Candy Cane Cupcakes

So you’re standing around with your hands on your hips wondering how the holidays have taken you by storm and left you with all of the mess to clean up… again. Yup it happens every year. With tomorrow (January 6th) being the last of the 12 Days of Christmas, I figured you could use one more recipe to use up the last of your Christmas goods. Candy Canes.

Start off with any vanilla cupcake recipe that you like. If you even have a box of Betty C. in the cupboard and you are that tired from baking, go ahead and use that up too!

Then grab all of the candy canes off of your Christmas tree, 1 or 2 will actually be plenty. Unwrap them, crack them in half or into thirds and stick them in a sandwich bag. Now go find the meat tenderizer, a small sauce pan, or if you’re really struggling a soup can. Put the sandwich bag of candy canes in between a kitchen towel and go ahead and let out any residual holiday stress!

Please remember that although it seems like a small step, it is an important step to put the bag in between a towel. This helps keep the noise down, saves your counter top, and also keeps the candy canes from bursting through the bag and making a bigger mess than you need to deal with right now!

Next… whip up the candy cane filling (Recipe below).

Once your cupcakes are cool, go ahead and start hollowing them out like a pumpkin. Please only do this step once BOTH the cupcakes are cooled and you are ready to stuff with your filling. If you cut the cupcake open while they are still warm they will loose a lot of their moisture, the same goes for if you cut them open and leave them sitting there for long time; you will end up with a dry cupcake.

Hollow them to allow for the amount of filling you prefer. The more filling you like, the bigger you make the space.

Fill the cupcakes and then trim the tops so the excess portion of cupcake tops is off and they are flat. This does two things. Allows you to eat some of your cupcake! As well if allows for you to have a cupcake surface to apply the icing to. I find this makes my life easier!

Then ice your cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream and garnish with left over candy cane sprinkles. I do this part with the cupcakes on a cooling rack inside a cake pan for easy cleaning!

 

Cream Cheese Candy Cane Filling:

8oz Light Cream Cheese Softened

1 tsp Peppermint Extract

1 tbsp Crushed Candy Cane

1/2 Cup Confectioners Sugar

2 tbsp Milk

1) Using electric mixer beat cream cheese for 3  on medium low minutes to soften.

2) Add Peppermint and continue to beat until incorporated

3) Add both the confectioners sugar and milk and continue to beat on medium low until the mixture is smooth; be sure to scrape the sides.

4) Depending on how you measured the sugar you might find the mixture too thick or to thin. You want the mixture to be creamy and smooth, but you don’t want it to be runny. If is too runny, when a guest bites into the cupcake it is going to run down their hand! Play with it until you like the consistency… there really isn’t a right or wrong here!

5) Add the crushed candy cane last so the color from the candy cane doesn’t run and turn your filling pink. Fold the candy cane in with a flat spatula and stop once combined.

6) Use right away or refrigerate!

 

 

 

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DIY Chocolate Cups

 

One of my new favorite treats to make in the kitchen! I had a blast making these super cute and stylish dishes, and I highly recommend you taking it on before your next dinner party!

Basically these chocolate cups couldn’t get any easier in terms of prep work, ingredients, and procedure. You can do this alone or have even more fun by making it a project for two (I had my big Brother in town at the time, so he was my helper!). Lastly, and most importantly you can put whatever you want inside the chocolate cups when they are set… we all know everything goes well with chocolate, so pick your fancy!

You’ll need 1 bag of chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet, but you can use milk chocolate if you prefer), 12 balloons, 1 quart size heat proof bowl, cooking spray, parchment paper, a spoon, and anything edible you might like for decorating (optional).

Step 1:

Blow up, wash, and DRY your balloons. I made my brother do this part… he was entertained and yet still demanded chocolate samples for his efforts! I suppose that was expected!

The balloons should be inflated to approx. 4 inch balloons. This is the beginning of your discrepancy- picture the size chocolate cups you would like and inflate to size!  

Be sure the balloons are completely dry, water droplets are not your friend when it comes to trying to control melted chocolate!

Step 2:

Once you have your balloons set, get everything else ready (chop chocolate, grab spoons and paper towel, decide on sprinkles or other decorations). When you have your chocolate melted and hot, you are not going to have time to run around setting things right. Here an important step is to trim your parchment paper to sit inside your pans; your balloons are not very heavy so unleveled parchment paper hanging out over the sides can cause your balloons to tip over- painfully annoying!

Step 3:

Melt your chocolate (just chocolate, don’t put ANYTHING else in the bowl) you can do this either via a heat proof bowl over a simmering pot of water and now you don’t have to keep running back and forth to the microwave (and reduces possibility of burning the chocolate) OR you can simply do this cautiously in the microwave! I picked the microwave this particular time just to see what might happen!

Now take a spoonful of chocolate and make a chocolate circle on the parchment paper. This is your chocolate base.

Step 4:

Give the bottom of the balloon a quick blast of cooking spray. Using a paper towel lightly spread the spry evenly around the bottom of the balloon, basically to the size/perimeter of what you want you chocolate bowl to look like.

Step 5:

With even pressure dunk the balloon into the chocolate, lift and let any access drip off, and then swoop it around so the chocolate can settle evenly onto the balloon.

Now is the perfect time to add decorations as desired onto the warm chocolate. If you were really organized or had a second person helping, they could have been attending melting white chocolates or other candy melts to drizzle over the chocolate to add color, contrast, and texture to the chocolate coating.

For me however, I had bored my brother by now and was working solo. Therefore these candy pearls did the trick!

Step 6:

Plunge your decorated balloon down on top of the circle chocolate base. Hold for 10 seconds and then let go and allow to stand by itself. Leave it alone.

Step 7:

When you have filled up an entire sheet of balloons place them in the refrigerator to set. PLEASE put them in the refrigerator. I actually do not know why, but if you don’t refrigerate then you’ll get funky cups that are spotted and break… pictured below! Like I said, put these in the refrigerator until you are going to fill the cups and serve them.

Balloons Gone Bad!

Step 8:

After a minimum 2 hours in the fridge, remove the tray and grab a knife. You want to pierce the balloon at the top by the knot and slowly let the air come out. Then lightly start to pull the balloon away from the surface of the chocolate.

Step 9:

Fill the cups with whatever you choose. You could do anything from ice cream, to fresh fruit, to a mousse or pudding of your liking. Here I simply used chocolate pudding. A better picture probably would have come from butterscotch or something, but this will do for now!

Step 10:

You should know me well enough by now… Eat  :)

 

I hope you enjoyed this post; I look forward to hearing what you filled your chocolate cups with!

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Happy New Year!

Another great year has passed, and I truly believe an even better year is ahead! Hopefully 2012 will be the official birth year of the Bakery, and even more of Bertie’s loyal followers can enjoy cakes and confections from my kitchen!

The above cake is just a little something I put together to celebrate the coming of the New Year, I hope you have a star studded golden year whoever and wherever you are!

~Happy New Year~

 

Oh… for those anxiously awaiting the rest of the 12 Days of Christmas, those posts are coming! There was a slight mishap with the auto publishing and I thought posts were up when they weren’t :(  Now we’ll be celebrating baking holiday goods all the way up to the “Old Christmas Day”!

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Peanut Butter Fudge

This is my favorite Peanut Butter Fudge! Wrap this little nugget up for a great Holiday gift or set it out on a party tray for dessert. The only complaint that you will hear is “where did the last of the fudge go?”

Ingredients:

1/4 Cup unsalted butter

1 Cup Peanut Butter (I prefer smooth over crunchy)

1/2 Cup Fluff (Puffed Marshmallow)

2.5-3 Cups Confectioners Sugar 

1) Melt the butter and peanut butter together.

2) Whisk the butters until a light and uniform mixture.

3) Add fluff and stir in. Eventually try to whisk the mixture together until smooth.

4) Add sugar in 3 parts. Use a fork to cut the sugar into the mixture. Add sugar until the mixture is solid but not too much as the fudge starts to crumble. You should have a fairly malleable dough that can be pressed into a cake pan.

5) Press fudge into cake pan to 1/2” thickness. Put fudge in freezer for 30 minutes for best “cutting” experience.

Enjoy!

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Christmas Shortbread Cookies

I truly believe that there is a direct link between the level of NOM left under one’s tree for Santa and the amount of goodness that he leaves for you in return! Sure there is all of this talk of “have you been bad or good” but lets be honest, no matter how much magic one old Man can possess it’s surely becoming a much tougher job (with his age and all) to keep track of kids Facebook pages! So, unless you’re willing to take a chance on a very old, yet jolly, Saint Nick to bring you what you REALLY want for Christmas this year, you better get to baking!

I made these cookie cut outs much the same as I did the Gingerbread cookies from the Gingerbread Christmas Tree, which means I rolled out all of the batter into a fairly thin sheet and baked it… THEN I used my handy cookie cutters to get really crisp edges on my cookies!

Then I let them cool off for an hour or so. There are two important things for you to remember here, first you HAVE to let the cookies cool sufficiently to allow for decorating. Any heat coming off the cookies is going to create one big puddle of icing on you; not good. Second thing to remember is that you just cut into a baked cookie sheet. So the natural browned edges of the cookie sheet that you see above go away for the little individual cookies that you just cut out. This is important to remember because now all of the steam being released from the cookie is going to via the new raw edges of the cookie. Cover your cookie, and don’t let them sit around all day before decorating. The icing acts as a natural barrier and keeps the moisture in the cookie!

Now Decorate!

Go ahead, break out your best sugar sparkles, pearls, and gel coloring!

The easiest thing I find for decorating cookies is to have an idea going into it what you would like the design or pattern of the cookie to look like, but also allow yourself the ability  to make veer from the path if the need arises! If you go into it with zero idea how you want the cookie to turn out then your going to waste a lot of time making mistakes and tossing out undesirable designs. On the opposite spectrum, if you go into it way set on one specific outcome, you might also waste a lot off cookies that aren’t up to par! Have Fun!

Shortbread Recipe

3 cups Flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

2 tsp Cream of Tartar

1 cup Sugar

1 cup Unsalted Butter (softened)

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

 

1) Cream the butter for 5 minutes with paddle attachment on medium speed.

2) Add eggs, vanilla, and sugar, continue to beat for 3 more minutes.

3) Add remaining ingredients with mixer on low speed until all dry ingredients are combined and the dough looks uniform.

4) Roll out using parchment paper on both sides of the dough.

5) Bake 15-18 minutes at 350 or until the center of the dough is becoming slightly firm.

6) Remove from oven and allow 2-3 minutes to allow cookie to cool slightly; cut cookie shapes while the cookie is still warm and soft.

7) **** IMPORTANT STEP**** Hide cookies from “others” in the house or be prepared to suffer the same fate of my cookie below. Santa will not be pleased :(

 

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A Gingerbread Christmas Tree

I saw in a recent newspaper the other day an idea similar to this and got to thinking. I can do that, and I can make it even cooler! So I’ve listed the steps that I created below, but remember you can actually do this with any cookie recipe that you like; I just liked the way the brown and green contrasted with each other.

First I gathered all the goods for the gingerbread, and then figured out what cookie cutters I liked. It’s important to take a few minutes to figure out what shapes and sizes you like for tree. There really is no pattern per se, you really just have to stack the cutters on top of each other and use some imagination! I also made sure to cut out several extra of each shape in case there were any “oops” moments and in case I happened to like one shape more than I thought I would!

Once you have all of the ingredients mixed together in one giant gingerbread ball, roll it out into about a 1/4” thick sheet of gingerbread. Believe me, in order to save time, patience, and sharp edges on your cookies bake the sheet of gingerbread and THEN cut out your cookie shapes! Don’t bother cutting out the shapes in the raw dough, it’s only a pain, and even thought these cookies don’t rise a whole lot, they are still going to grow a little bit and leave undesirable edges. If you’re worried about “wasting” unused scraps of the baked cookie dough, don’t kid yourself. Put the extras in a bowl and set it out for kitchen by passers to munch on. Let’s be honest, as soon as you open that oven door and the smell of warm cookies waft out, you might as well have tossed a bucket of chum into a sharks cage! Swarms of hungry hands will be attacking for anything you let them have!

After much debate I finally choose what shape cookies I thought looked best stacked as together as a tree and proceeded to color them with royal icing. Again, there is no method to the madness here on what decorating techniques to use, I was going for a bit of a funky look to my tree.

Let the icing on the cookies stiffen up for a bit before stacking (now would be a good time to clean up a bit!), and figure out what you would like the tree to be placed on.

Assemble your tree using a little bit extra icing in between the layers of cookies to act as a glue to keep from tumbling over. Put your star on top and smile at your creation. Honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to eat this one so it is currently standing tall on my kitchen window sill looking mighty festive! I’m now thinking that next year I ought to to make this same style tree, only bigger and use it as a center piece! Ohhh the possibilities!

The gingerbread recipe that I used is below, but remember you can actually use any cookie that you like best!

Gingerbread Cookies

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Parchment Paper

1 cup Molasses

1 cup Unsalted Butter

3 3/4 cup All Purpose Flour

1/2 cup Brown Sugar

2 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Salt

2 tsp Ginger

1 tsp Cinnimon

1) First melt the butter and molasses together and lightly whisk until smooth. Let rest until room temperature.

2) Combine the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, and mix them together with a fork.

3) Pour the molasses and butter mixture on top of the combined dry ingredients and fold the mixture together, cutting though it several times to make sure it is well mixed.

4) If the mixture is looking too “wet” add a tablespoon of flour at a time until you can roll the mixture together into a loose ball (picture shown above)

5) Using parchment paper to cover both the top and bottom of the gingerbread dough ball, roll the dough out into a 1/4” thickness. Remove top layer of parchment paper and place in oven.

6) Bake for 10-12 minutes at 400 degrees. If however you did not take my advice on the cutting the shapes out AFTER the gingerbread sheet is cooked, the gingerbread dough cut outs only need around 5 minutes at 400.

Good luck! And don’t be afraid to be creative and think outside of the Christmas tree shape and color!

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Chocolate Cheese Cakes Cups

Bertie’s 12 Days of Christmas Baking: Day 4

Watch out chocolate lovers, this quick and easy treat is a show stopper every time! Dress it up in cute tea cups and saucers for an even more sophisticated look!

First step turn your oven to 325 degrees and  then finely chop your semisweet chocolate.

Now, pour your cream into a sauce pan to bring to a boil.

This is probably the most important step in terms of paying attention. Keep your eyes on the bubbles, once they start to get rolling they will climb high and quickly, and always keep stirring the pot to keep from any hot spots burning the cream.

Pour the boiling cream into the bowl with the finely chopped chocolate and let it sit, do not stir yet! Let the cream sit on the chocolate for about 2 minutes and then whisk the two together into a smooth sauce. Allow to cool to room temp.

In the meantime, start combining your other ingredients until blended until smooth.

Then add the chocolate sauce and whisk together with electric mixer.

Once you have scrapped the bottom of the bowl and ensured all of the mixture is well blended you can start pouring up your cheesecake into your selected service ware!

Bake for 25-30 minutes and remove when the peaks of the cheese cake look solid yet still have a slight “wiggle” to them when you lightly shake or tap the pan.

These playful little treats can be topped with your imagination! Tonight I used a homemade “fluff”, but you could simply serve with chocolate syrup, a drop of whipped cream, ice cream, cherries, or just plain. I like these cheese cakes after they have had time to cool and sit in the fridge for 2- 4 hours, but I have know people to serve them hot with a side of ice cream. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of the above combinations so go with what you like or simply what you have time to make! Since the Boss wasn’t around today, I took the opportunity to play with fire :)

Dig in, and come back tomorrow to see how I sprouted my very own Christmas Tree!

 

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream

4 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

8 ounces cream cheese

1/4 cups of sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp imitation run (or you can use the real thing with 1 Tbsp)

3 large eggs

1 tsp pure vanilla

 

*These make 6 portions of about 3/4 cups of batter, fill your ramekin or oven proof mug to the almost top (1/2 from the edge). Since there isn’t much leavening in cheese cake so they wont rise to high on you.

*Place ramekins on baking or cookie sheets and then into the 325* oven.

*EAT THEM!

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Christmas Pancakes

Bertie’s 12 Days of Christmas Baking: Day 3

Part of the fun of the12 days of baking, is giving you ideas of what to bake/eat in the days leading up to the big Christmas holiday. One of my favorite things to eat on a long weekend or any big occasion is a big feed of pancakes! Christmas morning is no different! So I’ve come up with a more festive take on pancakes!

These are mini pancakes! Mini pancakes are about 2 inches in diameter and can be eaten in a single bite! They are a lot of fun and look super cute on the plate.

Another way to make this traditional breakfast food a little more festive is to add a little bit of red, white, and green to the pile and say Ho Ho Ho. Here I used a handful of Wilton Christmas candy melts and chopped them up fairly fine…you don’t really need a lot of them, just enough to add some color.

Below is a recipe I like to use for homemade pancakes, but you can always use trusty ol’ Aunt Jemima if you like  :)

1 c. flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
3 tbsp. sugar
1 c. milk
1 egg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Combine dry ingredients. Add milk, egg and oil. Mix until smooth. When your batter (in the pan) starts to form bubbles and those bubble pop and leaves a visible hole then it’s time to flip them! Another 20-30 seconds on the other side and they are ready to serve!

And of course, once you have poured your batter into the hot pan, be sure to add some chopped up Christmas treats saving the last sprinkle for on top. Serve with your favorite maple syrup and enjoy!

See you tomorrow!

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