Sugar cookies part 1 - birds

There were some more work birthdays coming up, and I was wondering how I could mark those occasions too.  I wanted something that would suit more than one person, and could be personalised. I follow a fair few cookie pages on Facebook and thought - aha, cookies!  

I have made roll-out sugar cookies before, and tweak the recipe slightly regarding bake times each time.  I haven't tasted anyone else's to compare, but wonder always if mine are the right crunch/soft ratio, or the right colour and so on.  Nonetheless, I went with my tried and true recipe (flavoured with a drop of caramel) and baked up a large batch of birds, circles and plaques (more about them to come).

The birds and circles were spares really, just done for fun - and then Mr Becca mentioned that he had a meeting to attend and did I have any spares for him to share with the participants?  Uh, yup.

As you can see, I had a few chocolate chunk ones, however they didn't bake up as well, because the chunks were a bit large I felt.  (the children ate those ones, and declared them perfect)  I decorated them in gorgeous shades of bright pink and green, and think they looked lovely.  He asked for them to be personalised with an initial, and the participants were all very impressed :)

Caramel, princesses and unicorns for an early birthday treat

Both our girls are quite gregarious, and have lots of friends in their class and outwith school.  But our kitchen table has only 6 chairs, so parties at home are limited in size.  I feel it makes for a more enjoyable occasion, as no-one tends to feel left out when there are only a small group of friends to entertain.  And the girls have certainly never complained, they enjoy the attention too.

In this case, Mini-2 had a group of friends who all lived very near one another and we'd arranged that L was going to come to our house one day after school to play.  But of course, as young kids do, they chatted about it and then G, E, A and K wanted to come too.  Uh, ok sure I said, then racked my brain as to the least stressful way to do that for her...

As her birthday was only a week or so after the planned playdate, we decided to call it an early birthday party and have cake and cupcakes and fun!

Mini-2 chose caramel as her cake flavour, and these super cute picks and cardboard wraps for the table decorations.

We ended up with a 6" cake and a dozen or more cupcakes, so the girls took them home as party favours.

The food boxes match the napkins and cupcake wraps - cute huh?  

Happy early birthday sweet girl.

Mr Becca's birthday treat, Millionaire's Shortbread

Mr Becca is not mad-keen on dessert, as a menu option.  He prefers savoury food, and will almost invariably have a starter and then not always be hungry for a dessert after his main course.  He likes them super-sweet so doesn't like dark chocolate with anything, because it's too bitter.  Every once in a while I make something that by chance he loves, but that I can't eat because it's too sweet.

I remember once,  long ago, we went out for a meal on my work (I won the meal as a reward for getting a customer satisfaction survery score of 100%) and he wasn't hungry enough for a dessert so we ordered two anyway.  For me.

Anyway, this year for his birthday I didn't want to make a cake ( like last year's butterscotch one, or the butterscotch one of the year before) a) because I wasn't confident I could find yet another butterscotch cake recipe that he'd like and b) because, quite honestly, he simply wouldn't eat a whole cake and thus make it worthwhile.  But then I remembered how much he likes Millionaire's Shortbread, and that I'd never made it successfully.  For those of you who don't know, or who know it by a different name, it's a 3 layer traybake of shortbread on the base, caramel in the middle and chocolate on the top.  I had made this once before, years ago, and not lined the tin.  I maintain that the recipe never told me to, but who knows now?  Suffice it to say, I definitely lined the tray this time.  

Knowing how much he didn't like dark chocolate, I only used milk.  Then for the marble effect, I used some Wilton Candy Melts in white colourburst brights - which have coloured sprinkles throughout them.

I was really pleased with the marbling effect, but felt it needed a little something extra.  So I marbled in a heart, using some red candy melts and matching sparkle.  Now just to hope it dried up exactly like that...

Phew, it did!!! 

I'm very happy to report that he loved it - the way it looked and the fact that I'd made it for him instead of a cake.  And the taste?

Well, it was rich and caramelly and crumbly and chocolatey.  How do you think that would taste?!  It was absolutely delicious!  But for future reference, he felt the chocolate layer was too thick, and I felt the base layer was too crumbly.  So I'll try it again at some stage, but with a different recipe.  Happy Birthday Darling!

Caramel chocolate fudge cake, but cute

I still had some of that tin of Ducle de Leche left over, and it seemed to still taste amazing, so I thought I'd use my new-ish 6" pan and bake me a cake!  Also, we had plans to visit A on Friday morning, and when I had asked if I could bring anything to lunch, she had replied, oh only if you're baking.  Ha ha.  I had really enjoyed the Caramel chocolate fudge one with the caramel choc ganache icing, but figured I'd only need half the recipe for the smaller tin.  That dropped it down to 1 egg from two, so made everything else easier too.  The only problem was, because I didn't have a full tin of caramel, I winged it with the amounts and got a little over-excited when adding to the cake batter.  Suffice it to say, the cake was only just cooked after nearly the full time, and ended up sinking whilst cooling.  (I didn't take a photo at this point, as I was rather embarrassed). 

But I figured I could just hide it with the ganache...  What do you think - can you see the hole??  Under all that delicious, gooey, swirly caramel choc topping with the edible pink glitter?  No?  Great! 

And all that extra caramel in the batter?  Wow, the cake was super-moist and delicious!  And because it was only 6" it was all gone quite quickly.  I posted a pic on our Facebook page and it garnered a lot of pleasing comments, so I took some slices for samples to friends.  Aren't I the best?  ha ha

Heart-shaped love for a special little boy

As Valentine's Day is nearly here, I thought I'd like to borrow and try out my friend R's heart-shaped cake tin.  I also fancied trying a new recipe, to add to my repertoire (hopefully) so picked Caramel Cupcakes, using Dulce de Leche (mmmm).  It's basically a really thick caramel that you can spread over things, add to things or, should you really wish, eat direct from the tin with a spoon!  I was being restrained and decided to add it to the cupcakes (also made with two types of brown sugar, for added caramel-ness).

I followed the baking time for the cupcakes so I would know for future reference, but wasn't sure how long for the heart-shaped cake and the smaller heart-shaped cupcakes (I bought a silicone tray last year), so you can see the holes where I poked it with my test stick, to see if it was done.

Then it was on to the ganache for the icing.  This was fun - break up the dark chocolate, heat the cream to nearly boiling then pour it onto the broken chocolate and wait a bit. 

Then start stirring et voila!  Chocolate ganache.

Then you kinda just smear it  nicely on top of your cake, I think.  I'm sure there's an actual technique involved, but I didn't either a) know about it or b) care that much.  I just smoothed on the luscious thick creamy chocolate sauce and hoped for the best.

As you can see, only 3 of the heart-shaped cupcakes came successfully out of my greased silicone tray, gggrrrr.  What a sham that tray is!  I've since bought Cake Release spray and will use it next time I do a shaped tin of any sort (after my also-disaster with the bundt tin).  Anyway, after the ganache and some gold edible glitter, I added the final touch - blue mini-Smarties in the shape of a number 2.  Why?  Because today should have been the 2nd birthday of our son, Mini-3.  Unfortunately he died before he was born, and so we never got to meet our little boy.  The girls know of and love their little brother, and we think of him as our own personal Guardian Angel.  You do what it takes to get by, really.

P.S. The cake tasted great!

Caramel Chocolate Fudge Cake

I had a tin of Carnation Dulche de Leche that was burning a hole in my ingredients cupboard, and didn't feel like another attempt at Millionaire's Shortbread, as I'm not really a fan.  I checked their website for inspiration, and found Chocolate Fudge Cake - score.

I cheated slightly with the cake and used a different recipe - still adding caramel to the mixture, then used theirs for the icing - wow!  We had friends coming to play and stay for lunch and the cake was ready just in time. 

The icing was still slightly warm when we tucked in, and dusted with neon pink edible glitter - it tasted just amazing!!  A scoop of vanilla ice-cream or mascarpone would have set it off very nicely, but a glass of water helped too.

The interior of the moist, dark, rich Caramel Chocolate Fudge cake with caramel choc icing and neon pink glitter. See the cake sticking to the knife... Sorry, am I making you drool?

Recipe for Maple Spiced Cake with Caramel Frosting

The metric equivalents are probably within 10g/10ml of correct...
1/2 cup (120g) butter                                            
1 1/2 cups (320g) light brown soft sugar              
2 egg yolks, well beaten                                        
2 cups (300g) plain flour                                        
2 tsp baking powder                                              
1 tsp ground cinnamon                                         
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/3 cup (90ml) evaporated milk
1/3 cup strong coffee (I used 60ml pure maple syrup)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
Cream butter, add sugar and egg yolks and beat again.  Mix flour, baking powder and spices in a separate bowl.  Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk, and beat until smooth.  Add the vanilla and maple syrup, mix and then fold in the egg whites.  Pour into the greased ring tin (this would work in a normal cake tin I'm sure, probably a 20cm diameter one would give a nicer height) then bake at 190c for 25-30 minutes.  (I found that the cake was jelly-like at this point, so gave it an extra 5 minutes and the skewer came out clean).
Allow the cake to cool (probably about 2 hours or so) then prepare the frosting/icing...

1 cup (270ml) evaporated milk                            
1 1/4 cups (300g) white sugar                              
3/4 cup (150g) light soft brown sugar
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Blend the milk and sugars in a large saucepan on a medium heat, add butter.  Bring to the boil and cook for a few minutes until the sauce thickens, so that a dribble dropped into a glass of cold water forms a soft ball (soft ball stage).  Cool for around 20 minutes, then add the vanilla and beat for a few minutes until the sauce thickens enough to spread onto the cake.  It thickens slightly more on standing, so spread it as soon as it's done.

Nostalgic birthday cake, maple spice with caramel icing

It's my lovely husband's birthday tomorrow and he's requested a particular cake that his mother used to bake, nearly 30 years ago.  All he could remember was that it had fudge icing and was in a ring tin.  So, problem number one, locate a ring tin.  A quick text message (ah, the wonders of modern technology) to a half-dozen friends was successful.  Next step, call his Mum and see if she knew what he meant, and more importantly, could locate the recipe.  His dad answered the phone and knew exactly the one I meant (spooky) and his Mum knew it too, and sent the recipe along a day later. 

Twenty-odd years ago, they lived in Melbourne too, so this was another Australian recipe, full of cups and teaspoons and so forth.  While baking, I converted the cups of flour, butter etc to British metric measurements in case I wanted to make the recipe again.  The recipe required liquid coffee, but he didn't want that so asked for maple syrup instead. 

I'm gonna assume that the recipe slightly didn't work (it hasn't been tasted yet) because it's old and I used a different ingredient.  After the required bake time, it resembled jelly, seriously, so I gave it 5 more mins. Here's what came out...

Or does this look more appetising??

As if that wasn't bad enough, the caramel frosting was equally difficult to get right.  Far too few instructions in the method meant using Google to figure out what on earth I should do.  I mean, does this look like it will ever be solid enough to paste over a cake?

But finally it was, hooray.

And we have the final result, ta da.  I have to assume you lot think it looks good because I've had positive feedback on Facebook and requests for the recipe too, thanks for your support!