Category Archives: Holiday

Hoppy Easter Cupcakes

April 8, 2012 – 6:00 am

A couple of years ago, the Easter Bunny brought me this book:

Have you seen this book? It has some of the most adorable cupcake creations I have seen. The materials and details that are put into each cupcake design are incredible. Although I think the cupcakes in this book are so cute, I have been too intimidated (lazy?) to spend the time making any of them myself. Until now.

With spring having sprung, and Easter right around the corner, I have green grass, flowers and baby animals on the brain. I could no longer resist these little cotton tails

peaking out of grassy egg-filled patches.

I tried a new chocolate cupcake recipe from Sweetness Delicious Baked Treats for Every Occasion by Sarah Levy (which was super moist and chocolatey) and stuck with my favorite vanilla buttercream frosting from Magnolia Bakery.

For the bunny cupcakes, I frosted cupcakes with buttercream and then dipped the frosting in crushed Oreos. The bunnies’ feet are cut out from the flat Kraft Stacker Marshmallows, with jellybeans and chocolate covered sunflower seeds for the “pads” of the feet. The tail is a mini marshmallow coated in thinned out buttercream and rolled in decorating sugar.

For the grass cupcakes I used a Wilton #104 icing tip and topped the frosting with Whopper Eggs.

Supreme Chocolate Cupcakes

by Sarah Levy

Keywords: bake dessert cupcake

Ingredients (16 cupcakes)

2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup boiling water
1 cup cake flour
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 1/8 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks (12 Tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 eggs, room temperature
1 Tbsp + 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line 2 muffin pans with paper liners.

In a small bowl, combine boiling water and cocoa powder, set aside.

In a large bowl, combine cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add butter and cocoa mixture. Mixture will be dry and lumpy at this point. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full with batter.

Bake for 18 minutes.

Cool completely before frosting.

Recipe adapted from Sweetness Delicious Treats for Every Occasion by Sarah Levy

combine cocoa powder and boiling water

combine dry ingredients in large bowl and add butter and cocoa mixture

add eggs and vanilla and mix well

pour batter into cupcake liners 3/4 full

bake, then cool completely before frosting

Vanilla Buttercream

by Adapted from Magnolia Bakery

Keywords: no-bake dessert frosting

Ingredients (Enough frosting for ~16 cupcak)

1 1/2 sticks (12 Tbsp) butter, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup + 1/8 cup milk
5 cups powdered sugar
food coloring (optional)

Instructions

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, cream butter and vanilla together.

Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, alternating with milk a little at a time after each powdered sugar addition.

Add desired food coloring if using.

If frosting is too thin, add more powdered sugar. If too thick, add more milk.

Happy Easter!

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Tags Candy, Chocolate, Cupcakes, Frosting | Comments (2)

4th Day of Christmas: Pecan Caramels

December 23, 2011 – 8:00 am

On the 4th Day of Christmas my sweet tooth gave to me Pecan Caramels.

Is there anything more fabulous and frustrating at the same time than candy-making? I have almost been brought to tears many times over a flopped batch of fudge or caramels that were rock hard. I think the only thing that can make it any easier is practicing.

I have finally gotten the art of caramels down (at least this year ) and I really think the key to success is a good thermometer. The one that I have is this one that I purchased at Williams Sonoma for not too bad of a price.

(source: Williams Sonoma)

The thing about a candy thermometer is it is very boring to watch until about 10 degrees before your goal temperature and then things really take off. You must watch it oh so closely and remove your pan immediately when you see your target number. If you do that and remember to butter your pan well before pouring the molten mixture into it, it should be smooth sailing.

Pecan Caramels

by Mercedes Porter

Keywords: dessert caramel nuts Christmas candy

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
1 tsp vanilla

Instructions

Liberally butter a 9X13 glass pan.

In a heavy medium-sized pot with a candy thermometer attached, melt the butter over low heat.

Once the butter is melted add sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, corn syrup and nuts.

Turn heat up to medium-high and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook without stirring until the thermometer reaches 240 degrees. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and pour into prepared pan.

Cool completely. Cut and wrap caramels in wax paper.

What candy have you had trouble making but then mastered with practice?

melt butter in a medium saucepan

add sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, nuts and corn syrup and attach candy thermometer to pan

bring mixture to a boil and heat until thermometer reads 240 degrees

add vanilla and pour into well-buttered pan

cool completely then cut caramels and wrap in wax paper

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5th Day of Christmas: Cut-out Sugar Cookies and a review of Royal Icing

December 22, 2011 – 10:04 am

On the 5th Day of Christmas my sweet tooth gave to me Classic Cut-out Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing.

Christmas really cannot be complete without decorating cut-out cookies with icing and sprinkles if you ask me. I have been marveling and gawking over the cookie artistry by Sweet Sugar Belle for some time now and although I knew my cookies would look nothing like hers, I had to try using royal icing to see if there was something magical about it. All royal icing is is powdered sugar, meringue powder, water and extract.

Let’s just say my first attempt did not go so well.

I had some frosting left after this batch of cookies and so I thought I would make another batch of cut-outs and modify my frosting a bit. Well naturally, I ran out of frosting and then made another entire batch of frosting!! I was exhausted but I decided to stick with it and power through. The recipe for Royal Icing that I have included here is from Sweet Sugar Belle and it is really simple to follow. That is not the problem. The difficult part comes in knowing how much to thin that original batch of icing to make it the correct consistency for either piping around the edges or “flooding” the inside of your piping. What finally helped me with that is this video from Sweetopia. In the video, she teaches you about the “10-second rule and the 5-second rule” and basically all that means is that for piping consistency, when you drag a knife through your frosting, you want the groove that the knife made to fill itself in in 10 seconds and 5 seconds for the flood icing. Just watch the video, it shows and tells you all you need to know.

My review of royal icing:

When the icing dries, it dries very hard and becomes crunchy which makes the cookies very easy to store and transport without fear of the icing getting smudged.
You need to make a time commitment if you plan to try decorating with royal icing for the first time. Just making the frosting itself again, is not difficult or too time consuming. The time consuming part comes in when you divide your icing in two and then thin each of those to piping and flood consistency. Then from there you have 2 bowls of white icing. So then you need to assemble piping bags with appropriately sized tips of different colors and each color you make you will likely need 1 bag of the piping and 1 bag of the flood consistency icing. YOU DO THE MATH of how long this takes. I would figure about an hour just to get your frosting ready.
It is recommended that you bake your cookies a day ahead and then frost so that the oil from the cookies does not leach into the frosting. You can guess if I listened to that rule or not .
Once you have the icing made, it really is lovely to work with. What I did was pipe around certain areas that I wanted to outline and then wait maybe 10 minutes for the piping to set up and then come back and flood those areas to fill in between my piping lines.
All that I really have to compare royal icing to is my typical powdered sugar icing that I simply make with powdered sugar, some extract and milk.

If you have been curious about royal icing, I definitely think it is worth a try. Just make sure you have lots of time and patience and just let yourself get lost in it and if you are like me, you will enjoy the creative outlet.

Royal Icing

by Sweet Sugar Belle

Keywords: bake dessert Christmas cookie

Ingredients

2 pounds powdered sugar
1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp meringue powder
3/4 cup water
2 Tbsp extract

Instructions

Place powdered sugar and meringue powder into a large bowl with an electric mixer and using the whisk attachment, combine them.

Add water and extract slowly and whisk on slow speed until incorporated. Then, increase speed to medium and whisk for 5-6 minutes. Turn speed to high and whisk another 3-4 minutes until icing is thick and fluffy.

Cut out Sugar Cookies

by Mercedes Porter

Keywords: bake dessert Christmas cookie

Crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle and perfect for decorating!

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla or almond extract
2 3/4 cup flour

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl and with an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Add egg and extract.

Add dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Turn dough out onto a floured work surface (or a sheet of parchment paper) and roll with rolling pin until 1/4 inch thick. Cut dough into desired shapes and bake cookies for 7 minutes.

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6th Day of Christmas: Caramel Pecan Turtle Bars

December 21, 2011 – 7:23 pm

On the 6th Day of Christmas my sweet tooth gave to me Caramel Pecan Turtle Bars.

I don’t need too look at a calendar to know how near Christmas is. I can simply look in the mirror. Yesterday when I looked, I had frosting on my cheek and powdered sugar in my hair and today I have acquired some nice burns on my hand thanks to caramel making. Yep, no need for a calendar.

I have a secret confession to make: I am loving the Justin Bieber Christmas album! I have never had the Bieber Fever before and I still don’t know if I have a full case yet, but I have been jamming out the Glee Holiday station on Pandora and they throw in quite a bit of the Bieb and I am becoming a Belieber! My sister swears that if you watch his movie you will become a convert so I really should watch that with her over the holiday.

(source)

Anyway, enough about J Biebs, lets talk sweets. I posted a photo of these Caramel Pecan Turtle Bars when I hosted the Fine Cooking giveaway a couple of weeks ago and promised that the recipe was to come. These bars have a shortbread crust which is topped with pecan-studded caramel and all topped with an irresistible chocolate ganache. Everything a sweet tooth needs to be content and then some.

Caramel Turtle Bars

by Fine Cooking Cookies

Keywords: bake dessert caramel chocolate bar

Ingredients (about 48)

For the crust

7 oz. (14 Tbsp) unsalted butter melted and cooled to just warm
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
9 oz. (2 cups) flour

For the caramel

2 cups toasted pecans, chopped
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream
4 oz. (1/2 cup) unsalted butter cut into chunks
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt

For the ganache

6 Tbsp heavy cream
2 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate finely chopped

Instructions

For the shortbread crust

Preheat oven to to 325 degrees.

Prepare a 9X13 baking dish by lining it with foil allowing it to overhang the edges of the pan. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl and with an electric mixer, combine the butter, brown sugar and salt. Add flour. Dough will be stiff.

Press dough evenly into prepared pan and prick all over with a fork.

Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 300 degrees and bake about another 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and sprinkle pecans over crust.

For the caramel

In a medium heavy saucepan, combine all caramel ingredients and bring to a boil over medium-high heat stirring until smooth. Insert a candy thermometer and continue to boil mixture without stirring until it reaches 240 degrees. Immediately pour caramel over crust and cool completely.

For the ganache

Place chocolate into a small bowl.

In a small saucepan, heat the cream to a simmer.

Pour hot cream over chocolate and let it sit for 2 minutes then stir to combine. Drizzle ganache over bars and let set for 1 hour.

Remove bars from pan by lifting foil. Remove foil and set on a cutting board and cut into 1 1/2-inch bars.

make shortbread crust dough and pressed into foil-lined and greased pan

bake

sprinkle pecans over crust

combine ingredients for caramel in heavy saucepan

bring to a boil and heat until thermometer reaches 240 degrees

pour caramel over crust and cool

make ganache and drizzle over bars

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7th Day of Christmas: Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

December 20, 2011 – 8:51 am

On the 7th Day of Christmas, my sweet tooth gave to me Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Banana Bread.

I think that this would be the most difficult time of the year to have a restricted diet. There are so many temptations around and if you have a food allergy or intolerance, you know that you will pay the price if you give in. So I wanted to make a treat for the people in our lives who have a gluten intolerance. There are so many gluten-free prepackaged foods, but nothing says you care like a homemade treat.

I made 14 of these mini loaves (9 regular and 5 gluten-free) and gave them to co-workers as a way of saying “Merry Christmas”. I don’t have a lot of experience with tasting different gluten-free items but one of the gentlemen I work has gluten intolerance and when I brought in chocolate chip cookies that I had made out of the Babycakes cookbook, he said they were the best he had ever tasted. So I was anxious to try another recipe and I hope he likes this bread just as well.

This recipe could also be made vegan if you simply substitute vegan chocolate chips.

To me, giving a gift from my kitchen is a way of showing love and appreciation to those people that bring joy to my life.

Are you making any special treats to accommodate anyone with different dietary needs this holiday season?

Also, my Triple Chocolate Mint Fudgies are in a cookie contest over at The Family Kitchen and I would greatly appreciate your vote! All you need to do is leave a comment at the end of the post saying that you vote for “Triple Chocolate Mint Fudgies”! Thank you!

VOTE FOR TRIPLE CHOCOLATE MINT FUDGIES HERE!

Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Banana Bread