Some call it dessert, I call it a boat!

My Father's 60th Birthday was coming up, so I had to design a memorable dessert that he'd really enjoy... so I made his boat into the topper for his birthday cake! If you've read my posts on making shoes, NES, or VW Bug, then you'll know this will be a vanilla Rice Krispie & icing treat.

I made two large banana bread pans worth of Rice Krispie treats.

Using the two large Rice Krispie treats I sculpted the hull and superstructure.

With the lower and top halves of the ship complete I started painting the hull with Royal Blue icing.

The decks of the boat are a light grey. A black fender stripe runs the perimeter of the hull, to simulate this I wrapped a long string of liquorish around the treat.

Once the icing was done I started adding in details.

 I think I got the memorable part handled... I'll post a picture with this dessert on top of the Birthday Cake when it's served :)

Jam Pillow Cookies

As my first cookie night turn of the year I chose to make light & delicious jam filled treat: Jam Pillows.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup sour cream

2 tsp grated lemon zest

1/4 cup jam (I used Strawberry and Blueberry jams for variety)

1 egg

1 tbsp icing sugar

This is a very simple dessert to make, unfortunately the recipe will only yield about 16 servings, so you may want to double up. The first step in making the pillows is to combine the flour, butter, sour cream, and lemon zest. This will create a crumbly dough when you should form into a disc, then wrap in plastic and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.

 Once the dough has had time to setup in the fridge, you can roll it out into sheets approximately 1/8 of an inch thick (~3mm). Using a pairing knife cut 2 1/2 inch squares from the dough (6 x 6 cm). Next place a 1/4 tsp of jam into the center of each square, then fold the dough to form a pillow (You can try rectangle or triangle shapes). Use a wet fork to press down the edges to contain the jam within the pastry.

 With all of the pillows filled with jam, now is the time to bast them with an egg wash (just whisk the egg and brush on). Heat the oven to 400 F (200C) and bake for about 12 minutes until golden brown. You may sprinkle some powered sugar on top of the freshly baked pillows.

I hope you enjoyed this treat, their not too sweet and pack a lot of flavour thanks to the jams.

Cookies from Christmas past.

To start the new year I thought I'd share some photos of the Christmas cookies I made for 2010. Their based upon my simple chocolate chip cookie recipe, with the slight modification of using Terry's Chocolate Orange pieces instead of chips :)

I hope everyone had a great holiday season, and got a chance to bake & eat a few dozen batches of cookies :)