Homemade Chocolate Truffles

This weekend Bertie’s Bakery embarked on a whole new journey!

Chocolate truffles!

I love chocolate truffles, and I have always wanted to learn more about the art of tempering chocolate, so with that I took the plunge into a day of chocolate! There were a lot of lessons learned, but I will say that the time spent was well worth it as the end product was a huge success!

I started with about a pound of chocolate. The milk chocolate was for the centers and the dark chocolate was for the outer shell. The biggest tip that I can offer about chocolate truffles is that you MUST be organized! Prepping the chocolate, measuring the weights, having all of your tools ready, etc. is key to being successful. Once you start heating your chocolate, there is no turning back (or time to run around your kitchen looking for you favorite spatula!).

Once the milk chocolate ganache was made I pressed plastic wrap down onto the top layer of the chocolate.  This helps protect it from getting a thicker skin on top as it cools.

Then using my mini cookie scoop (1.5mm) I scooped endless amounts of ganache onto a parchment paper lined sheet pan.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with plain milk chocolate, but I figured this was going to make a lot of truffles and it might be nice to change it up a little. The pan above has: 1) Plain mild chocolate 2) caramel center, 3) pistachio center, and 4) dark chocolate coffee.

Since these rough scoops of ganache need to be hand rolled into nicer, rounder balls, I pushed the pistachios a little further down and popped them back into the fridge to cool. Once they come out cold and a little firm they are much much easier to handle and shape.

I do apologize that there are no pictures of the actual dipping process, but the Boss was off on his trail run and I only have so many hands to balance the delicate and time sensitive steps! Hopefully you can forgive me and will settle for pictures of the final product???

Going from the top row and working our way down (on the photo below):

The green sprinkles on top are the pistachio.
The coco powder dust is the pure milk chocolate.
The dark chocolate drizzle is the dark chocolate coffee.
The white drizzle is the caramel filled ganache center.

Finally I packaged the chocolates up (what was left of them) and disbursed them to friends! I am excited! The flavors worked out fantastic, and I can’t stop thinking about what to put in the next batch!

I’m thinking a peanut butter ganache center is going to be a must! What about you?

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DIY Wedding Out of town Guests bags

Being at the beach this week has made me reflect on my wedding last July. We were married on the beach, and that was what I always wanted!

Right after the wedding I posted several posts about the wedding, mostly the wedding details. You can find them all here in “The Bird House”. I didn’t post all of the wedding details back in July only because I didn’t want you to burn out from reading wedding posts!

As you may know, I love creating desserts, but I also love taking care of all of the party planning details! One detail that I absolutely wanted (and so did the Boss) were “Out of Town Guest Bags”. These are traditionally left at the hotel for family and friends who may have traveled from out of town to the wedding. The bags contain things of convenience and/or snacks that one might forget to pack.

Since we had a destination wedding, essentially ALL of our guests were out of towners! I made one bag for each hotel room and stuffed it with more beach festive things. The bags in our case were more like “Thanks for making the trip” bags!

First I started off with buying the bags from Creative Packaging (I don’t have any connection with this company, I just have had zero problems with them, they are fast to ship and I have not found anyone cheaper!). Also, I bought a few cute ink stamps from the local craft store, and had left over 2” wide ribbon from another wedding project.

I stamped away and my Mom tied of the bows.

Then we did a run through with one bag to make sure the all of the goodies actually fit in the bag! Maybe I should have thought of this earlier, but it worked out just fine!

We only stuffed one bag because we had to travel with a lot of wedding stuff and it was WAY easier to pack the paper bags while folded up tight and stuff the other contents into boxes were they fit. My sister and I stuffed all of the bags in our hotel room as guests showed up during the week!

By now you must be wondering, “what did they put in the bags?” Well, we were staying at an all inclusive beach resort, and most guests were staying for 5 days or so. What would YOU want in a loot bag on the beach? I thought it was pretty straight forward:

* Reading material

* Snack food (be honest, you can’t get Swedish Fish at a resort in the Dominican on your own)

* SPF Lip Gloss

* Pool toys

* Pain killers (remember it was an all inclusive resort AND wedding week = lots of celebrating)

As our guests arrived, The Boss and I would make every effort we could to find them at check in or soon after and say hi and give them their welcome bag. Our guests LOVED getting a little something upon arrival, and even more so thought it was a great way to be welcomed and start their stay!

So even if your guests aren’t traveling to a destination wedding or even cross country, maybe you should think of having a little surprise for them upon arrival. It doesn’t have to be an entire treat bag, maybe just a snack bag of Swedish Fish with a tag that says “We’re glad you are here”.

So there you have it. “Out of Town Guest Bags” they are so simple yet so meaningful. What do you think? Would you have liked to receive a little something upon arrival to your last wedding?

Have a great weekend everyone! See you Monday.

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Cherry Blossom Shortbread Cookies

While the judges are “still out” on the Intermediate Division Overall Winner title, I am going to hold off on the post for my cakes.

I know, I know. A little frustrating, but it is what it is. Until then let us talk cookies!

So for anyone reading who may not be familiar with some of the big events in Washington, D.C., we are currently in the peak season for the Cherry Blossoms. Thousands upon thousands of people travel from all over to visit the D.C. area to see the Cherry Blossom trees in full bloom. The entire Tidal Basin is engulfed in a baby pink. It’s beautiful.

Below is a picture that The Boss took, it’ll give you the idea if you’re not familiar.

So due to the Cherry Blossom season I felt honored to pay tribute to our beautiful flower!

These Cookies were a bit of a process, so I’ll take you through my thoughts step by step.

I love big canvas panel art works. Even more so when there are several pieces of canvas that line up and the scene carries on across the many pieces. That was my thought here, I just had an internal struggle with how I wanted to cookies to line up. Straight and clean, or jumbled and modern.

Eventually I went with clean lines and a level set of cookies. Then it was time to sketch out how this was all going to come together.

After playing around with the paper, icing, flower style, etc. I decided it was time to get going on the real deal!

I decided to initially pipe the outline of the tree onto the cookie set before airbrushing. I did this because I didn’t want to be guessing how low and high I wanted the sky and grasses. Essentially, this way my tree design drove the decision making while I had the airbrush in hand!

Once I was happy with the heights of the sky and grass, I filled in the tree with my brown royal icing. I loved the way this turned out, and even considered stopping here! The texture of the trunk was well beyond my expectations.

From here I started to spackle on the baby pink royal icing as well as piping in tiny red beads for more dimension.

That was supposed to be it. I was going to stop at the spackling and beads. But as I sat there and hemmed and hawed, I decided that the cookie could actually benefit from a third level of pink dimension. So I punched out the tiniest flowers that I had a cutter for.

While I really liked the extra “pop” of the pink flowers, they were almost too plain, and even took away from the detail of all of the red bead work I piped into the pink. Hmmmm

So I took all of the flowers back off and one by every stinkin’ one, I piped with royal icing and my 00 tip 3 little yellow and two black beads. Wow, my neck still hurts thinking about this.

This was only a fraction of the flowers!

Then I started to build the flowers back onto the tree.

Finally I was finished!

Like I said in yesterday’s post. I really had a soft spot for these cookies, I figured I had the best chance at taking an award with these.

Well, let’s see what the judges had to say about that:

I have several opinions about some of the comments made…but I’m going to keep them to myself. Well except that for the next time I cut out several hundred flowers tinier than the butt of a pencil eraser, shape them into 3D flowers, and pipe five different teeny-tiny royal icing beads into each and every one of those 250+ flowers, I’ll be sure to be more precise  and detailed than that and also get out my ball tool and “soften their edges”???

Fear not, my feelings aren’t hurt. I loved these cookies, and I learned a lot from this whole process. Also, whether or not I agree with all of the feedback from the judges, it is always helpful to see my work through other peoples’ eyes.

These are the cookies that won overall best cookies. This was for everyone who entered a cookie set; ages 6 to master sugar artist. These were submitted by a professional (and pretty crazy impressive!).

The cookies that took 1st in my Division are below, the elephants.

And finally mine:

I hope you enjoyed my photo story of how I created these cookies! Did you get a chance to look through the album of Cake Entries that I posted yesterday. Did you have any favorites? Personally “The Flying Arnolds” was my absolute favorite!

Stay tuned for news on the cakes hopefully tomorrow!

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Don’t Pinch Me: Cupcake Toppers

Well this certainly is the week for green! And I am loving my new found skillz for cupcake toppers! I played around with several colors and images and this is what I came up with. On another note I am currently working away on several non-St. Patty’s Day projects (more on that later the week), so my ability to post has taken a hit this week. I’m going to keep this post short and sweet… and stuffed full with pictures! I hope you enjoy!

What’s you’re favorite meal for St. Patty’s Day? Besides the beer? I think we have a Corned Beef roast coming right up!

Okay, more later this week! Stand By!

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DIY FRIDAY: Pinwheel Cupcake Toppers

Yes it’s Friday! I love Fridays, and because they put me in such a good mood, I’m going to share my steps to making these super cute cupcake toppers, AND then I’m going to give them away!

Yup that’s right, there will be TWO lucky winners of these cupcake toppers, but before we get ahead of ourselves with the giveaway, lets figure out how to make these cuties incase you don’t win!

Step 1:

Cut out 2”x2” squares of what ever color double sided paper you want! (Double sided paper just means paper that is going to have either color or designs on either side, instead of just white…unless that’s what you want of course!)

Step 2:

Cut diagonal lines starting from each corner going into the center about 1”. You do not need to flip over the paper, I just wanted to show you my two sided paper!

Step 3:

Now fold the first corner (A) into the center of the square. Don’t crease this fold, just kind of bend it so it holds its shape. Do this to each “A” corner on the squares.

This is what your squares should look like once you have molded/folded each of the A corners inwards.

Step 4:

Now take each pinwheel and cut a small slit in the bottom of one of your folds. This only has to be big enough to slide a toothpick through. I like doing it this way because it hides the toothpick and glue, and it just looks a little bit cleaner. If you do not have a blade to do this with, no worries we can just glue the toothpick to the back. 

Step 5:

Open up all of your folds and slide the toothpick through your newly made slit. Hot glue toothpick to the center of the square.

Step 6:

Using little dabs of hot glue start re-folding in each “A” corner and folding them there until the glue has cooled and the fold is now permanent.

Keep going all the way around.

Step 7:

Once all the corners are folded in and glued, add one more dab of hot glue and adorn the pinwheel with any thing you like. I used fake pearls that I had saved from an old necklace I used to love! But you could use buttons, pompoms, or even paper circles from the left over paper.

See wasn’t that easy?

Now, I know exactly what some of you are thinking “Wow, that was informative, now how do I get my free pinwheels?”. Well here’s what you can do. There will be two winners of the Pinwheel Cupcake Toppers.

The winners will win a set of 12 Pinwheels, and I will mail them out pronto!

1: One winner will simply be random selection of all of your comments left below!

2: The second winner will be randomly selected from readers who have “Liked” Bertie’s Bakery Facebook page. So if you have already “Liked” me, you’re already in, if not what are you waiting for??? (And no need to leave a second comment below, I got ya covered in all the page-likers.)

3: I know I know, I never said anything about a third option. But I have to admit, I do not understand Pintrest and that makes me a little sad. I mean I “get it”, as in I fully understand why and how it has gone so viral, but I haven’t really figured out how to get my work “Pinned”. So if you are one of those “pinners” and you pin either the first or second picture from this post (I imagine you would then link back to my page as well?) then you may leave a second comment for a bonus entry! Is that cool?

***Entries Close 11:59 Tuesday, March 6th ***

Lastly, if it seems like you guys enjoy this give away, then I’ll be sure to do another next week for St. Patty’s Day! Not pinwheels but another type of cupcake topper I have up my sleeve!

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!

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Oscar Worthy Dessert

Is everybody as excited as I am about this weekend’s Academy Awards and Oscar Red Carpet Showdown??

Now I don’t get too revved up about the Grammy, Emmy, or Tony’s Awards, but I sure do love the Oscars! I am a huge movie buff and love seeing all of my favorite peeps get super styled out to celebrate another year of great entertainment (ahem, also their multi-millions of dollars made…).

Now I promise come Monday morning I will not go on a rant about who should have won what, but I might just have to comment about my favorite dress! We’ll see, I hope this year is not a dud for fashion!

Now, getting back to the post; I present to you the Bakery’s take on how to enjoy the show! Since we don’t get to tread the Red Carpet like all of the stars, I figured we should at least be treated to something just as eye catching!

Bertie’s Bakery Red Carpet:

There you have it! Short and sweet. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and it was enough to get you jazzed about the award show this weekend!

If you would like to enjoy some cream cheese frosting the recipe is here.

If you would like to see how I made my totally awesome Red Carpet cupcake wrappers you can find out here.

I am still not totally happy with my Red Velvet cake recipe so I’m holding off on posting that until I create a really good one!

Thanks for stopping by!… who do you think is going to win best movie??

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