Cooking Crusade

I’m staying up a little late.. but I didn’t want to neglect my blogging duties! It’s been awhile, my apologies! But I have not forgotten cookingcrusade.com!

Mike and I had our engagement party on Sunday (and unfortunately we were both actually struggling with a heavy dose of the ‘flu so we were massively drugged up on Codral – but we managed to have a good go of it.) The afternoon-night turned out to be pretty successful and I finally got to do a dessert table! I must apologise for that first photo, but I was so busy meeting and greeting guests I honestly did not touch a camera during the whole party so I had to rely on pix taken by the photographer and he wasn’t very interested in the dessert table, mostly the guests! Fortunately my lovely fiance realised I would want to blog about it later, so he took the remaining pics

Of course, there were plenty of things I had in mind. Macarons! Intricately decorated sugar cookies! Beautifully piped cupcakes, complete with miniature handmade flags! A beautifully decorated rose cake, or something pretty with fondant. Yes, I had many, many ideas… But unfortunately since I got sick a few days before the party (and it continued for quite a few days after), I was unable to realise any of these ideas – but I still think it turned out pretty well.

The theme colour for the engagement party was teal, so I tried to pick out a couple of teal themed ideas to add some colour to the table. Fortunately (and surprisingly) the walls for our engagement venue was actually painted a lovely teal shade – a funny coincidence, but also helped stick to the theme! Lol.

Some of the teal decos I picked out:

• teal cupcakes for the dessert sign made from coloured cardboard I picked up from a local craft shop
• teal dessert cups for the brownie cups – picked up from Alfresco Emporium
• teal heart shaped chocolates from eBay (it’s great, you can order 100 chocolate hearts in any colour you like) – i put these in an old fashioned glass candy jar of my Mum’s
• my baking partner in crime, Ghilaine made up some teal coloured fondant for the cake hearts and the cupcake flowers – dyed with some teal food colouring she had (she even painted her nails teal!). she also decorated heart shaped butter cookies with teal royal icing
• teal napkins! found (surprisingly) at a $2

I had lots of fun making the dessert sign. I bought a foam board from a craft shop, covered it with some pretty wrapping paper from Kikki.K, then printed a cupcake template from google images, then cut out a bunch of teal cupcakes from cardboard, drew on little cupcake papers and then glued them to the board with dessert names Easy and quite cheap to do!

Desserts we served;

• Chocolate fountain (borrowed from Ghilaine – so glad we got to have this – had many guests comment on it), served with marshmallows and fruit platters
• Hummingbird cupcakes (also by Ghilaine!) with yummy cream cheese frosting – from her cupcake Bible – the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery book
• Chocolate chip brownies (my fave packet mix! – White Wings)
• Bakerella’s deadly cookie-brownie slice
• Kim’s favorite choc chip cookie recipe from Lovin in the Oven – the first time I tried the recipe, but got many compliments. I made them in milk chocolate chip and dark/white chocolate chip versions – both delicious! Will definitely make this recipe again. I made huge batches before hand and froze them in log shapes, then defrosted them slightly, chopped it up and baked it
• The engagement cake was a double batch of Pioneer Woman’s chocolate sheet cake with whipped milk chocolate ganache, decorated with teal fondant hearts and cachous. I wanted to do something a little more involved, decoration wise, but I honestly ran out of time and had absolutely no energy to come up with anything better due to the cold… Oh well! I think it turned out rather well in the end
• Ghilaine made some lovely gluten free desserts for the gluten intolerent
• A friend of my Mum’s brought along a few platters of vegan cakes – so delicious! I am dying for the recipe

Cookie-brownie slice and chocolate brownies

brownie cups with cream cheese frosting / chocolate ganache

Cupcake tower (bought from Woolies for like $8, bargain!)

Chocolate chip cookies

Cute little vegan cakes.

Engagement Cake

Despite the fact that there were lots of little details that I missed out on doing, I think it turned out rather well!

ps: couldn’t resist sneaking in a few shots of us from the night:

Me and Mike with two soon to be newlyweds – getting hitched this very weekend! Congrats MF and Steve!!

More soon to be newlyweds… Grant and Chivs plan to marry a few weeks after us Congrats to you guys too

Love this pic of my maid of honor, Kira (on the right) and her sister Holly. Too cute!

Of course my gorgeous god daughter was there too! After all, her mama is one of my bridesmaids

Thanks for watching, hope you are well!

xx

Christine

I got to try out a new (totally WILD!… just kidding) experiment out on this cake.

I had two kinds of icing in the fridge that I wanted to use up.

Milk chocolate frosting and .. mint icing. And I wanted to use them together somehow to come up with a choc-mint cake. (Cos of course, chocolate and mint are a completely amazing combination. If you have ever tried and loved choc-peppermint ice cream, you will know this.)

Cake Stats : Pioneer Woman’s Chocolate Sheet Cake (Yes I know .. I went through a Pioneer Woman Sheet Cake phase. It’s.. probably not over.. but its so dang easy and delicious!), milk chocolate and peppermint frosting.

So instead of mixing the two flavours together, after baking and cooling the cake, I crumb coated the cake with a thin layer of peppermint icing and then frosted over this with milk chocolate icing. The result? A delicious creamy milk chocolate icing with a very yummy hint of peppermint.

If you take a look at this slice of the cake, you should be able to see the layer of the white peppermint icing (which I didn’t bother to tint at all.)

Frosting Recipes are as follows.

Peppermint Icing:

1/2 a cup of sour cream (the taste doesn’t come out at all but it gives the icing a great texture/body)
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar, sifted (or not, if you’re lazy like me)
1 teaspoon or more peppermint essence (to taste)

Using an electric mixer, beat together sour cream and butter together. Add in icing sugar one cup at a time and use a wooden spoon to incorporate (so it doesn’t get blown everywhere by the mixer). Add in the peppermint essence and beat for a further minute. Taste to see if it needs more peppermint essence. Can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container or as I do, in a plastic sanger bag for next time.

Milk Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting:

250 grams Philly cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter
250 grams milk chocolate, melted and cooled
3 cups icing sugar

Using an electric mixer, beat butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Pour in melted milk chocolate (it is important to make sure that it has cooled down otherwise it might melt the butter). Beat with mixer for 30 seconds or until smooth. Incorporate icing sugar with wooden spoon, cup at a time. If it is too runny, add more icing sugar. If it is too grainy, add a tablespoon or so of milk.
Can be stored in the fridge, just like peppermint icing.

Directions for Choc-Mint Cake.

1. Bake and cool two layers of chocolate cake.

2. Trim cakes if neccessary and flip upside down so the smooth side of the cake is facing upward. Crumb coat both layers with a thin layer of peppermint frosting. Refrigerate.

3. Sandwich cakes together with a good amount of milk chocolate frosting and frost outside of the cake with the milk chocolate frosting. Refrigerate.

4. While cake is in the fridge, make chocolate curls by peeling thin strips of chocolate off a family size chocolate bar with a vegie peeler (the way you would with a carrot, for example.) These melt quickly, so I suggest putting them on a plate that has been in the fridge for about an hour, or just placing them on a regular plate and keeping them in the fridge until needed. Be gentle with these as they break very easily.

5. Pipe a shell border with remaining chocolate frosting around the border of the cake and decorate with chocolate curls.

Serve and enjoy!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! xoxoxo

Lotsa Love

Christine

Gingerbread is one of my favorite types of cookies. I never had it much as a kid, but I remember drooling over the shiny packets holding its iced gingerbread tastyness at Woolies and Coles when I was a kid. Wasn’t really allowed them, sadly (probably the right thing to do lol) but since I’ve started baking, it’s been a big favorite of mine. I particularly love the softness and the spice of the cinnamon and ginger that blend so perfectly together. They’re also great for Christmas. I still remember the plate of gingerbread cookies my friend Kira baked for Christmas a couple of years ago. The softness of the cookie melded so perfectly with the crispness of the icing with a teensy lemony tang Kira had added. Yep, we had gobbled them up. I even have a picture of them.

Ah, that takes me back.

Fortunately gingerbread is also one of my boyfriend’s fave cookies as well, which gives me a good excuse to whip up a batch every now and then.

I recently  bought a set of star shaped cookie cutters and well, it was a good excuse as any.

You can check out the recipe I used here. I highly recommend this one, super easy and delicious! This recipe is definitely a keeper.

I experimented a little with the icing – one with water and icing sugar and one with milk and icing sugar. I noticed that there was no real discernible difference in the taste, but the icing with the milk was a lot shinier in appearance whereas the water-icing was dull. Hopefully you’ll be able to tell the diff in the above pix.

I didn’t attempt to replicate Kira’s amazing icing because it contains raw egg and I am a superstitious ninny when it comes to raw eggs. Maybe one day I’ll try it. But for now…

I’ll stick to being paranoid.

Have a wonderful weekend!~

xox

Christine