Magic Cookies and Mustaches–Not what you think :)

A friend asked if I’d make cookies for her nephew who was having a magic themed birthday.  The only request was they not be babyish.  He was six not a baby!

I scoured the internet for magic themed ideas but they were either very babyish or too scary, so I incorporated a little bit of both!

I had fun with stamping, painting and stenciling!

Next up was for our babysitter and all around awesome person, Alyssa.  She asked if I’d do her dad’s 60th birthday cake and cookies.  Chevrons and mustaches.  Cute!

They sent me the invite and I tried to do them justice.

First the cookies:

Next the cake:

Creating this cake became a comedy of errors.  We had our house up for sale and hadn’t had a showing in two weeks.  So, of course, we got one the day I was decorating the cake.  I had just finished ganache-ing this chocolate cherry cake when the text message came in giving me an hour and fifteen to get the house show ready.  So into the fridge it went.  I got the house ready, took the dogs for a walk, came back and pulled the cake back out to ice.  Then of course the door bell rang and the showing was rescheduled but they neglected to let me know.  Cake back into the fridge.  After they left I tried again and another text for another showing came in.  Cake back into the fridge.  The dogs and I are back out of the house, I picked up the girls at school and we went to get some ice cream as a treat.  Another text comes in from the showing people; they need to reschedule until tomorrow.  This was 45 minutes into the showing…are you kidding me?????  In the end I was up late finishing this cake because we now had showings for Saturday and the cake was to be picked up early afternoon.  I had originally wanted to put chevrons but didn’t like the way they looked, so I cut out some mini mustaches and added some dots. I used tappits for the letters. It turned out pretty cute but I wasn’t loving it until I got  this awesome email.

“I just wanted to say thank you for the amazing cake and cookies.  That had to be THE BEST CAKE we have ever had...and it was really beautiful!  The cookies were a big hit too.”

Thank for looking!

Happy Birthday Rob!

Today is my awesome husband’s birthday!  Yesterday we had a fun bbq with friends and then today we had a small party with just family.

I made him two cakes.

This one for the party:

It’s a three layer, 6” round chocolate cake with fudge buttercream.  Then I made it into a minion!  He turned out way better than I could have hoped.  Not bad for starting it at 6am before the rest of the house arose for the day.

Today I made him his birthday birthday cake, his favourite:

It’s 4” round Black Forest Cake.  Chocolate cake with layers of whipped cream and cherries.

Chocolate Cake (my kids absolute favourite)

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup freshly brewed coffee

1. In bowl of stand mixer, combine dry ingredients.
2. Add buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla slowly until just combined.
3. Slowly add coffee until just combined.  Remove bowl from mixer and fold to make sure all in incorporated.
4. Divide into 4 6” round pans. (I weigh my bowl and divide by number of pans, subtracting weight of bowl)
5. Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.  Let cool 15 minutes before removing to cool completely.
6. Ice with buttercream.

Chocolate Fudge Buttercream

• 1 cup softened unsalted butter
• 1 cup room temperature shortening
• 7 cups icing sugar
• 1 cup cocoa
• 6 tbsp milk

1. Cream butter and shortening until combined.
2. Add icing sugar and cocoa.
3. When combined at tablespoons of milk one at a time until desired consistency.  The thicker the icing the harder to spread.

Cherries (can be used in Black Forest cake as well as cherry pie filling:

• 1 can tart cherries in water
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp sugar

1. Drain cherries and place liquid into small saucepan.
2. Add sugar and simmer until dissolved.
3. Add cornstarch and sugar and mix constantly until it starts to thicken.
4. Put reserved cherries back into juice mixture and combine.  Set aside and let cool.

We also bought him balloons.  This is Rowan on the trip home.

In hindsight, 38 balloons in my car might have been pushing it!

I think he had a pretty good day!

Happy Birthday to the best hubby!  Love ya

Thanks for looking!

Treat Day Wednesday–Homemade Cherry Licorice Ropes & Giveaway

This week’s treat comes via my friend Kate.  She posted a link to a Gluten Free website called Gluten Free on a Shoestring.  What a wonderful site!  I know several people who can’t do gluten so I have had to create some gluten free recipes.  But what caught my eye was the post for GF Red Cherry Licorice.  I was sold!  I knew what my treat day treat had to be.

Now first off, I didn’t make these gluten free.  I did follow the recipe but just used regular unbleached flour. I also made this recipe twice and I’ll tell you why.  On my first go, I don’t think I boiled the sugar enough, after it came out of the fridge it softened way to much.  However, the taste was delish.  I didn’t have Lyle’s Golden syrup so I used honey.  Recipe can be found here.

So first off, this tastes exactly like twizzlers, however it didn’t have the right texture.  After I made them I read a couple other recipes and this one’s max temperature for the sugar is 240F, others were about 265F.  This is what happens when it sits at room temperature for a bit, it kind of melts together.

So take two was needed.  This time I used Lyle’s Golden syrup and boiled the sugar to hard ball stage.  We now had a firmer texture and great flavour (I did like the honey better) but alas it wasn’t a twizzler.

Now don’t get me wrong, these were delicious.  Super tasty but not what I love about licorice.  Would I make this again, you bet.  I’m actually taking the remaining ropes to a party tonight.

I’m also celebrating today!  I hit 3500 fans on my FB page and so decided to give away my stash.  Hi my name is Karen and I have a baking shopping problem.  If I see it, I buy it thinking I’ll use it and then forget it’s there.  So when I cleaned out my cabinets I found some great stuff, never opened, never used.  And I’m giving it away!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So Thank you so much for being apart of my life, it’s made it much richer for sure!

Thanks for looking!

Treat Day Wednesday - Chocolate Chip Cherry White Chocolate Cookies

Yup that’s a mouthful and so are these cookies!

Have you ever noticed that drop cookies are usually pretty small, in my opinion.  So when thinking up something to bake today and to use up pretty much all the extra stuff floating around like the white chocolate M&Ms and the cherry juice, I came up with these.  Also to use my ice cream scoop.  I mean I don’t ever use it for ice cream because it never works.  I use it for scooping cupcake batter, muffin batter and now chocolate chip cookies.

So they don’t taste a lot like cherry but I do so enjoy the white chocolate M&Ms.  A fabulous find by Miss Rowan!  They are big and chewy and you know every now and again, you need a really big cookie!

Recipe:

• 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tbsp cherry juice
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup white chocolate M&Ms

1. Cream butter and sugars together.
2. Add one egg.
3. Mix dry ingredients into butter.
4. Add cherry juice.
5. Fold in chips and M&Ms
6. Use icecream scoop to make really big cookies!  Best idea I ever had :)
7. Enjoy will a really big glass of milk!

So sometimes ideas may not always turn out as you had planned, sometimes better!

Thanks for looking!

Cherry Panna Cotta

So what do you do with all this cherry juice?  Well you make cherry panna cotta, that’s what!  Ok maybe it’s not a usual suspect but cherry flavour is so versatile that I thought why not make a few fan favourites with cherry juice.  Yesterday I made Cherry Chocolate Fudge Brownies.

You’ll also notice that I’m avoiding my favourite of all time recipes because then that’s just means I’ll eat them all and therefore going against the “trying to be good” idea I’ve got going on here. (this weekend was not a good example of trying to be good).

Panna Cotta is such a simple dessert with a hoity toity air about it.  I’m not really sure why, it just does.  I mean it’s only four ingredients, sometimes five.  So what’s so snotty about that?

Recipe:

• 1 cup cherry juice
• 3/4 cup whipping cream
• 1tsp vanilla
• 1 package gelatin

1. Stir gelatin into cherry juice and let sit for 3 minutes
2. In saucepan, heat cream and vanilla until just boiling.
3. Add cherry juice to cream and stir until dissolved.
4. Pour into desired ramekins/dish
5. Place in fridge for 4 hours, until set.
6. Enjoy!

{Nutrition Data per serving: Calories: 133; Carbs: 24g; Fat: 10g; Protein: 2g}

These are quite tart, which is what I like about it but if you feel the need to add some sweetness, a couple of teaspoons of sugar to the cream mixture should do the trick!  I love the way the juice separated out a bit and gave the two-tone look.  So pretty.

Also, the awesome looking cookies you see were made by Rowan.  She made them with grandma who’s been visiting this week :)  I felt they needed to be highlighted as well.  She’s the next great baker, so look out!

Thanks for looking!

Linking with:
Tasty Tuesday
Crazy Sweet Tuesday
The Kurtz Corner
Tea Party Tuesday
Tempt My Tummy Tuesday
Hearth & Soul Blog Hop

Cherry Chocolate Fudge Brownies

I’m going to have a few cherry recipes this week, what with the 11lb tub of pitted tart cherries my in-laws brought me :)

With most of the cherries, I made cherry pie filling and froze seven for future use.  Cherry pie is Rob’s favourite dessert. We had it for dessert last night, of course. After I finished making the pie fillings I had so much cherry juice left over and I don’t want to waste it, so I’m coming up with cherry recipes.

First up, I’m switching up a classic.  I took out half of the butter and replaced it with cherry juice.  I’m not a fan of cherries, it’s a texture thing but using the juice and not the fruit is something I can get on board with!

These brownies are moist and the cherry flavour mixes so well with the rich chocolate.

Recipes:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup cherry juice
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup good cocoa
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/3 cup unbleached flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

1. Melt butter in saucepan and add cherry juice. 
2. Mix in sugar and cocoa.
3. Add eggs and combine one at a time.
4. Mix in remaining ingredients and once combined pour into prepared 8 inch square pan.
5. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes or until knife comes out clean.
6. Let cool, slice and enjoy!

{Nutrition Date per serving: Calories: 139; Carbs: 23g;  Fat: 5g; Protein: 5g}

By cutting the butter in half you’ve decreased the fat content, yay!

I love plain old brownies but these are a fabulous twist on the original genius!

Thanks for looking!

Linking with:
Mix it Up Monday
Mingle Monday
Melt In Your Mouth Monday
Tea Party Tuesday
Crazy Sweet Tuesday
Hearth & Soul Blog Hop