The First Pie of Spring

This feels like the longest winter in history. It’s just never-ending.  I’ve been so busy since I last posted in November that most of this never-ending winter has seemed to pass by quickly, but it still feels as if it should be over by now. 

I spent part of the winter watching old episodes of Pushing Daisies each evening, a TV show that came on a few years ago about a piemaker named Ned who has the magical ability to bring dead people, animals, and plants back to life, with the catch being that he can’t touch them again or he will kill them forever. On the show, they always showed images of huge mouth-watering pies displayed in Ned’s pie shop, the Pie Hole, in the background. My favourite part of the show was when Ned’s brought-back-to-life girlfriend, Chuck (a.k.a. Charlotte) would bake pies with gruyère cheese baked into the crust and homeopathic liquid antidepressants dropped into the filling for her two mourning, cheese-loving aunts, who didn't know that she had returned from the dead. Chuck would make the pies and then have them secretly delivered to her aunts to cheer them up.

I don’t know that this winter has been bad enough to start baking antidepressants into my desserts (although putting cheese in the crust is something I definitely have to try), but in my attempt to will spring into existence, I decided to make the first pie of spring today.

It’s apple, peach and blueberry. I made half of my favourite Perfect Pie Crust recipe and I used the leftover pie dough to cut out flower and leaf shapes. I baked these on a separate baking sheet and then placed them on top of the pie once I took it out of the oven to cool.

This pie reminded me of some pies that I made in December: a Christmas chicken and broccoli pie and some starry lemon mini tarts.

For the Christmas chicken pie, I cut out small Christmas shapes (snowmen, reindeer, and stars) and baked them separately for a few minutes on a baking sheet, and then added them to the top of the pie once it came out of the oven, just like I did with the spring pie. The pie filling was made of chicken, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, garlic, milk and cheese, with flour to thicken, that was cooked ahead of time before being added to the crust.

I also made starry lemon mini tarts.

I made my own lemon curd for the tarts. These tarts were made to look like traditional British Christmas mince pies with the star on top, which I’ve never made and never tasted. There’s something about the word “mince” that turns me off. I’ve never seen mincement in the stores and I don’t know if I want to make it myself. I think I’d like to try these little tarts with a chocolate filling. Maybe Nutella with chopped, toasted hazelnuts mixed in.  Hazelnuts are pretty Christmassy.

Looking at these pictures of my Christmas pies reminds me that I still have a bunch of photos of Christmas food from last year that I haven’t had a chance to share. When I get time, I will post them. Hopefully before next Christmas.

And in case you are still digging out from this long, miserable winter and don't have access to a pie with cheese and antidepressants baked into it, here’s something that’s sure to help brighten up your day: a Mini Maestro from Kyrgyzstan who takes her conducting very seriously and very cutely.

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.

It’s been a while…

I’ve been so busy these past 6 months that I haven’t really had time to update this thing. I also had the misfortune of having my laptop crash and so I lost all of my photos of my birthday cake and my Christmas cookies and treats that I made last year.

Luckily, I still have a few photos of my Christmas Eve cake that I had saved in my email account that I can share with you.

The winter house cake was a traditional cherry pound cake with vanilla buttercream icing. I baked the cake in Wilton’s stand-up, 3D house cake pan. I made the wreath from royal icing and decorated it with sprinkles before letting it dry and attaching it to the cake. The green garlands around the door and windows were made from buttercream piped directly onto the cake and decorated with various sprinkles to look like ornaments. The snowman and the hedges were made from Rice Krispies treats molded by hand and covered in royal icing. The snowman and the icing snow on the cake board were covered in coconut to make them look fluffy. The evergreen trees were ice cream sugar cones covered in green royal icing that was piped using a star tip. I used chocolate pebbles to create the step in front of the door and for the border around the snow-covered flower beds. Originally, I wanted to dust icing sugar over the trees and the hedges to look like freshly fallen snow, but I decided against it because dusting powdered sugar never works out quite right for me. So, I left it as is. FYI, that's my Christmas tree in the background of the photo.

And here is my father’s birthday cake that I made a couple of weekends ago.

The pig pen cake is a two-layer, 8-inch brownie cake with chocolate ganache between the layers, decorated with chocolate ganache, chocolate cookie crumb "dirt," green vanilla buttercream "grass," and a pretzel fence to look like a pig pen. I made a gate for the pig pen by gluing pieces of pretzel together with royal icing and then letting it dry on a piece of wax paper. I made the pigs, vegetables, bees, ladybugs, and flowers from homemade marshmallow fondant. In case you're wondering, I made potatoes, carrots, apples, corn, cabbages, and pumpkins. Notice the pig at the top of the pen who dove right into the mud to get at his grub. All you can see are his leg, bum, and ears sticking out.

I also made some Easter brownies.

These are chocolate walnut brownies covered in a layer of chocolate ganache and decorated with homemade marshmallow fondant flowers and leaves, assorted sprinkles, and Hershey’s Eggies.

It's likely that I won't have much time to update for the next little while. For some (stupid?) reason, I applied and was accepted to another master's program. So, my cakes and cookies will be few and far between, but I'll be twice as master-y as I was before.

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.

Waiting for Spring to Spring

It's so cold this morning here in my office/craft room. Strangely, though, it feels as if winter never happened. I don't remember much about it. That's not to say that it was a good one or that it passed quickly; it was just unremarkable. And it's not as if we're having a great spring or anything that's wiping out the memory of winter. It all feels sort of...unremarkable. And yet here I am, remarking about the unremarkableness of the changing of the seasons so far this year. I'm waiting for Spring to start springing so that I can say that it has officially "sprung." If it has sprung, it has fallen flat on its backside. I guess I should stop wishing for snow days and just put away my sweaters already. Maybe that would help.

I've kept myself busy over the past few months, though. For one thing, I made some little felt magnets, which take more time than I could ever have possibly imagined. So cute yet so tedious. I made these during the winter and only just thought to take a picture of them last night.



They’re stuffed with polyester fluff so that they’re a bit plush. To get a sense of their size, the birds are about 2.5 inches wide, and the cup of tea is about 1.5 inches high. I mainly used clip art that I found online of things that I wanted to make and then resized them, printed the images, and traced the outline of those templates onto the felt. I modified this template to make the birds.



In late March, I made a 6-inch chocolate birthday cake for my father with raspberry jam filling and covered in chocolate buttercream and marshmallow fondant, which I made according to this Wilton recipe. It was my first time making fondant, and even though I only made one quarter of the recipe it turned out great.



In an attempt to make Spring feel like it was here, or at least on its way, I made mini chocolate spring cupcakes decorated with vanilla buttercream "grass", Hershey’s mini chocolate Eggies, fondant flowers, and flower sprinkles.



For Easter, I made more mini cupcakes. I made the marshmallow fondant again and used cutters to make chicks, bunnies, flowers and leaves.



And finally I made an Easter cake. It’s vanilla with raspberry jam filling and covered in vanilla buttercream.The pink icing had some raspberry flavouring added.



For some reason, the buttercream that I made didn’t turn out quite right and I wasn’t able to ice the cake to a smooth finish. In all my cake baking and decorating busyness, I likely forgot to put in the final cup of icing sugar and inadvertently made the consistency too soft. I tried to make the top look like a sky but I ended up putting a pink border around the edge to cover up the rough icing edges. Oh well. The little fondant birds don't seem to mind.

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.