a little bit savoury | a whole lot sweet
I was in a biscuit making mood recently and although I initially thought of something chocolate, I recalled a cinnamon flavoured biscuit with a funny name and was pretty sure I saw a recipe on one of my favourite blogs.
So I headed over to Sally’s website, Sally’s Baking Addiction, and did a search for Snickerdoodles and a number of recipes appeared. The one I ended up choosing was the soft and thick snickerdoodles, because let’s face it, they look amazing (as does everything on Sally’s blog)!
For this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge, it was time for me to try something that I had been wanting to for a while now. Whoopie Pies are an American treat which you don’t see much of here in Australia, well at least in my part of the world and are a cross between a cookie and a cake with two of them being sandwiched together by some kind of sweet filling.
For my Whoopie Pies, I originally thought of red velvet given my obsession but as it was the silly festive season I decided to make some Christmas Candy Cane Whoopie Pies instead using a recipe from JoyofBaking.com.
I still have half a bottle of crème de menthe sitting in cupboard which is slowly being used up since making the Purple Corset Cake. One day the hubby came across a recipe for chocolate dipped crème de menthe marshmallows on the interweb and encouraged me to make them. I didn’t have the right amount of gelatine required in that particular recipe, so I turned to my copy of Marshmallow Madness by Shauna Sever (where the Chocolate Malt Marshmallows came from) and lo and behold there was a recipe for Crème de Menthe Marshmallows so I got to work.
One of my favourite flavour combinations in this world happens to be “cookies and cream”. Generally, if there is something cookies and cream flavoured I will try it at least once, whether it is chocolate (Hershey’s is my top pick), ice cream (Connoisseur is the ONLY brand as far as I am concerned) or as a cupcake.
Now I have tried a lot of cupcakes and am still yet to find my favourite so I thought it would be an opportune time to attempt my own Oreo cookies and cream cupcakes.
Given all the red velvet goodies that I make, there is always buttermilk left over that I need to find a use for. Recently, I strayed from my tried and true scone recipe and found a recipe for buttermilk scones on Taste.com.au to try with very pleasing results.
Luckily for me the official scone tester, my father-in-law, was coming around to help the hubby with a couple of projects and he is always willing to be a guinea pig for my cooking. Especially when it comes to scones.
Man v. Food has to be one of the shows that I like and hate all at the same time. The hubby on the other hand absolutely loves it and drools with envy for every bite that Adam Richman takes. In one of the episodes of Man v. Food Nation (Season 1, Episode 17 for those of you playing at home), Adam visited a food truck in New York by the name of Wafles and Dinges where they serve traditional Belgian waffles topped with everything under the sun including a pulled pork combination which immediately won the hubby’s heart.
Hence we borrowed my mother-in-law’s waffle maker and for the first time used the mancake recipe for the batter. They were delicious, but a little heavy so the hunt was on for not only a waffle maker for us, but for a traditional Belgian waffles recipe.
I am quite addicted to piping a rose pattern having honed my skills on a wedding cake, a cake for the local Inner Wheel group as well as on the top of cupcakes. So why not use the same technique for biscuits? The blog that inspired the rose pattern posted some Neapolitan Spritz Cookies earlier this year and I knew straight away that I had to make them. Although I didn’t package them quite the way Amanda at i am baker did (which is super cute), I did show them off on my new high tea stand so these Chocolate Rose Biscuits with Rose Water Buttercream could be part two of my high tea series.
Can you believe that on Wednesday it will be one year since I published the first post about My Best Friend’s Wedding Cake? It is just absolutely crazy.
So for my celebratory post on my first blogiversary (as those in the biz call it) I thought I would share the cupcakes that inspired the cake that inspired the blog. These red velvet cupcakes are always popular whenever I make them, so much so that I made over 300 of them one weekend for a bunch of my brother’s friends. I absolutely adore everything about them.
Hi. My name is Cath, and I am a cupcake-a-holic.
As you may have gathered, I love to cook, and especially bake. I do love all kinds of baking, but at the end of the day, as much as I love macarons, cakes, biscuits and brownies, my true love is cupcakes. They are cute little packages of delight, sure to bring a smile to anyone’s dial. For years and years and years and years they have been my go to treat and a few of the many varieties I have made are lemon and lime, red velvet (it started the whole red velvet craze in my world), chocolate, lemon meringue and the trusty old vanilla. I love cupcakes that much that I have cupcakes on my dressing gown, apron, two bags, a tea towel and a cupcake shaped plate. I am also going to be getting a vinyl sticker for a wall in my kitchen that reads “love and cupcakes are all you need” after seeing a print that Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction received. So yes, a little obsessed over here.
So for my first foray back into the cupcake world after a long hiatus, I asked my friend C what her favourite chocolate bar was to inspire a cupcake for her birthday. Originally I was going to call these Turkish Delight cupcakes (as that was the answer to my question), and I guess I sort of can because the flavour is essentially there. But when you search for Turkish Delight cupcakes on the interweb, there usually is Turkish Delight in/on them. So I am going to go with the much longer name of Chocolate Cupcakes with Rose Buttercream. Phew!
So the home made soft pretzels have been a hit in our house since they made their first appearance on the weekend we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Since then, I believe we have made them three or four times, with two of those being a double batch (so 24 of the things).
One afternoon, we were making them for the hubby’s folks as well as a friend of his and were wanting another dipping sauce to go with the mustard. The hubby’s choice was a cheese sauce so I ran with it.