Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tutorial: Caramel Acorns

Recognize these? Must mean Halloween is around the corner. Here is a cute little edible decoration you can make with the kids. They make a great cupcake topper or decoration for your Thanksgiving desserts.

Cut the caramels so that you have a piece that is 2/3 the candy and 1/3. The larger section will be the body or the acorn and the smaller piece will be the cap

Here, I have rolled the big pieces into balls and the smaller into discs. The heat from your hands start to soften the caramels so it's good to make a bunch at once so that you can put one down and work on another to keep them from getting too gooey.

By pinching one end, form a wee point.

The caps can be lightly stretched over your finger to make a 'bowl' shape.

Attach the cap to the body and pinch to form a stem. I touch the top of the stem to keep it from being too pointy.

Here I am using a pin tool to make the markings on the cap. You could also use a butter knife or a plastic rotary fondant tool. The lines don't have to be perfect.

A close up of the cap.

The finished acorns. They even look super cute without the lines so don't worry if you don't want little fingers using a butter knife. Super yummy too.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Butterscotch Spice Cupcakes

I am participating in this year's Capital Cupcake Camp at City Hall. It is a fabulous fundraiser where amateur and professional bakers can enter their cupcakes for a small fee and you can also buy $10 Taster tickets good for 4 cupcakes of your choice. There are catagories that the amateur cupcakes will be competing in: Most Amazingly decorated, Best Filling, Tastiest Twist on a Traditional, Best Vegan and best savoury. You can only bring 24 or one flavour. My aim to make gum paste acorns and oak leaves, but for these samplers I made the acorn from a Kraft caramel. The cake is a brown sugar cinnamon sponge with a buttterscotch filling. The frosting is vanilla meringue buttercream with rum. I was going for something evocative of fall without having apple or maple. Nothing wrong with those flavours mind you.......