Christmas in February

If I was any good at prankery, I would try in earnest to convince you that today is in fact Christmas. It’s April Fools’ Day, after all. But if any truth could be said about me, it would have to be Homer Simpson’s famous line, “You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine!”

Sadly, I don’t have anything like an electrified fooling machine (and what I really want is a waffle iron). I guess I’m kind of pranking you with the title “Christmas in February” but, to be honest, today totally feels like February. It’s a snow day, my office is closed, everything in town is shut down because we’re going to get at least 100 feet of snow, and we might not see any signs of spring until next Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I was so busy during last Christmas that I didn’t get time to write about all of my Christmas makings and bakings during Christmas. Or after Christmas. Or after after Christmas, for that matter. Too many papers, too much work, too much... just much too much. That’s me: much too much. I’m all in, all the time. Why can’t I just be like normal people and not do anything for a change? No, I must make and do ALL of the things. All the cakes, all the crafts, all the cookies, all the fudge, and all of the masters degrees.

Seeing as how I don’t have anything scheduled for today, I decided to make some work for myself by writing one big post that covers my Christmas 2013 treats and post it right at the point when most people have totally forgotten about Christmas. Oh, you’re welcome.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I made a boatload full of food, including the pie and tarts that I showed you in my last post. FYI, a “boatload” of something is my favourite unit of measurement. I didn’t take photos of everything in the boatload, but I can show you the ones that I did.

Fudge: I forgot to get pictures of my “Everything” fudge (trail mix, cashews, peanuts, almonds, macadamia, pistachios, vanilla cream sandwich cookies, Smarties and M&Ms) and my butterscotch chocolate walnut fudge. But here are photos of my batches of rocky road fudge with mixed nuts and white chocolate candy cane Oreo fudge. 

I just love the look of those big ol' slabs of fudge before they're cut into pieces! By the way, next to “boatload,”  “slab” is my most favourite unit of measurement. The candy cane fudge is made using my favourite Eagle Brand cookies n' cream fudge recipe with candy cane sandwich cookies from Walmart that I call Oreos (or you can use the original Mint Oreos) with chopped candy canes on top.

Cookies: I made some melting snowman chocolate chip cookies and Rudolph oatmeal raisin cookies. 

The melting snowmen were decorated with royal icing to look like melted snow and scotch mints were used for their heads. The reindeers were made using a gingerbread man cookie cutter and decorated upside down. They're decorated with royal icing, chocolate chips for eyes, and a red Smartie for the noses.

Cake pops: After years of following Bakerella’s blog and poring over her books, I finally got over my anxiety and made cake pops for the first time. I made vanilla elves, Christmas trees, and snowmen. It was hard, messy work but totally worth it. After they were completely dry, I packaged them in small, clear cellophane bags secured with a silver twist tie. These photos were taken at night so the lighting is not the best.

I adore the snowmen in their jaunty candy berets! For some reason, the snowmen look very pleased with themselves, like they know they're cute and they’re happy to be here. Those are the kind of snowmen and people I like best: those who are just happy to be wherever they are.

Cupcakes: This year I decided not to do a big decorated cake for Christmas Eve like I usually do but I made cupcakes decorated as little snowy winter scenes instead. These are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and homemade marshmallow fondant shapes made by hand and using mini cookie cutters.  I made a variety of little fondant characters and shapes for the scenes including snowmen with scarves blowing in the wind, snowmen wearing hats, snow-covered trees, Christmas gifts, reindeer, and Santa hat-wearing gingerbread men.

In case you’re wondering what I did with this stuff, nearly all the treats were given away as gifts to relatives, my coworkers, my mother’s colleagues, and assorted friends and neighbours. The best part is that I got to sample everything I made.  

I keep saying that next year I’m not making anything, but I already know that I’m going to make another boatload of treats topped off with innumerable slabs of fudge. I'd better start planning.

A bear-eating bear and some pup-cakes

I’ve been pretty busy with work and grad school these past few months so I haven’t had much time for anything cake related. Or anything else related, really. But I do have a birthday cake and some cupcakes to share.

I made this little cake for my mother’s birthday in late June. It’s a small bear baked in a mini Wilton stand-up bear cake pan. It's about 5 inches tall. The bear is made from chocolate chip pound cake and covered in chocolate buttercream icing. The tree stump is made from the same cake and icing, and the small birthday cake on top is made from gumdrop cake covered in vanilla buttercream and decorated with mini cub gummy bears.

I made the flowers and toadstools from marshmallow fondant. I used a large flower-shaped fondant cutter as a sort of bowl and filled it to overflowing with regular gummy bears and the mini cub bears. I thought it would be fun for the bear to be eating a pile of gummy bears on her birthday. If there was a Heather-shaped candy, I'd definitely want to sit out in the grass and eat a big bowl of them on my birthday. The only thing that comes close to Heather-shaped candy is Sour Patch Kids, and they're only vaguely human looking.

Then I got bored one night a few weeks ago and made some spur-of-the-moment cupcakes for fun. These are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla and chocolate icing. I made dogs (pup-cakes!) and a boy and a girl.

 

I wanted the dogs with the collars to look like they had long, fluffy brown ears but the icing tip made it hard to get the ears to look anything other than spiky. The white dogs look like...white dogs. Terriers or something, I guess. Anyway, they tasted good. I brought the cupcakes in to work and then were all gone by 11:30 a.m. Pup-cakes for breakfast.

Pupcakes for Breakfast. That sounds like the name of a children's book.

Nan's Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

My grandmother’s birthday was yesterday so I made her a cake for her birthday dinner while she was in town.



It’s a six-inch vanilla cake with raspberry cream filling, and it’s covered and decorated with vanilla buttercream. I used Wilton’s Decorator Favorites Patterns Press Set to imprint the designs on the top and side of the cake, and then I piped over the lines with green icing. The cake has a bit of an art nouveau look to it.

I also made some little monsters.



I’ve always wanted to make cupcake monsters but I just couldn’t wait for Halloween, which seems like an appropriate time for monsters. Anyway, these are mini vanilla cupcake monsters with vanilla buttercream “fur.” The eyes are made using Smarties on which I drew pupils with a black edible ink food marker. I used Smarties and baking gum candies for noses, and baking gums dusted with green and pink Wilton Pearl Dust stuck on top of coloured toothpicks for the antennae. Some monsters have horns and noses made from blackberry cobbler candy corn. The monsters' wonky teeth are soft gummy candies that I bought at Bulk Barn. The green monsters have an extra row of teeth that I piped on with white icing.

Two Birthday Cakes (and some cupcakes)

Summer’s here. I do enjoy summer but everyone who knows me knows that fall is my favourite time of year. So for me summer is never the main event; it’s merely a light interlude between one Halloween-Birthday-Christmas time and the next.

But I do have two chocolate birthday cakes to tell you about.

My cousin turned 18 in late April and he asked me to bake him a cake for his birthday party, a cake based on the one that appears in the video game Portal. The Portal cake that I made was an 8-inch round two-layer chocolate cake filled with vanilla buttercream icing between the layers and covered in chocolate buttercream mixed with a combination of both sweetened and unsweetened toasted coconut for texture.



I had to put down a crumb coat of plain chocolate buttercream on the cake first before the outer layer of coconut chocolate buttercream was applied as the latter wouldn’t have stuck to the bare cake on its own. The cake is decorated on top with swirls of white buttercream, large red gumballs, and a single white candle.

For my mother’s upcoming birthday, I made an 8” square chocolate cake filled with chocolate buttercream icing between the layers (I baked one layer but split it to make two thin layers) and covered it in white vanilla buttercream. When I was planning this cake, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make a birthday gift cake with a fondant bow, or a candy and ice cream-themed birthday party cake. In the end, I combined the two and made a summer birthday gift and party cake.



It was my first time making a fondant bow and curlicues, which were both made from my homemade marshmallow fondant. I failed miserably at the bow, which is why I piped in some summery yellow buttercream flowers and green leaves to cover up the gaps and droopiness. Next time I’ll make the bow well ahead of time, maybe a couple days in advance, to let the loops dry thoroughly. I made this bow the day before but the loops would have benefited from a bit of extra drying time to really set up.


It was also my first time using the Wilton Script Message Press Set to create the words “Happy Birthday” on top of the cake, which I then piped over with dark lavender icing. The presses worked like a charm and it’s so much neater than my squiggly freehand piping.



The bottom border of the cake has a birthday party theme created with miniature ice cream cones, cupcakes, gifts, and candy. The little cupcakes are mini peanut butter cups from Bulk Barn that were unwrapped from their foil and topped with buttercream icing and sprinkles. For candles, I tinted some fondant yellow and formed small flame shapes and molded them to the top half of a Popeye candy stick. I made those candles the day before to let the fondant dry, and then I used an orange Wilton Food Writer marker to colour in the orange part of the flame. I only used the candy-and-fondant candles on the front cupcakes, and not on the cupcakes on the sides and back.


I used Compliments mini ice cream cones filled with a piece of store-bought Rice Krispies treat and topped that with swirls of chocolate and strawberry buttercream with a Smartie on the top. I didn’t want to fill the cones inside with buttercream because I wasn’t sure if the moisture from the icing would soften or soak through the thin, crisp cones, so I opted for the rice treat filling instead. The cones are delicate, though, so I had to form the pieces of Rice Krispies treats with my fingers first before gently pressing them down into the hollow of the cones so as not to break them.



The larger gifts are made from pieces of Rice Krispies treat covered in fondant with fondant bows, and the smaller gifts are just fondant molded into rectangular shapes. Finally, I put a row of rainbow Smarties around the perimeter of the cake just because I thought it would be pretty. And it sure is.

(P.S. I also made and decorated some mini chocolate cupcakes to bring in to work tomorrow.)

Good thing my birthday only comes once a year

I made two cakes last week. The first one was to celebrate my and a coworker's birthdays, which are only one day apart.





It’s a vanilla cake with raspberry cream filling and vanilla buttercream. I made all of the flowers myself from royal icing. It was my first time using royal icing to make cake decorations but the results were beautiful, and it was surprisingly easy to work with. My writing-with-icing skills need some work, though.

It was also my first time making lilies, but I made some roses and drop flowers, too, which in the past I've always made with buttercream icing.



I made the lilies, drop flowers and roses about 11 days in advance to let them dry out before putting them on the cake. The royal icing dries hard as a rock so it’s great for making decorations in advance.

To go with that cake, I made some mini chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and pink tinted coconut.




The other cake that I made was made for my family birthday dinner.


It’s chocolate cake covered and filled with chocolate buttercream, and it's decorated with KitKat bars cut into their individual segments (each bar has 4), assorted candies, and gingerbread people, which were part of the batch of gingerbread cookies that I showed you the last time I posted. It’s also known as a candy barrel cake and it’s pretty simple to make. Mine has the look of a family of gingerbread people taking a dip in a candy-filled hot tub or swimming pool as opposed to a barrel. The rainbow hued ribbon wrapped in a big bow around the cake helps to keep the KitKats in place.

I tried to use leftover pink buttercream to pipe on a bathing suit and cap on the gingerbread baby, and a bikini on the gingerbread mother as last-minute additions before adding them to the cake, but their swimming outfits look a little rough.




I used gummy bears, Whoppers, cookies ‘n’ creme Hershey’s Kisses, and Peanut M&Ms to decorate the top of the cake, and Smarties to decorate around the bottom, but you can use any candy you like.

I also made some Gingerbread Stuffing to go with chicken for my birthday dinner using a modified version of Nigella Lawson’s original recipe. Rather than buying the gingerbread pre-made, I made the gingerbread myself from this highly rated Old Fashioned Gingerbread recipe that I found on AllRecipes.com. I made the full gingerbread recipe but only used half of the finished baked gingerbread for the stuffing recipe as half weighed about 500g, slightly more than the amount indicated in Nigella’s recipe. I also changed Nigella’s recipe by using only half a pound of bacon, adding cranberries (soaked in hot water first to plump them), and toasted chopped walnuts. It was so good. It's like cake with bacon in it that you eat with gravy! Ridiculous.

I made mini raisin buns last week, too.




My buns never, ever look like buns. They start out in their raw doughy forms looking like buns, and no doubt they genuinely aspire to be buns, but they seem to settle into sturdy little lumps after they come out of the oven.

My autumn induced baking frenzy now appears to be over for this year. I hope. It's a good thing my birthday only comes once a year but I suppose it's my own fault for deciding to bake and decorate two cakes at the same time. I still have two more cakes to make in December, not to mention the 38,972 cookies that I have to decorate. After that I'll need a break from baking. I've earned it.

Luckily, I have good company in my kitchen. Oh, I forgot to tell you that I never bake alone! Here’s a picture of my constant kitchen companion, the Swedish Chef of The Muppets fame.


He just sits there on top of a recipe box on my kitchen table muttering jibberish and saying, “Bork! Bork! Bork!” occasionally. At least, I like to pretend he does.