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!

Mmmm. This pasta bake (I have to say), is amazing. It’s creamy. It’s garlicky. It’s cheesy. It has mushrooms and chicken. Seriously, how could you go wrong? The most awesome thing about this pasta dish is that it’s also incredibly easy. It’s also not an overly expensive dish to make and can feed quite a large group (or give you tasty leftovers for the rest of the week.) It is also versatile. You can toss in a whole bunch of other ingredients to give it that special flavour you want. This pasta dish only has one downfall and that is that it is not exactly low in fat. But hell, once you taste it, you probably won’t care.

Ok, enough self praise! Getting down to business.

This is a large serving. I made it for a dinner party and it can serve about eight to ten people (especially if you have a side dish of salad.)

Ok we’ll start out with the sauce. We’ll be needing two large onions (more if you’re into that sort of thing;), plain flour, cream of mushroom soup, garlic and butter. We’ll also be needing milk, but milk was being unreasonable and refused to be photographed.

Melt about 4 tablespoons of butter in a heavy based pot (you’ll be needing a large one if you don’t halve the recipe!)

While it’s melting, grate about four cloves or garlic (more or less, depending on how garlicky you want it. If you’re me, that’s a lot. lol.)
When butter starts to bubble, throw in garlic and until it becomes fragrant.

Add in flour, tablespoon by tablespoon and whisk until it becomes a smooth roux.

Gradually add milk, half cup by half cup, whisking the whole time to ensure smoothness. Add in can of cream of mushroom of soup and stir. Add in 1/2 a cup of shredded grated cheese and stir until fully melted. Adjust thickness of sauce by adding more flour to thicken or more milk to thin to your liking. If you like, you can freeze quantities of this sauce (before adding the chicken) for future use.

Shred BBQ chicken (or do beforehand, as I did).

Add shredded chicken to sauce.

In a separate pot, boil pasta shells in hot salted water with a drizzle of olive oil to prevent the shells from sticking until pasta is al dente. Drain. Add cooked pasta to sauce and mix through.

Season with salt and pepper and taste.

Now if you were serving this as a pasta dish, you could serve it now with a fresh side salad. If you wanted to turn it into a pasta bake, leave pasta dish in the pot (make sure this is an oven safe pot, by the way-) and sprinkle with a mixture of breadcrumbs and extra cheese and place in oven to bake. Serve when cheese is melted and golden.

Enjoy!

Here is a quick list of the ingredients for your convenience.

Ingredients

1 large family sized 750 gram packet of shell pasta, cooked
2 large onions
4 cloves of garlic, grated
4 tablespoons of butter
1 can of cream of mushroom soup (i used Campbells)
1 C grated tasty cheese
4 tablespoons of plain flour
2 cups of milk (more or less. depends on how thick you want your sauce.)
the shredded meat of 1 large BBQ chicken
seasoning

Optional extra ingredients: peas/corn, fresh mushrooms, other vegies you want to toss in (broccoli or cauliflower would go well.) You can also sub chicken for a can of tuna which is equally delicious and oh so slightly healthier.

1. Melt butter in heavy based, oven safe pot.
2. When it begins to bubble, throw in grated garlic and allow it to become fragrant. Stir gently.
3. Add flour, tablespoon at a time, whisking to avoid lumps.
4. Add milk, 1/2 cupful at a time, whisking still, to ensure smoothness.
5. When milk has been fully incorporated, add in 1/2 a cup of cheese and cream of mushroom soup. Taste sauce (it should be quite salty from the mushroom soup). You can also adjust thickness with extra milk or flour. If freezing portions of your sauce, do so here.
6. Add in shredded chicken and cooked pasta and mix well.

Optional. For a pasta bake, add extra cheese and half a cup of breadcrumbs (for crispness) to the top of the pasta bake and then bake until cheese is melted and golden.

Make this one today! It is superrr delicious.

Love ;

Christine