Christmas Pinwheel Cookies

I just thought of giving out a short tutorial on how to make these cookies as it is slightly tricky to get that pinwheel look on the cookies. So I have given step-by-step instructions along with the images to make it more clear. Hope you enjoy doing these as much as I did!! Let's begin...

INGREDIENTS:

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup Crisco shortening + 2 tbsp water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
Red and green food or icing color

DIRECTIONS:
Step 1:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line the cookie tray with parchment or wax paper. First beat the shortening, water, and granulated sugar till it becomes light and fluffy. Then add vanilla and baking powder to this. Then gradually start adding the flour, little at a time, and bring the mixture to the consistency of the dough. Knead the dough well (add little more flour if the dough is too sticky).

Step 2:
Once the dough is kneaded well make four equal parts. Out of the four equal parts, two should remain uncolored (white). Take the other two dough balls and add the green and red color to each of it. To color the dough uniformly, break the dough ball into equal parts and add the color to each part and then knead all the parts together to form a single ball.

Step 3:
On a parchment paper sprinkled lightly with flour, place one uncolored cookie dough ball and pat it gently with the palms to form a circle. On top of this place the red dough ball and repeat the action. Once both the dough balls are equal sized, start rolling out the cookie dough until about 1/4 inch thick. Repeat the same process for the green dough ball. Then put the flattened rolled out cookie dough into the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to let it firm up a little bit. This will make it more easy to form the logs out of  it.

Step 4:
After refrigerating it for 30 minutes, start to form a log of the flattened cookie dough from one end. Just start rolling the dough from one end with the parchment paper and then slightly pull the parchment paper off so that it won't get rolled up with the dough. Continue rolling till you reach to the end. Wrap this log in the same parchment paper and let both the logs freeze for at least 1 hour.

Step 5:

After taking them out of the freezer, with a sharp knife trim the edges of the logs and cut out round cookies about 1/4 inch thick. Place them on the lined cookie sheet. Let them bake for around 12-15 minutes on 350F or until the edges are slightly golden brown (time for baking may vary with the oven).

And the final product!!!

Double Chocolate-Chip Muffins

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup of all purpose flour
2 tbsp Hershey's unsweetened coccoa powder
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup Hershey's semisweet chocolate morsels
1/4 cup mini morsels

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line muffin pan with paper liners. In large bowl mix the eggs, oil, milk and vanilla. In other bowl mix the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, and chocolate chips. Add dry mixtures to the wet ones and fold gently until just mixed. Don't beat. Pour the batter into prepared pan and sprinkle mini morsels on top of each muffin. Bake at 400C for 12-15 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on rack.

This recipe is adapted from http://www.food.com/recipe/double-choc-chip-muffins-302004 I have halved the recipe. The above recipe yields 6 regular size muffins.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Cookies

We had been to Disney World, Orlando last week and really had one of the most amazing vacation!! While roaming around in one of the Disney stores in Disney downtown, I happened to see these cookie cutters and immediately grabbed it. I knew the cookies would look "perfect" with these ones as they looked so cute in the package too. The recipe I tried out for the cookies is originally a Wilton Sugar Cookies recipe to which I made some changes and had cut the recipe to half. The cookies came out very good and tasty.

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup Crisco shortening + 3 tsp water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp nutmeg powder (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a bowl, mix the shortening, water, and sugar and beat it till it becomes fluffy and light. Then add the egg, vanilla essence, and nutmeg powder. To this add flour gradually as required and knead into dough. On a wax paper spread some flour and roll out the dough until about 3/4 inch thick and cut out the shapes you want. Bake at 400 degrees F for 5-7 minutes. If you cannot roll out the dough, refrigerate it for about 15 minutes and then proceed.

I frosted the cookies with the royal icing, the recipe for which will be found in the blog. To get the perfect red for the mickey mouse, you will need to add a good amount of red color to the white royal icing. I used the ready made black buttercream icing for the ears, so they are a little bit uneven on the surface. Using royal icing should be the best way to get it smoother. For the minnie mouse, I used the pink royal icing with the white polka dots. The cookies do look cute, don't they??

Banana Cream Cake

INGREDIENTS:

For cake:
1 box vanilla cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1 1/4 cup water

For Frosting
2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 box of instant banana cream pudding

For garnishing:
4-5 strawberries thinly sliced
12-15 sliced almonds

DIRECTIONS:
Bake the cake according to the directions on the box and let it cool completely before frosting. For the banana cream frosting, take the heavy cream and start it to beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Then add sugar, vanilla, and 1/2 box of the banana cream pudding to it. Then beat it on medium speed till it reaches the stiff peak consistency.

Frost the cake with banana cream and garnish it with the strawberries and almonds.

Modeling Chocolate Fall Decorations

With the fall just round the corner, I just thought of making some fall decorations out of modeling chocolate which can be used as toppers for cupcakes or cakes. I wanted to try the "marble effect" for the fall leaves and was really successful at the very first attempt.

For the fall leaves you will need 4-5 colored modeling chocolate balls; I had chosen green, yellow, orange, dark pink and you will need your veining tool from the modeling set tools. Now for "marbling effect" on the chocolate, take any two colors and roll them into long rods. Then put these two together and twist them around and then make them into a ball. You can also mix three colors together. Roll this ball onto a wax paper and cut out the shape of the leaf with a sharp knife along the template. If you have the metal cookie cutters the job is much more easy. Once you have cut out the leaf shape, with the thin end of your veining tool, create the veins on the leaf. Start with the center vein and then to the smaller veins. Just do this gently but with pressure, too much pressure can rip off the chocolate. For giving it a more realistic effect, just fold the leaf a bit you want it to like before letting it dry. The leaves will dry out in about 15-20 minutes. Store in an airtight container if you are not going to use them immediately.

For the pumpkins you will need orange and green modeling chocolate balls and your veining tool. Roll out the orange modeling chocolate into small ball. Then using the tip of your thumb and the first finger, press it slightly to flatten it out a little bit. Keep it on a tray and then with the larger and flat end of you veining tool, press down a little on the top of the ball to create a small pit (it should not be very deep). Then with the other end that is the thin end of the veining tool, create the lines on the pumpkin all around. For the vine of the pumpkin, roll out the green modeling chocolate into thin rope and fold it around; put this on the top of the pumpkin. These small pumpkin toppers will definitely bring cuteness to your Halloween cake or cupcakes.

Award-winning "Back To School" Cake

This was the cake I had entered in the "Sweet Treats Cake Competition" at Colnia, NJ. I received an 'Honorable Mention' award for this one. This was my first cake competition ever. The cake competition was actually a fund-raiser for the Colonia Middle School, so I had thought of making a "Back to School" cake for it.

The basic cake was a vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. I had used the box mix for baking the cakes, but I had 'doctored' it for the density of the cakes for the tiers to remain sturdy and not crack. I had found this way from this link  http://baking911.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=cakebaking&action=print&thread=2163 I had used the recipe for Extended Pound Cake. It turned out pretty good but it was more crumbly. I managed to frost the cake but it took a lot of time.

The cake decorations are all made out of modeling chocolate. The crayons, pencils, rulers, calculators, report cards everything is chocolate. Also the school bus details are created using the modeling chocolate. It took me around 4 days to bake the cakes and the chocolate decorations from scratch; but it was all worth as this was my first award winning cake!!

Angry Birds Cake

This was the cake I made for a 3-yr-old girl who simply loves "angry birds". She is allergic to milk and so her mom had got me the non-dairy frosting. It was basically a two-layered cake with the bottom layer German chocolate and the top one vanilla and the whole cake was covered in the non-dairy frosting. The frosting was Duncan Hines Frosting Creations tub. We were going to use the angry birds edible image on the cake. I shaded the sky to go along with the image. I used the tip#12 for the sky with different shades of blue using one at a time. For the grass I used the grass tip. The edible image was added about 1 hour prior to the party. The only problem I noticed was that due to the uneven surface of the sky below, the image cracked a little bit after it merged into the cake. So from next time onward I am going to keep the surface below the image plain.