Mini Pumpkin Pies

My daughter's kindergarten class was having a Thanksgiving party, with each child tasked to bring a small treat to share with their class.  So we made mini pumpkin pies!  Mini pies are fun and easy.  Simply use a single filling recipe and a double amount of crust recipe for a 9-inch pie, and you can make 24 mini pies in standard muffin tins.  I used a 4 inch diameter round scalloped cookie cutter to cut rounds in pie dough, rolled out to 1/16 inch thick, and then gently pressed each round into muffin tins.  Then, I filled them with my homemade pumpkin pie filling, which has a secret: it's really half pumpkin, half sweet potato, with real maple syrup and fresh grated ginger!  Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, and cool 1 hour before removing from the muffin tin.  I topped mine with brown sugar whipped cream - just whip your cream with brown sugar instead of white for an added flavor bonus that works really well with fall-themed or spiced desserts.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut butter cookies have a problem.  Go ahead and bake up a batch of your usual recipe.  Growing up, mine was the recipe on the crisco shortening can.  Vegetable shortening makes baked goods very soft and light, but it has no flavor at all, and now we also know it has unhealthy trans-fats.  So, switch to a butter recipe.  Now the cookies are nice and soft out of the oven, but they cool to a crisp, tough texture.  Also, neither of the recipes actually has a lot of peanut flavor!  So, some recipes call for adding in chopped peanuts, and yes, this does give the cookies bursts of nutty flavor, but it also makes the cookie have a crunchy texture.  My ideal peanut butter cookie is soft and tender, with nice crisp edges, and a lot of peanut flavor.  To make this happen, I use ground peanut flour in my cookies for part of the regular flour.  When you mix flour with water, you get gluten, a tough, chewy protein.  This is desirable in crusty French breads, which is why we knead and knead them, to develop lots of gluten, but in baked goods you want as little gluten as possible.  The nut flour does two things for the cookies: no gluten formation with water, resulting in a tender texture, and a huge boost of nutty flavor without the crunchy texture found in chopped nuts.  And so, a perfect peanut butter cookie, made with real butter, peanut butter, and home-ground peanut flour!  Also, they are huge - only six to a baking sheet!

Horse Birthday

Today was my oldest daughter's sixth birthday!  She was very specific about what she wanted her cake to be: a rectangular cake with piped grass and a path, with six horses.  I added in some flowers in the grass and a picket fence as well.  It is her favorite flavor, which she requests every year: red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting!  She was thrilled with her cake!

Dinosaur Cupcakes!

I got an order this week for birthday cupcakes for a little boy... and he wanted dinosaurs!  These are chocolate cupcakes with three kinds of Swiss meringue buttercream: peanut butter for mud, green peppermint for grass, and coconut for nests, with whopper candies as the dinosaur eggs!  I drew a triceratops, a T-rex, and a brachiosaur on paper, cut them out, and then used them as a template on my homemade sugar paste to cut out all the dinos in green, blue, and red.  Then, I stuck a white pearl sprinkle on, and used a toothpick dipped in some black food dye to draw on the pupil.  They came out so cute, and I was especially pleased, because my 5 year old daughter came into the kitchen and correctly identified each type of dinosaur! 

Baby Shower Cake

This week I made a baby shower cake as a present for my friend, Mary.  Mary and I have known each other since high school, where we played in the orchestra together, and had way too much fun!  She is expecting her very first, a baby girl, and so I made her a delicious cake: alternating layers of white and strawberry cake with strawberry filling and strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream.  I decorated it with homemade vanilla fondant and hand-sculpted sugar paste baby booties and a bow!

Because it was a gift, I decided to experiment and try an inlaid stripe design with a hat-box lid on the bottom layer... it was harder to do than I thought, and it didn't turn out as well as I had envisioned!  Still, it was cute, and delicious, which is the most important part, in my opinion!

Congratulations, Mary!

Happy Birthday, Katie!

It was my niece, Katie's birthday this week, and I made her a cake for a present.  This was a chocolate cake with malted milk chocolate frosting and hand sculpted sugar paste dogwood flowers! 

Katie is a terrific sempstress, and she made the cutest rag doll for my daughter on her 4th birthday, and so I really wanted to do something special for her!  Happy birthday, Katie!

Malted Milk Chocolate Frosting

3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

3 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup malted milk powder (such as ovaltine original)

6 ounces milk chocolate chips (recommended: guittard)

pinch salt

Place the chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring between, until melted. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes. Once the chocolate has cooled, place the butter on the bowl of your mixer with the paddle attachment and beat on medium high for 3 minutes. Add the powdered sugar, malted milk powder, and salt. Beat on low until combined, and then pn medium high for 3 more minutes. Add the cooled chocolate and beat on medium until fully incorporated. Use to frost your cake immediately.

Malted Chocolate Cupcakes

This week, I was inspired by Halloween candy to make a special treat!  I made chocolate cupcakes and topped them with a rich malted chocolate frosting, and then a whopper candy to decorate and to give a flavor hint!  They were extremely delicious... I believe the chocolate malt frosting is my new favorite chocolate frosting!

In other news, I have a non-cancerous tumor in my trachea, which was diagnosed in 2008, and I have had it cut out with lasers several times in the last few years, but it has proven unresponsive to that less-invasive treatment, and so, on November 20, I will be going in to the hospital for a much more invasive surgery, where the surgeon will remove the entire section of effected trachea.  I will be in the hospital for 7-10 days, and then recovering at home for 6-8 weeks.  Therefore, I will be unable to do any orders, or post any posts until I am recovered, some time around February!  It is very sad to miss out on holiday baking - the best time of the whole year! But, my health is more important!  I have one last baby shower cake that I'll be posting later this week, and that will be my last order until February!  Thanks for reading, everyone!