Totally Fun Gingerbread

The Kids had a ball doing these.

For icing I used the same icing as I did for the Sugar Cookies see recipe here and decorator gels I bought at Golda's...NOT a good idea. They work really well but don't dry well so....it's taking forever to set. This morning some are still sticky.  The icing is fine, just don't use the gels.

Ingredients

3 cups Flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground cloves

2/3 cup butter

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1 egg

Instructions:

Stir together, flour, ginger, soda, cinnamon, salt, cloves and set aside.

 

Beat butter, add brown sugar, molasses and beat until combined. Add in the egg and mix well. Add in the flour mixture slowly and mix until just combined.

Divide dough in half, cover, and refridgerate for about an hour or so. Roll to 1/4 " thick on floured surface and cut out your various cookies.

Bake at 375 for 6-7 minutes. Lightly greased cookie sheets or parchment papered.

Have fun painting them with the kidlets. That's all I got for you at the moment. Have a few more I"m going to try this week I think. All of these recipes freeze really well.

Graduation Cake 2009

Today is my son's graduation from Middle school. Plans for this cake went somewhat sideways and we lost power for several hours. So much for more fondant to embellish it.

I don't do the parent volunteer thing at school so my contribution is baking.

This cake is a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing. Hats and scrolls were made from the remainder of fondant from the cell phone cake on Monday. A bit quick of an icing job but I'm really pressed for time on this one.

Hopscotch Brownies (Caramel/Butterscotch Brownies)

I began my love of the kitchen as a child. My mother would let me help her make cookies, and cakes and such. When I was about 10, friends from Ireland came to visit for the summer. With them they brought me a cookbook called "The Kitchen Wizard", complete with matching apron. A treasure of a book full of fun recipes for kids. I made sponge toffee, pull taffy, hard candies, all kinds of treats. It was a challenge though as all the measurements were in metric/grams. Managed to convert my favorites and now fortunately have a conversion scale in the kitchen.
Clearing out some old boxes I found my beloved childhood recipe book. It brought back many fond memories of the hours spent in the kitchen with my mom and friends.

This was always one of my favorite recipes. It has actually been doubled as my son has it to memory and dictated it to me. He has taken over the Butterscotch Brownie tradition in the house and has mastered it. If you wish a smaller batch cut the recipe in half.
By the way, he has announced I must credit him with mastering the perfect brownie, so I shall, as he does indeed make a perfect butterscotch brownie.

Butterscotch Brownies Recipe

1/2 cup butter
2 cups light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs (large)
1 1/2 cups white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup crushed pecans (optional)

Melt butter in a medium saucepan at medium.

Enter in the brown sugar and stir the mixture until all the brown sugar becomes wet from the melted butter.

Put the eggs into the substance with the vanilla extract and continue to stir until neither are visible.

Add the flour, baking powder, and salt into the mixture and stir until the dry ingredients are fully mixed and the substance will appear a light brown colour that is a little difficult to mix.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Pour the mixture into a parchment paper lined 9 X 13 cakepan and make sure that the mixture covers the entire bottem of the pan.

When the oven is ready, put the cakepan into the oven for 25 minutes.

When ready, let the brownies cool and cut after about 10-15 minutes. These are really good cooled but absolutely amazing when still warm.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention how wonderful this old cookbook is. It is now out of print but is titled Kitchen Wizard by Deborah Jarvis. I must thank Ms. Jarvis for introducing me to my love of baking in a fun entertaining way. The book is divided into sections to teach kids how to prepare ingredients such as "Basic Abracadabra", and Tricks of the Trade.

The recipes are divided into fun sections such as A Munchkin Brunch, Lunch in Lilliput, Huckleberry Finn Raft Picnic, A Boston Tea Party, Smugglers Snacks, Dinner with Davy Crocket, and Eskimorsels. All recipes have fun names such as "Flying Monkey Muffins", "Playing Hookey Cookies", and Huckleberry Buckle. My daughter now uses my old Apron and Deborah is now passing this love on to another generation. If anyone ever sees a copy of this in a used book store be sure to pick it up. It's wonderful.

How to make a LadyBug Cake

We made this cake for my Daughter's 8th Birthday. Her class had just finished a rousing performance of "Going Buggy" and she was the kidnapped Ladybug. She wowed her dad and I (who thought she was tone deaf to be honest) with a spectacular solo, belting out "that's no way to treat a ladybug" complete with the required "Don't mess with this gal" attitude. She brought tears to my eyes, not only in pride but also because I forgot the video camera...I have "part" of her performance thanks to a neighbour.

In honour of this we decided on a ladybug cake for her class. It was a hit and was really quite simple to make

Okay...here ya go. HAVE FUN!!!!!

The icing is just a simple buttercream. 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup shortening, 4 cups of icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla. Whip the butter, shortening, add one cup of icing sugar, whip again, add vanilla, whip, add icing sugar one cup at a time. Add a tablespoon of milk at a time to get a good consistency. I also add about 2 tblsp of clear corn syrop to help with consistency before adding the milk.






9 x 13 pan for leaf

Pans for the round body of ladybug (ended up with an extra one...the kids enjoyed it)

Baking (please ignore the dirty oven). Most of the pans I use are Wilton's and my favorite Baking Store...Golda's Kitchens.



Leaf cut out and iced. TIP: You can do two things to avoid the crumbs in the icing.

One: do a thin layer of icing with crumbs in it. Put in fridge for awhile until it gets harder then ice on top of it
Two: Take a jar of apricot or apple JELLY (not jam), nuke it until it's liquidy and brush it over the cakes. Let cool for about 1/2 hour in the fridge and you'll get no crumbs. It also helps to adhere the icing to the cake






Ladybug body done. Transfer onto leaf with a spatula



Body added. I made the head with an extra piece of cake, iced it and added. I filled in spots I missed with icing from a bag to avoid crumbs




Polka dots and such added with an icing bag. (if you don't have one you can always use a ziploc bag and cut a very small hole in the corner to make a tip.



Final embellishments. Little lady bugs made of marshmallow fondant. I'll type up the recipe for you. (easy peasy and it tastes like the inside of an oreo cookie) These are stuck on with toothpicks


For Fondant icing.
This one is a little trickier but after you make it once it's pretty easy. It molds like playdoh and rolls out super thin. It's paintable with food colouring and the possibilities are endless.

Here is the recipe I use. THis is a copy of a post in a cake decorating forum that I go to for ideas. Bunnywoman was the originator of this recipe.
The recipe is as follows:

Marshmallow fondant
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 tbsp water
1 1/2- 1 3/4 cup powder sugar

Place marshmallows in a standard 1 cup measuring cup and push down and pack them in. Place in a microwave safe bowl and add the water. Put in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Just long enough for them to soften and puff up. Take out and stir with a spoon until it is combined well. At this point it looks kind of soupy. Then add the sugar and mix and fold until all is incorporated and it is no longer sticky. I take it out of the bowl when it gets to the point where most of the sugar is incorporated and I knead it in my hands. This takes roughly about 5-7 minutes. Take a fondant roller or a regular rolling pin and roll out just as you would Wilton's fondant. You can get this fondant almost paper thin and it also repairs well. It's cheap, easy to work with, and tastes great too.

You can make a large batch of this fondant as well by doing this:

Large batch of Marshmallow fondant
1- 16 oz bag of mini marshmallows
2 tbsps water
2 lbs powdered sugar (8 cups)

Do the same procedure as above.



Tips for success from Bunny:
I add any flavor Lorann Oil flavorings to this. Something that will compliment my cake well. What I do is cut back on the water and add about 1/8 tsp Lorann flavoring. You can certainly add more (especially if I make the large batch) for a more of a pungent flavor, just adjust the water amount accordingly. *****The more liquid you add to this will make it stickier to work with. Try to be accurate in measuring the liquid.*****

Stickiness??????
If it is way to sticky to work with then cut back on the amount of liquid that you used by about 1/2 tsp. This will help.
Let it sit out and "air dry" for about 10 minutes.
Use a small amount of Crisco on your work surface and hands. A little goes a very long ways so don't go over board with the Crisco.

Knead the dough with a spoon!!!!! Do not attempt to pick it up and knead it too soon. This dough is hot when comes right out of the microwave!!!!! I say this because I have had people contact me saying they received a burn from it. I can almost knead it fully with a spoon.

Dough that is not in use must stay covered with plastic wrap or it will dry out. Or place it in a Ziploc bag. That works too.

Dried out Marshmallow fondant: place it back into the microwave and nuke it for a few seconds to revive it back to its original state. The bigger the batch the more time on the microwave. Example: small batch 3-5 seconds.......large batch about 10 seconds. Microwaves vary too so keep that in mind.

Coloring: well I have experimented with this several different ways. If I want to make the whole batch of Marshmallow fondant one color then I have added the color, just Wilton paste color, Americolors, or Chefmaster colors.....any will work for this, when I pull the bowl out of the microwave when it looks "soupy". Stirred it up and then added the powdered sugar. Otherwise I have added it after it has come together and kneaded it in by hand. I use plastic gloves too when I do this, because otherwise your hands are never the same!!!!

You can work with this just as you would the regular fondant. Pizza rollers cut this very well. Ribbon cutters work fabulous too for this. I can make bows and drapes, push molds etc with this. I love the taste of this stuff. Great on the pocketbook too!!!!!!


Happy Decorating!

OH...wanted to add...for the marshmallow fondant. I made the last batch using the kitchenaid mixer to get it mostly mixed then kneaded it until smooth. Worked like a charm.

I will confess sometimes I cheat and use boxed cakes. I substitute Buttermilk for water in all box recipes

The Beginning

We live in the kitchen in our house. I vowed when my boys were born that they would learn how to cook and bake and be able to fend for themselves in a pinch.

Over the years the kids have always been in the kitchen with me. We have a biannual Perogy making day where all of the kids have a little job on the assembly line. My beloved Gran used to make them and taught me. I wish to pass this on.

The older boys have daily tasks in the kitchen to cover their cell phone bills. I figure with the money we are saving by making everything from scratch we can trade off the cell phone bills.

My 14 year old makes bread dough daily and gets them into the loaf pans to rise. My oldest makes treats for lunches and occasionally takes care of dinner. The little ones just love helping out.

I hope you enjoy these recipes and please let me know how you make out with them if you try them.