Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: Olymp-bic Gold Medals

The theme for our July 2012 meeting ended up being a little tongue in cheek. You see, the Olympics were just around the corner and as they were being hosted in London it was a really big deal, so we were planning to have an Olympic themed meeting in July. However, shortly before our July meeting, we came across an article about the Olympics' special copyright laws, and a certain cake decorating competition that was threatened with court action for breaching that copyright law by having an Olympic theme for their 2012 competition.

Now, we law-abiding bakers at the Cake'n'Bake Club didn't want to breach any copyright, so we decided to change our theme to "not-the Olympics". We ended up with some really creative bakes, such as a Wimbledon cake, and some non-Olympic ring donuts. My take on the non-Olympic theme was to make some gold medal biscuits to give to people for non-sport related achievements, like this:

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 12-15 minutes

Makes 16 medals

Ingredients:

100g margarine

85g caster sugar

Almond flavouring, to taste

4-5 cherry drops, crushed

170g plain flour

100g white chocolate

Gold edible shimmer spray (I LOVE this stuff!)

Writing icing, to decorate (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until pale and creamy, then stir in the almond flavouring, crushed cherry drops and flour until the mixture comes together to form a dough.
3. Lightly flour the work surface, then roll the dough out to 1 cm thick. Cut circles out and place these onto the prepared baking tray, leaving at least a cm gap between each. cut out a small circle at the top of each cookie for the ribbon, then bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
4. Once the cookies are cool, thread a little bit of ribbon through each. Melt the white chocolate and then spread generously over the top of each cookie, then leave to one side to set.
5. Once the chocolate has set, spray the cookies gold by following the directions on the can of edible spray. Use your writing icing pen to write on each medal why the receiver deserve this Olymp-bic medal - favourites of mine were "champion eater" and "best helper" :-)

Happy Thoughts
x

Butter Biscuits

There are certain things that Sundays are made for: laying in bed late, taking walks in the sunshine, long baths, blogging, massive roast dinners, and not to forget tea and biscuits.

These butter biscuits are melt-in-the mouth delicious. The recipe below is just for the biscuits - which taste great on their own with a sprinkling of icing sugar. The taste equally delicious when sandwiched with a little jam and vanilla buttercream, as pictured above! I make these with a biscuit gun I received as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but the recipe works equally well if piped using a standard piping bag and nozzle.

Ingredients:

175g slightly salted butter
50g icing sugar
175g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla essence

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 15 - 20 minutes
Makes between 30-40 biscuits, (or 15-20 sandwiched biscuits)

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a baking tray (or two!) with greaseproof paper.
2. Lightly cream the butter and sugar until smooth and fluffy, then beat in the vanilla essence.
3. Sift the flour into the bowl and then beat into the mixture until you have a smooth, pipe-able dough.
4. Put the dough into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle - or into a biscuit gun if you have one! - and pipe shapes onto the lined baking sheet. 
5. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, or until golden brown all over, then take out of the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.
6. Taste one or two as soon as they are cool enough to handle, because that's chef's perks and it would be rude not to! To serve, eat as they are, dust with a light sprinkling of icing sugar, or sandwich together with your favourite jam and buttercream!

No real reason for this picture, I just like it. As an indicator to how many biscuits you get from the quantities used above, as well as the 27 biscuits pictured above there are another 12 in the oven!

Happy Thoughts
x

Mamma, I'm Hungry

Disney Classic # 17 - 101 Dalmatians

After a few weeks of novelty cakes I decided it might be a good idea to go back to basics with a simple a tasty classic. (I've also had a complication with my illness, and my Dr has told me not to do anything! Well... we can't have that, so I'll compromise by keeping it simple for a few weeks. ^_^) In honour of these wonderfully spotty dogs, I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. Unfortunately though - all of the shops in my area seem to have simultaneously sold out of dark/milk chocolate chips, so we ended up with chocolate chunk cookies instead. Still, the idea was there... and the cookies were tasty! I once read somewhere that each dalmatian puppy was animated with 32 spots. I was going to try to fit 32 chocolate chips in each cookie, but figured there'd then probably be chocolate than cookie...

You can be a champion too if you eat Kanine cookies...

This recipe is based on a recipe in my favourite cook book, BBC Good Food's 101 Cakes and Bakes. It started off as their "Smarties Cookies" recipe on page 196, but I've made a few adjustment, basically to cater to what I had in my cupbards at the time!

Prep time: 15mins        Cook time: 10-12mins per batch       Makes: 24 cookies

Ingredients:

200g margarine
100g light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp clear honey
300g self raising flour
1tsp vanilla essence
75g milk chocolate, chopped into small chunks
50g white chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a flat baking tray with greaseproof paper
2. Beat the margarine, brown sugar and caster sugar together in a bowl until light and creamy.
3. Add the honey, vanilla essence and half of the flour and beat until well combined.
4. Add the chocolate chunks, the chocolate chips and the rest of the flour to the bowl, and work into a dough with your hands. 
5. Divide the dough into 24 balls. Place these well apart on the baking sheet (note - do not flatten the balls, they will spread in the oven to make a thick round cookie) and bake for 10-12 minutes until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a couple of minutes on the baking tray before transferring to a wire wrack to cool completely. (note - when the cookies first come out of the oven they will still be a little soft, do not worry! they will crisp up as they cool and you will be left with a delicious chewy cookie!)

Next time we're watching The Sword in the Stone, and I'll be making some yummy scones!

Happy Thoughts
x