Mini Mint Cupcakes

At the supermarket around the holidays, this bag of Mint Truffle Hershey's Kisses just jumped into my cart. When I got home, I decided to make cupcakes with them to keep myself from eating them all.

I made a regular chocolate cake recipe and filled mini cupcake lines with the batter. 

The kisses were plopped on top and pressed ever so slightly.  

And I just baked them normally. The cupcake puffed up around them beautifully. 

Using a regular (and delicious) chocolate buttercream, I piped spikes on top and asked my sister to toss a few green jimmies and some white nonpareils on to make them even cuter.

Don't you love the carriers?

Each box was only about a dollar (and they're reusable!) and it did an excellent job protecting the cupcakes while I was on route to the delivery site. In fact, these pictures were taken after a bumpy car ride and even the peaks still look beautiful. 

Sugar Cookie Recipe

I suppose it's time to share my sugar cookie recipe. One of my mother's colleagues e-mailed her the recipe in 1998 and we've been using the same scrap of paper ever since with some slight modifications. This dough is AMAZING. I tried other recipes last year, but this is my only sugar cookie recipe now and I'm never going back. 

See this piece of paper?

It gets pulled out every time I make cookies. Like once a week. I've changed it a bit, but there's only so much you can do to a perfect recipe.

This recipe is incredibly easy. Wanna see how to make it?

 

This is my new mixer. We're pretty tight.

Cream butter and sugar.

After I use a vanilla bean, I toss it in with my sugar because there's nothing wrong with extra vanilla. 

I was making a quadruple batch here, so I used 4 eggs. Crack the egg in a separate bowl and dump it in to the fluffy butter and sugar. Why do you need to crack the egg into a bowl first? Well, maybe it's just me, but the last time I tried to crack an egg directly into the mixing bowl while the beater was running, I accidentally dropped the whole egg in. It was pretty unfortunate.

Once you get the egg in, add the vanilla and a pinch of salt. Beat it a little more for good measure.

Oooh, yummy.

Turn the mixer off. Dump in flour the flour all at once. Yes, I know it's scary, but it'll be okay, I promise. 

Turn the mixer on very low, being careful that it doesn't start suddenly and spew a flour cloud across the room. Not that I've ever done that. 

Once it's combined, stick it in the fridge for a bit until you're ready to use it.

And beware: the dough is irresistible, so don't even bother trying to avoid eating it.


Soft Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick)  butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons cream (or milk works fine, too)
Vanilla extract (I usually use about two teaspoons of vanilla bean paste, but the same amount of vanilla extract will work great as well)
Pinch of salt

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy. Add the egg and keep beating, then blend in the salt and vanilla.  Dump the flour in all  at once and mix on low until just combined. Refrigerate for a few hours, then roll it out and enjoy! After rolling on a lightly floured surface and cutting your shapes, freeze cookies for at least 15 minutes before baking to preserve crisp edges.  I like my cookies thick so I bake them for about 9 minutes at 375, but  check your cookies at about 6 minutes so you don't over bake them if you made 'em thin. Makes about 2 dozen thick cookies.

Happy baking!


Notes:
*I always make the dough the day before and refrigerate it overnight, but if you're short on time you can stick it in the freezer immediately after you make it for about an hour and it should be ready to roll by the time you've finished cleaning up and getting your royal icing ready.

* If possible, freeze the cut, unbaked cookies for an hour or even overnight for maximum spreadage-prevention, but if you don't have time to freeze and bake them immediately, don't worry about it. They'll spread a tad, but they'll still be very pretty and even more delicious. 

*I leave out the baking powder because I want to preserve the shapes and prevent them from rising.

Bond. James Bond. The making and demise of a glorious Aston Martin DB5 cake.

We had a James Bond party. Movie marathon, themed arts and crafts, guests in cocktail attire, spooky villain's lair decorations, the whole thing. Of course, I made cake. And chocolate tuxedo strawberries. Also some cake pops and chocolate gems. But let's start with the cake, shall we?

(Photo by Duncan Ballentine)

I studied so many pictures of car to make sure this was absolutely perfect. This was also my first carved cake - very exciting.

The insides are chocolate/strawberry marble with swiss meringue buttercream inside. I baked two 9x13 and one 9x9 cake, then plopped them on top of each other. 

I attacked it (carefully) with a big serrated knife. I spent a couple hours staring at the form and tweaking it. At this point, I was jumping up and down because I couldn't believe it actually looked like a car.

I called a few of my friends to explain:
"I'm making a car cake and it's really hard and guess what it looks like? ... It looks like a CAR!"

Then it was time to cover it in buttercream. I made sure to use the frosting to help emphasize my carving and build up on areas where I was a bit overzealous with the knife. Yes, big mess. What else is new?

I then covered it in one huge piece fondant and started pressing in details with the back of a paintbrush. I didn't have any idea what I was doing because I don't ever work with fondant, but it seemed like a good idea, so that's what I did.

It was spray painted with edible silver paint (gorgeous stuff), I added details, and it magically became a car.

JB007. Get it?

I painted the windows on with a paintbrush and a bottle of black food coloring. 

Even the little mirrors are in the right place and the trimmings were painted silver with a little vodka  and silver luster dust mixture.

I tried to add in tons of details and make it as lifelike as possible. This cake took me 3 days, I fell in love with it, and you know what?

They made me cut it!

 (photo by Duncan Ballentine)

 It took about 10 minutes to bring myself to slice it and I'm still crying on the inside about my poor dead car. 

This is me killing my cake. But it really was delicious.

Now, what to do with all the scraps leftover from carving?

Cake pops! These are bowler hats. I was very sick of cake by the time I made these, but they were still fun and they came out alright.

And here are some white chocolate gems because a James Bond party requires treasure and jewels. They're shiny.

Since we asked the guests to dress up in the spirit of the event, I thought it would be appropriate to make sure the strawberries were similarly attired.

These aren't nearly as hard as they look and there's a great guide here.

I'm so happy with how everything came out, but you won't see me working with fondant anytime soon. I've never had so much trouble destroying a cake and cutting this one just made me feel too destructive. Maybe it gets easier, but I'll take my difficulty slicing it as a sign that it's my best cake so far. And I'm definitely okay with that.

Grandpa's Birthday Cookies, or "I Hate the Post Office"

My grandpa is one tough guy. Back in September, he turned 90 and the family threw him a big party. Because I was as school I couldn't make it, but I sent along these cookies instead.

They were eat to make but incredibly impressive and so personal. I ordered edible icing paper with some very special pictures and they were so much fun to use. I made these in my dorm, so supplies. were tricky and they were a huge endeavor, especially because I made 100, but they came out beautifully.



Outline:

 Flood.

Plop the pre-cut frosting transfer on top of the wet icing

Add a border and some pretty dragees. Admire and cross your fingers hoping they'll dry in time. 

Wrap them up very, VERY carefully. 

Pay $60 for overnight shipping so they they'll get there in time for the next day's party. 

And cry when the post office loses them.

True story. 

But at least we got some great pictures. Besides, Grandpa doesn't like sweets anyways.

Oreo Cheesecake

Vanilla cheesecake covered in oreos and chocolate ganache with a cinnamon graham cracker crust.

You really don't want to know how many days in a row I ate this for breakfast.

It baked a bit funny in the middle, so I dumped oreos on it and everyone was happy. 

Let's all just pretend that I didn't eat this for breakfast for an entire week, okay?

I know the cinnamon crust sounds kinda weird, but it gave it a great bite and was really tasty.

Am I the only one who thinks this slice looks like a little mouse?

Yum!