Happy Holidays!

The cookie club celebrates the season...

Hoping everyone has a cheerful holiday season, and enjoys a cookie or two or three!

Shoes!

When designing a cake for my friend Anne's flirty thirty birthday there was only one theme choice - shoes!

This project was made in two parts; the shoe box is a large double fudge brownie, while the shoes are made from rice krispie treats. Both are decorated with butter cream icing, with the shoes receiving miniature M&Ms for a little more colour.

The shoes were carved from blocks of rice krispie treats, the below photo sequence shows their creation.

With the basic shapes created I moved on to frosting them. I used black icing to highlight the show box cover, and to outline the shoe's in-sole, outer-sole, and straps.

I hope you enjoyed the shoe cake, I know Anne loved it! :)

Vegan Chocolate Stout CupCakes

It's been a while since I last posted a recipe... I've been very busy dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Igor (flooded basement), so just starting to get back to 'normal' now. This treat was made for my friend Anne's birthday.

Ingredients (CupCake):
1 1/2 cup soy milk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 cup & 4 tbsp flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup stout
2/3 cup canola oil
3 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients (Topping):
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
4 tbsp canola oil

To make the cupcakes: blend together the soy milk and apple cider in a bowl, then allow it to curdle. In a separate bowl sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Next, add to the soy milk mixture the stout, sugar, oil, and vanilla - mix until foamy. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, in small amounts, then beat the whole mixture for two minutes.

The topping is a simple sifting of the flour, cocoa, and sugar together in a bowl. Oil is added and then you toss the mixture until crumbs form. You can use your fingers to break down any larger crumbs. Once the crumb topping is made you just need to sprinkle some on top of each cupcake - it should just rest on the top of the batter. Bake the cupcakes at 350F for 25 - 30 minutes (should make 18 large cupcakes).

I hope you enjoyed these Vegan cupcakes, there somewhat sweet and the stout flavour is very subtle so don't worry that it'll taste only like beer.

Butter-Pecan Cookies

After a long weekend full of events this cookie night turn I went for a very simple cookie recipe, butter-pecan cookies.

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
2/3 cup chopped pecans
Extra whole pecans for decorating.

To begin this cookie mix the flour and salt in a bowl. In a mixer combine the butter and sugar until beat smooth. Add in the flour and salt to the mixing bowl, then add in the egg yolk. Beat until fully combined. The chopped pecans can now be added, then mixed into the batter.

These cookies are baked as simple drop cookies. The batter will spread out however so space each drop at least three inches apart. Press a whole pecan into the center of each cookie drop. Bake at 325F for 15 minutes.

I hope you enjoy these cookies, their buttery and sweet!

N.E.S. (Another Rice Krispie treat)

This cookie was made a retro gaming fan and old friend of mine.

The main console consists of two layers of Rice Krispie treats, covered in butter cream frosting. The controller cables are made from strings of liquorish, and the red buttons are the severed heads of red vegan gummie bears.

I hope you enjoyed this cookie! So what was your favorite NES game?

Edible Bugs (Rice Krispie Square)

This cookie was inspired by Sheila's VW Beetle restoration project, her love of Rice Krispie squares, and her 30th birthday!!!

Earlier this year Sheila decided that it was time to fore-fill her dream of owning a classic VW Beetle, after searching high and low she finally found her bug and brought it home on a trailer. Ever since then she has been restoring the car, bit by bit. So when it came to deciding on what to make for her birthday dessert there was no question, I had to make her bug :)

Crafting this treat wasn't too difficult. First I made a large Rice Krispie square, then I used a knife to remove all the cereal treat that made the block look less like a bug ;)

Once I had the general shape I was looking for I prepared butter cream frosting for 'painting' the cookie. I used a piping bag with a flat nose for the bulking icing, and a pin hole tip for the black lining. Some white and orange gel icing pens were used for smaller accents. The white rimmed tires are repurposed white gummie rings.

I hope you all enjoyed this cookie - I know Sheila loved it!

Mr Spock as a cookie.

When asked to prepare some cookies for a birthday party and being told 'go nuts' I find myself quickly going a little over board... so for this batch of Birthday treats I made Original Series Star Trek cookies.

The recipe for the cookie base was a modified Apple cookie, adding two table spoons of cocoa powder and orange peel and juice. The cookies are also dipped in melted dark and milk chocolate. The chocolate dip makes it easier to do intricate icing work later on.

I drew Mr Spock free hand with an icing pipet, then filled in the enclosed areas with royal icing.

The uniforms and insignias were carved by hand in the cookie dough, then outlined in frosting and filled in with icing.

I hope you enjoyed these cookies!

Vegan Cupcakes

Anne asked me to prepare some Vegan Cupcakes for a BBQ party over the weekend, having never made such a dessert this is my first foray into non-dairy baked goods. I found recipes online for the cupcake base and buttercream frosting. I will note for you that your going to have to at least double the base recipe if you want more than eight or nine cupcakes - I was able to yield 16 via two batches.

Finding the 'vegan' ingredients wasn't too difficult, with a simple trip to my local grocery store I was able to find soy milk, soy based non-hydrogenated margarine, and all-organic-vegan-fare-trade gummi bears (added to the frosting as decoration).

Since the batter doesn't fill up all twelve cupcake molds in my baking trays I added some water to each empty cup in order to help provide moisture during the baking process.

The vegan frosting presented something of an additional challenge - it doesn't set like regular frosting. I attempted to work around this issue by piping frosting in a spiral pattern around the cupcake. As the frosting began to drip it would naturally just fill in the spaces between the lines... it was somewhat successful but in the end it still dripped over the cupcake wrapper's edge.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe, I think Anne's cat Calleigh approved.