolate flavour in things (:

So for the frosting on the cupcakes, I made a quick ganache with 8oz of callebaut milk chocolate and 3/4 cup of hot heavy cream. Then when it was liquid and warm I whipped it in my stand-mixer for a few minutes until it was cool and held its shape so it could be piped easily.

Voila! Delicious and easy cupcakes.

And I promise to have an actual new recipe soon! I’ve been busy making halloween costumes lately so I haven’t had much time to experiment with many new recipes.

Wedding Cake Taste Test #1

I officially suck at cutting cakes evenly just look at those uneven layers! I need one of those cake slicers…If I were in school already, I would get a really bad mark on the montage of this cake!

Okay! So yesterday I made a trial cake in my new 12″ cake pan and the results were fantastic. What a great wedding cake recipe! The cake turned out fluffy but not light enough that it would sink under the weight of fondant. And it was moist and had a really good flavour to it. I didn’t have any almond extract to add, but I have a feeling it would make the cake even more wonderful. When you eat the cake on its own though, it tastes a little bit floury. Do you know what I mean? But once it was all put together it was really good.

So this is how it all started. I’ve been eyeing up this one recipe from Epicurious.com for a while and decided that it was the day I would try it! I divided the recipe by 1/3 with no bad results. While the cake was baking I made a random soaking syrup by combining some ingredients we had in a small saucepan and letting it simmer. They were Bailey’s Caramel and some Disaronno. I put some ground up espresso beans or whatever they were in a coffee filter and tied the top. Then I put all of these on the stove in my new wonderful $5 saucepan and let it gently simmer until the alcohol was evaporated and the espresso had diffused into the mixture. It was really really really good once it had reduced slightly. The only problem was that I didn’t have enough! But that’s what this trial was about. Figuring out things like that.

So then I cut the round cake in half to make two half-circles. Then I cut those each piece into 2 layers so I would have a 4 layer half-circle cake. I made some random cream out of some cream cheese, mascarpone cheese, sugar and a bit of milk with a touch of the buttercream to spread on the layers of the yummy-soaked cake. Then I covered it all with an italian merangue buttercream. It was really really good! I wasn’t trying to make it look good or anything, I was just trying to get an idea of the flavours we wanted. I was overall fairly happy with it. I now know you always need MUCH more soaking syrup than you think you do to actually get a good amount in the cake.

You can find the recipe I used and dived by 3 here.

Halloween Sugar Cookies

I love the holidays because it means that I can make festive sugar cookies or any decorated cookie. I am not really artistic, but somehow the cookies always end up looking okay. Although the ones I made today, I told my mom (who was taking them to work) to tell everyone that they are ‘abstract halloween cookies”  because they were not so pretty!

I’ve been on the hunt for a good sugar cookie recipe, and still haven’t found one. I guess this one is okay. Everyone else said the cookies tasted really good but I thought they weren’t as good as they could have been. Maybe I just don’t like sugar cookies and keep thinking they are something they reall aren’t.  But these stay soft in the middle but are strong enough to not fall apart. Overall, with the icing on them, I liked them!

Rolled Sugar Cookies

1 1/4 cups of unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/4 cups of cups icing sugar, sifted
1 1/4 cups of regular granulated sugar
5  large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 1/4 cups pastry flour, sifted
1/2 tsp salt

Whip the butter until smooth with the paddle attachment of your stand mixer. Add in the sugars and mix until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time and beating until each is fully incorporated. Then add the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour and salt.
Mix the flour into the butter/sugar/egg mixture until it forms a dough.
Remove from the bowl and knead the dough a little bit until it’s smooth. Then divide it into 2 discs and wrap in saran wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 325F. Chill your cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or a silpat. (I find that when I use the silpat, the cookies pretty much don’t spread at all. But when I use parchment paper they do spread. Not so that they are unrecognizable, but just enough that you can tell. )
Knead the first disc of dough a little bit until manageable. Cover your work surface with clour and roll out to around 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch thick. However thick you want the cookies. I like mine to be 1/2″. Cut out the desired shapes, and then pop the tray of cookies into the freezer for a few minutes. Then bake in the preheated oven for about 10-12 minutes (if your cookies are 1/2″ thick. use less time for thinner thickers, and more for thicker cookies.)

Continue the cycle until your dough is gone! But remember not to put the raw cookies on a hot or even warm cookie sheet because then they will spread for sure!

Use your favourite icing to ice them. I used a royal icing recipe I found somewhere on the internet.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

6 oz (3/4 cup) of warm water
5 Tablespoons Meringue Powder
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 kilogram (2.25 lbs.) powdered icing sugar

*** Note; if your meringue powder has no vanilla flavour (vanillin powder) in it, add a teaspoon of clear vanilla to this recipe.

Directions:

In mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Mix it with a whisk by hand until it is frothy and thickened…about 30 seconds.

Add the cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds more.

Pour in all the icing sugar at once and place the bowl on the mixer.

Using the paddle attachment on the LOWEST speed, mix slowly for a full 10 minutes. Icing will get thick and creamy.

Cover the bowl with a dampened tea-towel to prevent crusting and drying.

Tint with food colourings or thin the icing with small amounts of warm water to reach the desired consistency.

I didn’t particularly like the icing that much. It was really really thick at first and I had to spend a lot of time thinning it out and even then after sitting for a few minutes it was still too thick. Maybe I just didn’t make it properly!  I usually use a different icing recipe almost every single time I make cookie.  I like experimenting with all the different recipes.

No Recipe Today!

Okay so I know this is supposed to be a recipe blog, and a recipe blog it is! But some days I just want to share some really really neat things that I find, and share some websites that I love.  And today is one of those days! (: so bare with me and let’s get started!

First off, I want to talk about this wedding cake that my mom and I are making. I am so excited for it and having a lot of fun gathering all the items we need for it. All we need left really is the fondant, and we are going to use Satin Ice since it doesn’t taste like playdough. In the meantime I’ve been doing some practice cakes for flavours. So here is what the bride wants (I say only bride because the groom doesn’t even like cake, so he left it all up to her. how nice!):

-3 separate tiers of 16″, 12″ and 8″.
-They have a huge dessert table so she wants the 16″ cake to be fake, so styrofoam.
-The 12″ cake will be a tiramisu inspired cake. 3 layers: white cake brushed with kahlua/coffee mixture with mascarpone cream filling and then a moist chocolate cake (with a possible mocha layer in between the chocolate cake cut in half) and then more mascarpone cream filling and then another kahlua/coffee brushed vanilla cake layer. Frosted with a sweet buttercream and then covered in white fondant.
-The 8″ cake is their little take home cake, which is a lemon poppyseed cake. Layers of lemon poppyseed with a lemon curd and sweet buttercream filling. Frosted with sweet buttercream and again, covered with white fondant.

Now, for the decoration. On the 16″ and 12″ cakes, they are to be covered in white fondant. There will be black vertical stripes on both tiers, with a black bead border on top. In the middle there will be a black  fondant oval plaque with a small white bead border, and the bride’s name on the 16 and the groom’s on the 12.
On the 8″ cake, it will be covered in white fondant, with a black ribbon bow on the bottom third. But still with a black bead border on top and the plaque on top but with their last name.

Just in case you don’t understand, the picture at the top is a drawing I made in paint that took me a while…ha. I must say that I am not  fan of the new paint layout in windows 7! It’s all different and I don’t like it. Anyways, look up top to see!

So this is how it should look. In the beginning I thought the design was kinda ugly! Not gonna lie. But now after I drew it here, I think it looks okay. And kind of pretty! There is one thing that I left out though. The bride wants black daisies on the bottom of the 16″, and black eucalyptis on the bottom of the 12″, and I think that would make it too busy. I’m sure when it gets set up on the wedding day it will be nice.

There is one thing that my boyfriend has always asked me. In the future, if I had my own cakery (ha, my short form for cake bakery.) and someone asked me to do a wedding cake (or any cake) that I thought was really ugly and I was so not into it, what would I do? And this is my answer: If I really thought the design was something I wouldn’t do well for whatever reason, I would tell them that I didn’t think I was the right person to do their cake, and maybe recommend someone else that I thought would do a better job on it.

Okay this just turned into a huge jumble of words! And I don’t want to read over it to make sure there are no errors. Oh well!  I also just thought of a sweet name for my dream pastry shop! And I’m not telling (:

OH YEAH! the reason why I actually wanted to write this post in the first place is to share my love of CAKE STENCILS! ahhhh! I love them so much! I really really really want the Damask 5 tier stencil set and the lace 5 tier stencil set!!!! they are so cool! You can find them at www.designerstencils.com and I LOVE themmmm so much!

Happy Baking!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Mousse filling and Chocolate Ganache Frosting

I am NOT going to give the recipe for these. I just wanted to post SOMETHING about them because I put so much work into them. They are definitely not a favourite recipe at all. They were nothing what I was expecting. So disappointed!
I wanted to make something where I could utilize two new (and by new I mean things that I don’t usually have in my cupboard for whatever reasons) ingredients that I had. But now I feel like I wasted the chocolate on these! I used callebaut milk chocolate for the chocolate ganache. The chocolate, which I can’t get in stores unless I order it online from the US) was delivered to me by my dear boyfriend Kevin who’s aunt lives in Michigan. His sister went to visit their aunt this passed weekend and Kevin was sneaky and asked his aunt to get some things for me (The chocolate and PEPPERIDGE FARM BAGELS! I love these bagels so frigging much it’s not even funny. There is no bagel like this in Canada and it breaks my heart. They are so soft and buttery and delicious!!! ahhhh!!!). Anyways, so I used almost 3/4 of the brick of chocolate in these and now I am sad that it wasn’t in anything that I REALLY loved and wanted to eat constantly. And that’s asking a lot, because most of the time I don’t eat what I make aside from tasting it. I just really wanted something delicious! I have to redeem myself  soon.

Pumpkin Pie

I’m Canadian, and so that means that one of my absolute favourite excuses to eat delicious food just passed by. But not without celebration! It was thanksgiving this passed weekend, and you can bet that I stuffed myself full of all the wonderful food and desserts! And I will continue to stuff myself until all the leftovers are gone. Turkey dinner is my favourite* meal of all time and the fact that we really only eat it twice a year makes it so much better.

And my favourite* pie of all time, is none other than the great Pumpkin Pie!
Seriously, it’s so good. All cinnamony and gingery and just so delicious you could die! I think I could eat an entire pie (or perhaps even two if I was really hungry) by myself. Of course there has to be whipped cream on top. It just doesn’t taste as good to me when it doesn’t. Of course it’s super good on it’s own, but when that whipped cream is on top it just brings it to a level that can’t be beat! Here is the recipe that my mom and I use and that I love so much!

*makes 2 pies
56oz of pureed pumpkin
4 eggs
1 3/4 cup of brown sugar
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups of evaporated milk

Just mix everything together in a big bowl with a whisk until blended and smooth. Pour into 2 unbaked 9″ pie shells and put in the oven. First, at 425F for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350F and bake for 30-35 minutes.

For the pie shells:
(This pie dough tastes really really good, but it doesn’t really hold it’s shape as well in the oven as some others. I just use it for the flavour, so if you don’t mind a rustic looking pie crust, this is for you!)

1 cup cold unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup cold water

Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the butter (it makes it really easy if you cut the butter into cubes before and pop them in the freezer for a few minutes.) Cut in the butter until it’s a crumbly mixture and the butter pieces are about the size of a pea. Pour in the cold water and mix around with your hands until a dough forms. Knead on a floured surface for a few minutes until it’s smooth. Let it chill in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
Take out the dough from the refrigerator, cut in half and roll out the first half to however big you need it. Do the same with the other half and put it in the pie pans. Chill in the refrigerator for another 15 minutes prior to filling and baking.

Enjoy!

*I don’t have favourites of anything, except turkey dinner and pumpkin pie. LOVE THEM!

Lemon Cake

This cake is from a recipe I found in my mom’s old recipe book. Can I just say first that I LOVE making this cake? It always turns out right. Light and fluffy, golden brown on the outside, sweet and tart from the lemon, and no matter how you drizzle the icing on a bundt cake it always looks so pretty! This cake is such a comfort food for me. I like to eat this cake anytime at all, but it just seems extra good when I’m wrapped up in a warm blanket reading a book when it’s snowing outside. This cake is great all seasons though. The light lemon taste is great for an after dinner dessert in the summer, and yet is comforting and warms your heart in the winter. I recently came across Ina Garten’s lemon cake recipe and noticed how similar these recipes are. In fact, I don’t recall noticing any differences. (I love almost every single recipe I’ve used from Ina Garten. ESPECIALLY the wild mushroom soup. Sooooo good! And I don’t even like mushrooms at all.)

1 cup of unsalted butter, softened*
2 cups of sugar
5 large eggs
1/4 cup of lemon zest
3 cups of flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup of buttermilk
3/4 tsp of vanilla extract

1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice

1/8 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 cups of icing sugar

Whip together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time until each is well combined. Add the lemon zest at this point.
In a bowl, combine the flour, the baking powder, baking osda, and salt and whisk to combine.
In a measuring cup, mix together the buttermilk, lemon juice, and vanilla.
Add the wet and dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture. Beginning and ending with the dry. (I usually do 3 dry, 2 wet.)
Make sure everything is fully mixted together by using a spatula.
Pour into a greased bundt pan and bake in a 350F oven for about 55 minutes, a knife inserted should come out clean.

While the cake is baking, combine the 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of lemon juice in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.
When the cake comes out of the oven, spoon the syrup over the cake. Use all of it! It’s really good Allow the cake to cool in the pan, if you can’t wait til it’s fully cooled that’s okay. I never can either.

Once the cake is fully cooled, mix together the icing sugar and 1/8 cup of lemon juice, adding more lemon juice to get the right consistency if needed. It should be really thick looking and fall in a ribbon when you drizzle it over itself.
Drizzle this over the cake and let it fall over the sides.

Next step: EAT IT! because it’s so good!

*I sometimes hate when recipes say butter at ‘room temperature.’  Because sometimes your kitchen isn’t warm enough to let the butter actually get soft at room temperature! Like today, I left the butter out for about 5 hours, which is usually enough for me. But because it’s cold out now, the butter was still hard when I went to use it.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Coconut Buttercream

I really wanted to bake today but didn’t know what. I decided I’d make these cupcakes again! The perfect chocolate cupcake recipe is what I used. Then I made some random quick buttercream that I ended up not liking that much. But that’s just because I don’t like these kind of frostings, you know the ones that are made with butter and icing sugar? I don’t like them. Whenever I eat them I feel sick and I don’t know why. Maybe because of too much over-indulgance as a kid when my mom would make it. I feel this would be good with a french merangue buttercream. Since the cupcake recipe is already on this blog, I will include the french merangue buttercream recipe that I love so much (:

French Merangue Buttercream (this recipe makes around 4lbs of buttercream. I’ve scaled it down before with no bad results. It turned out perfectly fine!)

680 grams of sugar
1/2 cup of water
12 egg yolks (1 cup)
2 lbs of room temperature, unsalted butter
2 tsp of whatever flavour you want!

Place the sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil while stirring to disolve the sugar. Once the sugar is disolved, reduce the heat and let it boil until the temperature reaches 240F
While the syrup is boiling, whip up the egg yolks until they are pale and thick. Lower the speed to around medium and then carefully pour the sugar syrup (once it is at the correct temperature) down the side of the bowl into the egg yolks. Whip at the highest speed until the mixture is cool and looks light and fluffy. This can take anywhere between 15-20 minutes.
Once the mixture is cooled and the bowl is cold to the touch (like how it feels at room temperature) you can turn the speed to low and gradually add the softened butter. Once the butter is all mixed in, mix in the flavourings! This also tastes really good even without vanilla or anything in it.

Yum!

Tiramisu Cake Squares

So my mom and I were recruited to make a wedding cake for some friends of our family. I think I mentioned this in the previous post about the chiffon cake. Anyways, with the leftover cake we had (about a 6″ square of cake), I decided to make a quick  miniature version of what I wanted the cake to be. I bought some tiramisu cake squares from Longo’s and tried my best to replicate those, because they are so good! So I whipped together some whipping cream, vanilla, and soft cream cheese to make the white filling, and brushed the cake layers with a mixture of sweetened coffee+amaretto+kahlua. I then COVERED the top of the cake with cocoa powder, just like the ones from the store. Then I cut off the sides so that it would look pretty when I took a picture of it. And voila! Delicious tiramisu cake squares that to me, were way better than the ones from the store (obviously! they were made at home from scratch! Aren’t things done that way always so much better? I think so.)

Ingredients

1 recipe of perfect chiffon cake (You can substitute any cake you think would be good. Why not try it with a chocolate cake? mmm)
1 8oz package of cream cheese, super dooper softened (you can also use mascarpone. I just didn’t have any and was only doing a test.)
2 cups of 35% whipping cream
2 tsp of real vanilla extract
1/4 cup of sweetened hot brewed coffee
1 tablespoon of amaretto
1 tablespoon of kahlua
lots of dark good cocoa powder

Make the cake as directed in the previous recipe. Once this has cooled, cut in half. Each layer should be about 3/4 of an inch tall. Something like that. Just not too thin or too thick. Well, I suppose you could make it as thin or thick as you want!
Whip whipping cream with a sprinkle of sugar and the vanilla, and set aside.
Whip the cream cheese until soft enough to mix the whipped cream into it. (I put a little bit of stabilizer in the whipped cream to help it stay a bit fluffy.)
Mix together the cream cheese and whipped cream. Set aside.
In a small bowl, combine the coffee, amaretto and kahlua. With a brush, brush this onto the bottom layer of the cake.
Spread half of the cream cheese mixture onto the bottom layer of cake. Top with the second layer of cake.
Spread the other half of the cheese/cream mixture on top of the second layer. Make it as smooth as you can.
Sprinkle the top liberally with cocoa powder, and then trim off the rough sides of the cake to make each edge pretty. Cut into squares and you’re good to go!

Super delicious and fairly easy to make tiramisu squares!