Stained Glass Candle Cookies

I think you'll impress everyone if you had a few of these around the house.


All ablaze. I used a small candle in it's own glass holder. The candle didn't make the lollies melt which was something I was wondering about. Just be careful when using candles especially around children, you know the 'don't leave candles going when you leave the room' etc. I had this on when my children were in bed.

It's Eat Christmas Cookies Season 3 over at Food Blogga. I participated last year and there were some really yummy Christmas cookies. I've checked-out the cookies for this year and the Chocolate Toffee Crunch looks oh soooo good and easy to make, can't wait to make them.

Find out about the Round-Up so you can join in too.

Check out this years Round-up cookies.

Stained Glass Candle Cookies

Dark Gingerbread (recipe below)

250g clear boiled fruit lollies (green and red starburst lolly pops were all I could find)

Royal Icing (coloured if you like)

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Line two baking trays with paper. Thinly roll out the dark gingerbread mixture on a floured surface and cut out twelve 12cm x 8cm rectangles. Transfer the rectangles to the lined baking sheets, spacing them slightly apart.

2. Using a square cutter (or sharp knife) cut out six squares from each piece, leaving a fine windowpane-effect frame. Bake the pieces for 5 minutes, then remove them from the oven and leave aside.

3.Ligtly crush boiled lollies while still in their wrappers, by tapping lightly with a rolling pin. Unseal the wrappers and place a few crushed lollies in each square of the frames.

4. Return the baking sheets to oven for a further 5 minutes until the lollies have melted. If there are any squares that are not completely flooded with melted lolly, use a toothpick to ease mixture to the sides. You will need to do this quickly as the lollies harden quickly. Leave the pieces on the tray to cool completely

5. Spoon royal icing into piping bag with a medium writing nozzle. Pipe lines over the gingerbread. Leave to set for about 30 minutes.

6. Sandwich two long sides of biscuits together with icing holding together tightly until they are stuck together and leave to dry.

Dark Gingerbread

makes 24

prep time: 10 minutes, plus chilling

baking time: 12-15 minutes

410g cups self-raising flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 stp gound cloves

125g firm unsalted butter

125g dark muscavado sugar

125g black treacle/molasses

1 egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 200 C and line two baking trays

2. Put the flour and spices in a food processor. Cut butter into small pieces, add to processor and blend until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, treacle and egg, and mix to a dough. Wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

3. Roll out the mixture on a floured surgace. Cut out rounds or squares and place on baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the spaces have risen slightly and appear a little paler in colour. Leave for 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

I know this recipe idea came from a cookie book but I cannot remember which one. If you know please let me know so i can give credit.

Ice-cream Sundae Cupcake

Tastes as good as it looks! They're so simple to make too. The cupcake consists of a vanilla cupcake, ice-cream, whipped cream, half a musk stick and a glace cherry.

Here's how I put it all together:

1. Using a knife cut a round hole as big as you like (mine weren't that deep), in the top of the cake.
2. Eat the cut out cupcake top;)

3. Now fill your hole with slighly softened ice-cream and spread it around and flatten it at the top.

4. Swirl on your whipped cream. Start on the outside of the cupcake and pipe around the edge then start piping in the middle to fill it in. Now pipe a little swirl on top of the middle.

5. Decorate with half a musk stick stuck in at an angle into the ice-cream and top with a cherry. Serve immediately or the ice-cream will melt.

Since these cupcakes were a success with my family, i've got my heart set on making Banana Split ones!

Notes:

• Use a different coloured ice-cream to the topping (cream) so you can see the ice-cream and it'll be a fun surprise when the cupcake gets bitten into.
• I found if the ice-cream wasn't softened a bit you couldn't really spread it and the cupcake came away from the liner.
• Because I made only a few cupcakes we ate them straight away but if you make a lot you could pop the cupcakes filled with ice-cream into the freezer for a few mintues to harden up before pipping and decorating.
• Pour a little cold chocolate sauce over the cream before adding the decorations - yum.

Wishing I'd Been On A Tropical Island

It's been almost 5 months since my last post! I wish I could say that I spent the entire 5 months on a secluded lush tropical island with my family, lazily spending my days sipping milk from a coconut, swimming in crystal clear water, playing games and lying under a palm tree soaking up the sun.

Oh the reality, it couldn't be farther from my wish. In reality I mostly spent 5 months secluded to my bedroom, 'lazily' spending my days sipping water, lying on my bed or sitting outside soaking up the sun because it made me feel better.

Why was I sick. Well, it's because I'm...

Morning sickness and food blogging just don't go together! I couldn't even log into my blog email address because just the thought turned me green. I'm much better now, morning sickness is gone, I have a few other pregnancy niggles but they seem to be managable with the help of my friends and family.

Baby no. 3 - how exciting! We have a daughter and a son already so I don't really care what we have this time. I think it's a boy but my husband and daughter think its a girl. So...

Luckily i've had my scan and found out...

Yup, it's...

So as it turns out my husband and I were both correct. We found out we were having twins at 7 weeks. It was weird because before I left to have a scan I had an overwhelming desire to have twins, I mean I really really wanted twins and i've never had a feeling like that before so it was such a pleasant suprise (and a bit of a shock) to be told I was having twins, I cried, it was fantastic news. Twins don't run directly in our family, both our dads have twin cousins but that's about it, so it's exciting to be pioneering the twin thing in our family (fingers crossed).

I'm still undecided if this cupcake resembles a belly or not. My belly button is not like that at all (just in case you were wondering), and this belly must belong to a not very pregnant woman, needs more icing underneath for a heavily pregnant lady.

Shhh, she's sleeping!

Sleeping Beauty birthday cake for my daughter. LC went through all my cake books picking out ones she liked the best, then it was a process of elimination to see which one she really liked the best and this was it. This Sleeping Beauty is from Debbie Brown's Enchanting Magical Cakes. I changed the hair colour so it would match LCs.

Please excuse the mess in some of these photos. I pulled an all nighter and only remembered to take photos just before the cake was due for it's entrance. I tell you, i'll never pull an all nighter again. I had a major headache at the party (i wasn't able to enjoy it very much) and to top it off I couldn't bring myself to eat the cake until 3 days after - that's really sad!


Uh oh, where's your feet? Her legs (and waist) look a little weird:)

The colours of the fondant were almost the same as the ones in the book. I had to mix colours to get the results and I relied heavily on this colour mixing chart. I wouldn't have been able to do it without it - thank you colour chart:)

There are templates for the candleabra, bed heads and side bed things and as you can see I made the cake a little too long but put roses next to the bed to try and disguise it, anyway LC wanted roses on the cake so it all worked out well.

The bed head, footer and side things are made from Pastillage. I love that stuff. It dries really hard and I'm not kidding when I say that everyone wanted to taste it. Some even thought it was real wood - hmmm, maybe they were joking!

In the book Debbie uses this stand to place roses, but I thought it would be a good place to put the candles.

This design is so simple but effective. All you do is get a toothpick and mark groups of three dots - instant medieval!

This was another of my husbands wonderful ideas. He did this the next morning (after the party) to surprise me. He's a sweety:)


The end of the dress. You can't see it but i used a shimmer dust to make the dress sparkle.

Below is the pastillage recipe that I used. The recipe in the book calls for egg albumen which I couldn't find anywhere on the net, but luckily I found this recipe just in time. You need to make the decorations in advance so that they can dry. When it does dry it dries really really hard. Like I mentioned earlier, the bed heads were a very big hit and everyone wanted to try it. My nephew was walking around eating the bed head - ewww. I wouldn't recommend eating it though. Although it's mostly all sugar it does have raw egg and seriously I couldn't imagine it tasting very nice.

Pastillage

makes 350g (12oz)

1 egg white
300g (11oz) icing sugar, sifted
10ml (2tsp) gum tragacanth (I used tylose powder instead)

1. Put the egg white into a large mixing bowl, you don't beat the egg just add enough icing sugar until the mixture combines together into a ball. Mix in the gum tragacanth or tylose, and then turn the paste out onto a work surface and knead the pastillage well.

2. Incorporate the remaining icing sugar into the remainder of pastillage to give a stiff paste.

3. Store pastillage in a polythene bag placed in an airtight container in a refrigerator for up to one month.

Notes: Pastallage dries quickly so work fast. If it does become hard you just need to keep kneading it till it comes together and becomes smooth again.

Oh So Sweet

These are soooo simple to make, any Little Chef can do these. The only thing I didn't let LC do was the cutting of the lifesavers - that's strictly an adults job.


Pop the whole thing into your mouth- yum. Even my husband commented they were really good.

Little Teacups

250g marshmallows
1 packet of freckles
2 packets of musk lifesavers, cut in half with sharp knife
approx. 3/4 cup icing sugar
water, just a little bit

Mix the icing sugar and water together till you get a thick paste.

Put a small amount of icing on the freckle. LC used a knife but I find it easier to use my finger, a bit messy but easier. Place the freckle on top of the larger end of the marshmallow.

Now put some icing on one half of a broken lifesaver. You can use your finger, a knife or dip it into the icing - make sure to hold on tight though.

Now place the lifesaver on to the side of marshmallow making sure to press it in for a few seconds. I prefered having the back of the lifesaver facing forward rather than having the lifesaver front (with the word 'Lifesaver') facing you, I think it looks better.

There are more of these little teacups over at Planning With Kids. They use a biscuit as a saucer which is really cool. There are also instructions and heaps of photos.

Cookie Monster and Caterpillar Cupcakes

The end of May was busy with birthdays (me, my dad and my daughter ) and this was my excuse to go crazy and try cupcakes and cakes that i've always wanted to try and of course I had a burnout and that's why I haven't posted in 2 weeks. I don't think I could bake for a living. I couldn't eat cake for a few days - ahh!

Lets get the ball rolling and start with the cupcakes I made for my daughter to take to school for her birthday. I thought of making just pretty caterpillar cupcakes but I just couldn't imagine the real boy boys in the class being overjoyed so I made some Cookie Monsters for the boys.

Check-out the Cookie Monster on the bottom, second from the right. Don't know how I missed him but he makes me laugh.

Hmm, looks like someone needs to brush up on their food colouring technique.

I made the eyes out of about 4g of sugarpaste and used black food colouring but if you don't want to use sugarpaste, mint cool fruits would be a good substitute.

I have made caterpillar cupcakes before, they were fun and easy to make not to mention extremely cute so I thought the girls would love them.


Those little tufts of grass were my husbands idea, and a pretty good one at that.

I thought I'd try something new and put some shimmer powder down their packs but unfortunetly it didn't really work out.

Well, the cupcakes went down a treat with the kids, i'm glad they enjoyed them, althought my husband was extremly (and i mean extremly) upset to hear the kids enjoyed them. He thought I had made them for our daughters family birthday party we were having the following day, he was looking forward to eating the Cookie Monsters.

Happy Birthday To...

Happy Birthday to......ME!
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday dear Meeee
Happy Birthday to Me

Gimme a few hip hip hoorays. Awww, thanks.

I love presents, I love attention (but only on my birthday) and I love birthday cake! One year when I was young (maybe 10 years old) I asked my mum if was going to have a birthday cake. She grumbled a bit and said she'd pick one up after work. It was a honey and ginger swiss roll (the cheap ones from the shopping centre) and I was soooo disappointed, it just didn't feel like a birthday. From that day on I told myself that it wasn't going to be a good birthday unless there was good cake!


Now i'd call that a good 30th birthday cake, even if I did make it myself - hehe. My daughter and husband made me a mothers day cake (i should post that up sometime soon) but i gave them strick orders to NOT make me a birthday cake (you'll see when I post the pics) because I wanted to make one myself.


The cake was originally going to have flowers on it but they didn't turn out, then I was going to have ruffles on it but my Dad said 'those carnations look nice' so i scraped that idea, then I remembered my Maisie Fantaisie book Sweet and Simple Party Cakes that hada polka dots cake and voila - here it is. I must say this polka dot cake is fantastic for beginners, not only does it look good but you can hide any imperfections with the dots - yay.


A cool little trick, hiding the bottom with some rolled fondant, it made it look kinda professional.


Whooa, I made the chocolate fudge cake in the book and boy was it sweet. I love sweet things but it was a little hard to eat. I'll definitely cut out some of the sugar next time (it has 4 cups!).

The original Dotty About You by Maisie Fantaisie.

Apparently the 30's are the new 20's (whatever that means!) so it's good to be young again!

Cupcakes - Yay!

Who's been a naughty girl? Ummm, that would be me!! In the past month i've bought 3 cake books and a decorating magazine. Last week I was just browsing (honestly!) the cake section in the book store when Planet Cake's book leapt out at me and so I had to buy it. The cakes in there are amazing, i can't wait to make the bag cake- cool huh.

The book is more like a course. It begins with the easy stuff (cupcakes) and you more on to the hard stuff (the bag). So, last week i started 'the course'. I've baked PC's (Planet Cake's) vanilla cupcakes and used their syrup and white chocolate ganache recipe and I can say that they were extrememly tasty. I mean really tasty!


The first cupcake i made was PC's hot pink and black bow cupakes. Although not perfect these were cool to look at. Can't wait to make them again. Okay, i had planned on making heaps of these but my creative genius was bursting to get out (lol) and the rest of the cupakes i decorated were experiments, just me messing around with different designs.

This is my favourite! I just love the bow.

I wanted to do a more manly cupcake for my husband so i made this cirlce one, but my husband prefered the pink tie-dye! Yikes, i thought it would be breeze to do this sort of design, i definitley need to practice more.

One big happy cupcake family:)

Traffic Light Crackers

These are on a playschool DVD which we have had for years so that's how long i've been wanting to make them! Playschool is one program I can sit and watch with my kids. They have a great site that has lots of useful box ideas and some recipes, check it out:)

How To:

Spread vegemite (or promite, marmite) on rectangular shaped crackers. Then top with half a cherry tomato, a small chunk of cheese and then a small piece of gerkin. My son didn't like the gerkin but use whatever, a piece of lettuce or something.

Little Chefs crackers. She's known her traffic lights since she was two! lol

Lime and Buttermilk Cake

This cake was the find of 2008 for me. It was funny though, this recipe was lying around for several months waiting for me to just get on with making it! I didn't think the cake looked particularly interesting and I don't like limes so this cake was purely for my husband and children. Weeeell, guess who ate most of it? Haha yup, it was that good!! It's like a lemon delicious pudding but in cake form but using limes:) It's really soft and moist in the middle and I love it the best just after the icing sets. It's so nice when it's really fresh. I've tried this recipe using lemons instead of limes but it just didn't taste that good. Maybe limes and buttermilk were just meant for each other.

Lime and Buttermilk Cake

serves 8

250g butter, softened

2 limes, rind finely grated, juiced (should make 1 tablespoon)

1 cup caster sugar

3 eggs, separated

2 cups self-raising flour, sifted

210ml buttermilk

Lime icing

1 cup pure icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon milk

1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease and line a 20cm (base) round cake pan.

2. Using an electric mixer on high speed, cream butter, 1 tablespoon lime rind and sugar in a small bowl until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, mixing well after each addition.

3. Transfer to a large bowl. Stir in half the flour. Add half the buttermilk and 1 tablespoon lime juice. Stir to combine. Fold in remaining flour and buttermilk and 1 tablespoon lime juice. Using electric mixer, beat eggwhites in a clean bowl until soft peaks for. Fold into batter.

4. Spread batter into cake pan and smooth surface. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in pan. Turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Make lime icing: Combing icing sugar, milk and enough lime juice to form a thick icing.

6. Spread icing over top of cake. Allow to set before serving.

Thomas The Tank Engine Cake

Here is the Thomas The Tank Engine cake I made for my son's 2nd birthday. I had made 3 large slab cakes and 1 square cake to carve into Thomas, i was worried there wouldn't be enough cake but there ended up being too much. The cake could have fed 60, there was only 6 of us! We were lucky enough to take the cake that afternoon to a family bonfire but we still came home with some - Thomas was HUGE!

That's a sugarpaste head. Once you get the hang of it it's not that bad to make. My son realised it was Thomas so he wasn't that unrecognisable:)

Unbeknown to me, I demoted poor Thomas! My husband pointed out that Thomas was the No.1 engine that's why he has a 1 on the side and that I shouldn't change the number - sorry Thomas. I know Thomas doesn't quite look like Thomas. Where's the red and the detail? Well, carving the cake took me one hour because I didn't know what on earth i was doing so when it came to icing, i just slapped it on and did whatever! FYI there's supposed to be 3 wheels in blue icing.

Slapped on icing or not, my parent's think i'm pretty cool now!

This is a pic of the first Thomas head i made. I got up to this point and i was thinking how wonderful i was when i realised that there was no room for the eyebrows - aaaargh! Back to the start i went.

To make this cake i followed the Thomas The Tank Engine tutorial from Cake Space. It's a good tutorial although I didn't have time to email questions about measurements so I had to wing it when it came to how much sugarpaste to use for the face etc.

The Week That Was

What a week! Well, in a nut shell, here's what's been happening:

Saturday was my son's 2nd birthday - Yay! We celebrated with a cake (i'll post that up on Monday) and my parents came around. But, the little one just wasn't himself - he was a bit moody, not wanting to play games or eat lollies/cake etc. The poor thing ended up going to bed. Two sleepless nights followed.

Monday I noticed oozey stuff coming out of the little man's ears - ear infection, that explains his moodiness and zero sleep! Off we go to the doctors and $50 later he's got all the medication he needs - we need sleep!!!



Tuesday I made Mel's Sheila's Dream Bars. I put them in a smaller dish so they ended up not entirely quite right. They still tasted really nice and this week I hope to make more - yum! I made this version of Dulce de Leche for the Dream Bars.

Wednesday saw the pest control guy come over to check out our place for termites. We had a pest inspection before we moved in and it was all okay but guess what, we have termites - not happy:(

Thursday my daughter stays home from school

Friday I took her to the doctors to get her feet and nose seen to. The poor thing has ezcema and her feet are just really bad so she needed some antibiotics. So all up this week i've spent around $100 on medication!

Today (saturday) the pest control guy came back to treat the termites and do a proper inspection and he found more places where the termites have been - nooooooo! There doesn't seem to be any internal structural damage and no sign of them in the roof, so that's good, fingers crossed it stays that way.

I got a funny comment on my Astro Boy Cake Post this morning. It made me laugh so I thought i'd share it with you. Posted by LALALAALALA: when i googled "astro cakes" i was looking for marijauna cakes!! i found this instead ... it's wuite impressive:)

Well, it's 7:30pm and only one hour until The Bill is on. It's my fav show and I think I can squeeze in two very ancient episodes (from the 80's) before 8:30pm - double yay!

Welcome to....

Has anyone tried snake before? I hadn't before I made these and I must say they taste a bit like scone! My son's eyes lit up when I showed him a snake, a definite hit. Well, lets take a closer look inside 'the pit', don't be afraid, they won't bite;)


These snakes are pretty ugly. The one on the left sports season all salt while the one on the right wears dark green food colouring (although you can't tell) and his name is Slytherin.

We're starting to get a bit more fashionable. These are covered in coloured sugar.

Very hip. My husband said the one on the left looks like a Rainbow Serpent .

Then there's ones that always have to be different!

Ssssss

If you're not into snakes:

try some very yummy cinnamon and sugar bread sticks.

Home-baked Bread Sticks

2 cups self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup polyunsaturated oil

3/4 cup skim milk

1 egg white, lighlty beaten

Savoury Toppings:

poppy seeds, seasame seeds, caraway seeds, mixed Italian herbs, Cajun spice, parmesn cheese, coarse salt, garlic powder, chilli powder etc

Sweet Toppings:

cinnamon sugar, hundreds and thousands, sprinkles. I used cachous for the eyes and large rainbow sprinkles for the tongues

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line 2 baking trays.

2. Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Add oil and milk. Mix together with a round-bladed knife to form a firm dough. Knead gently on a lighlty floured surface until smooth.

3. Cut the dough into 24 equal pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a 30-cm rope. Place 2.5 cm apart on baking trays.

4. Brush dough with egg whites. Sprinkle with toppings.

5. Bake until golden, about 10 minutes. Place baking trays on wire cooling racks and cool for 10 minutes. Transfer bread sticks to rack and cool completely.

Makes 24 breadsticks

To make spiral bread sticks, roll 30-cm ropes lightly in flour (I forgot to do that part) then wrap around oiled wooden chopsticks, I used a brush and brushed on the oil. Bake as above. Cool before gently removing from chopstick.

Tea For Two

Here' s the second cake I made and it's my favourite with all of the details and little characters. I had so much fun, even if the models did take a while.

Would you believe that I don't have any brown food colouring (i know it's tragic isn't it) so I used browining essence instead!

My daughter thought some white sugarpaste would look good in the teacups to represent milk which was a great idea but I opted for some blue gel to look like water.