Diamonds for Dessert

Constellation Cheesecake Tarts

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:43:00 +0000

Happy President's Day! This post has absolutely nothing to do with President's Day, but nonetheless, I hope all of you in the US had a wonderful 3-day weekend. Now on with the post...

Way before college, back in elementary school, I was already a budding science nerd. But my fascination with science was on a larger scale (as opposed to my college focus on molecular and cell biology), leaning more towards things that could be seen by the naked eye, like animals, plants, the rainforest, and fossils. One topic that really captured my attention was outer space. I was obsessed with anything and everything related to it: the stars, the moon, planets, black holes, comets, etc.

Today's post is inspired by that childhood interest in outer space. Beyond science, stars in particular were interesting to me as they formed bright connect-the-dot images in the night sky, appealing to my visual nature. Moreover, tying in Greek and Roman mythology, each constellation has its own story, which made them all the more fascinating. Thus, I really wanted to base a baking project on constellations. Since blueberries go so well with cheesecake, I thought I could play around with a recipe and make something constellation related with a blueberry glaze acting as the night sky.

What I ended up with was this recipe. They're basically simple mini cheesecakes, but instead of baking them in muffin liners, I made them in mini tart pans, forming cheesecake tarts (which also increases the crust to filling ratio, and as I've mentioned before, I'm a crust person). I strained my preserves and added a bit of gelatin to the jam glaze so that it would set smoothly, giving me a flat surface to decorate. And finally, I made many little white chocolate stars to place on top of each cheesecake in the form of a variety of constellations, completing my constellation cheesecake tarts.

Constellation Cheesecake Tarts

Graham Cracker Crust
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter, melted

Mix the graham cracker crumbs with the sugar. Add the melted butter and mix. The crust mixture should have the texture of wet sand. Take the mixture and press into tart pans sprayed with nonstick spray. Preheat oven to 375°F.

For small tarts, I used 3-inch diameter tart pans (9th item down on left in link), like the ones used for egg tarts. If you choose to skip the crust on the rim, and use 2 1/2 tbsp crust mixture in each cup. If you want the rim crust, use 3 tbsp crumb mixture in each cup. (It's up to you whether you want that rim crust or not. It can be a bit difficult to press the mixture into a crust on such a small cup, so if you want the easier way, skip the rim crust.)

For large tarts, I used aluminum pot pie pans. For these large tarts, used 4 1/2-5 tbsp of crumb mixture per pan. Bake the small crusts for 5 minutes and the large crusts for 7 minutes. Let the crusts cool before adding filling.

Cheesecake Filling
2 packages (16 oz) cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix cream cheese with sugar. Add in eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract. Bake tarts for 20-30 minutes. They're ready once the filling is set.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. (Don't worry if the filling puffs up in the oven. It'll fall back down once cooled. And cracks will be covered up by the glaze.)

Decorating the Tarts
Blueberry Glaze
1 cup strained blueberry preserves
2 tbsp hot water
1/2 tbsp gelatin
a few drops blue food coloring

Put the strained preserves in a small saucepan. Add 1 tbsp water to the preserves. Mix in the food coloring so the preserves are more blurple than reddish purple. In a separate bowl, mix the gelatin and 1 tbsp water together so that all the gelatin grains are wet.

Place the saucepan over low heat. Add the wet gelatin. Heat the mixture until all the gelatin is dissolved. Then remove from heat. Let cool a few minutes to slightly thicken. Pour the glaze over each cheesecake tart and use a spoon to spread the glaze so that all the cream cheese is covered and only the crust is visible.

Cool the glazed cheesecakes in the refrigerator a few hours for the glaze to set.

White Chocolate Stars
white chocolate (or white candy melts)
toothpick

Melt your white chocolate. Place a dot of white chocolate on a piece of parchment paper. Quickly, use the toothpick to push the dot of chocolate in five directions to form the five arms of the star as shown in the illustration above. Allow to dry. Lightly press on the back of the parchment paper to release the stars for use.

Finishing Up
glazed cheesecake tarts
white chocolate stars
white chocolate

Place stars on the glazed cheesecakes like in the illustration above. If you don't position it exactly as you want it, take a toothpick and lightly push on the side of a star to move it around. (For large tarts, use the first photo in this post with the little and big dipper or use multiple constellations of your own choice).

Once the stars are positioned, melt the white chocolate and use a toothpick to draw the lines between the stars with the melted chocolate. Finally, take the leftover stars and place them randomly on each cheesecake to fill the empty space.

Makes 14-16 small cheesecake tarts or 8-9 large cheesecake tarts

Multilingual Conversation Hearts

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:20:00 +0000

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!!! Thanks to all of you who replied to my facebook post. Your replies were quite helpful for today's post.

Every year, Conversation Hearts always feature some new messages to keep up with the times. But why stop with just English? I love learning languages, so I decided to combine that fascination for foreign languages with my Valentine's project for this year. I'm fluent in French and Chinese and I've learned basic Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Hungarian, so a combination of my own knowledge, the awesome input from some of you, and Google helped me come up with the messages for these Multilingual Conversation Hearts.

I first came up with the idea when I noticed the leftover letters from my parents' Do-It-Yourself Stamp Kit sitting in a cabinet, waiting to be used. I saw that in addition to the normal letters and numbers, there were some special character stamps, like Ä, Þ, and Ɖ, and thought it'd be cool to incorporate the stamps into something on this blog. I guess I also had Valentine's Day candy on my mind as well because not long after that, I ended up with this idea.

These aren't an exact match to the actual candy, but they're pretty close (they're softer in texture). I can't really judge the taste because I used flavors different from the actual candy flavors (I basically found all the extracts I have and used one for each color). But these candies are totally fun because they're customizable in color, flavoring, shape, and message. Plus, the recipe isn't too difficult. This would definitely make a great project for next Valentine's Day :).

"I Love You" from top L->R:
Russian, Malay, Norse, Japanese, Greenlandic, Portuguese, French, Swedish, Dutch, Hungarian, Chinese, Greek, Irish, ASL, Tagalog, Italian, German, Finnish, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish

Conversation Hearts
adapted from about.com

1 tsp unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup water
1 tsp light corn syrup
1 lb powdered sugar, plus extra for dusting
assorted flavoring extracts
assorted food colorings
heart-shaped cookie cutter (ex. Linzer cookie or fondant cutters)

Combine the gelatin, water, and corn syrup in a small bowl and mix. Microwave 15-20 seconds, or until the gelatin dissolves and mix again. Pour this mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. (Or if using a hand mixer, pour into a large bowl). Add 1 cup of the powdered sugar to the bowl and mix on low until the sugar is combined.

Add the remaining powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing until incorporated, and repeat until the 1 pound of powdered sugar is used up (you should end up with a stiff dough). Dust a flat work surface with the extra powdered sugar and scrape the candy dough out onto the surface. Knead the dough on the surface until no longer sticky.

Split the dough into six pieces. To each add the color and flavoring extract of your choice, kneading it on a powdered sugar dusted surface until the color is well mixed and the dough is no longer sticky. When you aren't using a piece of dough, make sure to keep it covered in plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out.

(For the extracts, I added from 1/4 tsp to 1 tsp extract, depending on taste for each dough. If I used more extract, I ended up mixing more powdered sugar into the dough to make it less sticky. I stuck with the original colors: pink, yellow, orange, green, purple, and white. The corresponding flavors were: Pink=Strawberry, Yellow=Lemon, Orange=Orange, Green = Mint, Purple = Vanilla, White = Almond.)

Once done coloring and flavoring, place a piece of dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Roll it out to between 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch thick. Use your heart cookie cutter to cut out hearts, placing the cut-outs on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Roll up the scraps and cut out more candies. Then repeat with the rest of the dough. (If the cutter gets too sticky, wash and dry it.)

Let the candies dry for at least 24 hours. It is crucial that the candies are totally dry or else the food coloring later used to write on words will run. To test, bite into a candy. If it's still wet in the center, let dry for longer. At this point, to dry faster, turn up your oven to the lowest temperature (for me it's 170°F). Let it preheat. Once preheated, turn the oven off. Take your sheets of candy and place them in the oven with the door closed for 10-15 minutes. Remove and let totally cool.

Decorating Conversation Hearts
red liquid food coloring
toothpicks
Do-It-Yourself Stamp Kit

Method #1 (simple): Dip a toothpick in red food coloring and use it to write on the candies. I used this method for characters that weren't in my stamp kit, like for Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Russian/Greek/ASL, but you can always use it if you'd rather not use a stamp kit.

Method #2 (harder): Pick all of the stamps off one of the plastic boards that holds all the individual letter stamps (you can keep the stamper for your own use). Use tweezers to place stamps back on the holder to form your message (remember it goes on backwards to show correctly on your candy). Dip a toothpick in red food coloring and use it to color the letters. Place your candy on top of the letters, press down on the candy to make sure the letters stamp on, and remove. (If some letters don't show up too well, use a toothpick to draw it in).

Makes about 180 heart candies

Tangerine Cake Balls

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:40:00 +0000

The beginning of the Lunar New Year was Monday, so Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快樂! The great thing about Chinese New Year is of course the New Year's Eve feast. I love the fact that each dish has a double meaning meant to bring luck or fortune in the new year.

Tangerines are a must around the beginning of the new year because in Chinese the word for tangerine is a homophone for "luck": same sound, different spelling. Apparently it's even better if the tangerines still have their leaves as that adds the benefit of longevity as well. I personally associate tangerines with Chinese New Year because when I see that the tangerines on the trees in my backyard are ripe and ready to eat, I know that CNY is right around the corner.

This year, I thought that it would be fun to make a tangerine based dessert for CNY. The fact that tangerines are usually served whole didn't give me much flexibility, but I realized that this was the perfect time to work on my DforD Resolution #4. I used the zest and juice of my backyard tangerines to flavor a cake and some frosting and turned them into tangerine cake balls (cake pops without sticks), with leaves and all. A lucky dessert to start off the new lunar year!

Tangerine Cake Balls
tangerine cake (recipe below)
tangerine cream cheese frosting (recipe below)
orange candy melts
green candy melts
toothpicks
plastic piping bag
leaf frosting decorating tip

Crumble the cooled cake into the frosting and mix. Roll the resulting cake "dough" into 1 inch diameter balls and flatten slightly. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze in the freezer for a few hours until firm.

In the meantime, melt the green candy melts, fill a piping bag, cut a small hole in the bag, and pipe short 1/2 inch lines on parchment paper to use as stems later. Place a leaf tip (like Wilton #352) in a piping bag and pipe out small leaves on another piece of parchment paper (the pointy part of the tip should be gouging into the center of the leaf that you squeeze out to create the central vein of the leaf). Set the stems and leaves aside to dry.

Melt the orange candy melts in the microwave 1 minute at 50% power, stir, then continue heating 30 seconds at a time at 50% power, stirring in between until totally melted. (A useful trick to prevent the candy melts from hardening while decorating is to boil some water, pour it in a bowl, and keep the bowl with the melted candy melts on top of the bowl of boiling water throughout the decorating process, adding more hot water to the bottom bowl when necessary).

Stick a toothpick into the top of a cake ball. Use the toothpick to dip the cake ball in the orange coating, shake off the excess, and place the coated cake ball on a piece of parchment paper to dry. Gently twist the toothpick upwards to remove it, and in its place, stick in a green stem. (Optional step: Once the orange coating in no longer wet looking, take a toothpick and gently poke at the cake ball, all over its surface, to give it some texture).

Melt some green candy melts. Use a toothpick to make a seal around the green stem, making sure there are no gaps between the orange coating and the green stem (if you don't seal it, cake will start oozing out around the stem). Repeat with the rest of the cake balls. Finally, use a bit of melted green coating to glue a leaf onto each cake ball.

Makes 30 cake balls

Tangerine Cake
adapted from The Little Red House

1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup tangerine juice*
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp orange extract
1/2 tbsp tangerine zest*
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/8 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside for now. Rub the tangerine zest into the sugar. Add the vegetable oil, tangerine juice, and milk and mix. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Mix in the orange and vanilla extracts. Now add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until a batter forms.

Pour the batter into a greased 9-inch round cake pan lined with parchment paper at the bottom. Place in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes in the pan. Then transfer the cake to a wire rack and let cool.

* If you don't have tangerines, oranges work just as well!

Tangerine Cream Cheese Frosting
adapted from Dulce Dough

4 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 tsp tangerine juice*
1/2 tsp tangerine zest*
1/8 tsp orange extract
2 cups powdered sugar

Mix the cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth. Add the tangerine juice, tangerine zest, and orange extract.

* If you don't have tangerines, oranges work just as well!

Strawberry & Champagne Truffles

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:34:00 +0000

It's my first post of 2012! I really love the beginning of the new year since it's a good time to reflect on the past year while looking forward to the new one. Considering how much I love making lists and brainstorming plans, New Year's resolutions are always a must for me. This year, in addition to my personal goals, I decided that I'd come up with some blog specific resolutions as well.

2012 Diamonds for Dessert Resolutions
1) Blog Improvements (convert to metric, figure out yields, edit comments coding, add blog extras, etc..)
2) Add an About Me page w/FAQ!
3) Work on food styling & photography
4) Conquer Candy & Cake Pops (weaknesses of mine)
5) Work on answering e-mails more promptly

What's Coming Up on DforD in 2012?
1) Baking 101
2) The Hunger Games series (totally in love with the books, especially Catching Fire. So so excited for the movie!)
3) Literary Inspiration (ex. fairy tales, fantasy stories, nursery rhymes, my favorite novels & classics)
4) Fashion & Art
5) TV Shows I love (ex. Parks & Rec, Adventure Time, Pushing Daisies, childhood cartoons)
6) Superheroes (this year seems to be the year of superhero movies)
7) MORE CAKES & BREAD!

Now about today's recipe. These truffles were originally for NYE, but due to recipe complications I couldn't get this up until now (yeah... New Years resolution #4). But I figure with Valentine's Day coming up next month, now is still a good time to post this. What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than with chocolate, strawberries, and champagne? Below, I provide two different options for these truffles. They can be kept separate as strawberry truffles and champagne truffles, or you can combine them with one flavor in the center and the other on the outside. The second option takes some more time, but it's fun biting into one of them and having a surprise in the center.

Strawberry Truffles
8 oz. white chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp heavy whipping cream
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp of strained strawberry puree
red food coloring, optional
powdered sugar

Melt butter and white chocolate together in a microwave and mix. Heat cream in a small saucepan over low heat until simmering. Pour the cream into the white chocolate/butter mixture and combine. Mix in the strawberry puree. Add a bit of red food coloring if the mixture isn't pink (it depends on how red your strawberries were). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for a few hours.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Use a spoon to scoop out ping pong ball sized portions of the strawberry truffle mixture onto the parchment paper. Place the sheet in the freezer for 1-2 hours, until the mixture is firm.

Take the tray out and roll each portion into a ball. Roll each ball in powdered sugar and serve immediately. If not served immediately, place in an airtight container and keep in freezer until ready to serve (they might need to be re-rolled in powdered sugar when served).

Champagne Truffles
6 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
3 tbsp butter, softened
1/4 cup champagne
dutch processed cocoa powder

Place the chocolate in a heat proof bowl and set aside for now. Heat the cream in a saucepan over low heat until simmering. Pour the cream over the chocolate and mix until all the chocolate is melted. Add the butter and gently mix until all the butter is incorporated. Mix in the champagne. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for a few hours.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Use a spoon to scoop out ping pong ball sized portions of the strawberry truffle mixture onto the parchment paper. Place the sheet in the freezer for 1-2 hours, until the mixture is firm.

Take the tray out and roll each portion into a ball. Roll each ball in cocoa powder and serve immediately. If not served immediately, place in an airtight container and keep in freezer until ready to serve (they might need to be re-rolled in cocoa powder when served).

Strawberry & Champagne Truffles
strawberry truffle recipe, above
champagne truffle recipe, above

After chilling both of the truffle mixtures, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Use a spoon to scoop out gumball sized portions of both the truffle mixtures (basically 1/2 a ping pong ball sized portions from above) onto the baking sheet. Place the sheet in the freezer for 1-2 hours, until the mixture is firm.

Take the tray out and roll half of the portions into balls. Use the other half of the portions to wrap around the balls so you have one truffle flavor on the inside and another on the outside. Freeze the tray of wrapped truffles back in the freezer for 1-2n hours, until the truffles are firm.

Remove from freezer, roll each truffle in a ball and if the outside layer is strawberry, roll in powdered sugar. If the outside layer is chocolate champagne, roll in cocoa powder. Serve immediately. If not served immediately, place in an airtight container and keep in freezer until ready to serve (they might need to be re-rolled in cocoa powder or powdered sugar when served).

Candy Cane Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:02:00 +0000

My last official holiday cookie post. Actually, it's also my last post of the year! I can't believe 2011 is almost over. Happy New Year's Eve!

Every year I always want to put something minty in my cookie boxes. Peppermint just seems to be a must during the holiday season what with seeing candy canes all over the place. I was tempted to remake last year's mint chocolate chip truffles, but decided at the last minute to try something new this year. I searched for candy cane cookie recipe and found these cute cookies. They're super festive and just minty enough, a wonderful addition to a set of holiday cookies.

Candy Cane Cookies
adapted from A Good Appetite

2/3 cups butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp peppermint extract
pinch of salt
red food coloring

Mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside for now. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg. Then mix in the milk and peppermint extract. Add the dry ingredients and mix until a dough comes together. Split the dough in half. Wrap one half on plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Add red food coloring to the other half of the dough and mix until the coloring is evenly distributed. Then wrap the red dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate. The dough should be chilled for about 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. To shape the cookies, first divide the two doughs into 50 pieces each. Take one red piece of dough and one white piece of dough. Roll both dough pieces into 5 inch snakes. Twist the two snakes together. Pinch the two ends of the twist.

Roll the whole twist a bit against the table so the two dough snakes stick better together. Then place the twist on a parchment lined baking sheet. Hook down the top of the twist to form a candy cane shape. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until the bottoms begin browning. Leave on the baking sheet a few minutes, then move to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Makes 50 cookies.

Gingerbread Gentlemen

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

My second holiday post for this year: Gingerbread Gentlemen.

Every year at Christmas, ever since I started baking 4 years ago, I've been making my go-to Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookie recipe to share with friends and family. To keep things interesting, last year I started playing around with the appearance of my gingerbread men and made Gingy-bread Men (a la Shrek). This year, to mix things up, I stuck to royal icing and made Gingerbread Gentlemen.

They're one part Victorian men's fashion, one part Mr. Moneybags, and one part Mr. Peanut, which combines so many things I like: the 19th century*, board games, pop culture cartoons, fancy schmancy accessories (bow ties, top hats, monocles, and walking sticks**), and of course, mustached cookies. Win? You bet :P. They seemed to be many of my friends' favorite cookie out of all my holiday cookies.

*more specifically: art, literature, and history
**too bad there wasn't room for pocket squares and braces/suspenders

Gingerbread Gentlemen
thick and chewy gingerbread recipe
royal icing recipe

Pre-Baking: Make the gingerbread cookie recipe as indicated in the linked post, using a person-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the dough and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Take a knife and cut a little bit off top of each dough man's head. From the dough scraps, use the knife to cut out thin rectangles slightly wider than the heads and narrower, tall rectangles to form the top hats. Place them above each dough man and then bake as indicated in the recipe.

Post-Baking: Immediately when you take the cookies out of the oven, use a toothpick to make a vertical indent on the hand and foot of one side of each cookie (like in the photo above). After leaving the cookies on the baking sheet for a few minutes, move them to a cooling rack to finish cooling before decorating.

Decorating Cookies: Make the royal icing from the linked post above or use a recipe of your own. On a piece of parchment paper, pipe lines of icing about the same length as the distance between the top edge of the cookie's hand and the bottom edge of the foot. Set aside to dry.

To ice the cookie, follow the illustration above: 1) hat band, 2) bow tie, 3) collar, 4) shirt, 5) jacket lapels, 6) cuffs, 7) monocle lens, 8) eye, 9) moustache, 10) monocle chain, 11) outline everything else.

Carefully pull the icing walking sticks off the parchment paper. Squeeze icing into the hand/foot indents left by the toothpick to act as glue. Place the walking sticks into the dents. Lastly, take the icing and pipe a round blob onto the top of each walking stick.

Santa Sugar Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:31:00 +0000

Hope all of you had a wonderful holiday break! Last week was nonstop cookie baking. To one-up last year, I had two rounds of cookies this year: one featuring oldies, but goodies (most of which are already on this blog) and another which centered around newer recipes.

Before I started baking this year's holiday cookies, I looked back at all of my past holiday cookie recipes and was surprised to see that there was nothing centered around Santa Claus. Thus, I decided that some sort of Santa cookie was a must this year. I didn't want something too complicated, so I stuck with a circular cookie cutter and my go-to sugar cookie recipe. When I think of Santa, I see his signature hat, rosy cheeks and a red nose (because it'd be freezing riding around in a sleigh all night), a big beard, and an all-around jolly face. So today I have a how-to guide for making Santa sugar cookies.

Santa Sugar Cookies
sugar cookie recipe
sugar cookie icing recipe
red food coloring
black food coloring

Make the cookie dough as directed in the recipe in the link above. Cut out circles from the dough with cookie cutters and baked as indicated in the recipe. Let cool before decorating.

Follow the recipe for the sugar cookie icing. Take the white icing and draw on a long horizontal squiggle 1/3 of the way down from the top of the cookie for the brim of Santa's hat. Then, to the right of that, a little bit lower, make a circular squiggle as the hat's pom pom. Use more white icing to make a beard, covering about half of the cookie.

Scoop some of the icing into another bowl and add red food coloring to the portion (keep the rest of the icing covered with plastic wrap when not using it). Take the red icing and fill in the top portion of the cookie above the squiggles to complete Santa's hat. Draw an oval with the red icing in the center of the top edge of the beard for the nose.

Take a little bit of the white icing and mix it with black food coloring. Use a toothpick to dot on eyes in the unfrosted region between the beard and the hat brim. Then draw on a mouth on the beard below the nose. Finally, mix a bit of red icing with white icing to make pink icing and make a circle next to each eye for cheeks.

P.S. If you were interested...
Holiday Cookies Round 1:

Clockwise from Top Left: My Mom's Cream Cheese Fruitcake, Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti, NYT Chocolate Chip Cookies, Snowflake Sugar Cookies, French Macarons (Chocolate, Lavender, Pistachio, Lemon), Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Men

Holiday Cookies Round 2:

Happy 2nd Birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:12:00 +0000

Well this post is way overdue! I've pretty much been out of town since the beginning of November. But now I'm back and ready to start blogging and baking again, especially with the holidays coming up.

About a month ago was Diamonds for Dessert's second birthday! Like last year, I decided to celebrate my blog's (belated) birthday with a cake. Because what better way is there to celebrate a birthday than with cake? Anyway, I've been pretty addicted to pinterest lately and after seeing a bunch of gorgeous ruffle cakes, I knew I needed to try making one. Turns out they're really easy and fast to decorate. No need to worry about perfecting your icing technique or smoothly frosting the cake since it all gets covered up by the ruffles!

The highlight here is the frosting. This is the first time I've tried making a swiss meringue buttercream and I must ask, "Why haven't I tried this before???" It has a wonderfully light texture and it's not too sweet, which I love. The thing I dislike most about simple buttercream is that it needs so much powdered sugar to stiffen up, which makes the frosting too sweet most of the time. But that's not the case with swiss meringue buttercream. The strawberry puree makes this frosting even better, acting as a natural food coloring while flavoring the buttercream to taste like fresh strawberry ice cream! This amazing strawberry buttercream + my go-to chocolate cake recipe + ruffles = the perfect cake for a celebration.

Strawberry Chocolate Mini Ruffle Cake
my go-to chocolate cake recipe
strawberry buttercream recipe (below)

Follow the instructions for the small chocolate cake, baking the cake in the rectangular sheet pan as indicated in the recipe. Let it cool on a cooling rack. Once cool, take a 3 7/8 inch (98 mm) diameter round cookie cutter and cut out six rounds of cake. Use a knife to level the cakes so the six rounds are the same height. Make the strawberry swiss meringue buttercream recipe.

Assembly:

1. Cut out a round piece of parchment paper wider than the cake round. Place a cake round on top of the parchment.

2. Dollop some frosting on the cake and smooth it out.

3. Repeat with another cake round and more frosting.

4. Place the third cake round on top. Press down on the three layers to make sure they stick together.

5. Apply a thin layer of frosting all over the cake as the crumb coat. Don't worry if it's ugly; it'll be covered up by the ruffles later. Refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes, until firm.

6. Place a petal tip (it looks like an elongated dew drop) in a piping bag. Add the buttercream to the piping bag.

7. Hold the piping bag vertically with the fat part of the dewdrop towards the cake and the thin part towards you. Squeeze the bag and pipe back and forth along the cake side until you reach the top, making sure the frosting is touching the cake.

8. Repeat.

9. Repeat until the whole cake is covered.

10. To finish, frost with a zigzagging motion from the sides of the cake towards to center to form slightly overlapping wedges of frosting until the top of the cake is covered.

Makes two mini ruffle cakes.

Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream
adapted from Martha Stewart

4 egg whites, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, pureed

Simmer a pot of water on the stove. Mix the egg whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over the simmering water and whisk the mixture until it reaches 160°F on a thermometer. Remove the bowl from the heat and pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixture (with the whisk attachment). Mix on medium high speed until stiff peaks form and the mixer bowl has cooled down to room temperature, about 10 minutes.

While waiting, cut up the sticks of butter into small pieces. After stiff peaks have formed, reduce the mixer to medium speed and add the butter a few pieces at a time, waiting till the butter pieces are incorporated before adding more. If it isn't coming together, increase the speed back to medium high for a few minutes until it does. Then add the strawberry puree a little at a time to let it slowly incorporate. Same thing, if it isn't coming together, increase the speed back to medium high and let it mix for a a few minutes.

[If you aren't using the frosting immediately, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate. To use later, let the frosting return to room temperature. Then mix it for a few minute on low speed (to reblend the puree that has separated) until it starts clumping/coming together. It should then be ready to use again.]

Jack-o'-Lantern Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:06:00 +0000

Halloween is tomorrow! Which of course, means some Halloween baking. Since I always make something with pumpkin around this time of year, I decided to make some pumpkin cookies this year.

Every year, I always think about carving a Jack-o'-Lantern, but I never do. It's always either realizing I have nowhere to put it or being too lazy to clean up the mess that comes along with it. Well, this year, I came up with a solution to this desire to carve something: Jack-o'-Lantern cookies, carving cookies not pumpkins. It's entertaining and not too difficult to do. Plus pumpkin and chocolate just seem to go very well together. Overall, a fun and delicious fall activity.

Jack-o-Lantern Cookies
adapted from verybestbaking.com

2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 stick butter, soft at room temp
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
semisweet chocolate (for decorating)

Mix dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Set aside for now. In another bowl, cream sugar and butter together. Mix in the egg, followed by the vanilla extract. Add in the pumpkin and mix. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until a dough forms.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place dollops (of about 2 tbsp) of the sticky dough onto parchment lined baking sheets, there should be about 30 of them all together. Wet your fingers and smooth out the dollops of dough to form flat ovals (they will puff up while baking). Place the sheets in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, or until firm. Let cool on the sheets for 2 minutes, then move to a cooling rack.

Shaping Jack-o'-Lanterns
Use a knife to cut out faces on your cooled pumpkin cookies. Poke out the cutout portions and brush off any crumbs. At the top of each cookie, cut a small triangular wedge for the stem.

Melt some semisweet chocolate. Spread ovals of chocolate about the size of the cookies on a piece of parchment paper. Place a cookie on each chocolate oval. Use a spoon and place a dollop of chocolate at the top of each cookie where the wedge was cut out to form the stem. If the stem isn't tall enough at first, wait for the first layer of chocolate to dry and then add another layer on top. Let all the chocolate dry. Then carefully peel the cookies off the parchment paper.

Finally, take a spatula, or another utensil with a thicker edge, like the blunt edge of a butter knife, and use it to press out/score vertical lines on the cookies to make them more pumpkin-like.

Makes 28-32 cookies.

Bacon Epi

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:32:00 +0000

It seems that I haven't posted about bread for a long time on this blog. Well, that's about to change since I'm on a bread making kick. There are too many bread recipes I need to share :).

Now that I think about it, this was one of the first recipes I put together back when I started baking. The story is that in high school, my mom used to buy these long loaves of chewy french bread filled with pockets of bacon from a bakery at a local mall. I loved that it could be easily pulled apart into individual servings. My family always referred to it as "bacon bread". Eventually though, the bakery went out of business and we had no more bacon bread.

A few years later, when I finally took up baking, I thought back to the bread and realized that it was going to be difficult to find a recipe since I had no idea what it was called. But I figured the recipe wouldn't be too hard to recreate, just a baguette recipe with some bacon. After a bit of research, I finally discovered that this is referred to as "pain d'epi". An "epi" is an ear of wheat, which is what the shape is supposed to resemble. This bread recipe is one of my go-to recipes because it's not too difficult and it isn't that time consuming (relatively speaking for bread making), and of course, it's delicious.

Bacon Epi

adapted from French Women Don't Get Fat

1 tsp active dry yeast
2 cups warm water
4-5 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
6 slices bacon

Boil a pot of water. Once the water is boiling, drop the bacon slices in and boil them for 5 minutes. Remove the slices, let them cool on a paper towel covered plate, and set aside for now. The boiling is optional, but it reduces greasiness and saltiness in the final product.

Microwave one cup of water for about 15 seconds, so the water is warm, but not hot enough to burn your finger. Add the sugar and yeast, stir, and then let it sit for 10 minutes, until the yeast has proofed and the top of the mixture is foamy. In a mixing bowl, mix 4 cups flour and the salt. Pour in the proofed yeast mixture and the other cup of warm water. Mix. If the dough is very sticky, add in another cup of flour, 1/4 cup at a time until it is less sticky.

Once the dough comes together, knead it for about 10 minutes. Then place it back in the mixing bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it rise for about 1 hour, until doubled in volume. Once doubled, punch the air out of the dough and divide it into 6 pieces. Take one ball of dough for now and keep the other five covered.

Shaping the Epi

1) Take one of the six dough balls and roll it out on a flat surface so it's longer and wider than a slice of bacon
2) Place a slice of bacon in the center of the dough
3) Fold the dough over the bacon
4) Pinch the dough to seal it and place it seam side down on a parchment lined baking sheet
5) Take kitchen shears and snip a "V" into the dough, cutting all the way through the bacon, but not all the way through the dough
6) Push the cut dough to the left and cut another "V" lower down
7) Push the cut dough to the right and cut another "V" lower down
8) Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you reach the end of the dough and then repeat all the steps with the other 5 pieces of dough

After shaping the dough, let the loaves rise on the baking sheets for another hour. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Fill an oven proof bowl with water and place it in the oven. Place your baking sheet next to the bowl and bake the loaves for 10 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 400°F and bake for 5-10 minutes more, until the loaves are golden brown and they sound hollow when you tap them. Let the loaves cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then move to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Makes 6 loaves.

Flaky Taro Mooncakes

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:24:00 +0000

Thanks everyone for the ukulele advice! I'm surprised so many of you play the ukulele. I think I'm going to order a cheaper one off Ebay first and attempt to teach myself with the links you all provided :D.

So, the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) was yesterday, which meant mooncakes! What typically comes to mind when thinking about mooncakes are those brown, tender-crusted pastries stamped with intricate designs and words of good fortune, basically Cantonese-style mooncakes. Two years ago, I made that type of mooncake from scratch, but truth be told, it was a pain in the butt (and that's coming from me, someone who enjoys challenging recipes). I prefer buying them from an Asian bakery since they're so widely available. So instead, today, I'm going to blog about a different type of mooncake, one that's less time consuming to make, but equally delicious.

Every year, my mom makes Taiwanese-style mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival. They are pale and flaky and are less widely available, because unlike Cantonese mooncakes which need to age for optimal texture, Taiwanese mooncakes taste best fresh from the oven. The traditional filling for these is a mix of mung bean paste and ground pork, which creates a wonderful savory and sweet filling. For a purely sweet dessert, the meat can be left out or the mooncakes are filled with taro paste, as done here. Any way, they're all very tasty, so if you want a change from the typical mooncake, try these out.

P.S. These mooncakes are closely related to the swirly purple taro pastries often found at Asian bakeries. That being said, you don't have to wait until the next Mid-Autumn Festival to make these; just think of them as flaky taro pastries, not mooncakes. Anyway, the first time I had these taro-filled mooncakes was earlier this year, in the spring.

Flaky Taro Mooncakes
adapted from Chinese Snacks

Taro Filling
1 lb taro, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt

Outer Dough
2 cups flour
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup water
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Powder Dough
1 cup flour
1/4 cup shortening

For the filling, steam the cubed taro until soft and mash with a fork. Let cool. Add the sugar and salt and mix. Cover and set aside for now.

For the outer dough (right), mix the flour and salt together. Blend in the shortening. Then add the dough and knead till a smooth dough forms. Split the dough into 20 pieces and roll each into a ball. Cover for now. For the powder dough (left), mix the shortening into the flour.

Assembly

Take an outer dough ball (keep the others covered so they don't dry out) and form it into a bowl shape. Spoon in about a tablespoon of the powder dough and pinch the outer dough to wrap around all the powder and make sure to seal it very tightly (more well-sealed than picture 3 above). Flip the sealed dough over so the seal faces the table. Take a rolling pin and roll out the dough vertically only so you get a piece of dough that is taller than wide. From the dough edge pointing at you, tightly roll up the dough.

Flatten the rolled up dough. Then turn it so the shorter edge faces towards and away from you while the longer edges point left and right. Take the rolling pin and roll the dough vertically so the dough strip gets even longer. Then from the dough edge pointing towards you, roll up the dough again. Now flatten the coiled dough.

Roll out the flattened dough coil to form a thin, round sheet of dough 4 inches in diameter. Place 2 tablespoons of the cooled taro filling in the center of the dough circle. Gather the edges of the dough together and seal the last bit of dough by moistening it with a bit of water. Make sure the pastry is properly sealed or else the filling will leak out while baking. Then flatten the pastry with your hand and place it on a parchment lined baking sheet, seam side down. Preheat the oven to 350°F and while waiting, decorate the mooncakes in one of the two methods below. Bake them for 20 minutes, let cool a bit, and serve.

Decoration Method 1
black sesame seeds
1 egg
1-2 teaspoons water
toothpicks

This is the more difficult method, but personally, I like the result better. Crack the egg in a bowl and mix in the water to create an egg wash. Dip a toothpick in the egg wash and use it to trace out "taro" in egg on your mooncake. Take a handful of black sesame seeds and sprinkle them on the top of the mooncake, making sure to cover all the letters traced out. Flip the mooncake and shake it to get rid of the extra sesame seeds. Then take a clean toothpick to help neaten the letters and get rid of any more extra seeds. Repeat with other cakes.

Decoration Method 2
red food coloring
a few drops of water
5 disposable chopsticks
rubber band
bit of paper towel

Mix the red food coloring with a few drops of water. Then soak the bit of paper towel in the dye; it will act as an ink pad. Take your five chopsticks and rubber band the round ends together to form a five petaled flower. Now press this "stamp" on the dyed paper towel and then stamp it on your mooncake as many times as you choose. Repeat with the other mooncakes and then bake.

Makes 20 mooncakes.

Ukulele Shortbread

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 06:14:00 +0000

Well, these cookies have taken a lot longer than I planned due to a lot of recipe testing and weird chocolate-related problems. But I finally got it all sorted out and I'm happy with them :D.

Right now I have this big desire to learn the ukulele, which is strange since I'm not really a musical person. Not to say I didn't try. I played piano for most of my life, but since I really don't like classical music, it never became a big passion of mine. I tried the flute for a while, but that really didn't work out from, well, a lack of skill. Neither did the recorder nor the harmonica. But I think all my recent dreams of lounging on a tropical island (due to a summer stuck inside taking classes and filling out med school secondaries) has gotten to me.

While I usually don't enjoy instrumental music (ie. music with no words), I find myself feeling relaxed when I hear ukulele music; the mellowness is just infectious. I think it's a combination of liking the sound of the instrument itself and the image of the beach and palm trees that automatically pop up in my mind through association. Thus, I was inspired to make ukelele cookies. They're basically chocolate-dipped shortbread, but fancily ukulele-shaped.

P.S. Anyone play the ukulele? Do you have any advice for learning how to play? How difficult would it be to teach myself to play?

Ukulele Shortbread
adapted from 101cookbooks

16 tbsp (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

semisweet chocolate
white chocolate
pearl milk tea straw
piping bag
parchment paper
(spoons for method 2)

Cream butter with sugar. Add the vanilla extract and mix. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/vanilla mixture. Mix. Gather the dough in a ball and split in two. Place one of the halves between two sheets of plastic wrap. Cover the other half and set aside.

Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough to 1 cm thick. Print out one of the ukulele stencils (for stencil 2, use only the body stencil, leave the head/neck stencil for later), cut it out, then spray with nonstick spray (so the paper won't stick to the dough). Use a knife to trace out the stencil on the dough. Carefully move the dough cut-outs to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Take the pearl milk tea straw and cut out holes in the cut-outs where the ukulele sound hole should be. Repeat all of this with the other half of the dough. Gather the leftover scraps and repeat until all the dough is shaped.

Refrigerate cookie cut-outs for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350°F. When the half hour is up, place in oven and bake 10-12 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Take out of the oven and let cool on tray. Make sure cookies are totally cool before decorating them.

Ukulele Parts

Decorating the Cookies
I have two different methods for decorating the cookies. One takes less hassle, but in my opinion, doesn't look as good (but it's also less fragile). This is method 1, shown in the first photo in this post, which uses stencil 1. The other method takes more work and produces a more fragile cookie, but I think it looks more ukulele-like. That one is method 2, shown in the last photo in this post, which uses stencil 2. Pick whichever method you would prefer.

To use the stencils, copy and paste the one you want onto MS Word (or similar program). Crop out the extra background and stretch the stencil out to the indicated dimensions. Measurements are taken at the extreme points of the stencils. So for the length of stencil 1, it would be from the pointy top to the round base.

Stencil 1 - 3 1/2 x 1 1/4 inches

Stencil 2 - Body: 1 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches

Head/Neck/Bridge
Method 1
This step is fairly straightforward. Melt the semisweet chocolate. Use a toothpick or a spoon to spread it in the head and neck area of the cookie. Then, use a toothpick to trace out the bridge of the cookie. Melt a little bit of white chocolate and use a toothpick and make four dots in the head area. Let dry before proceeding to the string step.

Method 2

Take the head/neck part of the stencil and cut it out. Place a piece of parchment paper on a flat, clean surface and trace the stencil onto the paper over and over. Flip the parchment over. Melt the semisweet chocolate. Use a toothpick or a spoon to spread it within each outline on the parchment. Try to make the chocolate layer thick. Wait for it to dry. Take a toothpick and dot on four dots of chocolate at the head to make tuners. Cover each chocolate tracing with another layer of chocolate and let dry. Melt a little bit of white chocolate and use a toothpick and make four dots in the head area.

While waiting, use a toothpick to trace out the bridge on the cookie bodies. When the chocolate on the parchment is totally dry, carefully remove the chocolate head/necks from the parchment paper. Melt some more semisweet chocolate. Dab a bit of chocolate in the top center of each cookie body, above the sound hole. Place a chocolate head/neck on top of the chocolate blob and use a spoon to hold the neck in place until the chocolate blob is dry and holds the chocolate pieces in place, seen in the photo above.

Strings & Sound Hole

This step is the same for both methods. Cut out little rectangles of parchment paper that fit over the ukulele cookie sound holes. Cover the sound hole of each cookie, as seen in the photo above. Melt white chocolate and place it in a piping bag. Cut a tiny hole in the piping bag and test drawing lines on a piece of parchment.

When ready, pipe four strings on each cookie. Start with the middle two strings, piping from the bottom of the bridge to the top two white chocolate dots on the head. For the outer two strings, start from the bridge bottom and pipe to the bottom two white chocolate dots on the head. Trace over the four strings again with white chocolate to strengthen them. Then pipe a horizontal line of white chocolate across the bridge (over the four strings). Let the strings dry.

Once the strings are totally dry, use a toothpick to carefully poke loose the small pieces of parchment paper, push them toward the back of the sound hole, and carefully use your fingers to pull out the piece of parchment from each cookie. To finish, the sound hole should be covered. Melt semisweet chocolate and use a spoon to place small blobs of it on a piece of parchment, seen in the photo above. Then place a cookie on top of each blob, let the chocolate dry, then carefully pull the cookies off the parchment.

Makes 30-35 cookies

Harry's Birthday Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:24:00 +0000

I been quite busy haven't had time to bake; not even for the 4th of July :O! It's been frustrating since I'm bursting with baking project ideas. Last week, I decided enough was enough. I was craving cake so I decided to find some time in my schedule to bake one.

But because, as you all know, I can't just let things be, I took it one step further and decided that I'd make it a chocolate birthday cake, like the one Hagrid gave to Harry when they first met, but uh, much better tasting (remember Hagrid's rock cakes? haha). I tried to keep the appearance much like the one in the movie though: a bit messy, strangely pink and green, and in need of spell check.

Above: Harry's b-day cake from HP & the Sorcerer's Stone. Photo Credit: twrobot

This cake recipe totally rocks. It's easy to mix together, a one bowl recipe. The cake comes out wonderfully moist, and it isn't too sweet, which is good because then it doesn't compete with the frosting and become overwhelming. The frosting is also easy to put together and it is perfectly creamy and chocolatey. After making this, I've decided that this is now my go-to chocolate cake recipe. If by chance you're one of THOSE people, who doesn't like Harry Potter, do make the cake anyway, just skip the pink and green frosting.

Harry's Birthday Cake (large)
adapted from allrecipes.com

Chocolate Cake
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Chocolate Frosting
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, room temp
1 1/2 cups cocoa powder
5 1/3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Vanilla Frosting

6 tbsp (3/4 stick) butter, room temp

4-5 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

red food coloring

green food coloring

Cake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir in eggs one at a time. Add the milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract and mix. Now add the boiling water and mix. Spray two round 9" diameter baking pans with nonstick spray. Pour your batter into the two pans, splitting it equally between them. Place pans in oven and bake 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Remove cakes from oven and let cool in pans for 10 minutes. Then, carefully transfer the cakes to a cooling rack to finish cooling. When the cakes are totally cool and you're ready to decorate them, take a knife and slice them in half like a hamburger bun so you end up with four circular cake layers.

Chocolate Frosting: Mix the cocoa powder and powdered sugar together. In another bowl, cream butter until fluffy. Mix in 1/3 of the cocoa/sugar mixture. Add about 1/3 of the milk. Repeat this until all the cocoa powder, sugar, and milk are added. Mix in the vanilla extract. The frosting should be spreadable at this point. If not, add in more milk or powdered sugar as needed.

Vanilla Frosting: Cream the butter until fluffy. Mix in 1/2 of the powdered sugar. Add 1/2 of the milk. Repeat with other 1/2 of sugar and milk. Add in the vanilla extract. The frosting should be spreadable at this point. If not, add in more milk or powdered sugar as needed. Now scoop out a portion of the frosting to a separate bowl (enough for the frosting letters).

Add a few drops of red food coloring to the remainder of the frosting and mix to get pink frosting. In the other bowl, add green food coloring to get green frosting. Keep bowl covered until ready to use.

Assembly:

1. Cover your work surface with a sheet of plastic wrap. Cut out a circle from a piece of cardboard and cover it with foil. Place it on your plastic wrap, followed by your first layer of cake.

2. Dollop some frosting on the cake and then smooth it out.

3. Place another cake later on the first, dollop frosting, and smooth.

4. Repeat process with third layer of cake.

5. Place final cake layer on top. Press down on top of cake to make sure firmly sandwiched. Wipe off the crumbs dotting your plastic wrap.

6. Take your pink vanilla frosting and start your crumb coat by thinly coating the top of the cake.

7. Continue the crumb coat on the sides of the cake, making sure to get it fully covered. Don't worry if it looks ugly at this point. You can carefully move the cake onto a plate if desired.

8. Clean off your knife and apply a second layer of pink frosting.

9. Put your green frosting it in a piping bag (or plastic bag) and cut a hole at the tip. Pipe on "Happee Birthdae Harry" and you're done!

P.S. If you were wondering, my cake was not 9" in diameter, it was 5 3/4". Here are the instructions for making a smaller cake:

Harry's Birthday Cake (small)
Chocolate Cake
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 1/8 tsp baking soda
1 1/8 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg + 1 yolk
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup boiling water

Chocolate Frosting
6 tbsp (3/4 stick) butter, room temp
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2-2 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Vanilla Frosting
3 tbsp butter, room temp
2-2 3/4 cups powdered sugar
1/6 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
red food coloring
green food coloring

Follow recipe above, except instead of using two 9" cake pans, use one 12 1/4 x 8 1/8 inch (31.1 x 20.6 cm) rectangular sheet pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool on metal rack. Once cool, flip the cake onto a clean, flat surface covered with plastic wrap.

On a sheet of paper, print out a 5 3/4" diameter circle (easy to do with MS Word using the circle shape) or draw one using a compass. Cut out the circle stencil and use it and a knife to cut out two 5 3/4" circles from your rectangular cake. Cut both circles in half hamburger bun style and then decorate as indicated above.

Sand Dollar Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:45:00 +0000

My calendar tells me it's summer, but it seems the weather begs to differ. Rain... in June? In California! What gives??? Nonetheless, my brain knows it's summer, and I've been dreaming of lounging around on the beach with the sun in my face, the ocean just a jump and skip away, and the sand beneath my feet.

Of course, given the weather conditions and my current work load, a beach trip will have to wait. So instead, I decided to bake something "beachy" to compensate, sand dollar cookies. I remember learning about sand dollars in science class when I was a kid and thinking that they were super cool. There are folk tales that describe sand dollars as mermaid currency or the lost coins of mermaids. How lovely is that? And apparently, according to Wikipedia, in New Zealand, sand dollars are referred to as sea cookies and snapper biscuits!

For the cookies, I wanted something fragile and not too sweet. I remembered reading up on kuih bangkit, a Malaysian CNY cookie, and thought that they might just work. I've never had kuih bangkit before, so I can't tell you how these cookies differ from actual kuih bangkit, but I can tell you that they fit perfectly with what I imagined for sand dollar cookies. They're white, crisp, and delicate with an interesting texture, a bit like a dry meringue. And tastewise, they're slightly sweet with a hint of coconut. A perfect summer treat!

Sand Dollar Cookies

adapted from Little Corner of Mine

2 1/2 cups tapioca flour/starch
1 egg yolk
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/2 cup (120 ml) coconut milk/cream

Place the tapioca flour in a bowl and microwave it for 1 minute (to get rid of any excess moisture). Let it cool. Pour it into a mixing bowl and mix in the powdered sugar. Then add the egg yolk, butter, and coconut milk. Mix until a dough forms (it has a plastic-y texture that reminds me of mozzarella cheese).

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Take 1/4 of the dough and place it between two sheets of plastic wrap. Roll the dough out very thinly, 2-3 mm in thickness. For large sand dollars, use a 2 5/8 inch diameter circle cookie cutter, and for small sand dollars, use a 1 7/8 inch diameter circle cookie cutter to cut out circles. Transfer them to a parchment lined baking sheet. Use a toothpick to poke a hole in the center of each circle cut out. Repeat with the rest of your dough.

For the large sand dollar cookies, you'll need a pearl milk tea straw and a regular drinking straw (like the ones at fast food places). For the small sand dollar cookies, you'll need a regular drinking straw and a smaller straw (like a striped bendy straw). Take a pair of clean scissors and cut off a 1 cm piece from the ends of the straws that you are using. Pinch the straw pieces so that the ends become more elliptical than round.

Then take the larger of the two straws and use it to cut out an oval hole in the bottom center of each circle cut out. Use the smaller straw to cut out 2 smaller ovals on both sides of the large hole. By the way, the holes will shrink while they bake, so it's better to make them a bit wider now. Place the cookies in the oven and for the larger cookies, bake them for 6 minutes, and for the smaller cookies, bake them for 5 minutes. At this point, remove the baking sheet from the oven.

Use a toothpick to quickly prick out a dotted five-petaled flower shape on each cookie (be careful not to burn yourself on the baking sheet, if necessary, place an oven mitt on top of the baking sheet edge to have something your arm can rest on). If the middle hole has shrunk, take the toothpick and enlarge it. Place the cookies back in the oven and continue baking until the cookies are relatively crisp and begin to brown at the edges, about 5-7 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheet to finish crisping up, then move to a cooling rack.

Graduation Bears

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:28:00 +0000

I'm back (after a busy month of no blogging)! And I'm now officially a college graduate! I just graduated last Tuesday morning in the pouring rain... Seriously, it was the only rainy day of the week. What is up with that? Well, at least it was a super memorable experience.

Nonetheless, it's big milestones in life, like graduation, that make me realize just how quickly the years pass. To think, just four years ago I was still in high school with pretty much no idea how to bake. Now, four years later, after teaching myself to bake and realizing how awesome it is, here I am with my own baking blog. It's interesting to see just where life takes us. For my graduation, I decided that it'd be nice to bake a bunch of Cal themed cookies to pass out to friends at the reception. The key was that I didn't want the designs to be too complicated, so that it'd be easy to make them in bulk. In the end it all worked out, and I ended up with two designs: a blue and yellow Cal heart (much love for Berkeley) and graduation bears (Go Bears!).

Graduation Bear Cookies

sugar cookie dough
1-inch circle cookie cutter
rectangle cookie cutter (or a knife)
pearl milk tea straw

Roll out the sugar cookie dough to 1/4 inch thick between two sheets of plastic wrap. Use the circle cookie cutter to cut out circles for faces. Use the straw to cut out small circles for ears. To make the hat, use the circle cookie cutter to cut out a semicircle from a piece of dough, keep the outline portion of of the dough (not what was cut out). Next take a rectangle cookie cutter (or a knife) to cut out the semicircle outline. Then take the straw to cut out two ear holes from the cutout.

Piece the hat, two small circles, and one large circle together on a parchment lined baking sheet. Make sure that the pieces are well stuck together and try to smooth out the connecting areas so the lines aren't so apparent. Bake as indicated in the dough recipe and let cool completely before decorating.

Decorating Cookies

sugar cookie icing
orange food coloring
brown food coloring
yellow food coloring
black food coloring

Make the sugar cookie icing. Take some of it and mix in black food coloring. Then use it to fill in the hat area on the bear cookies as indicated above. To make peach food coloring, add a very small amount of orange and brown food coloring to the white icing. Use it to make a small oval in the middle of the bear face. When the hat is totally dry, make some yellow icing and use a toothpick to trace out a tassel on the bear over the hat and part of the face. Lastly use a toothpick to dot out eyes, the nose, and the mouth in black icing.

P.S. These would make great gifts for any recent Berkeley grads or new bears who will be attending Cal in the fall. And I'm sure this idea can also easily be adapted to fit another school's colors/mascot :).

Grasshopper Tart

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:10:00 +0000

The warm weather here in California has me dreaming of summer. Already I'm seeing shorts and tank tops everywhere as well as lines out the door for ice cream. So, with a craving for something sweet, cold, and refreshing, I decided to make this grasshopper tart.

With my love of all things mint chocolate chip, this was right up my alley. This tart is a remake of the very retro grasshopper pie, a slightly boozy mint chiffon pie with a chocolate cookie crust, based on the grasshopper cocktail (equal parts crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and fresh cream). What I really like about the tart version is the higher crust to filling ratio (when it comes to pies and tarts, I'm very much a crust person) and the addition of mini chocolate chips. This is definitely a wonderful treat for a hot day, or any day, if you love the combination of mint and chocolate.

Grasshopper Tart

adapted from The Boozy Baker

3 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups heavy cream, divided
2 1/2 tsp gelatin
1/4 cup crème de menthe
2 tbsp crème de cacao
green food coloring (optional)
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

32 chocolate cookies*
5 tbsp melted butter, cooled

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Crush the cookies, either by hand or with a food processor. In a bowl, mix the cookie crumbs with the melted butter. Lightly spray the bottom of an 11-inch tart pan (with a removable bottom) with nonstick spray. Take the mixture and press it into the pan, making sure to press it up the sides of the pan. Bake the crust for 10 minutes, or until set. Remove from oven and let cool.

In a small saucepan, add 1/2 cup of the cream. Sprinkle the gelatin onto the cream and let stand for 5 minutes. While waiting, mix the egg yolks, sugar, and salt together until pale yellow. Set aside. Take the pan with the cream and gelatin and cook it over low heat until all the gelatin dissolves and the mixture is almost simmering (steam will begin rising), about 2 minutes. Then, take it off the heat.

Temper the egg yolk mix by whisking in a few tablespoons of the hot cream mix into the egg yolk mix. Once incorporated, pour and whisk the egg yolk mixture into the saucepan. Place the saucepan over low heat and while continuously stirring, cook for 3-5 minutes, until the mixture can coat the back of a spoon. Take it off the heat.

Pour the saucepan contents into a large bowl. Add the crème de menthe and crème de cacao. Now is the time to add the green food coloring if you decide to use it (for example, if your crème de menthe isn't already green). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge until thickened, but not totally set, about 20-30 minutes.

Remove the filling out from the fridge. In a separate bowl, take the remaining 1 1/4 cups whipping cream and use an electric mixer to beat it until there are soft peaks. Lighten the mint filling by mixing in half of the beaten cream. Take the remaining whipped cream and fold it into the mix. Then, fold in the mini chocolate chips. Dollop the filling onto the cooled tart crust and smooth it out. Then chill the tart for 6 hours, until set. (Btw, the tart tastes good frozen as well).

*If you can't find plain chocolate cookies, you can: 1) use chocolate sandwich cookies like Oreos, but just scrape off the filling, 2) if you really can't find any, you could always make your own chocolate cookies from scratch (which is actually what I did)

Lucky Spinach Quiche

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:43:00 +0000

It's almost spring (in less than a week)! I already see clovers popping up everywhere, which means that St. Patrick's Day is near. I wanted to make something green for St. Patrick's Day and finally settled on making spinach quiche. And for some extra luck, I decided to shape my quiches like 4-leaf clovers.

I didn't want to buy a clover shaped pan, since I knew it'd get very little use and take up a lot of space. Instead, I did some brainstorming and came up with two different ways to make 4-leaf clover shaped quiches. Both involve disposable aluminum pans, one a muffin pan and one a pot pie dish. So pick and choose depending on which method you like better. The great thing about this quiche recipe is that it's pretty adaptable in terms of ingredients. Overall, these would make a great treat at any springtime party.

Lucky Spinach Quiche

adapted from Smitten Kitchen

10 oz frozen spinach, thawed and drained
3 eggs
1/3 cup half-and-half (or milk or cream)
1/2 cup grated gruyere or cheddar
1/4 cup grated parmesan
3 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup diced onion (white, red, or green onions)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 recipe pâte brisée (recipe below)

Preheat oven to 425ºF. Mix the cream cheese with the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the half-and-half, salt, and pepper. Then add the rest of the ingredients: spinach, gruyere, parmesan, and onions. Mix. Shape the pâte brisée in either of the two methods described below. After the shape crusts are filled, place the aluminum tins on a baking sheet and bake the quiches for about 20 minutes. Cool for a few minutes.

Carefully remove the quiches from the aluminum tins, line the baking sheet with parchment paper, and place the quiches on the lined sheet. Place the quiches back in the oven for 5-10 minutes until the crust sides crisp up a bit. Let cool for 10 minutes, then serve.

Makes 3 quiches or 12 mini quiches

Pâte Brisée

adapted from Martha Stewart

2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
1 tsp salt
1/4-1/2 cup ice water

Mix the flour with the salt. Cut the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter or your fingers until it resembles coarse meal. Add the ice water, a little at a time, while gently mixing until the dough sticks together. Split the dough in two. Place each half on a piece of plastic wrap and flatten each into a disc. Wrap the dough in the plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour, until ready to use.

Makes 2 9-inch pie crusts

Shaping the Crusts

Method 1 (3 quiches)
3 aluminum pot pie pans

1) Take a pair of scissors and cut at four equally spaced points on the edge of the pot pie tin. One snip on the right, one on the left, one at the top, and one at the bottom.

2) Start pushing the cut edges towards one another. Crease the pan side, right under the cut, so that the crease points inwards. Be careful because the edges are sharp.

3) Start rounding out the rest of the pan edge, curving the pan edge.

4) Repeat with the rest of the pan edges.

5) This is what the pan should look like when you're done. Now, lightly spray the pan with nonstick spray.

6) Roll out the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Split it into 3 equal squares and place each square in a shaped pan. Have the extra dough stick out inwards at the four points where the pie pan edges overlap.

7) Take some foil and fold 12 little thick rectangles. Spray the rectangles with nonstick spray. Place each rectangle between the extra dough flaps on each crust. Press the dough into the bottom of each pan and around the foil rectangles. Take a fork and lightly prick the interior of each crust. Then use the fork tines to press into the top edge of the crusts.

8) Refrigerate the crusts for 10 minutes. Then, fill and bake.

Method 2 (12 mini quiches)
2 aluminum 6-muffin tins

1) To shape the muffin tins, from the long side, pull on center of the edge of each muffin cup to a point. Crease side of the cup to emphasize the point (each cup should now look like a raindrop/petal). Lightly spray the two muffin tins.

2) Roll out the pie crust dough between plastic wrap sheets and divide it into 12 squares. Place each dough square in a muffin cup. Press the dough into the muffin tins and trim off extra dough. Use a fork to lightly poke holes on the crust and use the fork tines to press along the top edge of each crust.

3) Refrigerate the lined trays for 10 minutes. Fill the crusts and bake.

Turtle Icebox Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:58:00 +0000

Here's the last in this series of animal cookies: turtle icebox cookies. The shaping starts off like the lion, but then a few more extra parts added. And, there's actually a little story behind these cookies.

Way back in elementary school, my friends and I used to exchange little notes, written in glittery Gelly Roll pen on cute Sanrio stationery. (Remember the days of gel pen collections?) Anyway, each of us in the group had our own "signature" cartoon characters that we would draw on our letters. There were monkeys, cats, dolphins, dinosaurs, and, of course, my turtles. I didn't choose to draw turtles because I particularly liked turtles (because honestly, non-cartoon turtles aren't all that cute... sorry turtle lovers).

The main reason was that I wasn't very good at drawing cartoons (even now, ask me to draw a realistic portrait and I can do it, but tell me to draw some sort of anime character and I'm like @_@). But, I found cartoon turtles relatively easy to draw, just a bunch of circles, dots, and lines. Which, more importantly, means that they adapt to icebox cookie form very well. So I took my old turtle, spruced it up a little, and turned it into a cookie :).

Turtle Icebox Cookies

icebox cookie dough (with modifications listed below)
2 tbsp matcha powder
black nonpareils

Make the vanilla icebox cookie dough until it says STOP (for modifications). Split the mixture that you have so far in thirds and set aside for now. Get two separate bowls. To one bowl, add 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour and 2 tbsp matcha powder. Mix thoroughly.

Add one third of the previously split mixture and mix until you get a dough. To the other bowl, add 1 1/2 cups flour. Add the remaining two thirds of the previously split mixture and mix. Now you should have one matcha cookie dough and one vanilla cookie dough.

Split the vanilla dough in half. Place half of the vanilla dough on a piece of plastic wrap. Roll it so it forms a log with a 1 1/4" diameter. Sandwich the matcha dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin to roll it out to a rectangle as long as the vanilla log and wide enough to fully wrap around it (it'll be about 1/4" thick). Wrap the matcha dough around the vanilla dough log. Use your fingers to smooth out the crease formed. Cover the entire log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Once the dough is firm, remove from the refrigerator. Slice 1/4" thick slices from the dough log and place the cookies onto the baking sheets. Take the other half of the vanilla dough, sandwich it between plastic wrap, and roll it out to 1" thick. Use a round 1" cookie cutter to cut out circles from the dough.

Take the cookie cutter and cut off part of the circle to form crescent shapes for the turtle heads. Use a big straw (like the ones for pearl milk tea) to cut out small circles. Use a knife to cut each circle in half. Now take 1 log slice, 1 crescent, and 5 small semicircles (4 for the feet and 1 for the tail) and stick them together to form a turtle.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Pinch the tail semicircles so it looks triangular. Add two black sprinkles on the crescent for the eyes. Repeat for the other log slices. Chill cookie turtles for 10 minutes. Place in the oven to bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets for 3 minutes, then move the cookies to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Decorating Turtle Cookies

semisweet chocolate

Melt the chocolate. Place it in a piping bag. Pipe two vertical lines on the shell. Then, pipe two horizontal lines on the shell perpendicular to the vertical lines.

Chocolate Mousse

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:37:00 +0000

Anyone out there still looking for a Valentine's Day dessert? Well, I have the perfect one for you! A two ingredient chocolate mousse that's quick and easy, but still wonderfully delicious.

Two ingredients??? Yup, just chocolate and water in this awesome recipe invented by French chemist Hervé This (well, if you decide to add sugar, then it's three ingredients, but still :P). There's no need to mess with eggs or cream. Gadget wise, all you really need is a trusty whisk, a pot for melting the chocolate and water, and two mixing bowls for, well, mixing. The reason it tastes so good is that it's pretty much pure chocolate, rich and decadent. Just make sure you use good quality chocolate and you're all set.

Also this recipe is pretty adaptable. The flavor can be tweeked by replacing some of the water with liquor or tea, or maybe by adding some spice, like cinnamon. Adding sugar is optional (I chose to add it). The mousse can be served in containers of all sizes. I brought some to a get together in little plastic shot glasses and decorated them with a bit of whipped cream and little red chocolate hearts. The leftover mousse was put in plastic champagne glasses and garnished with a dollop of whipped cream and the word "love" piped in chocolate, the perfect end for a Valentine's Day meal.

Chocolate Mousse

adapted from Cafe Fernando

9.35 oz (265 g) bittersweet (70% cocoa) chocolate
1 cup (240 ml) water
4 tbsp sugar, optional

cold water & ice

Place ice and cold water in one of your mixing bowls. Then place the other mixing bowl on top to chill. Chop up the chocolate and place it in a medium sized saucepan. Add the 1 cup water (and sugar if you decide to use it) and place the pan over medium heat, whisking the mixture occasionally.

When the chocolate is all melted, take the pan off the heat and pour the mixture into the mixing bowl that's been chilling (the one on top of the ice and water). Take your whisk and start mixing until the mixture starts thickening and resembling softly whipped cream.

Continue whisking until it thickens more and can be scooped up by the whisk (video below showing perfect texture). At this stage it is very easy to over-whip the mousse, so watch the texture carefully or else it will end up grainy.

Divide mixture into serving containers, garnish (if desired with whipped cream and chocolate hearts), and serve.

Penguin Icebox Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:43:00 +0000

That's right, penguins! I loved reading all your guesses and reasoning last post. Now I've got hippos, monkeys, elephants, and Totoro on the brain for future projects :). But, for today, let's talk about penguins.

For some reason, when I think "cartoon penguins," I picture cute little blue penguins, not black ones. But now that I've pondered over this, I realize that this may be the influence of too much Sanrio in my childhood, if there is such a thing :P. There used to be a penguin character named Tuxedo Sam, a little guy with a red bow tie and a spiffy sailor hat, and he was indeed pastel blue. But because I wanted to use my ube powder (purple yam powder), I decided to make these penguin cookies purple. And that is why these penguins are purple.

P.S. Two pictures above, you can see the last animal in this icebox cookie series. Not as difficult to guess as the penguins were, I think :P.

Penguin Ice Box Cookies

icebox cookie dough (with modifications below)
3 tbsp ube powder
purple food coloring
black nonpareils

Make the vanilla icebox cookie dough until it says STOP (for modifications). Split the mixture that you have so far in thirds and set aside for now. Get two separate bowls. To one bowl, add 1 cup flour. Add one third of the previously split mixture. Mix until you get a dough.

To the other bowl, add 1 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour and 3 tbsp ube powder, mix. Then add the remaining two thirds of the previously split mixture and mix. Add purple food coloring. Now you should have one vanilla cookie dough and one purple ube cookie dough.

NOTE: Ube powder (purple yam powder) can usually be found at Asian supermarkets. If you can't find it, that's fine. Instead, replace the powder with 3 tbsp flour (in addition to the other flour) and add a bit more purple food coloring.

Place the vanilla dough on a piece of plastic wrap. Roll it so it forms a log with a 2 cm diameter. Sandwich the purple dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin to roll it out to a 1.5 cm thick rectangle as long as the vanilla dough log. Now use the rolling pin to flatten the sides of the rectangle (as pictured above). The middle should remain thick and the sides should be able to wrap around the vanilla dough log.

Wrap the purple dough around the vanilla dough log. Use your fingers to smooth out the crease formed. Cover the entire log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Now go back to above instructions to where it says RESUME. Except, after the log is sliced, place 2 black nonpareils on each cookie on the top of the cookie where the purple dough is, as the eyes, then bake.

Makes approximately 90 cookies.

Decorating Penguin Cookies
white chocolate
yellow candy melts (or white chocolate + yellow candy coloring)

Melt the yellow candy melts and use them to draw a small triangle beak and two semicircle feet. Then, melt the white chocolate and use a toothpick to trace two wings. Let the chocolate dry before serving.

Lion Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:03:00 +0000

Today's post is the first of three. Here, I'll introduce the basic recipe for icebox cookies. Then, in each of these posts, I'll list the changes necessary to make the different flavored animals cookies.

Over winter break, I was flipping through The ATK Family Baking Book, and I noticed a recipe for icebox cookies. The book showed different shapes that could be made with the dough, like swirls and checkerboards. That got me thinking: what about some other shapes, like animal shaped cookies? Well, today I'll post about the chocolate and custard icebox lions (plus a Domo alternative), and in the next two posts, I'll post about two other animal icebox cookies.

Vanilla Icebox Cookies

adapted from The ATK Family Baking Book

2 1/2 cups flour (will vary in dough modifications)
16 tbsp (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract.

Cream the butter and the two sugars together. Mix in the egg yolks one at a time. Then, mix in the vanilla extract. [STOP here if you plan on modifying the dough.] Add the flour to the mixture and mix just until a dough forms and no flour streaks remain. Split the dough in half. Place each half on a piece of plastic wrap and roll into a log, wrapping each log in the plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator to chill for 15 minutes. [RESUME here with modified dough.]

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Once the dough is firm, remove from the refrigerator. Slice 1/4" thick slices from the dough logs and place the cookies onto the baking sheets. [Add sprinkles for modified dough.] Chill cookie slices for 10 minutes. Place in the oven to bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets for 3 minutes, then move the cookies to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Lion Icebox Cookies

icebox cookie dough (with modifications below)
2 tbsp custard powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
black nonpareils

Make the vanilla icebox cookie dough until it says STOP (for modifications). Split the mixture that you have so far in half and set aside for now. Get two separate bowls. To each bowl, add 1 cup + 2 tbsp flour. To one of the bowls, add 2 tbsp custard powder, and mix. To the other bowl, add 2 tbsp cocoa powder, and mix.

Now, take the mixture that you split in half earlier and add 1/2 of it to the custard powder bowl and 1/2 of it to the cocoa powder bowl. Mix each of the bowls so that you end up with one custard icebox cookie dough and one chocolate icebox cookie dough.

Place the custard dough on a piece of plastic wrap. Roll it so it forms a log with a 1 1/4" diameter. Sandwich the chocolate dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin to roll it out to a rectangle as long as the custard dough log and wide enough to fully wrap around the log (it'll be about 3/8" thick).

Wrap the chocolate dough around the custard dough log. Use your fingers to smooth out the crease formed. Cover the entire log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Now go back to above instructions to where it says RESUME. Except, after the log is sliced, place 2 black nonpareils on each cookie, near the center of the cookie slice, as the eyes, then bake.

Decorating Lion Cookies

white chocolate
semisweet chocolate
custard powder

Melt the white chocolate and mix it with custard powder until it's the same color as the custard part of the cookie. Use a toothpick to draw two small triangles in the chocolate part of the cookie to form ears.

Melt the semisweet chocolate and use a toothpick to draw a nose (a thick, short horizontal line in the center of the cookie with a little vertical line underneath). Then, use the toothpick to draw the mouth underneath the nose, two curvy lines. Let the chocolate dry.

P.S. Domo Icebox Cookies
Since many of you out there wanted an alternative Domo cookie that wasn't a sandwich cookie (like the TKOs), here you go. The good thing about this alternative is that this dough is easier to work with than the TKO dough. (And for whoever doesn't like chocolate... you can add brown food coloring to the dough instead of adding cocoa powder).

icebox cookie dough (with modifications listed below)
3 tbsp cocoa powder
red food coloring
white chocolate
semisweet chocolate
black food coloring (oil based, for candy)

Make the vanilla icebox cookie dough until STOP. Take the mixture, split it in 4, and set it aside for now. Get two separate bowls. In one of them add 1 1/2 cups + 3 tbsp flour and 3 tbsp cocoa powder. Mix. Then add 3/4 of the mixture you previously divided. Mix until a chocolate dough forms. In the other bowl, add 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp flour. Then, to this bowl, add the last 1/4 of the mixture you previously divided. Mix and add some red food coloring until you have a red dough.

To shape the dough, follow the shaping instructions from the Domo TKO post. Once the dough is shaped into a log, chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Now go back to the vanilla icebox cookie instructions where it says RESUME. In order to decorate the Domo icebox cookies, follow the decorating instructions in the Domo TKO post.

P.P.S. The next post will be dedicated to the purple cookies on the right in the above picture. Any guess to what animal it is?

P.P.P.S. Hmm... after staring at these photos for a while, I'm wondering if I should have added whiskers or not? If you're planning on making these, perhaps some chocolate whiskers can be added...

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:27:00 +0000

Finally, I'm on my last holiday related baking post. Just in time, since winter break is ending for me and school starts again tomorrow. Luckily this recipe isn't one of those "makes sense only during Christmas" recipes. These cranberry pistachio biscotti can definitely be enjoyed any day of the year.

I think of biscotti as the perfect afternoon pick-me-up. These cookies have the right amount of sweetness and crunch to tide one over until dinner, plus they're great with a cup of coffee or tea. Whenever I get the chance to make biscotti, I typically make almond biscotti. But, I thought that for the holidays, I would try something new, so instead, I made these cranberry pistachio biscotti. They're tasty, and I love how the green of the pistachios and the red of the cranberries look.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

adapted from allrecipes.com

1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 1/2 cups pistachios

Preheat oven to 300°F. Mix sugar and olive oil together. Add in the eggs one at a time. Mix in the vanilla and almond extracts. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add the dry ingredient mixture into the wet ingredients. Mix until no streaks of flour remain. Then mix in the cranberries and pistachios.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Divide the dough in two and form two 12x2 inch logs on the parchment lined cookie sheet. If the dough is sticky, wet your hands to make it easier to shape the dough. Bake the logs for 35 minutes. Remove them from the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes.

Change the oven temperature to 275°F. Slice each log into 18 slices. Place the slices back on the cookie sheet on their sides. Bake 8-10 minutes until dry. Let cool on the sheets for 10 minutes then move to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Makes 36 cookies.

Mint Chocolate Chip Truffles

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:34:00 +0000

This Christmas, I wanted to make some truffles for my holiday cookie boxes. I've always thought that chocolate truffles make great gifts. They're easy to put together, yet they have an air of decadence and luxury. Plus, they taste delicious.

I wanted to make a truffle that couldn't easily be found in stores. So, I did an internet search and found a recipe for mint chocolate chip truffles. I'm a big fan of mint chocolate chip; it's been one of my favorite ice cream flavors ever since I was a little girl. I'm glad I tried out this recipe because these truffles turned out great: delightfully minty with bites of chocolate in each truffle, and visually appealing, with the pale green contrasting with the brown of the chocolate.

Mint Chocolate Chip Truffles

adapted from about.com

1/3 cup + 1 tbsp heavy whipping cream
1 1/4 cups white chocolate chips
a pinch of salt
4 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
2-3 tsp mint extract
green food coloring
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup cocoa powder

Microwave to melt the white chocolate chips, salt, and butter (about 45 seconds, depending on your microwave). Pour the cream in a small saucepan and place over medium heat until simmering. Remove the cream from heat and add in the white chocolate mixture, whisking until completely combined. Then add the mint extract (to taste) and a few drops of green food coloring (too much will look funny). Cover the mixture with plastic wrap and let cool to room temperature. Once cool, add the mini chocolate chips and mix.

Place in the refrigerator to chill for 3-4 hours. Remove from the fridge and use a spoon to scoop out small portions that can be rolled into 1" balls. A way to prevent getting your hands sticky is to transfer the mixture from the spoon to a small piece of plastic wrap and use the wrap to pinch it into a ball. Then drop the balls into the cocoa powder and roll them around until thoroughly covered. Chill the truffles until solid. Keep refrigerated until ready to eat; serve at room temperature.

Makes 30 1" truffles.

Carbón Dulce (Sweet Coal)

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:33:00 +0000

I always thought that getting coal for Christmas wasn't THAT bad of a punishment for naughty kids. Sure it's not as fun as toys, but at least it has some use, plus it's better than nothing. If it were up to me, I'd give bad kids things like dried up markers, creepy Jack-in-the-boxes, crumbly rocks... Well, good thing I'm not Santa, haha.

To embrace my stance on coal not being a bad present, this year all my friends and family got coal for Christmas... candy coal that is :). Last year I bookmarked a post for it because I thought it looked so cool. Carbón dulce (sweet coal) is a Spanish candy that's often made during the holiday season. It tastes sort of like rock candy, sweet and crunchy, with a pleasant almond flavor from some added almond extract. And it does indeed look very much like coal. Pretty awesome!

Carbón Dulce

adapted from Fragrante Delicia

1 egg white
200 g powdered sugar, plus more if needed
5 drops lemon juice
black food coloring
2 1/2 tsp almond extract
700 g sugar
230 g water

Mix the egg white with the 200 g powdered sugar. The mixture should be thick enough that when cut with a knife, a visible cut remains, so add more powdered sugar if necessary. Then add the lemon juice, almond extract, and black food coloring (enough so the mixture is black).

Measure out 70 g of this egg white mixture and set aside for later; discard the rest of the mixture. Spray a baking pan with nonstick spray and line with parchment paper. Set aside for now. Place the 700 g sugar and water in a medium saucepan. Place over medium-high heat and let it boil to 126ºC, stirring occasionally. Remove the pan from the heat.

Add the 70 g egg white mixture to the pan and stir until it begins to foam. Then keep on stirring until it becomes thick and grainy (like in the picture above with the pink spatula). At this point, pour the mixture into the parchment lined pan. Let it harden and dry. Then break the candy apart (I broke it into big pieces and placed them in a plastic bag wrapped in paper towels and used a hammer it break it into even smaller pieces).

Red Velvet Shortbread Fireplaces

noreply@blogger.com (Susan S) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:13:00 +0000

Hope you all had a great New Years! I can't believe it's 2011 already. To continue with my holiday cookie posts, today I have a recipe for Red Velvet Shortbread Fireplaces.

Since people make and decorate gingerbread houses all the time, I thought it'd be interesting to switch it up a little and just decorate a certain part of the house: the fireplace. I mean in real life many people really do decorate their fireplaces for the holidays, whether it's with stockings, holly, wreaths, or holiday lights. I decided to keep it simple with just a string of lights and a small fire :).

Red Velvet Shortbread

adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1 1/4 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
8 tbsp (1 stick) butter, diced up
1 tbsp red food coloring
green, yellow, red gummy bears

Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. Cut the butter into the mixture until it forms crumbs. Add in the red food coloring and mix till evenly distributed. Gather the dough and sandwich it between two pieces of plastic wrap.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Roll out the dough to 1/4" thick. Take a knife and cut out 3x3 inch squares from the dough. Then cut out 1.5x1.5 inch squares from the bottom of each square as shown below. Place the fireplace shaped shapes on parchment lined baking sheets. Chill the sheets in the fridge for 10 minutes. Then bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Let cool on a cooling rack.

To prepare the gummy bears, take kitchen shears and cut off the gummy bears' arms and legs and place them on a piece of parchment paper (sticky side down).

Decorating Fireplace Cookies

red velvet shortbread cookies (above)
gummy bear arms & feet (above)
royal icing
white chocolate
dark chocolate
yellow food coloring
orange food coloring
brown food coloring
green food coloring

First, dip the top edge of the fireplace cookies in melted white chocolate and place on a piece of parchment paper to dry. Next, take melted dark chocolate and use it to draw rectangles a bit larger than the 1.5x1.5 inch cookie holes on another piece of parchment paper. Place one cookie on top of each chocolate rectangle before it dries, making sure the hole is completely covered by the chocolate. Wait for the chocolate to dry.

Mix orange food coloring with some royal icing. Use a toothpick and draw a spiky flame on the dried chocolate. Let dry. Mix some yellow food coloring with some royal icing. Use a toothpick and draw a smaller flame on top of the orange flame. Let dry. Mix some brown food coloring with some royal icing and draw some log shapes on the bottom edge of the piece of chocolate. Let dry.

Tint some royal icing a teal green color and place it in a piping bag. Pipe three loops of green icing along the bottom edge of the white chocolate. Take a gummy bear arm/leg and dip half of it in royal icing. Place it under the green icing "string," just touching the bottom side. Repeat with the rest of the gummy bear arms/legs, alternating colors as seen above.