Crafty Bakers

How to Make a Delicious Christmas Dinner

2011-12-19T22:18:00.001-05:00

How to Make a Delicious Christmas Dinner

3 Days Before Dinner

Three days before our Christmas dinner, we bought all our ingredients, including a frozen turkey. Note for future Christmases, 3 days is not enough time to defrost a 17 pound turkey.

2 Days Before Dinner

Two days before our Christmas dinner, wash the half - thawed turkey to prepare it for brining

Prepare the brine. This year, we used a pre-packaged brine mix. We usually make it ourselves, but last year, we bought a brining kit for the brining bag and figured we might as well use the brine mix this year. It was by President's Choice, and pretty darn delicious:

Before putting the clean turkey in the bag, we took silly pictures of the turkey's bum:

We then triple bagged the turkey, and slowly filled the bag with the appropriate amount of water. Sadly, the only liquid measuring cup I have is a one-cup measure, so this took a while:

The water needs to be really cold, so we filled it with all of the ice cubes we had. Unfortunately, it meant that I had to sacrifice some robot ice cubes for the greater good:

The turkey fit perfectly in the fridge in the bags! No more sketchy sink or balcony brining for us, we're pros now!

One Day Before Dinner

I made custard and mixed it with pumpkin puree for the ice cream base for the delicious dessert. This has to be super cold when going through the ice creaming process, so has to be refrigerated for several hours.

All mixed up:

With the leftover egg whites (the custard required 5 egg yolks), I made meringue nests to hold the ice cream. I had a lot of extra meringue, so used it to make itsy-bitsy cookies:

The morning of the Dinner

Jacqueline prepared her famous stuffing using some bread, leftover crackers, onions, celery, eggs and magic. This must be done in advance as the stuff should be cold when stuffing the turkey to avoid scary things like food-poisoning.

The Afternoon of the Dinner

Jacqueline stuffed the clean turkey:

Then she sewed up the openings:

The whole thing was wrapped in bacon:

We fashioned a splatter shield from tin foil:

After the turkey was in the oven, I made the ice cream using my fancy-pants ice cream maker. I just pour the cold custard into the machine, being careful not to spill it all over myself :)

When it reached the consistency of a thick soft-serve ice cream, I transfered it to a plastic container so it could firm up in the freezer:

We checked on the turkey to make sure none of the bacon had fallen out of place:

Then we pealed potatoes, a squash, and a rutabaga for the assorted side dishes. This one looked like a heart!

After the bacon looked nice and crispy, we took the turkey out of the oven:

Then, I took a pretty picture of the bacon before Casper jumped on the table, pushed the plate on the floor and gobbled up all the bacon:

While the turkey was doing it's business, we worked on sides.

Here are the roasted garlic mashed potatoes:

Turkey is ready!!

While the turkey was in the oven, we wrapped some sweet potatoes in foil and roasted them alongside the turkey. MMmmmmm

We mashed the roasted sweet potatoes with some nutmeg and cinnamon for the sweet potato casserole and topped it off with marshmallows. This went in the oven to make the marshmallows nice and melty.

Jacqueline made magical gravy from the delicious turkey and bacon drippings:

The Dinner!

A plate piled high with food and gravy :D

After the Dinner!

And the finishing act, home-made pumpkin ice cream in individual meringue nests!

Cookie Party 2011!

2011-12-04T21:40:00.002-05:00

This weekend, Jacqueline, JP and I held out annual Christmas Cookie Party! This year was even bigger and better than ever! Jacqueline and I each made 3 kinds of cookies / desserts, and JP made some delicious savoury snacks. This post will mostly be pictures of the amazing cookies, tarts, squares and snacks that we made.

I used my trusty cookie press again, and made some vanilla sugar cookies in the shape of snowflakes. Here they are all squeezed out on the cookie sheet:

And the finished product:

I also made brown butter rice krispie treats. I've made these a few times in the past, and they've always been a big hit, and I figured they'd be a quick and painless dessert that I could whip up without using the oven. For some reason, it seemed to take forever to melt the marshmallows. Here they are taking their time to melt:

Thankfully, they melted eventually, and I had nice smooth marshmallow to mix with rice krispies for delicious treats:

I smushed all the rice krispie marshmallowness into a cookie sheet:

When it was cool, I cut out squares and arranged them on a cake platter. The most difficult part was cutting the rice krispies, I thought I was going to accidentally cut my hand off! It's like a wedding cake made of rice krispie squares!

I also made molasses spice cookies which are always a big hit (but I somehow managed to forget to photograph them, whoops).

Jacqueline made a GIANT batch of gingerbread cookies. She says the recipe was incredibly involved, but based on how these turned out, I'd say it was worth it. The cookies were nice and hard on the outside, but soft and cake like on the inside!

She also made two types of chocolate tarts, one with chocolate ganache inside and the other with some sort of whipped topping, both won rave reviews:

I saw in one of my Martha Stewart books a decorating idea to make snowmen out of marshmallows, so I made a few plateful of those as well. I made 2 plates, one with snowmen on the "South Side" gang, and one on the "North Side" gang. Sadly, most of the marshmallow snowmen went uneaten, but I hope they added some festive cheer to the table :)

We also had an assortment of savoury snacks:

JP made prosciutto wrapped melon and prosciutto wrapped breadsticks, and it was all very delicious!

He also prepared some cheese and crackers:

Jacqueline's boyfriend Boyan made smoked salmon on mini-toast:

and a delicious (and colourful) veggie platter:

As an added bonus this year, I managed to learn how to take timelapse videos with my old camera and was able to put together a small video showing some of the party, enjoy!

One of a Kind Show!

2011-11-30T22:54:00.002-05:00

I LOVE The One of Kind Show and Sale and have been attending every show for the past few years. I wish I had unlimited money to spend at these shows, because everything is so very very pretty.

This year has been extra exciting because I was part of the One of a Kind Circle One Advisory Committee, and had the opportunity to give the show some feedback and learn about exciting things they had planned! One perk of being in the committee was free tickets for each show this year (the Spring and the Christmas show) and $100 in One of a Kind dollars to spend at each show.

I visited the show twice this year, first on Sunday and again tonight so I could check out both the five day and six day vendors. On Sunday, I went with a few friends, and we all had pretzels during snack time:

This was quite possibly, the saltiest pretzel I'd ever had! On the bright side, we got to sit next to a giant Christmas tree!

Some of the vendors I really liked included:

This one that made little boxes and drawers out of driftwood. I wanted to go back, but forgot to, whoops:

I also loved:

- Biko jewellery - Very pretty jewellery including this really awesome acorn that OPENED

- Reiner's Originals - They had the most adorable elephant ottomans, but they were WAY too heavy for me to carry home on the streetcar and subway, I'll have to find them somewhere else when I have a car with me

- Rover - They had the cutest little peacoats for puppies

- Annie Tung- She had beautiful little pearl rings

- Thomas J Suh - Really nice piggy banks -- if only I were still young enough to have one

- Hoi Bo- Fancy pants bags!

- Beebop and Wally - I very nearly bought an adorable grey capelet from here, but it snowed today and I realized my window for wearing a not-so-warm capelet has already passed for this year. Sad.

One of the mainstays of the show are the personalized ornament sellers, here's one:

I ended up buying a brooch from the other one of a little gingerbread man!

It was only $2.99 and I've been wearing it on a gray blazer to show my Christmas spirit :D

It was really difficult to decide what else to get, but in the end, I also bought:

A really pretty cameo ring from Toodlebunny that was only $30.00! (EDIT: I just noticed that the ring is upside down, whoops, I am also too lazy to fix it -- so enjoy :D)

A Christmas present for Jacqueline from The Dog Party:

And, my favourite one of a kind find, a super awesome plexiglass elephant to display on my wall from Rabbet for $65.00!

I was debating between some bowls and the elephant, but in the end the elephant won because I really wanted to spend my One of a Kind dollars on something silly that I wouldn't spend practical money on :D I love it!

I can't wait until the Spring show!! Sadly I won't have any more One of a Kind dollars.

Glass Beads!

2011-11-02T00:16:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I took a short (free) one-hour glass bead making workshop at Tank Studio in the Distillery District as part of Culture Days. I've always been interested in working with glass, and also love the Distillery District, and free things, so it was the perfect opportunity!

I met up with Erin after my workshop, and we had a great day sampling food and exploring the Distillery, but I think that will be another post.

After having done silversmithing, I found glass bead making to be a LOT less anxiety-ridden. First of all, the torch is attached to the table, so you don't have to hold it in shaking shaking hands. Second of all, the torch is always pointed away from you, so you don't need to aim the fire at anything. Third of all, because it was only a one hour workshop, they lit the torches for us, which is always the scariest part (I have a not-so-unreasonable fear of fireballs forming because the flints sometimes take too long to light and the gas accumulates).

To make a bead, you basically use the fire to melt a glass rod around a metal rod and form different shapes with the melted glass. Working with glass is WAY more forgiving than working with metal. I remember my first cuttlefish casting experience, and what a disaster that was (and terrifying), but when you mess up with glass, you sort of just let it melt back into a goopy mess. And because the shapes I was going for were so organic, there was a lot more flexibility.

These were the colours I chose.

And the whole glass and torch set-up:

They showed us different techniques and how to move the glass around so no one spot gets too hot. I intentionally stopped spinning my beads for a few seconds so that the glass would get nice and droopy so I could wear the beads as pendants.

After we were done with the beads, they had to be put in a kiln overnight to set. Erin picked my beads up for me the next weekend because I was in Boston.

Here are my finished beads! They are sitting inside my froggie Halloween mask.

Bannock!

2011-11-01T11:40:00.001-04:00

I've been pretty swamped lately between work, thesis, social life and side projects -- so I haven't really had a chance to bake or craft. Sadly, I didn't even get around to baking for Halloween!!

Instead of letting this blog get boring and stale, I've decided to expand and include delicious food I eat.

First up is a meal I had at Bannock a few weeks ago. Bannock is at Queen and Bay, and is advertised as having "Canadian comfort food". My sister and I went for our semi-regular Friday night dinner and shared the Duck Poutine Pizza and the Tortiere.

While both meals were delicious, the duck poutine pizza was the real winner. It was delicious! But also gigantic, I definitely recommend sharing it with at least one other person.

Lam Jam - Baking Party #1

2011-09-11T20:47:00.006-04:00

Last weekend, Jen, Amanda, and I hosted a baking party in Ottawa. Oh man, we baked so many things... It was the most baking I've ever done in my life! Okay, that's not saying much... But the oven was on for two days straight!

Our menu was as follows:
- Lemon cake with super lemony icing
- Blueberry pie
- Red velvet cupcakes
- Coconut cream cupcakes
- Cream puffs
- Pistachio ice cream

Basically, it was my dream come true. Check out the pics.

Creaming sugar and butter together for the lemon cake:

Then the eggs and other wet ingredients went in:

One of many lemons that got stripped:

Btw, this Microplane zester was AWESOME, and I went and got myself one today.

These lemons gave everything they had.... inside and out...

Measuring sour cream for the lemon cake. Sour cream made it extra moist and delicious.

Even the batter looks delicious:

Lil' E loved baking with us!

I watched Grand Master A grease and flour the silicon cake pan. The beautiful creamy cake batter was then poured into the pan.

The cake came out of the oven like this! We have no idea what happened... It was so bizarre! :D

Actually, this was the result of a heroic effort made by J and I to flatten the top of the cake so that when you flip the cake upsidedown on a plate, it's level. I think we did a great job! Look how beautiful it is:

Here's a piece, topped with lemon icing. Are you drooling yet?

The puffs were easy. I used my go-to cheese puff recipe minus the cheese. Here is the dough, spooned onto a baking sheet.

The oven was a bit more powerful than mine, and these came out a little burnt around the edges. They were delicious nonetheless.

J improvised and "whipped" up some whip cream from scratch! A good portion of it was consumed by us with some fresh strawberries. :D It was incredibly delicious, and I vowed that I'd never buy whip cream again. We piped the freshly made whipped cream into the puffs, et voila - we had cream puffs!

This is the beginning of our problematic pie crust.

Here's our Grand Master expertly rolling out the pie crust.

Deeelicious blueberry filling!

The filling meets the crust...

The dough really didn't want to cooperate... but we somehow pieced together this ug.. I mean "rustic" weave pattern. Grand Master A brushed on some milk wash.

It took a while longer in the oven than what the recipe instructed, but came out nice and golden.

The pie was a big hit, and it was gone almost instantly.

Here is our pink velvet cupcakes batter (because we didn't have enough red food colouring).

The batter made many dozens of these:

We gave them cream cheese icing, some piped, some not.

Fancy cupcake liners we used for the coconut cream cupcakes.

Making coconut cream icing:

Coconut cupcakes, fresh out of the oven:

They were topped with generous mounds of coconut cream icing and were dipped in coconut flakes. MMM!

It was a blast baking and eating and baking and eating for two days! We'll probably do another one for Christmas. :)

Bakery Review: Magnolia Bakery

2011-08-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

I've been really busy lately, and haven't really been able to do any fun crafty bake-y things :(

I have, however, made time to enjoy baked goods by other bakers :)

I went to visit my friend Gillian in New York City a few weeks ago. And being a huge Sex and the City Fan and a huge cupcake fan, I insisted we visit Magnolia Bakery!

It was a really adorable bakery, and not too crowded because we went at night.

The cupcakes were adorable, and decorated very simply. I loved that they weren't over the top and loaded with too much buttercream or fondant (I HATE fondant!)

I chose a pretty green one with a pretty pink flower, and Gillian chose a pretty purple one with white sprinkles. Because we went so late at night, they only had vanilla ones left -- I will have to try the other flavours the next time I visit!

I thought this next photo would give a good indication of the size of the cupcake, but it really doesn't because my tiny-child sized hands make the cupcake look massive. The cupcake was about the same size as cupcakes you make at home.

And here is the picture of the middle. The cupcake was the perfect texture! I was really impressed! A lot of bakeries go for pretty cupcakes instead of delicious ones (ahem, fondant), but this was both!! The cake was light, fluffy, and not too dry. I secretly wish I'd bought a half dozen and ate them all at once, they were THAT good!!!

Chocolate Coffee Pound Cakes with Pink Icing

2011-08-08T15:45:00.006-04:00

I think I'm obsessed with pink! My last three posts were all pink.

For Dave's brother and his fiancée's shower, I was asked to bake a bunch of cupcakes. I decided to try this recipe from Desserts For Breakfast since (the author/photographer) Stephanie's photos are so lovely.

A few weeks ago I did the test run. Differences from the recipe: We didn't have black cocoa powder (subbed: Ghiradeli cocoa powder), espresso (subbed: instant coffee), or bittersweet chocolate chips (subbed: milk-chocolate chips). I think all three combined made the cupcake too sweet for my taste. Also I didn't use as much butter (1 stick vs 13 tablespoons).

Even after all the subs and sweetness, it was still a pretty good cupcake! Mine don't look anything like Stephanie's, I'm going to blame on the fact that the Wilton "beginner's kit" I have didn't have the right tip. Actually, I am lying. They have the large, closed-star tip... but not the right plastic adapter thingy! It doesn't come with it! Why bother providing the tip if you can't attach it to your piping bag?

Well, either way, I piped them, using the "rose petal" tip instead. I used a different frosting recipe because I didn't want cream cheese frosting for all the test ones I'd have to eat, so I just used an "eggless buttercream". I added way too much icing sugar, so it was also overly sweet, but it helped keep the frosting crisp and delicate (unlike my usual globby melty frosting jobs).

My next post will be about the five dozen cupcakes I baked on Saturday :-)

Bridal Shower!

2011-08-07T17:01:00.000-04:00

My sister is getting married in a few weeks, and to celebrate we organized a bridal shower for her a few weeks ago. The theme was tea parties and New Kids on the Block -- both things that she loves.

We mostly bought the food, because I am lazy and not fancy enough to make really delicious scones. But I decided to make use of my Message-in-a-Cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma. They're pretty much the most awesome cookie cutters in the world. I used them at Halloween last year too!

Because I love puns, I stamped the following messages on the cookies: "Steep-by-Steep" and "I beleaf in you", after popular NKOTB songs. I coloured the cookies bright pink because they were for a bridal shower. I also bought some cool cookie cutters the last time I was at St. Lawrence market and used those to make diamond ring shaped cookies and unicorn shaped cookies (because, you know, unicorns are really awesome).

I'm really happy with how the cookies turned out!

Here is a batch on the cookie sheet:

And a plateful of finished cookies!

We bought cupcakes and macarons from Crumbs and Co in Richmond Hill because I had a groupon. The cupcakes were pretty darn delicious and oh-so-pretty, but the macarons were pretty disappointing. They weren't cooked fully and were too mushy. Next time, I'll just get cupcakes.

Here are the pretty, but disappointing, macarons:

And some of the pretty, and delicious, cupcakes:

We also had lots of other fun food like finger sandwiches, fancy scones, patties and fancy tea.

For the party favours, we gave away small tins of fancy loose leaf tea, with a label saying "T(ea) is for Thanks!". I was pretty proud of that play on words :)

The wedding is in two weeks, so I'll probably have some wedding craft themed posts in the coming weeks!

I Made A Tie!

2011-07-28T15:32:00.003-04:00

Two Saturdays ago I had my first class at The Workroom! It was fantastic! I'd wanted to do the snap-purse class, or the dufflebag class, but those were on weekdays, and I work too late and too far. So I thought it would be cute to learn how to sew ties!

I got to the store a bit early so I had time to pick out my fabrics. There was a whole wall of really cute fabrics. A whole wall! Every single fabric was so pretty or adorable. I settled on a pink flower pattern, with a light pink contrast fabric for the underside of the tie.

A few other people came in, and Karyn (the owner) started the class. There were only six of us. I think there are only six sewing machines too. Karyn explained the first few steps and then we got started. The very best part of the experience was using their sewing machines. There were quite a few different machines, and by chance I got the Bernina Bernette 12 machine. It's a basic machine, good for beginners and it's pretty affordable. It was soo amazing, especially compared to the machine we have at home, where the machine snags at every other stitch. The Bernette was so smooth! It made sewing so enjoyable! I want one now.

Anyway, we assembled our ties, and did a lot of ironing to make them nice and crisp. The fun part was flipping them inside out. Karyn came up with a pretty nifty trick to flip the narrow ties: she attached a string to a weight (like a metal bobbin), pinned the end of the string to one end of the tie, slid the weight through, and then pulled. It was so exciting to see the finished tie revealing itself! I was so proud of my new tie (I was giddy, actually), that I asked Karyn to take a photo of me and my tie. Here I am:

The Smiths Cross-Stitch

2011-07-18T22:41:00.003-04:00

I've been on a crafting streak! Actually, I started this project before the little oven mitten, and it was originally supposed to be some art for Dave's new workplace (which he started at in May).

I think I've mentioned before that Dave is a copywriter. His job is pretty demanding (it's a lot of pressure to think up clever ideas in not a lot of time), with some pretty long days (working weekends, working most weekdays from 8AM to 7PM not including plus commute, etc). And because he also worked so hard to get into the advertising business in the first place, I find it pretty hilarious to quote Morrissey back at his face whenever he's complaining about his job, him being a huge Smiths fan and all.

Now I don't even need to remind him, since this little piece now sits at his work desk.

Child-sized Oven Mitt

2011-07-05T09:51:00.006-04:00

My niece had been wanting a little baby-sized oven mitt to use while she plays with her toy kitchen, but I'd been really lazy and I hadn't made it. I finally got around to it last week. Here is the final mitten!

I used some of the instructions from a blog post I found, Skip To My Lou's Oven Mitt Tutorial, and winged the rest of it.

My sister had traced out a mitten template earlier so I would know how big to make the mitt (it's really small! I couldn't put my hand in the finished mitten). I cut out two pieces of pink gingham, two pieces of pink cloth, and two pieces of white fleece (since I didn't have any insulated lining that you'd use if you were making real mitts).

I pinned the pieces for the "front" side together then sewed diagonal lines across the pink gingham, so it would look "quilted", and did the same for the "back" side. Then I pinned both front and back pieces together, inside out, and sewed them together. I also added a little loop of pink fabric, so you can hang the mitten. The thumb area was tricky because it was so small, so I had to clip the fabric really close to the sewn edge. Then I flipped the whole thing back inside out.

To do the pink band at the bottom I didn't really follow the tutorial, but still ended up doing basically the same thing they did. Except it was pretty difficult sewing all the way around (I couldn't top stitch the nice side of the band), since the little hand-hole was too small to fit on the sewing machine, so it was really awkward.

But besides that I think it was pretty straightforward and it turned out pretty good! My niece seemed to really like it. She played with it for at least a few minutes (wearing it backwards) before she got distracted and started playing with something else!

Carrot Cup Cakes

2011-06-28T10:25:00.003-04:00

In January, I baked Dave a carrot cake for his birthday. He really liked it, and so did his dad. So since his family invited me to Father's Day a few weeks ago, I decided I'd bake some carrot cup cakes. I used the same recipe as last time, and added the raisins again, too.

They turned out pretty perfectly, except I forgot how to ice the carrots, so they were all really chubby looking from trying to make them backwards.

My next project is to bake really fabulous looking cupcakes for Dave's brother and Dave's brother's fiancee's wedding shower. I want to try making these double chocolate espresso cupcakes by Desserts For Breakfast! It might be an epic fail, so I will have to practice. There will be a lot of cupcakes in the near future!

Patchwork Cube

2011-05-08T21:52:00.001-04:00

I'm cheating a bit, and blogging about a project I finished years ago.

Every so often, I get really really excited about a certain craft technique or fad, and I spend lots of time researching everything and buying supplies and tools. Then, something new comes up and I forget all about the craft until several years later :)

Quilting is an excellent example.

Years, and years ago (I'd say, at least 5), I got really excited about quilting. I did a lot of research into quilting books and quilting tools and bought a Denise Schmidt book on quilting. I read the book cover to cover, and imagined all the amazing quilts I'd make. Of course, none of these quilts ever actually got made, but I think I got my 20 dollars worth of book with all the imagining I did :)

Anyways, while I was in my first quilting phase, I decide to practice patchwork with my machine. I searched the Internet for cool patch work projects, and seven hours later, I ended up with a super cool patchwork cube!

It'd probably have been easier if I had a rotary cutter, and was less lazy and measured more carefully, but it came out surprisingly pretty :)

The cube has exactly 0 uses, but I think it looks cool. I guess, when I have a grown up place, I can use it as a decorative and uncomfortable cushion :)

Recently, I've become interested in quilting again, and spent a lot of time browsing the Internet for more fun ideas. I've decided that after I have a bit more time (ie after I defend my thesis), I'm going to start taking a quilting class at the workroom, they all sound so fun, and I really think I need a class to kick my butt into gear and finally actually make a quilt :)

Orange Pudding Cake

2011-04-29T22:59:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I felt like baking and eating cake, so I made a delicious orange pudding cake :)

I've used the recipe a bunch of times whenever I want a quick cake :) It takes less than 20 minutes to whip up, 35 minutes to bake and 5 minutes to devour :D

The recipe calls for lemon, but I used oranges instead. Next time, I'll use a little bit less sugar, because oranges are must sweeter than lemons.

This cake is delicious hot, and is baked in a casserole dish. The top comes out nice and fluffy and the bottom is delicious pudding. It is incredible!

Here it is all scooped up into a bowl.

Cake Hiatus Week 2

2011-04-11T20:05:00.004-04:00

This break was not planned but as I walked my dog Casper:

How could I resist not posting his picture! He is adorable!

Anyways, back to the story! As I walked Casper on Sunday morning on Queen Street we went by Rivoli and a large group of people setting up for the Toronto Bakes for Japan fundraiser. While we were there super early, I made sure to go back to get some goodies. So instead of baking for others this week, I bought yummy treats for myself!

While the weather wasn't the best, the rain and cool temperatures didn't seem to keep people away. When Casper and I went back around 1pm there were a lot of people selling and buying, and I think there was even a news camera! According to their website, that location alone raised just over $6000.00! Thank you to everyone that helped out (whether you baked or bought).

Here is what I indulged in:

Avocado Pound Cake

Sugar Baking Cupcakes

Cake Hiatus Week 1

2011-04-11T19:31:00.011-04:00

This week I went "cake free" because I knew that I would be busy preparing cookies for two different birthdays.

The first is my Dad's birthday. He is a huge Star Wars fan so when I saw the Star Wars Heroes & Villains Cookie Cutter Set at Williams-Sonoma I knew they would be perfect. My plan was to give him the cookie cutters as a present (and a new pair of swim trunks!) and because I'm not actually sure he will use them (his specialty is waffles) I decided to make a batch myself.

I used the sugar cookie recipe/icing recipe that comes with the cutters. Each cookie cutter is like a stamp, you cut the dough and then push down and it imprints a pattern/design onto the cookie.

There are four cookies: Yoda, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a storm trooper.

To decorate, I also bought Food Paste because it came with black. I know it is hard to make black from regular food colouring colours and since making Darth Vader is really really important I wanted to make sure it was perfect.

For each cookie I followed the examples on the cookie cutter box. It seemed really daunting to do all the details, but actually wasn't that bad. I started with the storm troopers because they are mostly white:

Then I started to mix black food paste. I used a lot. Probably more than I needed to but I found that it stayed gray for a long time. With the black, I did Darth Vader, then piped the black detailing onto the storm troopers, and added details to Boba Fitt. I did this by putting the black into a small ziploc bag and cutting one corner. I find this is an awesome technique when you have lots of colours and also if you need a very very small diameter tip.

Next I made green icing for Yoda! And then I darkened it for Boba Fett as well:

The last big task was to pipe white detailing on Darth Vader and Yoda, and do yellow and red detailing on Boba Fett:

The other cookies that I made were for Adam a.k.a BATMAN! He turned 5 :)

And with the left over icing I made crab sugar cookies with a cutter that I bought in Baltimore last summer (awesome awesome souvenir!):

Cake Cake Cake

2011-03-28T22:21:00.004-04:00

So yes, I have to admit I've been really behind on posting about my cake adventures. Hopefully this post catches me up!

Yogurt-Cheese Pie

This was a really awesome and easy recipe! I got it from "A World Community Cookbook: More-with-Less". I bought this from Ten Thousand Villages. It looked really interesting when I bought it, but I hate to admit it...I've hardly used it :(

The only other recipe I can remember making from it is French bread...

Anyways, I purposefully sought out this cookbook and I happily stumbled upon this recipe. It was perfect, because I had cottage cheese already. While I should have actually blended the cottage cheese so the pie isn't chunky, I'm pretty sure it tasted the same anyways.

Since it seems to be a rare recipe (based on what I could find on the Internet) I'll post it here:
-1 pie shell (graham cracker works great)
-1/3 cups milk
-1 package unflavoured gelatin (OR 1 package of flavoured J-E-L-L-O)
-1 cup cottage cheese
-1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
-1/4 cups sugar or 3 tbsp honey

1. Prepare and cool the pie shell.
2. Combine milk and gelatin (or JELLO) in a small saucepan. Stir to dissolve gelatin. Warm over low heat and stir constantly until all dissolved.
3. Combine in a blender (or mixer) the cottage cheese, yogurt, sugar (or honey) and dissolved gelatin mixture. Whirl/whip briefly.
4. Chill mixture 20-30 minutes until it begins to set.
5. Pour into pie shell and chill.

Other options are:
-sprinkle with nutmeg.
-add 1-2 cups fresh berries or sliced bananas to the pie shell before pouring mixture. Set and chill for 8 hours.
-after chilling top with jam/thickened fruit.
-instead of using a pie shell layer with fruit into parfait glasses.

The great thing about this recipe book is all the recipes are submitted by bakers/cookers and usually contain small tidbits of information. Such as this piece
"Contributor is a Mennonite grandmother who says, "Our cookery has rated among the best for years but there are aspects to it that disturb me-so many recipes are high in fats and sugars." Her recipe passes the test as a nutritious dessert" ".

And boy does it! In my version I used a package of Lime flavoured JELLO and whipped up some fresh whipped cream to garnish. It is a light, refreshing pie that resembles a cheese cake (but very fluffy) and I love that the flavour possibilities are endless!

Pouring partially set filling into graham cracker pie shell:

Slice of pie with some whipped cream:

Milk Chocolate Pudding Cake

The next cake is one I've had on my wish list for a while. I cut this recipe out from an old "Got Milk" calendar and is very similar to what I would consider a chocolate lava cake that you can get at many restaurants.

The most amazing thing about this cake is that you fill the pan with the cake batter, and then pour chocolate pudding on top. While it bakes the cake magically floats/lifts to the top and the pudding settles to the bottom. This was soooo cool! And it actually perplexed me for a while when I first took the cake out because I was testing if it was done (with a toothpick) and was so confused that it actually came out clean (thinking that the pudding on the top would prevent it from doing so!).

It is best served warm and is a wonderful combination of chocolate cake with a pudding middle!

All my dreams coming true:

Orange Chocolate Layer Cake

I originally wanted to do a St. Patty's Day cake that was green on the inside and covered in chocolate frosting but ran out of time that week. Instead I did the exact same recipe but didn't dye the cake. I made a white layer cake split between two round tins and then an easy peasy chocolate frosting that consisted simply of melted chocolate, milk and butter (over heat) and then chilled in the fridge to the right consistency for cake decorating.

The cake had a hint of orange (orange zest) that went surprisingly really really well with the chocolate icing:

I needed to do some cosmetic work before assembly. The "tops" were just as yummy and Anita and I nibbled on them right away:

Decorated cake - I made the star by placing a cookie cutter on the cake and filling it with the sprinkles:

And the final master piece:

I might as well say that I definitely haven't done a cake a week, but I think I'm close to about two cakes a month (not bad!). I've also done some brownies in February but forgot to take pictures....

This week, I am halting my cake adventures and turning my attention to cookies - special birthday cookies with a twist! Stay posted to find out what!

Jewellery Marking: Bird Pendant 2

2011-03-25T00:09:00.000-04:00

I feel like I am never going to finish this bird pendant!

So, today I had what was supposed to be my last jewellery class. Last week, I decided against having another wax piece cast, because I didn't want to be stressed out this class. Turns out, I was stressed out anyways. I thought I was being smart and practical. All I had to do was make and solder 6 jump rings and make rivets for my bird.

Of course, things are not always as easy as I think they will be.

I had to solder on jump rings to a few unfinished pieces, and it just took forever. First, I kept losing jump rings after I had cut them, then I kept soldering them incorrectly (ie the seam would not line up properly, etc). Every time I mess up, I have to put the piece in the pickle, let the flux and oxidation wash off a bit, wash it with baking soda, set it up all again and then try again. Basically, it takes forever and a half and I kept having to relight the scary giant torch that is prone to fireballs.

I finished the holes on the bird last week, so this is what I started with today:

I decided that I would attach a chain to jump rings attached to the wings to make sure the wings never fall too low (unfortunately, I overestimated the length I'd need, so the wings will fall low anyways, but oh well).

To solder on the jump rings with the chain on, I had to cover the chain with heatshield. It's basically a goopy clay you put on everything that you don't want to melt. Because the chain is so much thinner than everything else, it'd melt and get all messed up. It is difficult work covering such a fine chain with clay without touching the seam of the ring!!

Anyways, after many tries by me, and Meredith's help, the rings and chain were attached to the wings!

I ran out of time at the end of class, so wasn't able to do the rivets. Meredith kindly agreed to give us some time next week even though today was the last class to finish up our projects.

Here's what it looks like now:

I plan to put it in the tumbler for a bit next week to make it nice and shiny.

So, I'm happy with my progress so far with my bird, but my goodness, today was a frustrating class!

Everybody loves fresh pasta!

2011-03-18T14:01:00.004-04:00

On Sunday Dave and I made dinner for my family. We chose to make fresh pasta with two sauces (red sauce with meatballs and cream sauce with mushrooms and white wine). Dave championed the sauces while I made the pasta.

Since we had it at our disposal (and because I'm lazy), I put all the pasta ingredients in the KitchenAid stand mixer. And by "all" the ingredients, I mean three cups of flour, three eggs, and less than half a tablespoon of olive oil. That's it! I know I should have used durum semolina flour, but we didn't have any. Also thinking on it now, I should have added a pinch of salt too.

I attached the dough hook, and let the KitchenAid work its magic for fifteen minutes on medium. The pasta dough doesn't come together quite as good as with bread-dough, but the hook gets all the egg and flour combined, so all I had to do was press the bits into a ball, then dropped it back into the mixer. This time the dough hook beat the hell out of the ball until it was nice and smooth. I wrapped the ball in cling-wrap and popped it into the fridge to rest for thirty minutes.

Meanwhile, Dave was slaving away on the meatballs (ground beef, breadcrumbs, egg, salt, pepper and parsley). To save time, the red sauce was from a bottle (don't judge), but the cream sauce Dave made (diced onion, portobello, button, and oyster mushrooms, white wine, cream, salt, pepper, parsley).

Back to the pasta: After its break in the fridge, I split the ball into quarters, taking 1/4 and putting the rest back. Using our Imperia pasta machine (which I bought Dave for his 26th birthday, from Sasmart in Kensington. It was overpriced at Williams-Sonoma. Sasmart had the best price), I flattened the dough through the highest thickness level, folded the dough, flattened it again, moved to one thinner level, and repeated til it was really smooth and elastic, and in one long sheet. We stopped on the 2nd thinnest pasta, then cut it using the spaghetti attachment. Then I did the same thing with the three other dough-balls.

When my sister got to our house, Dave cooked the pasta, saved a bit of the starch water, and mixed it all in with the sauces. The red sauce was more popular so we had more noodles go into the red sauce.

They were pretty delicious! The end!

Jewellery Marking: Bird Pendant

2011-03-17T23:04:00.001-04:00

This week, I worked on my bird pendant. Last week, I cut out the wings and the body. This week, I ran the wings through the rolling mill to add some texture. I was a bit of a dummy and accidentally put the texture on the same side of both wings, so I had to put them both through again and as a result, the wings are slightly different from each other. This made me a bit sad, but oh well.

Here are the cut out wings and body:

Then, I drilled holes in the wings and torso so that I can put some rivets in next week. The chain I had was only silver-plated, so I can't solder on the jump rings until next week (because the heat will ruin silver plated chain).

So, this is basically where I am now:

Next week, I'll put in the rivets and put jump rings on the wings so that I can pull a chain and make the bird flap his wings :)

Next week is the last class, so I need to finish up all my existing projects. This basically means I have to solder on a million and a half jump rings. I also might submit a cool elephant ring for casting, and will need to finish that up next week too.

Thankfully, I finished up my cloud :) I sanded it down last week, re-polished it this week and I'm really happy with the result!

I bought a super long chain for it and am excited to add it to my jewellery rotation!

Bakery Review: Fraiche Bakery Cafe

2011-03-15T16:25:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, my friend Jill and I went to Chicago to visit our friend Gillian. We spent 5 wonderful days braving the frigidly windy Chicago weather, visiting museums (Shedd Aquarium! Field Museum! Art Insitute!) and playing tourist.

On Jill's last day there (I was flying out the next day), we stopped by Gillian's neighbourhood bakery for our last lunch together for a long time. The bakery, called Fraiche Bakery Cafe was literally minutes from Gillian's apartment in Evanston and was one of the brightest, nicest, homiest bakeries I've visited in a long time.

We actually went for a real meal, so I was only able to try one baked good, but next time I visit Gillian, I will skip the lunch and go straight to multiple desserts :)

The first thing you see when you walk in is a beautiful display of baked goods.

There were cookies:

And lots of cupcakes:

Some cupcake closeups :)

I love how different they all look!

They also had Whoopie Pies!!! Further confirming our (Jacqueline and I) theory that they are the new cupcake / macaron! (And I saw some today at Starbucks -- red velvet whoopie pies, two trends at once!)

Because it was lunchtime, and the end of 5 days of gluttony, I decided to have a breakfast burrito with eggs, salsa, avocado and a side of hash browns. That's almost healthy, right? (In any case, I decided it was healthier than 3 cupcakes :) )

It was delicious!!

Gillian had the French Toast, which looked equally delicious!

I can't remember what Jill had, but it was likely healthy :)

For dessert, I had a "Lemon Kiss", which was 2 lip-shaped shortbread cookies sandwiching lemon cream. It was INCREDIBLE. Possibly the best short bread I've ever had!!

I wish this place was closer to Toronto. I loved the variety of baked goods, the availability of savoury meal-sized foods, and the lack of pretension here. I will definitely be back!

Dumplings (From 2009)

2011-03-14T18:10:00.000-04:00

A long time ago (approximately a year and a half), I made some dumplings from scratch. I took photos, uploaded them on Flickr, and apparently never wrote a blog post about them! (I may be wrong, because I think I can remember writing a post, but a cursory archive search yielded nothing)

I was trying to decide what I want to make for dinner tonight. Erin suggested I make dumplings! This reminded me of the time I spent hours and hours making dumplings, and they were delicious but took forever!

When I say "made from scratch" I am lying a little bit. I bought the wrappers from the Chinese grocery store near my apartment, but the insides were all from scratch. I combined napa cabbage, leeks, green onions, salt, pepper, and oyster sauce to make a delicious filling:

I then cook the filling a bit to reduce the napa cabbage a bit.

I then filled the dumpling wrappers. I put a bit of filling in the middle, dabbed the circumference with a little bit of water and pleated the dumplings the way my mom taught me when I was little.

Because I am only one person, I froze the dumplings on a cookie sheet and packaged them in groups of 6-8 for later meals :)

When I was eating them, I'd put a bit of water in the pan to defrost/steam them.

Then I cooked them in a bit of EVOO for a nice crispy exterior!

Delicious! But probably too much work for tonight's dinner.

Jewellery Making - Almost finished cloud!

2011-03-11T00:31:00.000-05:00

And so, the cloud saga continues. During the week, Meredith filled in the holes on my cloud. So, when I got to class today, all I had to do was file away the holes (yay more filing!), and file the rest of the piece and sand it all down.

I went through the different levels of sand paper, and figured I could skip the finest grade because I'd be using the polishing machine anyways (whoops, mistake).

Anyways, here is what the cloud looks like now.

It is all pretty and shiny!! If you look carefully, you can still see some fine file marks which I need to sand off, which means I'll need to repolish next week (awesome). There were also some bits that need better polishing. The piece gets CRAZY hot when polishing, and covered in polish, so it's difficult to see which bits got polished properly. So, while this piece is almost almost done, it'll still require about a half hour of work next week.

After I finished polishing today, I got started on my next piece. I'm pretty excited about it, so excited that I forgot to take pictures. But, if it works out the way I want it to, it will be awesome :D :D (fingers doubly crossed).

I threaded a chain through my cloud and I'm going to wear it this week even though it's not quite done. And man, $50 dollars worth of silver is HEAVY! I'm going to need to get a longer and thicker chain for it!

I don't know why my fingers look so weird in this picture.

Birthday Bashes!

2011-03-08T21:51:00.003-05:00

Back in February my boyfriend and I traveled to KW to celebrate two birthdays. Last minute I decided to make them a cake and looked through my Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book - a classic that I always remember my mom using to cook and bake. My edition was given to me by my aunt.

Since I made this the morning we were leaving I chose a simple, delicious Chocolate Marble Cake. It was very quick to whip up, looked very impressive (more impressive than the effort I had to put in to it) and it tasted great!

Lighting the candles

TA DA!!!!