Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio

Italian Peach Cookies (Pesche Dolci)

December 22, 2014 by Jenn

When Paul and I first started dating, Christmas was only two months into our relationship. Can you say awkward? I had no idea what to buy him and ended up getting him some gift certificates to somewhere I don’t even remember. It was a total cop-out, but I didn’t know him well enough to get him something more personal.

During that first Christmas, I tried my first Italian Peach Cookie. It was amazing! When Italians get together, there is never a shortage of food. Never. A dessert tray is no different from a main course or the third, or the fifth- there is always a ton of food. The cookie platter that held the peach cookies, had a bunch of other pastries and sweets as well, so I’ve got a lot of cookies to replicate in the years to come.

Finally last year, I tried to replicate the peach cookies on my own, without help (my stubbornness shining through!) and didn’t succeed. This year, with my Mother In Law in better spirits (she has had some heart problems in the past), I approached her about teaching me, and then teaching everyone in a YouTube tutorial. Being that she is 80 years old, she has no idea what YouTube is, and barely understands a computer. But, being the strong, confident woman that she is, she was willing to do something that she didn’t really understand the purpose behind. She has been wanting to help us for years in our business, and she was so happy to finally be able to do so.

Paul and I will cherish this video for many years to come, and we are so lucky to have been able to include Pina in our tutorial.

Christmas Cake with Snowman Macarons: Collab with Sugarcoder

December 20, 2014 by Jenn

Merry Christmas everyone! This is our last Christmas tutorial video for 2014, so I hope that you enjoy it.

For a special Christmas video this year, I joined up with my friend Miki who has the YouTube channel Sugarcoder. I was fortunate enough to have met Miki early this year, way back in February. She lives in San Francisco and flew to LA to meet Paul and I when we were filming at YouTube Space LA. She is one of the happiest and sweetest people I have met. She is always sending me presents . . . that’s not why I like her, but it speaks to her thoughtfulness.

Miki previously had a different YouTube channel (Miki’s Pantry) and recently started this new one as it was more true to the brand that she wanted to convey. I think that it was very brave of her to leave behind 60K subs to start all over again!

Making this cake is basically just assembling many prepared pieces. The links to everything you need to have prepared are in the recipe below, so make sure to check that out. I found that the candy canes were mostly broken inside their wrappers, so I opted to leave the wrappers on the candy canes in order to not have to deal with that issue. Just ensure that they are clean before placing them on to the cake.

Making macarons has always been a challenge for me, so when you head over to Miki’s channel, Sugarcoder, and try out her recipe, don’t get discouraged if you don’t succeed the first time. The first time I made french macarons, I failed four times until I got it right. Miki’s recipe is simple to follow, and she learned it first hand from a chef in San Francisco. Give it your best effort, and remember to keep practicing if you’re not successful the first time. Have fun!

Surprise Inside Christmas Cake: Vertical Striped Cake

December 13, 2014 by Jenn

Merry Christmas! We’re only a couple of weeks away from the big day, and I’m sure you’ll need some sort of dessert to help celebrate. This vertical cake roll will impress the jolly man in the red suit, and all your other guests!

This cake roll is something a little different than the regular type of roll you might be used to. Instead of traditionally rolling up the cake by the width, this cake is rolled up length ways in small strips to create a large roll. It gets a little messy when you roll this cake up but it’s kinda fun to get dirty sometimes, right? It’s fun to roll it up!

As far as fillings for inside the cake roll go, it’s best to work with a light filling, such as whipping cream, but you could also use a fruit filling, and if you prefer, you could try buttercream, but I’m not sure how that would affect the ability of the cake to roll. I had decided that since there was so much buttercream around the outside of the cake, and using something different for the inside was probably best. It is also really easy to roll up whipping cream as opposed to other fillings.

Decorating the outside of the cake can be done however you want, and I’m sure my viewers and readers have great ideas! I liked the way the ribbons up the side of the cake we soft looking and very festive. Anything themed for the season would be great for this holiday type of cake!

Starbucks Peppermint Mocha Cupcakes

December 10, 2014 by Jenn

As you probably know by now, I have a slight additction to Starbucks drinks. In the fall, I love me a PSL, and when the winter time hits, it’s either a Peppermint Mocha Light, or a Gingerbread Latte, half sweet, non-fat, no whip. Yep, I’m that girl. Slightly high maintenance, but since I’m paying $5 a drink, I feel I’m entitled to a bit of choosiness.

Back in September, I made a Pumpkin Spice Latte drink into a cupcake (see it here), and our viewers really seemed to enjoy that, and so many people requested that I do another cupcake. Since the peppermint mocha seemed to be popular, and a drink that I already enjoyed, I decided to make that!

The chocolate and peppermint combination in this treat is perfect for any holiday celebration you might be attending. Bring cupcakes to a Christmas event can be a nice change from the normal assortment of cookies trays that are found in abundance around this time of year.

The swirl affect of the icing looks super hard, but it’s actually really easy! In simple terms, all I do to create that effect is to “stripe” the bag with gel paste prior to putting the white buttercream into the piping bag. I have shown viewers how to do that before when I made a Skittles cupcake, and I will also use it again in a video up loading this weekend!

I hope you enjoy this tutorial, have a very Merry Christmas!

Grinch Christmas Cupcakes (Candy Melt Drawing)

December 6, 2014 by Jenn

Next to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and Love Actually, How the Grinch Stole Christmas is up near the top of my favourite Christmas movies. I’ve definitely been watching my share of Christmas movies already this year, as I decorate and think up new cake ideas. It helps put me in the mood. It’s for research people!

I love the Grinch book more than the movie. If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you might have heard that statement a couple of posts ago in regards to Hunger Games! It’s the teacher in me. I prefer the books. Dr Seuss had a magical mind, and he was able to put it into the pages of many books for us to read. He is the creator of the original Grinch story if you didn’t know that the Grinch existed before Jim Carrey brought him to life in the movie.

Making these Grinch toppers is super simple. You only have to be good at tracing! Who can’t trace something?!?! Everyone can! The link to the download is posted below in the recipe area.

I knew I was going to be making these cupcake toppers this year, as they were on my list from last year, so I ordered the lime green melting wafers from Wilton a couple of months ago. You might even be lucky and able to find them on clearance in the Halloween section of a craft store! I don’t have any stores like that where I live, so I had to be planned.

For the other chocolates, I use Merckens melting wafers that I buy from the store Bulk Barn in Canada. True chocolate purists will say that it is not actually chocolate, and technically they would be right, but for a project like this, there is no point in tempering and colouring pure chocolate. That would add a ton of work, and time to the idea. If you’ve got more time than me, by all means, I’d love to see you do it, and I would be so proud of you.

The heart sprinkles were an addition that I thought completed the cupcakes. But if you don’t like them, you don’t have to add them. I get asked that type of question in the comments on YouTube all the time- if it’s a decorating element, you can decorated however you want, but, if it’s a recipe element, you need to follow the directions to be successful.

Merry Christmas, I hope you enjoy these cupcakes!

Sugar Cookie Christmas Tree

December 3, 2014 by Jenn

Recently, we were asked by the local cable company, Shaw TV, to come and do an interview with us while I baked with one of the hosts, James Farnan. I agreed immediately, as we had worked with both of the crew members before, and James happens to be our neighbour. We know that he likes to mow the lawn at 10:30 PM- when we’re trying to film- and it’s dark! Who does that?? Just James. It must be an Australian thing. He’s awesome! We had a great time filming and joking with each other!

When we started our baking business, way back in 2011/12, Shaw TV came to interview us back then. We did the interview in the kitchen space we were renting, so this time, we were all crammed into our kitchen, both filming a video for our respective channels. Shaw TV will have their piece airing on local television during the week before Christmas, and they’ll also have their video uploaded to their YouTube channel at that time.

Making this sugar cookie Christmas Tree is skill wise quite simple, but it does take a day or so to bake, ice and allow to dry. So plan accordingly. It is an excellent activity that can be done with kids, as they can take part in the recipe creation, cutting and rolling of the cookies, as well as the decorating portions.

The first task is to cut out the cookies. Each cutter (there are 10 of them) need to be used twice, to cut out 2 cookies per star size, so all in all, you will be icing 20 star cookies. You can ice them with royal icing like I did, or you could use buttercream. I chose royal icing as I wanted to have a more smooth look to my tree, but if you’re doing this activity with kids, you could easily use buttercream for them to decorate with.

Once the icing has dried, the next step is to stack the tree, and this is done from largest cut out, to the smallest one. Each star should be offset on the previous star. In order to “glue” the stars together, place a small dollop of royal icing in between each cookie. Once it is dried, you can wrap a small line of LED battery operated Christmas lights around the tree, and continue to decorated as you wish. In order to get larger “ornaments” onto the tree, I used melted green chocolate as the royal icing wasn’t strong enough.

Hopefully you enjoy this Christmas treat!

The Hunger Games Cake: Katniss Wedding Dress Cake

November 29, 2014 by Jenn

I adore the Hunger Games books. Adore them. I also love the movies, but as with most book to movie conversions, the book is better than the movie!

With Mockingjay out in theatres, I knew I had to make another Hunger Games video. I have previously made Mockingjay cupcakes, and Catching Fire cake pops, so I wanted to do something more epic! I knew it had to be in cake form, as I had already made cupcakes and cake pops, and one of my favourite parts of the Catching Fire movie was the scene in which Katniss is wearing her wedding dress and transforms into the Mockingjay. That scene is where the inspiration for this cake comes from.

From the bottom up- the bottom is the black feathers of the mocking jay, which leads up to the flames and finishes off with the remaining top of the wedding dress.

This is a challenging cake to make if you don’t have much cake decorating experience, BUT with the video tutorial I know that all levels can make it successfully. Planning ahead is important with a cake of this size, and with one of this many elements. The feathers need to have time to dry, so they can be prepped days, if not weeks ahead of time. The candies can be melted a couple of days ahead of time as well, though I don’t recommend more than a week ahead as the candy gets a bit sticky. You can also make the royal icing lace portion days, to weeks ahead as well, as it requires time to dry and doesn’t go bad. Bake and freeze the cakes the night before you want to use them, and prep the icings the morning you want to decorate. If everything is ready to assemble, the actually decorating and assembly of the cake is very straightforward. You can use any decorating technique to ice the cake, and you can also just simply slap it on with a spatula.

I’m looking forward to watching the new Mockingjay movie, now that the initial crowds have left the theaters! I hope you enjoy this Hunger Games cake.

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!

Italian Peach Cookies (Pesche Dolci)

Christmas Cake with Snowman Macarons: Collab with Sugarcoder

Surprise Inside Christmas Cake: Vertical Striped Cake

Starbucks Peppermint Mocha Cupcakes

Grinch Christmas Cupcakes (Candy Melt Drawing)

The Hunger Games Cake: Katniss Wedding Dress Cake

How to Make Homemade Rock Candy

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