Cooking Crusade

It’s no secret that I love anything choc-peppermint. I’m a huge fan of mint slices and choc-mint ice-cream. These flavors are also very popular with my friends and my boyfriend, so I don’t need an excuse to whip up anything choc-minty In the past I’ve made choc-mint hot chocolate (sooo divine!); a rich chocolate ganache ice-cream with peppermint and let’s not forget, the choc-mint cake.

I hate showing up to any social-type gathering’s at someone’s house empty-handed and it’s always an excuse to bake (I shouldn’t say this because now whenever I visit people’s houses, they will demand cookies. Haha.). However I’m often very sleepy/lazy to want to whip up something crazy complex and complicated.. Easy is the best way to go most of the time I pondered over the right type of baked good to bring to a housewarming for a friend, but I was running low on butter and eggs. Fortunately I had a box mix of brownies languishing in the cupboard… Box mix to the rescue!

These cupcakes result in a rich, fudgy brownie cupcake and is topped with a swipe of silky peppermint Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC) and topped with some sprinkles to add colour. No fancy piping, decorations, special tools or skills needed! Fortunately for me I had an extra cup of the SMBC frosting from another cake sitting in the fridge just waiting to be used, but you could just as easily substitute it with a simple American buttercream (creamed butter, powdered sugar + a little milk.)

Ok, so let’s get this party started.

Start out with your favorite brownie box mix. My fave is White Wings (I swear by them! They make the best brownie box mix and believe me when I say that I’ve tried sooo many of them. This isn’t like, product placement or anything, but I wouldn’t waste my time with the other brownie mixes. Mostly they don’t bake as nice and moist as the White Wings brand or they taste crumbly/weird/have a strange aftertaste. I always have great results with this brand and it’s only in one bowl and takes a couple of minutes to assemble which is perfect for me.

This cake mix calls for 2T water, 1/4 cup oil and 2 eggs. I used a splash of water, 1/4 cup of melted butter, 1 regular egg and four egg whites (not for any particular reason, but because I had run out of whole eggs and I had used the yolks from those four to make ice-cream a day before. I kinda threw them in there hoping it would work and it turned out fine …But I mean, don’t go out of your way to do the same thing, I’ve used two eggs previously and it makes no real difference – in fact the texture seems slightly more fudgy with two eggs – probably as a result of the extra yolk.)

Melting butter for the cake batter.

Arrange your cupcake papers in the cupcake tin.

Mix cake batter together.

Here’s a tip for you; pour your cake batter into a small jug – this makes it a bit easier and neater to pour the batter into the cupcake papers rather than pouring it all in a big mess straight from the bowl.

Fill cupcake papers with batter.

Bake cupcakes and remove onto tray and cool.

You can pop them in the fridge for about half an hour if you like to help speed the cooling process along. Before frosting, ensure that cakes are entirely cool so they won’t melt the SMBC.

Tint and flavour your Swiss Meringue Buttercream (I used two capfuls of peppermint essence and gradually added Wilton’s green paste colour until I got the colour I wanted).

If you have made yours overnight like mine and kept it in the fridge, it may have gone a bit hard (due to the high fat content). Leave it out at room temperature and beat until it is smooth enough to handle. You may have to add a tiny amount of cream or milk to help make it smooth out a little bit but I found that the addition of the peppermint essence was enough to make it rather smooth again, instead of hard and lumpy. While adding peppermint essence (I added two capfuls to about 3/4 to 1 cup of SMBC icing), taste it and add more/less to adjust the frosting to make sure it is perfect. I like mine to be quite minty, but I could have gone a bit more pepperminty than with 2 capfuls (I ran out of peppermint essence).

Plop about a teaspoon of peppermint frosting onto each cooled brownie cupcake.

Using a flat butterknife, smooth out the frosting.

Sprinkle on some 100s and 1000s.

If you have more frosting or slightly higher domed cupcakes, you can create more of an upwards dome on your cupcake by smoothing the frosting upwards, like this.

nomnomnomnom.

Enjoy these cupcakes!!

Xoxox
Christine

Ah sugar cookies. With Valentines’ Day just around the corner, these are the perfect gift to bring to your loved ones! Make heart and flower shaped cookies, wrap them in ribbons, little cellophane bags or pipe sweet little messages on them. They are incredible versatile and this recipe can be used for a whole bunch of occasions, birthdays, Christmas and all kinds of other holiday celebrations. I’m sure if you baked a tray or two of them and took them to the office the next day, nobody would be complaining either

I used Bridget from Bake at 350′s recipe for sugar cookies, but i’ve seen it around other blogs, so it seems like its been around for quite awhile. This is the first time I’ve ever made sugar cookies but the results were excellent. The biscuits were deliciously soft with a strong flavour of vanilla. I also liked the combination of the crisp royal icing on the soft cookie. Next time I’ll try adding some lemon zest, juice, essence or oil (depending on which I get my hands on first). I’ve heard that royal icing with some lemon added in is quite commonly used and judging from my memory of tasting a friend’s Chrissy gingerbread with lemon royal icing, it’s pretty delicious.

You can try all sorts of cute romantic designs out on these cookies. I used my heart and flower shaped cookie cutters for this time around, but I would love to try and experiment with different cookie cutters. I’ve built up quite a collection of Christmas cookie cutters last year; I’ve got Chrissy bauble cookie cutters (still unused! Oh Christmas sale at David Jones, how you tempt me,). My grandmother gave me a set of Christmas tree cutters for my birthday in November, I collected a set of snowflake cookie cutters from Alfresco Emporium (one of my new favorite cake decorating stores). I also got a metal ring of more Chrissy DJs sales that includes a santa with a bag, a shooting star, a star of David and other assorted Christmas cutters. *Sigh* I wish it were Christmas now! The only non-Christmas cutters are a set of hearts and a set of stars from Chalet. I’ve been seeing a lot of gorgeous cookie designs online, like cake, ice cream cone, high heels and other adorable cutters that I would looove to pick up. All in good time, I guess! Getting back to the main topic, the only cookie cutters I used for this were the heart and star shaped sets.

I tried some pink royal icing on a white background. I tried out;

Polka dots (Easy – just outline and flood the background with white royal icing. Then when the white background is still wet, apply some thinned out pink royal icing in a plain tip, just pipe dots the size you want onto the cookie.)

Mini-hearts
Also very easy – just follow the steps for the polka dot cookie and then drag a toothpick through the dots from top to bottom (while the icing is still wet) to drag the royal icing into the shape of a heart. You can pipe a few dots in a line and then drag the toothpick through them creating a chain of hearts

Squiggly lines (Just piping pink royal icing in a squiggly line on the white background. I piped this onto a wet background and the pink icing was a little bit too runny, so you can see that it bled a little bit into the white.. oh well, no matter.)

Vines and berries (I saw a cookie, I’m not sure where with adorable vines and berries piped onto it. I wanted to try and recreate something similar here. Unfortunately it did not work out as I had planned… The green icing for the vines was too thin so it spread out on the cookie too much resulting in fat vines. I then made the icing for the berries too thick so they did not pipe as well as I had planned either. Ah well. Practice makes perfect!) Basically for this cookie, I outlined/flooded the cookie with white icing, then piped on green vines with a plain tip with royal icing and Wilton’s paste gel, then piped on small berries with a pink Wilton’s colouring paste. Then I practiced piping dots around the border in the pink and green colours. This was fun to do and a lot easier than I thought it would be (but of course as is with everyone, could do with a little more practice )

Wrapped up with a little ribbon, they make the sweetest little gifts!

Wow. Well I can’t believe it’s been one year since I started this blog. Time seems to have gone by so quickly! I still feel like I’m definitely still a beginner in many aspects of cooking and baking but I like to think that in the last year I have made some bigger strides towards improving my baking. Certainly my love for all things cake decorating only really began to flourish this year – as did a large increase in my baking tools. In the last year, I got a cake turntable, proper icing tips and bags, and tried out a bunch of fun new techniques.

I got a whole bunch of fun new cookie cutters, I tried piping with royal icing for the first time.

I even tried feathering icing for the first time, too. I love this technique.

I tried a whole bunch of new cake recipes (finding a fave with Pioneer woman’s sheet cake).
I made marshmallow fondant for the first time and made a Bulldogs themed cake with it.  I made my first animal themed cake for my God-daughter’s second birthday.

I made my first two, heck, three tier cake. (Mind you I am still yet to venture into the world of using dowelling.. for some reason it scares me.) I even made rice pudding for the first time. I even made ice cream for the first time (well technically the second time. I made it once in high school for Food Tech. But this was this first time with an ice-cream maker anyway.)

My strawberry decorated cakes went from

this

to this.

My piping went from

this

to this (that second post was the first time I managed to successfully pipe a buttercream shell border. One of my proudest moments as a cake decorator!! Also made chocolate curls there for the first time, too.)

So, I guess on Cookingcrusade.com’s first birthday, it’s only appropriate that I post about something new that I haven’t done before.

And that thing is Ruffle Cake. The first time I saw this was from the blog,  My Sweet and Saucy. I then saw it on I Am Baker, who said she had found it on Martha’s site and well.. I guess it’s out there a lot more than I thought (even though  I’ve never actually seen one in Australian bakeries before. Believe me, the first time I saw this cake, I had no idea at ALL how they had managed to make such a delectable, sweet looking cake. They uploaded a youtube tutorial on it and wow. Who knew it could be so simple?? Guys, if you have time check out that video, it’s such an easy and pretty technique. It is one of my new favorites and I will definitely be using it again in the future!

I used a swiss meringue buttercream to pipe the ruffles on. It was the first time I had ever made a swiss meringue buttercream and it was worth it. For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, please give it a go! It is gorgeously silky and a lot easier to make than I originally thought. Dyann Bakes has a wonderful and very easy to follow youtube tutorial on this (I will be posting on it myself later on.)

Onwards to ruffle cake!

This cake is incredibly easy.

Basically, bake and cool your cake (whatever flavour/mix you desire). I’ve found its a lot easier to decorate cakes after they’ve been in the fridge for a day or so (or frozen) since they aren’t warm from the oven and prone to crumble as much – and they’re a lot easier to handle (and torte.)

If you are going to fill your cake, cut it in half with a serrated knife or a cake leveller and fill with your cake fillings. Place top half of cake onto the fillings and ice the cake with a thin layer of buttercream icing (you could use a simple buttercream icing instead of swiss meringue if you please) onto the cake, to capture all the crumbs. Refrigerate for about 10-20 minutes or until the icing has formed a crust. Take it out of the fridge and apply a thicker layer of icing to the top and sides of the cake. Don’t worry too much about the sides as you’re going to cover them in ruffles anyway so the imperfections won’t be as noticeable.

Using a filled piping bag with a flower tip (skinny side of the tip facing towards you), pipe the icing against the cake in a zig-zag motion from bottom to top. You can make the ruffles as fat or thin as you like, just make sure they are of a consistent size with each other. Continue this pattern until you have covered all sides of the cake.

Cut into wedges and serve.

I love how gorgeous these ruffles are! (PS if you’re wondering why the colour change of the icing, i blame two things.. 1) the lighting in the first and second shot and 2) the icing seemed to change colour a tiny bit in the fridge! it was weird).

Enjoy and hope you all had a great Australia Day!

Xoxox

Christine