Brush Embroidery- Cookie Decorating

During my first experience at the National Capital Area Cake Show, I did a lot more than just make a cake and bake up a storm for a cupcake contest. At the weekend’s events I also visited many booths and demonstrations to gather more ideas for the bakery. I had seen this “brush embroidery” on the Cake Boss earlier in the year and was interested in it for a while now, plus it’s a good way to improve my piping skillz! So I watched some demos and brought my new found knowledge home to practice!

So what is “Brush Embroidery”? Basically, all it is is Royal Icing (the icing that gets really hard on cakes; it usually makes the flowers) piped out into different shapes and then you take a damp food safe paint brush and press down into the icing and pull it out and across the surface to make that desired effect. Since I was only practicing this new technique I didn’t want to waste any good homemade cookies, so instead I used wax paper. I highly recommend doing this test round a few times before diving into a batch of cookies. This way I could mess around with lines, squiggles, filling in sections, whatever I wanted and not have to feel bad about messing up a cookie.

Later when I was happy with what I had figured out in terms of drying time, thickness of the Royal Icing and what brush I liked best I went ahead an baked a 1/4 batch of my moms shortbread cookies! Time to decorate.

 

Helpful things that you will need to start are: wax paper, paper towel, 1/8-1/4” wide paint brush (food safe), cup of water, and tooth picks.

To start make sure you have dipped your brush into some water and then dabbed dry. This helps smooth out the icing as you pull it out and across, but too much water will actually melt the icing so be sure to dab ALL remaining water out of bristles (again that is why you do a few on the wax paper- you’ll figure out how much water is enough or too much with just a few strokes).

Go ahead and pipe out small sections of the design that you are making. *If you pipe out too much it will sit out too long and harden before you and the paint brush ever get there. Royal icing is supposed to dry and harden quickly, so just remember less is more, and work in small sections.

The length of the brushed icing will depend on the angle of your brush and where you started the tip of the brush within the icing line. I tended to like the effect that it makes when I brushed over almost the entire line of icing. I saw it done 3 different ways at the cake show and this was one option. Other bakers brushed over the entire line of icing and then after finishing the entire design went back and re-piped a new/clean and very thin outline on top of the brushed effect. I also saw another lady who started her tip about half way across the icing line and this technique left a strong outline look to the design without having to go back over. Again, it’s going to be all about what you like and what you happen to be better at, they all look nice and add a lot of character to just an iced cookie.

The clean up is easy too! From all of the messes that I make in the kitchen, this is the smallest one yet!

Here are a few samples of what I came up with:

What makes these treats even greater is that all it takes is a little plastic wrap and a little bit of ribbon and these cookies wrap up to be sweet gifts for someone unexpected!

Go ahead, you can do it!!

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BANANA BREAD!

B - Bananas- B-A-N-A-N-A-N-A-N-AS!!!

Mmmmm. Have you ever had a baked good that when served straight from the oven really takes your day to a whole new level? You know the kind of treat that can take you from rock bottom to back on your feet? If not, today is your day. Honest to goodness this banana bread should be served at somber events like to the loosing team after a championship game, because all it takes is one warm bite to instantly forget your problems.

Have I gone too far with my description? I’ll let you be the judge of that. If I were to open my shop tomorrow, this Banana Bread would be a lifetime menu option and I am confident in saying that it would be a top seller! I enjoy this recipe so much that I had stopped baking it all together due to my inability to not eat the entire loaf before it even cooled. Well until now; since Bertie’s Bakery probably isn’t going to be a reality for many, many, many more months I simply cannot withhold this treasure from you any longer. Therefore I present to you, Bertie’s Bang-Bang Banana Bread! (No it’s not really called that, but YES the full recipe below).

 

As always, to start things off get your room temperature butter and sugar mixing and “Fluffing”. If I am confident that I actually have all the ingredients that I will need for the banana bread then I will go ahead and get the butter and sugar going before I even start organizing the rest of the mess I’m going to make in the kitchen!

 

Beat with the paddle attachment for a good 4-5 minutes. You don’t want your butter looking yellow any more, so beat until a pale ivory! Beat on medium, scraping the sides and bottom every 2 minutes or so and just let it do its thing. While your mixer is making all of that noise go ahead and get your dry ingredients, bananas, and liquid ingredients organized.

 

 

Here you have flour, baking soda, salt, and cloves. Wisk them together with a fork and set them aside.

Eggs and vanilla. Wisk them too and set aside.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S. MASH! In my situation today I had to defrost the bananas first and then mash. I am sure that if you are one of my endurance athlete followers, then you are always left with one or two bananas in the bunch that you just didn’t get to eat in time and now they are just too brown and smoochey for your liking. DO NOT THROW AWAY! I purposely let my bananas get a little brown before making this recipe; or better stated, I will not make this recipe with yellow or yellow/green bananas. The sugars haven’t developed all the way yet. So if you have a situation where your banana bunch has gotten away from you, don’t fret, just peel & freeze for when you are in the mood for banana bread!

*Note* If you are using frozen bananas do make sure you’ve brought the fruit back to room temp; you actually can mash frozen bananas… but the frozen pieces will effect your cook time!

Once you’ve organized, whisked, and mashed everything go ahead and gradually pour in your egg and vanilla mixture. Make sure to scrape down the sides and bottom and allow time for ingredients to become well incorporated.

Not Well Incorporated vs. Incorporated

Now is time to gradually add the mashed bananas. Don’t worry… the batter will take on the illusion that it has curdled but it hasn’t and it is still going to taste Grrrr-eat!

Not so pretty huh?

Moving on! Now, remove the bowl from the standing mixer and add your flour mixture. Using a spatula, fold in your flour. Don’t over do it. Remember there is still chocolate chips and nuts to be folded in as well.

 

Now is time for your chocolate chips and toasted walnuts. (ahem… yeah, remember when I said above “if I am confident that I have all of the ingredients for the recipe then I will get the butter started before organizing the rest”???… well there were no walnuts or pecans to be found in the house so I guess I shouldn’t have been so confident.) Both, however, of these are “Optional Ingredients” but I would also categorize them as “Highly Recommended!”

 

Fold some more.

Perfect.

Now prepare your baking pan. I have made this recipe in several different pans in the past, all really depending on what I wanted the bread for. I find people really like this bread as a random gift, so when I was teaching I would sometimes bake up several petite loafs and make deliveries to other staff members. Other times if it was simply for around the house or to deliver to our fun run-long run group I would just bake in the traditional loaf pan. Lately I have enjoyed my mini-bunt pans for the banana bread, and that is what I went with today!

You have a few options here; I’ll start with my preference.

Oil the pan/ Pam.

Then add sugar!

I take about 1tsp of white sugar and sprinkle it into each mini bunt. Then go ahead and tilt and swirl the pan (over the sink) such that the excess sugar rolls around the inside and coats the inside walls and bottom. Then go ahead and turn the whole facing down and gently tap out any excess sugar into the sink.

You could go ahead and do this same process with flour, or you could simply just spray the pan and leave it alone. Personally I like the sugar option because if you manage to let the banana bread survive past the state of warmth, the sugars will turn the crust a little bit crispy for an extra sweet surprise.

Fill and bake!

These are actually a little over filled as you will see in the following pictures that you can no longer see the hole in the top. From far away you would just assume these are oversized muffins instead of the quaint petite bunts. I baked these for 30 minutes at 350*F. If you were going to go with one single loaf you would bake for more like 40-50 minutes, and if you wanted muffins (which I haven’t done yet, but now that I think about it…) I’m sure the baking time would be shorter again. Definitely rack the pan in the middle of the oven making sure not to over brown the bottom since the larger loafs would be cooking for much longer.

Seriously YUM! No go ahead, get a pen or pencil and write down the following ingredients so you can make your own ASAP!

Bertie’s Banana Bread Ingredient list: 1 1/4C     All Purpose Flour 1tsp        Baking Soda 1/2          Cloves 1/2         Salt 1/2         Vanilla extract 1/2         Unsalted Butter (Room Temp) 1C          White Sugar 1/2         Toasted Walnut ( or Pecan) 2lrg        Eggs 2-3          Very ripe bananas (~1cup mashed) 1C          Chocolate Chips

Bon Appétit!!! 

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Wedding Detail Revelation!

So, some of you know that I am engaged! And for those of you who didn’t know this… Surprise!

Anyways, I’m not exactly an aspiring “Bridezilla”; I think the wedding details have been pretty laid back around here, and that’s the way I’d like it to stay!

We decided on a destination wedding, and that (whether I like it or not) has taken care of a lot of the planning “stresses” and as well has limited a lot of the decisions I get to make. I’m definitely a “DIY” kinda gal, so in a way I’m a little disappointed with the low level of  creativity I get to apply to the day to make it “my own”.  No problem though, this allows me to just not worry about it.

So, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and just go ahead and show everyone what I have planned. Honestly this takes a lot of pressure off of me in July, and further more I will now no longer have to field the question of “What does your dress look like?” Yes, the dress is pictured below… but come on… check everything else out first!

First, the wedding cake! Here she is… yeah, I’m copying another bride’s cake, but I thought it was really pretty, and I’m sure she would be flattered! Plus we’re adding a little flick of purple to “make it our own”.

 

Then comes the bridal bouquet! I only have a few choices here due to being in a foreign country for the wedding, I have to go with what they “got”.

 

Next is the hair-do!! I’ve searched high and low for hair styles that I like and that “Make a statement”. Call me crazy but I looooove a good up do! Marg Simpson style and all! (Yeah I’m a little nervous about getting bangs cut for the wedding, but I really like this style! Here goes!)

 

Then, one of my favorite details! The Shoes!! I found a girl online who hand paints wedding pumps!! I’m thrilled about the frills!

 

The veil is another exciting detail! I’ve already showed off the hair do, and I will be adding that flower, but a girl NEEDS a veil for that long walk!

 

And now what you have all been waiting for! The Dress! We’re getting married with our toes in the sand, so I thought that this dress was appropriate!

 

But if we are really being honest here, no matter how much I am able to plan in advance I’m probably still going to end up looking like this guy!

 

Alright, that last one was a little extreme, but seriously, I want to be honest with you… go ahead and double check today’s date on your calendar! Did you really think I was going to show you all the deets? Sorry y’all! These certainly are not my first wedding picks… I guess you’ll have to wait until July after all!!

 

Oh… and just a friendly FYI, “what does your dress look like” is not really a question a bride likes to be asked. I’m not trying to sound mean here, but I bet she really doesn’t want to tell you! She’s probably already stressed about it “did I pick the right dress”, “how will I look in that dress”, “will other people like the dress”, and on and on! So unless she brings it up and wants to describe it to you… just say something more like “how excited are you about your dress?!?!”, now she gets to have that one little detail all to herself before the big day!

Welcome to April folks! Have a great day!

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NCACS Cupcake Cocktail Challenge

Before I open the lid on all of the Cupcake details, I have to say that yesterday’s response to my “Triathlon Cake” was so flattering! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would get that many comments or visitors! Thanks to everyone who stopped by, left a comment, and introduced me to the wild wild world of twitter! Tweets are kind of viral! (In a good way).

Back to Cupcakes!

So I was stoked to sign up for the Inaugural Cupcake Challenge! Each year from here on they are going to have a different theme; this year happened to be “Cupcake Cocktails”. Immediately I started to ponder some of my favorites and Irish Car Bombs were high ranking on the list! After many experiments with Guinness and Bailys I was pleased but not “excited” about them, so I moved on to creating other flavors.

Here I present to you my two final choices!

On the left is: “Bertie’s Hard Lemonade” which is a light lemon cake filled with a Citrus Vodka Lemon Curd, topped with Meringue, a lemon head, and red straw for garnish.  

On the Right: “Cherry Blossom-tini” which is a Cherry flavored cake filled with one whole Maraschino Cherry that was soaked in Triple Sec, and topped with a light and fluffy butter cream with a gum paste cherry blossom flower for garnish.

We started the morning with the National Half Marathon (that post will probably show up tomorrow) and to be frank, I waddled home after the race, slept, ate chipotle, then suffered through lower-back spasms as I baked for 5 hours- creating over 200 cupcakes!! Here’s the picture show of how it all went down! The Boss was a great helper and much like everything I do, it just wouldn’t have all worked out if he wasn’t around!

All gone! We sold out of all of our the cupcakes, and could easily have done more if we had baked them! Since it was the first year that they ran this event I think they were a little overwhelmed by the incredible turnout! They sold over 700+ tickets, and it was organized chaos! In the end, all I can say is that I would enter the challenge again in a heart beat! Plus the monies raised went to charity, who can argue with that?

Hope you enjoyed the cocktails! I’ll definitely be making these puppies again soon so stayed tuned!

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