Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

 "Number one, I absolutely love making chocolate chip cookies. I mean, it's fun. It's exciting. Beyond the fact that I love making them, I love eating them. "

Debbi Fields

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Yield 16 Big Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 tsp vanilla
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Stir together flour and baking soda and set aside
Beat butter for 30 seconds then add both sugars and beat on medium speed for 1 minute
Add the eggs and vanila and beat for 1 minute on medium speed
Add half the flour mixture and blend on low then add the rest of the flour mixture
Using a wooden spoon or spatula mix in chocolate chips.
I like to line the cookie sheet with waxed or parchment paper but you don't have to.
Use an ice-cream scoop to get evenly sized cookies and leave about 2 inches or 5 cm between each cookie.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown

Slightly adapted from:
Better Homes and Gardens Step By Step Kids Cookbook
Pictures taken by: Steve Eymann

Leftover Cake & Piping Tips

Have you ever been making a cake and had cake batter left over? Well instead of over filling your pans just make a little cake or a couple cupcakes! Over-filled cakes never have a happy ending.This will also help you with your leftover icing. This method will work a lot better than eating it by the spoon. Not that i do that though.... Well this Easter after i was making my cake (post soon to come just waiting on pictures to be delivered, i forgot to take pictures for you guys!) I had some left over frosting and cake batter so i made a little 6 inch cake and practiced my piping skills. Which by the way aren't that great, which is why i practice! The old saying Practice Makes Perfect really comes into play here because unless you have been born with awesome amazing piping skills, unfortunately  most of us aren't, practicing when ever you get the chance really helps. Here are some tips to help you if your having trouble:

1. Make sure your icing isn't too stiff, if it is it will really hurt your hand and make it hard to push out of the bag. Especially with smaller tips.
2. Every once and a while cool down you icing in the fridge because the heat from your hand will make it too thin and it won't hold it's shape.
3. Make sure your icing doesn't have any chunks in it, if there are make sure you have a toothpick near by to clean out the tip, whenever you feel it getting harder to get the icing out. If you don't clear the tip you run a high risk of exploding you bag. Ya it appended to me. Not good
4. If you find that  your icing is really airy with lots of air bubbles, take a spatula and calm down the icing by gently stirring and folding it till nice and smooth. This happens a lot with royal and butter cream icing I find.
5. Always make sure your tip is clean, this will keep your piping looking clean and sharp.

Fondant & Whipped Cream Recipe

Now normally covering cakes in fondant isn't that hard, you dirty ice your cake in butter cream then cover it in fondant. When iced it in whipped cream I didn't think there would be a problem since I was just covering it in fondant anyways. Although little did I know that whipped cream and fondant don't mix.

With butter cream in between the fondant and cake it acts as glue of sorts because it is thick and can hold its weight. But with whipped cream even though it holds it shape OK it's way to light to hold the fondant. With my cake all the whipped cream slid off the cake and started oozing out the sides. Ya not pretty :P I did my best to fix it but with the cake always moving and shifting it was quite difficult. I had to take things out of my design and add new concepts in just to hold the cake somewhat together!

But lesson learned now. Attention everyone: DO NOT USE WHIPPED CREAM IF YOU PLAN TO COVER YOUR CAKE IN FONDANT! But as you can see from my top tier fondant works really well if you use butter cream. Even cream cheese icing works better see here.

Whipped cream isn't all that bad though it is great on ice cream, pancakes, as a filling, and great on pie! So don't ever be intimidated by whipped cream. Here's my recipe for homemade whipped cream.

Whipped Cream

Yield about 4 cups

2 cups whipping cream
4 tbsp icing sugar


Place whipping cream and icing sugar in a bowl of a stand mixer and beat on high speed until light and airy like whipped cream.

Marshmallow Fondant

1 bag of mini marshmallows
500g icing sugar
1 cup vegtable shortning (Crisco)
 1 tbsp water

Clear a big work space for your fondant like a counter top or table

Throughly grease your workspace and a big microwavable safe bowl

Place marshmallows and water in the bowl

Mix the water and marshmallows together

Dump all the icing sugar onto the greased work space

Microwave the arshmallows and water on high for 30 secs and stir

Zap marshmallows and water in 15 sec intervals until all melted stirring in between

Grease your hands and beware this gets very messy

Pour melted marshmallows onto the icing sugar and knead until the icing sugar stops sticking to the fondant.

In the beggining it will seem like it's not working but keep at it and you'll make your fondant.

Store in a air tight container wrapped in plastic wrap. 

Simply Lemon Cupcakes

I just got back from a family vacation from Florida and it always boggles me with the difference in temperature from here in Canada to Florida. We were lucky enough to be able to rent a house that included or own pool and everything! It was absolutely a wonderful vacation. We also backed out onto a wonderful green space that had orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees! When I got home I was so inspired by the fresh citrus fruits in Florida that i decided to make a lemon flavoured cupcake to bring back some Florida to the chilly weather back here in Canada. Little did i know though that it was warm here too! How wonderful. I guess now my cupcakes are celebrating the weather we are having here instead!

I came across this lemon cupcake recipe on a great blog called My Baking Addiction. The cake sounded promising so i gave it a whirl but tried adding my own thing to it by using lemon juice instead of lemon extract. And my experiment failed they tasted great and looked great but they had a weird texture. The texture was kind of doughy and not cake like at all!  So instead of giving them to my fathers fire hall like I had planned me and my family ate them instead. My butter cream was amazing though. The lemon flavour was out of this world! I would maybe suggest making a white cake to go with it though since the frosting is so in your face.And that's just what i did with the leftover frosting. But hat I'll save for later

Because of my inspiration for these cupcakes was the warm weather i thought my decorating should capture that! So i used yellow muffin liners that i got at he dollar store and there were lot's of other colours too, DOLLAR STORE RULES! Any ways away form my obsession with the dollar store and back to decorations. I tinted the frosting a light yellow and added yellow sugar sprinkles and green and yellow (what were supposed to be) butterfly sprinkle... they look more like hearts. OH well still cute right? Here's my lemon butter cream but be warned its lemon flavour will be CRAZY! If you8r not that into lemon don't add as much lemon juice :) 

Simply Lemon Butter cream

1 cup softened butter
4 cups icing sugar
3/4 of a lemon
3 tbsp table cream or milk
yellow food colouring (optional)

Juice the lemon. Cream the butter till light and fluffy. Add half the sugar and combine. Beat in the cream and juice. Mix in the rest of the sugar. Then beat on high until fluffy.

Easter Cake Inspiration

With Easter coming up I'd just like to give you guys some inspiration for an Easter treat. One of my favourite cake pans out there in the wonderful world of Wilton is this cake pan they like to call a "Checkerboard Cake Set". It comes with three 9 inch pans and the dividing ring.

Why wouldn't you love this cake pan i mean like you can get chocolate and vanilla in the same cake!!!! Amazing i know. But with all seriousness i also like to use it for an Easter cake.

I would make a plain white cake and then separate them into 3 different bowls and colour them with colour gels. The end result i think is a really nice for a fun Easter cake.