No Bake Desserts

Popcorn Cake (No Bake)

February 11, 2015 by Jenn

I love popcorn. It’s my vice in the evenings. Really, it’s probably a habit that I should quit, but I just can’t quit it. Yet. But I should try. Soon. Maybe. But I like it! Years ago, my friend Kim introduced me to the wonders of popcorn with Smarties. Say what? Popcorn and chocolate? OMG, Everyday I curse and applaud her for this. Thank you dear friend.

Well, now that you have direct proof of my mental struggle with food, I will move on to the actually reason you are here reading this, and that is for the Popcorn Cake!

If you love a salty and sweet combination, which I also love, but we don’t want to get into that, this is the perfect no-bake cake for you! Start out with a basic recipe that you might find for rice krispies treats (marshmallows and butter), and add in any of your favourite small candies or chocolates, press it into a cake pan, and ta-da! A popcorn cake!

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Filed Under: Cakes, No Bake Desserts, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: birthday, birthday cake, cake, candy cake, M&M, M&M cake, movie cake, movies, No Bake, no bake cake, no-bake popcorn cake, popcorn, popcorn cake, rainbow, Rainbow cake, rainbow twizzlers, smarties, Smarties cake, sweet and salty, sweet and salty cake, twizzlers

How to Make Homemade Rock Candy

November 26, 2014 by Jenn

After making our Penguins of Madagascar cake, which used a lot of rock candy, I received many requests for a video on how to make your own homemade rock candy. So, I started practicing . . . two weeks ago! This activity takes quite a long time to grow (1-2 weeks), so be prepared a head of time if you need homemade rock candy for a project.

Making this recipe brought me back to high school chemistry and supersaturated solutions. I did not really want to go back to high school in my mind, but I had to. All for the sake of rock candy. As far as the actually creation of this recipe, it is fairly simple, and straight forward. “Supersaturation is a state of a solution that contains more of the dissolved material than could be dissolved by the solvent under normal circumstances”, thank you Wikipedia. Basically, you need to get as much sugar into the water as possible, in order to make sure that the rock candies will grow.

Tips:

ensure that the stick does not touch the bottom or the sides of the glass
make sure that the sugar has dissolved in the solution completely
add colour and flavour to make it delicious looking and tasting!

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Filed Under: No Bake Desserts Tagged With: cake decoration, candy crystals, homemade, homemade candy, penguin cake, penguins of madagascar cake, rock candy, rock sugar, sugar candy, sugar crystals, sugar sticks

Turkey Shaped Buckeye Peanut Butter Balls

November 12, 2014 by Jenn

Chocolate and peanut butter is one of my most favourite combinations! Whose isn’t it? All those people who yell at me in capital letters that they are allergic to peanut butter. I feel for you, I really do as I couldn’t imagine being without my addiction, but finding a substitution is probably something easier for you to do, than me. There is also this amazing thing called Google.

This recipe is a special one to me, as my girlfriend Melissa made it for us during a Christmas Cookie Exchange one year. Unfortunately, a number of years ago, she passed away. I felt so lucky being able to continue on using her Dad’s recipe for this creation. I know she would have loved it, and I appreciate my time that I got to spend with her, albeit too short.

You can make these traditionally by rolling the peanut butter mixture into balls, and dipping them into melted chocolate. But if you’re looking for an adorable Thanksgiving treat, you have to try these. They’re super simple, and the only thing that takes time is the setting of the chocolate. I address this in the video, but I chose to use melting wafers/almond bark as they set faster than regular chocolate.

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Filed Under: Cake Pops, Cookies, Holiday Baking, No Bake Desserts, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: american thanksgiving, buckeye balls, chocolate, chocolate turkeys, peanut butter, peanut butter balls, peanut butter chocolate, peanut butter chocolate balls, peanut butter turkey, thanksgiving, thanksgiving cake pop, thanksgiving dessert, turkey

Gourmet Caramel Apples with Homemade Caramel

October 4, 2014 by Jenn

I’ve never made caramel apples before, and in fact, I’ve never even had a caramel apple. I’ve walked by chocolate shops a million times that had the fancy apples in the windows, but for some reason I have never bought one. I probably thought it was too healthy or something . . . all that fruit and all!!

When I first set out to make the caramel, I started out trying the pre-made caramel candies, and melting them down. I tried that 3 times, and had no success. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but I had failed enough times that I said “Screw it!” and went to scratch! I should have known better and started there! The caramel is deliciously chewy and SO hard to resist dipping into it immediately, but it is HOT when it comes off the stove, so be careful.

Choose a great tasting apple to use for dipping. I went with Honeycrisp and I was worried at first that they would be too sweet with the caramel and chocolate, but they were perfect! When I took the apples to a work function, the thing that my coworkers liked best was the combination of flavours with the type of apple I had chosen.

Choosing which additional toppings to put onto the apples has endless possibilities! I chose three that I thought would make great combinations, but you can change them up however you would want to. My favourite of the three was the peanut butter one. I think it was because of the combination of saltiness of the peanut butter items and the sweetness of the caramel and apple! Whichever one you choose, they’re all delicious!!

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Filed Under: Holiday Baking, No Bake Desserts, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: apple desserts, candy apple, candy apples, caramel, caramel apples, chocolate, chocolate apples, chocolate caramel apples, fall baking, homemade caramel, oreo apples, oreo caramel apples, oreo cookies, oreos, peanut butter apples, reese's pieces, reese's pieces apples, smarties, smarties apples

Homemade Nutella: How to Make Nutella Recipe

August 16, 2014 by Jenn

Nutella. Yum. Chocolate hazelnut spread. Yum.

I only recently added Nutella into my baking life, and posted about that when I made Ferraro Rocher cupcakes. I haven’t looked back since! I enjoy the process of recipe testing and finding a way to make things in my own way, so when I needed more Nutella for an upcoming recipe, I knew I had to figure out how to make it myself.

The recipe is fairly simple, and what I like about making things homemade is that you know exactly what is in it. During my research, I started to notice that many products have ‘modified palm oil’. What in the world is that? I always have to question what a product is if you can’t buy it yourself at the grocery store. At least when I put butter in something, I know it came from a cow!

Yesterday, a story broke in Time that the price of Nutella is rising, due to the damaged hazelnut crops in Turkey (which provides 70% of the hazelnut supply!). So, grab your hazelnuts in bulk while you still can, and get making this!

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Filed Under: No Bake Desserts, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: chocolate hazelnut spread, chocolate spread, hazelnut spread, homemade, homemade nutella, How to Make Nutella, Nutella, Nutella Recipe

The Official Nanaimo Bar Recipe

August 2, 2014 by Jenn

If you’ve been following us on our Social Media sites, you will know that we were recently able to take a working “holiday” to Vancouver Island. We have already uploaded two of our three videos that we shot while we were there- Sand Dollar Sugar Cookies, and a Marshmallow Shooter– but our video today was definitely my favourite because I LOVE Nanaimo Bars!

A Nanaimo Bar is a Canadian specialty, in case you’re wondering what in the world I’m talking about. It is a three layered dessert bar that has a bottom, brownie like base with almonds and coconut, a middle vanilla custard layer, and a top layer of chocolate.

My Grandma had a Nanaimo Bar recipe that my mom and her sisters always make. I was going to use that recipe one day to make a video, but when the opportunity to head to Nanaimo presented itself, I knew I was going to have to skip Grandma’s recipe, and go for the original one.

The true origin and documented first version of the recipe cannot be found but the city of Nanaimo claims it to be theirs, as they are the namesake of this particular bar. There are other bars that are similar and ones that go by different names, but this is the version that is known to be the official Canadian Nanaimo Bar version. The first printing of the bar was documented to be in the 1952 Women’s Auxiliary to the Nanaimo Hospital Cookbook.

If you have never heard of this dessert, or never made it homemade before, you MUST stop what you’re doing and make it now. There is NO comparison to the store bought version. This version is amazing.

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Filed Under: No Bake Desserts Tagged With: deep fried, deep fried nanaimo bar, fudge, nanaimo, nanaimo bar, nanaimo bar fudge, nanaimo bar recipe, nanaimo bar trail, nanaimo bar truffles, nanaimo BC, nanaimo museum, official nanaimo bar, official nanaimo bar recipe, truffles

How to Make Lollipops and Hard Candy

July 14, 2014 by Jenn

I had never tried to make my own candy up until three weeks ago, and now, hot diggity, I’m an expert!

I was scared of the candy thermometer.

No need to be scared of it people- it is surprisingly easy! You can get away with NOT using a candy thermometer, and using the “cold water test” but I found that way unreliable.

To make your own candy you need very few ingredients- sugar, corn syrup, candy flavouring and water. You can skip the flavouring if you want, but that’s the best part! I found all of my flavours, and many more, at Bulk Barn. I know you can also find them at many online sources, while Amazon and ebay will have lots of choices for you.

The only difficulty that making homemade candy presents, is the act of patience. The liquid seems to heat up fairly quickly to 200F, and then . . . nothing. Wait, and wait, and wait while the thermometer ever so slowly climbs past 200F on it’s way to 300F! I didn’t want to leave the candy on the stove unattended, so I each time I made it, I patiently sat stirring, and watching each. and. every. notch. on. the. thermometer. rise. Once it’s up to temperature, you have to work quickly. The candy will start to harden as soon as you remove it from the heat, so you want to add your flavour and colour, and get it into the molds, or onto the pan quickly. Be careful not to touch the syrup though, as it is HOT!

Once the candy is cooled in the molds, you can easily pop them out. If you have chosen to pour it onto a pan, you can smash it up, or cut it up quite easily. Coming up at the end of this week, we will be releasing our MUCH requested Frozen cake! In order to make the Frozen cake, you need to know how to make hard candy.

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Filed Under: No Bake Desserts Tagged With: blue candy, candy, candy lollipops, candy suckers, cherry candy, Frozen, Frozen cake, Frozen movie, hard candy, how to make, how to make hard candy, how to make lollipops, lemon candy, lollipop, peppermint candy, red candy, suckers, yellow candy

How to Make Vanilla Ice Cream with KitchenAid Ice Cream Attachment

July 8, 2014 by Jenn

Making homemade ice cream is a tutorial that I have been wanting to do for forever!! I love ice cream. Unfortunately it doesn’t love me. But, I keep coming back to it, expressing my love, and never ending commitment. It doesn’t matter. It wants nothing to do with me.

Also having love and devotion for my KitchenAid mixers, I had my sights set on the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment. I had seen it for over a hundred dollars from a couple of stores, so when I found it on sale for $90 CAD, I ordered it right away from Golda’s Kitchen, which is an online baking supply store in Canada.

I was set to love this attachment. I always do that to myself. I set myself up for adoration, and when it doesn’t live up to my level of love, I’m disappointed. I think I thought that this attachment would magically make ice cream, pretty much instantaneously. But, you actually have to MAKE ice cream! Well, duh Jenn . . . life is not meant for laziness!

In my naivety, I thought I would just have to throw the ingredients into the freeze bowl and turn it on, and viola, ICE CREAM. Nope, not how’s it done. You have to warm and cook the creams, sugar and eggs, and THEN you can throw them into the freeze bowl?! NOPE. You have to chill the warm mixture first for eight hours, and THEN you can throw the mixture into the freeze bowl?! YES! Finally.

Other than the fact that this machine is not a magic machine, I liked it. You have to be prepared though since many of the steps require freezing and chilling. The freeze bowl needs to be completely frozen before using it, and in the directions it says not to take the bowl out of the freezer until you are ready to pour the cream in- and they mean it. I tested that accidentally. If the freeze bowl is not completely frozen, the ice cream will not freeze, no matter how much you stir it, will it, or scream at it. Trust me on that one.

I would also like to make a comment to the parts “namers” at KitchenAid . . .”freeze bowl”, “dasher”, “driver”. . . seriously KitchenAid? You couldn’t have found better names for these parts? It took me like a million takes to get those names right! It felt like I was reading off Santa’s reindeer.

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Filed Under: No Bake Desserts Tagged With: homemade, homemade ice cream, homemade vanilla ice cream, ice cream, ice cream maker, KitchenAid, KitchenAid ice cream maker, vanilla, vanilla ice cream

Popcorn Cake (No Bake)

How to Make Homemade Rock Candy

Turkey Shaped Buckeye Peanut Butter Balls

Gourmet Caramel Apples with Homemade Caramel

Homemade Nutella: How to Make Nutella Recipe

The Official Nanaimo Bar Recipe

How to Make Lollipops and Hard Candy

How to Make Vanilla Ice Cream with KitchenAid Ice Cream Attachment

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