Tag: cake decorating

Recipes, Mary

lemon “tea” cookies (with actual tea)

Our lemon tree is seriously overflowing with lemons right now. I keep thinking “I need to make lemon stuff!” and this was just one way to get it done. I pulled 5 lemons off the tree for this recipe – but I really probably only needed 4. They’re kind of extra lemon-y, but since they’re Meyer lemons, they’ve still got a hint of sweetness to them.

pretty-lemon-tea-cookies

I brought in little baggies of cookies for my co-workers with a little note on them:

cookies-with-note

My co-worker, Lauren said, “It’s like a tasty little window of hope in my day” when she tried one of the cookies. Is that a shining  endorsement or what!?

gevalia-lemon-berry-tea

These lemon tea cookies aren’t just a clever title either. You can eat them with tea, but they have actual tea in them, too. I used some Lemon Berry Breeze tea from Gevalia – which is a Lemon Raspberry Tea.

lemon-berry-breeze-bits

The tea comes in tea bags and this is what it looks like poured out of the bag. Many little flecks of tea!

cookie-log

I didn’t do the step-by-step (oooh, baby) photos this time, but here’s the cookie log.

cookie-dough-tea-bits

You can see the specks of the Lemon Berry Breeze tea in the dough! The recipe I used said to chill the dough and then roll it out and cut out cookies. Pfftt. I hate rolling out cookies. I just sliced off pieces from the log – way quicker! You just have to be careful to make them all about the same thickness otherwise you could get a couple of “well baked” ones (yes, I burned a couple of too thin ones. They became dog biscuits).

powdered-sugar-vitamix

I also discovered I had no powdered sugar in the house. Which was weird, since I usually buy powdered sugar when I don’t even need it anymore. I wondered how easy it would be to make my own, and a quick Google search told me that I could make powdered sugar in the Vitamix in about 60 seconds. Using only sugar!

I was disbelieving until I actually tried it – and no joke, it takes about a minute! You just pour 1 cup of sugar into the Vitamix and put the variable to “1” and switch it on – and slowly turn the variable up to “10”. You can then switch it on high for a few seconds but I found that at this point it was already totally powdery. I was instantly in awe and vowed to never buy powdered sugar again.

iced-lemon-tea-cookies

With my homemade powdered sugar in hand, I made a quick glaze with lemon juice and lemon peel. I love how bright the peel is! I started spooning the glaze onto the cookies until I figured out dipping was quicker and more efficient (and results in less glaze all over the damn place).

lemony-tea-cookies-plate

These cookies are crispy, buttery, and chock full of lemon flavor. Next time, I might try emphasizing both flavors in the tea – the lemon and the raspberry – with maybe a raspberry glaze on the cookie. I couldn’t taste the tea all of that much, but all of my co-workers seemed to be able to detect it (though, my sinuses and taste buds were still kind of jacked up from this killer-never-ending virus/cold thing I’ve got going on). I would maybe up the tea a little, too, by adding in any extra bag for extra “oomph”.

Recipe below! Continue reading “lemon “tea” cookies (with actual tea)”

Mary, Recipes

peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread

Sometimes you get lonely, over ripened, sad bananas. But they’re not sad! They’re happy! Because they can be transformed from their sad, mushy state into something wonderful, like banana bread. Even people who don’t like bananas (*ahem*, me) like banana bread so you can’t go wrong here.

very-ripe-bananas

Sometimes you’ll start thinking about things you never think about, like Elvis (because someone in your house was recently watching an Elvis movie marathon) and then you’ll make the magical connection of peanut butter and bananas and wonder if it would taste good as a bread.

And then you’ll do it.

And then you’ll discover that maybe Elvis was onto something here.

But you still won’t eat a peanut butter banana sandwich since you still don’t like bananas.

And then you’ll write a blog post about it.

And then you’ll think, “Maybe I should just get on with it then.”

And you will.

Also – pardon the iPhone photos. I was too lazy to go upstairs to get my real camera. *sigh*

peanut-butter-chocolate-banana-bread

This bread has chocolate chips in it. And peanut butter chips! And a good hefty amount of peanut butters. And of course, those mashed bananas.

slice-closeup

When warm, the chips are kinda melty… and the peanut butter chips give that extra “oomph” of peanut butter goodness. Most of the sweetness here comes from the natural sugars in the bananas, too, so you don’t have to add a ton of sugar to this recipe. Continue reading “peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread”

Baking, Mary, Recipes

stabby broken glass cupcakes for halloween

For Halloween this year, my work held a baking contest! I can’t tell you how excited I was about this. I started browsing around on Pinterest for ideas the day I found out the contest was happening to help me find a decorating idea. I stumbled upon some images of broken glass cupcakes… and I knew I wanted to do something similar to that.

I’d seen Dexter themed cupcakes with the glass slides and a dot of red in the middle, but I wanted to do something slightly easier than trying to make perfect sugar rectangles. The broken glass sounded challenging but without the requirement of symmetrical lines. Broken glass easily became the winner.

First I made red velvet cupcakes using Brown Eyed Baker’s recipe (but doubled).

Don’t you just love the color of red velvet cupcake batter? It’s so bright! And perfect for bloody, stabby cupcakes.

Once the cupcakes were done and cooling, it was time to start making the “glass”.

You basically just need to dump sugar, corn syrup, water and cream of tartar into a pan and mix it until it’s incorporated. It’ll look like a big, weird mess and you’ll start to think to yourself, “I have no idea how this is going to become candy.” Put your disbelief aside and crank that sucker until you get a hot, boiling mess.

Having a thermometer is pretty important when you’re making candy. I didn’t have a candy thermometer, so I had to steal the one out of our BBQ grill outside. Improvising: it works.

Make sure you’ve got a baking sheet ready (I put a silpat on the bottom of my baking sheet for extra protection) during the last stages of your candy making process. You want to start watching it like a hawk when it starts getting closer. Let your bubbling, hot, sugary mess get up to 300 degrees and then pull it off the stove.

Quickly pour the mass of sugar onto your prepared baking sheet.

Get every drop out!

And let your hot, sugary candy sit until it cools down. You’ll be able to feel it when it’s ready for the next step – it’ll be a little sticky but hard to the touch. I think I waited 15-20 minutes for it to cool down before moving onto the next step.

I first used a mini mallet (like the ones you use to crack crab legs) on the candy, but that made it far too splintered.

A butter knife ended up being my stabbing implement of choice – it created much better cracks and was easier to control as I broke up the glass. I tried to create a variety of sizes and pieces, often rebreaking larger pieces to create smaller glass-like pieces.

I stuck various sized pieces and shapes into the cupcakes creating shards.

Then I created an “edible blood” made with corn syrup, corn starch, water and food coloring to create a bloodied effect on top of my pristine, white cream cheese frosting.

The effect turned out quite well, making the cupcakes look like they were bleeding out from the stabby shards of broken glass.

My co-workers seemed to enjoy the cupcakes enough to award me first place that day – woohoo!

This is my first place prize – a mixer with a $50 gift card to Vons inside!

Want to make your own candy glass? Instructions below! Continue reading “stabby broken glass cupcakes for halloween”

Mary, Baking

repost: zombie graveyard cake for halloween

Halloween is right around the corner! And if you need a rockin’ cool cake to make for your Halloween party (or any other zombie related event), you should try your hand at making a zombie graveyard cake. It’s not too bad to make this sucker and the best part is that is doesn’t have to look neat – zombies like gorging on flesh, they’re not exactly concerned with how they look, you know.

This is a repost from my old craft blog that I decided to port over here for the holiday. Enjoy!

[zombie graveyard – view one]

The cake is a yellow cake with vanilla pastry cream (dyed red) and fresh strawberries in the middle with chocolate frosting.

[zombies coming up out of the dirt]

Continue reading “repost: zombie graveyard cake for halloween”

Mary, Recipes

berry crumb pie aka i think i love pie

I have been on some kind of pie making kick lately. In the last few months I’ve made a blueberry pie, 2 strawberry pies, this berry crumb pie and last weekend I made an apple strawberry pie.

Compare this to last year, where I made approximately zero pies.

I think I might love pie after all.

I really want to make mini pies now. I must experiment!

This pie makes use of the bounty of the season with fresh strawberries and blueberries. It’s summer! You should bask in the glory of summer berries!

These are some of the ingredients you need. Flour and sugar were too shy for the line up. Also: that Speculoos filled chocolate bar doesn’t go into the pie. It’s just for eating while you make the pie.

It’s there for support.

I like making the crumb topping first. Flour, sugar, cinnamon, soft butter. If you’re feeling giddy, add in some oatmeal.

You can stir this if you want, but I chose to just squish it that day. Squissssssssh.

It ends up looking a little coarse and crumbly, like this. You can also just melt the butter and stir, but what’s the fun in that?
Continue reading “berry crumb pie aka i think i love pie”

Mary, Recipes

peanut butter + chocolate rice krispies treats

I kind of want to go and make these again. Right now.

These are super tasty and super easy treats that you can make. I brought them to the San Diego Food Blogger’s Bake Sale last month and am finally getting around to posting about them! I first spied this on Brown Eyed Baker’s website and knew I had to try it.

Peanut butter and chocolate is, after all, one of my all time favorite combinations.

Make the rice krispies!

Get yourself a bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups. You can tell this was right after Easter, since I used peanut butter eggs instead. They were on clearance! And yes, you need a whole bag.

Continue reading “peanut butter + chocolate rice krispies treats”