Practice, Practice, Practice....and a recipe

I haven't made decorated cookies in almost two years now.  There is no real reason, I just fell out of the habit and it's a shame because I have a basket full of cookie cutters that are just packed away.  With Valentine's Day coming quickly, I decided that sugar cookies are in order.  This means that I need to make several practice batches to become reaquainted with the steady hand I used to have.
When seeing all these perfect cookies on sites such as Pinterest, it's easy to forget that they take a lot of practice and those pictures are the result of folks who do this all the time or even professionally.  Here is what I have been making all these royal icing flowers for!

Getting a nice smooth line is tricky.  Having all of your icing coloured and the correct consistency is also important, but making lots and lots of cookies is the only way to get better.

The other challenge was the chocolate cookie.  It occurred to me that I've only done regular sugar cookies or gingerbread cookies for decorating.  I found one recipe online that was credited as a Martha Stewart recipe, the photos of the cookies look amazing but the recipe itself didn't work for me.  The dough was almost the consistency of icing and the cookies spread unevenly and never crisped up.  I took my original sugar cookie and replaced a 1/4 cup of the flour with 24% cocoa.  The smell of the dough was like fudge and the cookies have a lovely chocolatey flavour.

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa ( prefer the dark 22-24%)
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Sift dry ingredients and set aside.  Beat butter and sugar until fluffy and pale.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  Add flour mixture and mix on low until completely combined.  Wrap dough in plastic wrap, flatten and chill for at least an hour.
Preheat oven to 325*  Have cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.   On a lightly floured surface,  roll dough 1/4" thick and use an offset spatula to loosen dough from countertop.  Try to use as little flour as possible.  Place sheets with cookies in freezer for 15 minutes.
Bake 15-17 minutes or longer if cookies are large.
Cool before decorating,  yield will vary greatly depending on the size of the cutters used, but this recipe lends itself to doubling.

Pretty Packages - Royal Icing Flowers

I just love making these.  The trick right now is finding the time to do them.  On the other hand, part of their beauty is that once made, they can wait indefinitely in the cupboard until such time as they are required to dress up cupcakes, tarts, brownies - anything!

So far I have done these: apple blossoms, forget-me-nots, primroses and simple rosettes.  Next up I may just use some different colours.  I am starting to think ahead to Easter, although the rosettes would dress up some sweet Valentine's cookies.

Makes me happy to think of spring

Ottawa Mission Christmas Dinner

This is the second year in a row that I've had the chance to donate cupcakes for the Ottawa Missions' Christmas Dinner.  It was through word of mouth that I learned about Cupcakes for Christmas.  These fantastic people have used Facebook and local bakers who all talk to each other to amass 3000 cupcakes for the annual Christmas dinner at the Mission.
My manager, Lindsay and I have been able to do this together both years.  This year, her cupcakes were Lactose-free, which is awesome as many people have lactose intolerance.  Lucky for me she has a vehicle, otherwise I have no idea how we'd transport dozens of cupcakes!

this is what four dozen cupcakes looks like!  thank goodness for Costco and the perfectly sized boxes that Lindsay picked up for me.

Next year, if we can find a way to not have to work ( hard to do in retail at Christmas!) we can also volunteer that day - I'd love to see all the different cupcakes that everyone has made.

Gingerbread House Party

It looks like this could become an annual event!  Last year, I had our wee friends Constance and Jonas over to decorate gingerbread houses before Christmas.  This year, we invited Jacob and his brother James to join them.
Thursday,  I cut and baked all the gingerbread.  Friday morning, I joined all the cookies together to give them time to dry for Saturday night.  You could join them early morning the day of, but I had to work, so I did them Friday.  As long as they get an eight hour day for the Royal icing to dry.

Two batches of Martha Stewart's gingerbread recipe and one batch of Royal icing were enough for five houses and a few cookies.  I cut out a tree and gingerbread man for each house.  Small tweak for next year?  I need to change the size of the roof so that it doesn't matter whether the house is put together long or wide.

With a selection of candy from the Bulk Barn, the kids were ready to go.  I learned a valuable lesson this year.  M&M's are expensive in bulk!  You get far more mileage out of jubejubes, jumbo gum drops and liquorice all sorts.  I also had some Christmas sprinkles which look great if you can handle most of them ending up on the floor!

Disposable plastic icing bags are a great help.  I cut the holes small enough that the icing doesn't leak out all over the table.  It still ends up everywhere by the end of the night though!

Melissa helps get more of the candy on the houses and less in the bellies!

Constance is a good big sister, helping Jonas with his house.  I think he gets too excited to focus.  Candy can have that effect on kids!

Jakes' awesome house - completely covered in candy!

New Camera!

Well, it is not a new camera, but is new to me.  It is also vastly superior to my camera, which took another hit with the Mister on his trip. I bought my Olympus in 2003, it's a 3.2mp!  It would still take great shots -  especially super macro - if the poor thing hadn't been knocked about more times than it could handle.
So now, I have the lovely Hollie's Sony Cyber-shot.  It has a completely different feel and with a different system, it will take some getting used to.

I took my new buddy with me on a walk down a path I've never explored.  Running past the entrance to the path, I've wondered about it many times and also figured I might be able to use it, to get a better look at the horses at the nearby Greenbelt Farm.  There was a light dusting of snow this morning that threatened to melt if I didn't get my butt out the door.

I did eventually find the horses.  It was tricky to get a decent shot as one couldn't get too close.  There was a stream running around the perimeter of the property and it was quite thick with bushes in most places.  I did manage to get one shot that I liked.

I like that you can catch a glimpse of the snow that was still trying to fall, despite the temperature hovering around the freezing mark.  This path was lovely and quiet, there was one other walker with a skittish dog, but they didn't last long and then I had the area all to myself.  In a big city, it's not easy to find a quiet spot without traffic or shopping.

Along the way I found an abandoned nest.  I saw others as well, but this one I brought home.  Of course now that it is thawing, it is coming loose.  Aren't these things usually tightly bound?  I will have to find a way to reinforce it without wrecking the look of it.  This one pictured below was higher in a tree and was perfectly cup-shaped.  One of these days, I'm sure to find another - just gotta keep trekking.

Recipe: Apple Cake

What a heavenly smell this cake makes in the kitchen!  Perfect for this time year when the apples are ripe for the picking. Ha!   This cake is super moist, spicy and made to be eaten with a cup of tea.  You could gussy it up with one of those fancy bundt pans and spiced whipped cream I suppose....or a caramel whiskey sauce - yum.  I have no idea whose this recipe is, it was clipped from the newspaper - my guess is the Chronicle Herald in Halifax.  The only changes I made are described after the recipe.

Apple Cake

4    medium apples, peeled, cored and sliced or chopped
2    cups sugar
2    large eggs, beaten
1    cup butter, melted
3    cups flour
2    tsp baking soda
2    tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1    cup walnuts

glaze:  1/2 cup icing sugar
           1  cup apple cider.

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Lightly butter standard size bundt pan.  Place apples and sugar in a large mixing bowl and stir to coat.  Set aside for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Combine eggs and cooled butter; mix well.
In another bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and walnuts.  Add butter and egg mixture to flour mixture, then sugar and apples; stir well.  Pour batter in into prepared pan and smooth top.
Bake 45-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Let cake cool 10 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack placed on waxed paper.
Place cider in small saucepan; boil until reduced by half.  Let cool 10 minutes; whisk in icing sugar: drizzle over warm cake.

I did things a bit differently this time.  I used two 8" square pans instead of a bundt.  I wanted one to put in the freezer for later.  The batter was just right for the two pans.  It still seemed to need at least 50 minutes to cook, as this is a super moist cake.  Because I wan't needing all that glaze, I just took 1/4 cup of icing sugar and thinned it with a tablespoon and a half of apple cider.  The flavour of the glaze in the original recipe is super yummy and worth making properly, I was just lazy and made a basic drizzle.

happy baking!

Wild Crabapple Jelly

I have never made jelly before.  Jams, yes with a package of Certo at the ready.  But, jelly from scratch?  it always seemed like it would be a tricky sort of alchemy that you work only if you've grown up with an old school Gramma who canned everything.  This site made it seem doable.
 I had seen the tree full of lovely red crabapples on my run during the week. It's a route I used to run in the winter and would never have seen the lone tree in the mix.  I decided that making jelly from a wild crabapple would be really cool.   I rode to site Saturday morning and realized that I was a couple of weeks too late.  Up close, most of the fruit had be partially devoured by hornets.  I went ahead and collected as many unblemished apples as I could

They are small like cherries and a lovely red.  I hoped this would bode well for the colour of the jelly.  I'd read some recipes where they had added food colour to give the jelly a deep red hue.  I was hoping this batch wouldn't need it.  Being small it took quite a few minutes to remove all the stems and blosssom ends and cut in half.  Thank fate they didn't need peeling!  I also thank Trev for giving me a hand.

It was a lovely afternoon to sit on the deck

All the fruit measured 8 cups when cut.  This is half of the amount used on the website I linked to above. MMs' instructions were clear and concise, but I was glad my amount wasn't an odd number.  She recommends half the amount of water to the amount of fruit.  So far so good.  8 cups fruit, 4 cups water. This was brought to a boil for 10 minutes before smooshing.

Once the fruit was boiled for 10 minutes, then mashed and cooked for another five,  it was put into a cheesecloth lined colander over a large bowl to let the juice extract itself.  You can supposedly buy a jelly strainer bag, but given how many people in the various stores I went to, looking for the cheesecloth - knew what cheesecloth was - I'm guessing that jelly making is a lost art here in South Ottawa.

The pulp is wonderfully red.  It took a couple of hours to drain.

Once the juice is drained and ready, MM recommends measuring it (making a note for future reference) and adding slightly less than that amount of sugar.  I had almost three cups, so I topped it up with a bit of water ( maybe 1/8 c) to make an even three.  I measured 3 cups sugar and then removed two spoonfuls. Once this mixture started to boil, it turned a gorgeous deep, clear red.  I was starting to get excited that this might work out after all!

Getting the temperature to 220*

I did a gel test as I was skimming off the foam and it really seemed like gelling was not going to be a problem.  Being nervous, this my first foray into jelly making, I did both the plate test and the spoon in the ice water test!  The stuff gelled like a dream!  The boiled jars were waiting in the oven at 225* and I had the lids boiling away and ready.  In the past when I've made jam according to the Certo instructions, I've never used a water bath.  I've had the canning pot for quite awhile, but have never used it!  So I popped the jars into the boiling water, waited for the boiling to commence again and set the timer for ten minutes

Make sure to start timing after the water has returned to a boil.

This morning, I popped open one of the jars and spread the jelly on hot, buttered toast.  It tasted just like Crabapple jelly should!  I got seven 250ml jars, just the right size for gifts.  Next year, I have to remember to go a week or so earlier and take Trev with me so we can get some of the fruit up high!

Like Jewels!