Bringing in the new year with load of desserts!

Hello everyone! Here is an overload of desserts for you tonight! Why you ask? Well, my parents, who are spending a few weeks with us, went to eat without us, I had a load of time, and I really wanted to make some fondant decorations-I hadn't in such a long time. So that's how it started... I decided to make 3 big cupcakes for fondant (I mean, no one will eat them so might as well not make any more than that!), just enough mini cupcakes for us all to eat at least 2, and then had leftover dough, so I baked a cake to make cakepops. Taking a few supplies out of my new kitchen cupboards, I saw the chocolate moulds Katie bought for me in Canada, and decided to make cakebites instead of pops. So I spent a few hours in the kitchen-and honestly, I think every single thing was a success! I am so excited! This was a great evening and a wonderful way to finish the year. Tomorrow we will have a dessert, my mom will make tourtières and we'll just have a great start to 2012! Yay! I feel quite happy about 2012! What are you guys doing for new years? Any resolutions? Mine? Try my very best at everything I do. The rest will fall into place I hope! Happy New year everyone!!

Just your average meltdown...

So, it's after Christmas, everyone is happy, well fed, have slept in...and I thought I would go and brighten my day with cakepops. I don't know what I was thinking... I have got to get my act together! I am always having some kind of meltdown when I make these, things never go the way I want it to... I really don't know guys. I don't know why my grinch cakepops-the most complicated I have made, turned out perfect, and the easy ones still cause me this much annoyance... In general, the chocolate is always a problem-and well, I am still using leftover Wiltons, so once I run out, I am hoping this problem stops, and I tried using a different technique to pipe onto the cakepops, but that didn't work out and my eternal battle with getting a perfectly round ball isn't about to be won...thank god for sprinkles and sugars though, they save every wonky cakepop. I hope all of you had a happy Christmas! I am starting to think about my new years resolutions....one will definitely have something to do with cakepops...

Merry Christmas everyone! And here are my table setting cookies!

Yay everyone! It's finally Christmas! Lily's very first! Ok, not that she will know what's going on at all, but still, we'll be taking lot's of pictures. I haven't been able to do much in the last few days, but I made these-to know where everyone will sit at the Christmas table-and two cuter ones for the only kids joining us! I am not certain of the result. I think they are quite cute, and they worked out well, but they are a bit on the overly colourful side of the holidays! Anyway, what do you guys think? Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

A small present for my husband, and my first gingerbread cookies of the season!

Everyone who knows my husband, knows what a big fan of the Montreal Canadiens he is. I think he has gotten every Canadiens memorabilia there is on the market as birthday and christmas presents. So I decided to give him something no one else could...food and Habs combined! The result, hmm, so-so...because I had to pipe the sign by eye, the proportions aren't quite right and this especially shows on the left where the red always had to be made thinner than it should-and because I had such little space left, the white was hard to pipe there too... but soon I will have my kopykake machine and will be able to make perfect reproductions! Ok, it'll still be me and my shaking hand, but at least I will be following a made line... Let's start with the cookie itself. This is my favorite recipe ever. It is just perfect and barely spreads. It's not super flat, but I can live with that, 'cause I just want them to taste great! I printed out a canadiens logo on picture paper (took like 15 tries till my stupid printer finally centered the logo on the paper!!) and cut it out. Placed the paper on the dough and cut around. As for the rest-like I said, I had to do it by eye. My very first finished ones, I had filled in the gingerbread spaces with white as well, and my husband just totally insulted the result, what was his wording...something along the lines of, the cookie looks like how the canadiens are playing at the moment...you can recognize them but they aren't quite right? Bastard... ah whatever, he was right, I just didn't want to hear it from him. Anyways, this is the result...what do you guys think?

Watermelon cakepops that taste like banana!!!

 

 Ok...have I ever made two desserts in a day? It's possible, I mean, I am a bit of a dessert ogre... but really, there was a reason. When I made the extra batter this morning, I really wanted to try out these watermelon pops, and was very curious as to whether they would work...and my day was going so well, and it was still early so I made the balls, then we had supper, and somehow it was still quite early, so I decided to make the most of the baby free hours (weekends are daddy time!) and start. As usual, the white coating didn't look very good-I really don't know how anyone makes a nice white coating-it seeps into every single cake pore and  looks like craters... anyway, I didn't panic as the plan was to coat them in green afterwards. That worked out well despite the candy coating having little pieces in it...I don't know if it was the shortening or the chocolate that didn't melt in properly. I, who knows why, PATIENTLY took them out with a toothpick everytime they appeared on the pop and they dried really nicely! The yellow food colouring to make the melon look real didn't work out well either, so I brushed it on with a finger, and that made them look even more life-like! Lastly, when I took a bite out, the chocolates were mixed in too well and didn't show at the surface. So I added a few chocolate chips for the picture. The colour is also a bit too dark, but like I mentionned in my other post, the banana batter made it darker than if it would have been a vanilla cake. I find it quite amusing to bite into a watermelon and have a banana taste...but next time I may buy some watermelon aroma and make a watermelon buttercream, just to see. I get the feeling it could be almost sickly sweet tasting...which tends to give me headaches, so it may not happen. Anyway, tonight was not only a successful result, but a total self-control success! What do you guys think?

Banana with chocolate buttercream...revisited

Now, it's not that I like to repeat myself-really, once I have a recipe down pat, I tend to forget it until it is requested by someone... but we were having a brunch at ours today, and I decided, of all the possible flavours, a banana cupcake is the most brunchy like one. This time I left out the nuts in and on the muffin and put some white chocolate shavings on the chocolate buttercream. And this time I perfectly timed my chocolate melting-so the buttercream turned out perfect. Had a few sweaty minutes when the cream turned (as it usually does), and took way longer than usual to come back to the right consistency... but powered on and got a perfect result (I didn't sweat into the buttercream for those who are a tad disgusted...). Anyway, I liked them... And since I made way too much batter, tomorrow there will be some new cakepop pictures on the blog! My initial idea will possibly have to be forgotten as the colour of the banana cupcake has falsified the pink food colouring I put in...but we will see. Maybe I will do one or two of my originals and change the colours on photoshop! Ooooh, cheat!!!! Ha! No one will ever really know...anyway, hope you all had a nice sunday!

My second batch of Christmas Cookies

Yesterday I got my Ultimate Cookies book by Julia Usher, and decided to test the most important part for me...the consistency of the royal icing. It was the first time I saw
such a perfect description, with pictures, of how it should look like
for which technique. I had lots of leftover cookie dough in the freezer, so I only had to bake the cookies, and then I made a batch of icing. And went crazy with the colours! When I went to bed last night-before attaching the little figures to the cookies (had to make both dry up first), I started thinking how overly colourful they probably would be. That I am learning a lot, but I have to practice making classic understated cookies, not just crazy childish ones, you know? This morning, I woke up to make Lily's bottle and saw that my cat, despite the barrier I had made around the figures, destroyed one of my reindeers, a bauble and a penguin. I was so mad. I just felt like these cats are slowly destroying me! Too frustrated to get back to sleep after Lily's feeding, I decided to finish the cookies and was quite taken aback with the result...I think they came out really really cute, despite them being really flashy! All of the remaining figures were stable, the cookies had dried well, and the addition of a few snowflake sprinkles made everything look really cute! I am really happy with the result! Credit has to be made to Doodlebug Design Inc and Best Creation Inc... I used their cute designs as my figures... Just put a piece of acetate on top of the drawings which I had made smaller and copied with black icing! What do you guys think?

The cat barrier

How many things can go wrong with a cake pop recipe?

It started out so well, but I feel that with cakepops, most of my posts end up being about how annoying they are to make! The worst part is, I really like them! But something always goes wrong! Today started well, made the cake at 11, made the balls at 1. I thought we would be home earlier from an evening out, but we got home at about 9 and I decided I wanted to make the planned cakepos. The icing had sort of leaked out and there was lots of water pooling in the plate...but I wiped them off and started dipping. I made bees and lego men to start with...then the chickens and the hearts. I had to double dip every single one because I used Wilton's candy melts and they just melt so badly and sort of hang in every little pore of the cake balls, I don't know...anyway. Because one of the chickens fell off the stick, I left the others in the freezer-so obviously by the time I made the hearts-well they cracked! Even when I double dipped the hearts, you still see the crack from the first layer... Then I made faces with the stupid edible ink pen. Well, as you can see, there are no lego men on this picture. That's because the pen worked so badly, and I got so frustrated that I took the lego men in my hand and squeezed the cake right out of them...it was my way of not screaming. The bees look cute from afar, but making their lines was also almost impossible. I made Andy eat one to hide the evidence, and threw out a second one in another fit of frustration. All in all, I really don't know why everything always goes wrong with these. I start out so positively. I always think, oh yes, I am getting better at this, but I am not! I am not used to being so bad at something. My ego is taking quite a blow! Anyway, I am sure that the use of Merckens melts next time, and me being able to make them right after rolling them will help... and if they don't, well whatever, I just can't give up on these stupid things! I have to get them right once and for all!!!!!!!!!

Christmas Cookies-Ok, I admit, I stole the idea!!

Sometimes, I just need a bit of baking therapy. This is what this project was about...because let's face it, who would eat cookies like this? Not that I find them too pretty to eat, but basically, for them to not spread too much, I had to use a very dry recipe, so I don't know how good these even taste! And so much royal icing is bound to give anyone a toothache. But as the title suggests, I saw this in Julia Usher's Ultimate Cookie book-I have ordered it, but not yet recieved, so basically, I just did what I thought is how she did hers...we'll see when I get the book! I keep learning from my royal icing mistakes though...this time, it was just always too leaky-which is why the snowman and the polar bear look a bit off...but all in all, and from afar, they look pretty cool! As usual, I put my favorite in the forefront...putting the best foot forward, is my motto!!! Expect more unusual cookies in the future, I really like decorating them! Hope you like looking at them!!