Nut Horns

I am continuing my posts on holiday cookies.  So, so much has been going on in my life, I haven't really had much of a chance to bake.  One of my mom and sister Leah's favorite cookies are these scrumptious cookies.  They are not the easiest cookies to make, but I do make them every year for Christmas.

Nut horns are a staple for a lot of people for their holiday cookie trays.  The dough for these cookies is a very mild, not very sweet dough that has to be kept very cold.  I like to let this dough sit in the refrigerator over night before I use it.  It's a very sticky, difficult dough to work with if it warms up at all.  I use walnuts to make the filling and grind them very finely.  I add some sugar and vanilla and just enough of a binding agent to make them stick together.  These cookies can be pretty messy to make.  I use sugar to roll the dough out instead of flour.  I usually end up with sugar all over my kitchen!  Also, the filling is very sticky.  I usually have a very sticky mess everywhere after I make these cookies, but since my family loves them so much, I make them every year.

Do you have a simple filled cookie recipe that you love?  You can really fill it with any kind of filling that you like.  You could substitute pecans in the above recipe if you prefer pecans.  I have filled these cookies with apricot on many occasions.  But you could use a poppy seed filling, raisins, or date filling.  Just use something that you like if you don't like what the recipe calls for.   

Pecan Tassies

With Christmas right around the corner, I decided to do a post about some holiday cookies that I never got around to last year.  Pecan tassies are classic holiday cookies that always please a crowd.

Pecan tassies are one of my favorite cookies.  I cannot resist fresh pecan tassies.  Tassie dough is a very simple dough with just a few ingredients.  A lot of recipes for this dough call for just two ingredients, flour and cream cheese!  I like to actually make some pecan and some walnut tassies when I make these cookies.  Everyone in my family loves walnuts, so they would all prefer the walnut ones.  I love them both, but I think I like the pecan ones better.  The filling is the same whether I use pecans or walnuts.  It is a mixture of brown sugar, eggs, and butter.  Put all these simple things together in one little cup and you have a delicious little bite of gooey brown sugar filling, crunch and nuttiness from the pecans, and tartness from the cream cheese in the dough.  They are perfect with a cup of hot coffee on a cold winter evening!

Did you know that pecans are not actually nuts?  They are technically drupes, which are fruits with a single stone or pit, contained in a husk.  Pecans are a good source of protein and unsaturated fats.  They are rich in omega-6 fatty acids, although contain about only half as much as walnuts.  Pecans can also help to reduce cholesterol by reducing the "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.  Clinical research suggests that eating a handful of pecans a day may help lower cholesterol levels similar to the effects of cholesterol lowering medications.  

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

I was asked recently to make cookies for the out of town guests for a wedding.  The bride specifically requested Chocolate Chip cookies but gave me a few ideas about what she would like the other cookie to be.  I ultimately decided to do White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies mostly because I love them so much!

I love making cookies almost as much as I like eating cookies.  There is nothing better than a warm cookie with a cup of hot coffee to brighten my mood.  And to me, white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are just the perfect blend of salty and sweet.  Almost every time I bite into one, I am reminded of salty buttered popcorn, but then the sweetness of the white chocolate hits me.  I just love these cookies, especially when I get the "perfect" bite with a little bit of salty macadamia nut, some sweet white chocolate, and perfectly crumbly cookie.  Yum, yum!!!

Just a reminder that I am now accepting orders for the upcoming holiday months.  Take a look at my Holiday Cookies page for pricing info.  But remember that I am also available for pies or rolls for your Thanksgiving feast.

Cheeseburger Cake

I got an order from a friend for a cake that looks like a cheeseburger for her son's 2nd birthday. She also wanted a little one just for him to eat by himself. I thought it was a fabulous idea, and it turned out super cute!

It was unusual for me to make a cake where I did not use a pastry bag at all.  It didn't seem right.  I kept feeling like something was missing, but it did not need any piping.  I made the "buns" out of white cake with French buttercream.  The "burger" itself was chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream.  So in each thin slice, you got a nice mixture of all those flavors.  I used a large slice of orange fondant for the American cheese and green fondant for my lettuce.  I made a decision to leave the lettuce and cheese off of the small cake for the birthday boy.  He had three layers of cake, he didn't really need two layers of fondant too :)  All in all the cake looked awesome and tasted quite yummy.

If you want to cover your cake in crumbs, it's super easy.  When you level the cake, keep that part that you cut off and stick it back in the oven briefly to crisp it up a little bit.  That will make it a bit easier to crumble.  Just make sure you let it cool before sticking it onto your iced cake, otherwise your icing will melt.  Cake crumbs are great for lots of reasons.  They can add some texture to your cake.  They can make your cake look pretty without lots of decorating.  But also, they can help cover up mistakes on your cakes if you are not great at covering your cakes smoothly.   

Blueberry Pie

My husband's uncle had a birthday yesterday. He LOVES pie, and last year I made him pumpkin pie. This year I decided to make him blueberry pie because he absolutely loves it. Of course, I made an extra one since they are my favorite too.

There is nothing like a fresh berry pie. Blueberries tend to turn somewhat bitter during the baking process, so a fair amount of sugar is necessary when baking a blueberry pie to allow them to retain their sweetness. A lot of fruit pies, like apple or peach, require time to macerate in the sugar before being baked. Blueberries, however, do not, so this is a fairly quick pie to make. I always make my pie dough way ahead of time so that it has a lot of time to chill. Pie dough is best when it is super cold. So, I made that the night before. All in all, it took me about 10 minutes to get these pies in the oven. If you are not experienced with pastry, it may take you a little longer to get the dough rolled, but with a little practice, you could whip up some pies very quickly too :) The berries are a nice blend of sweet and tart. A little bit of lemon zest make this filling just divine with the crumbly, somewhat salty pie dough. I could eat blueberry pie after every single meal, happily :)

If you are someone who likes fruit desserts, the best tip that I can give you is to buy fruit when it is in season and freeze it yourself. It may not actually be fresh, but I can guarantee you the quality is better than what you can buy already frozen at the grocery stores. The fruit that you can buy in bags in the grocery store is called IQF, or individually quick frozen. That means that the fruit was laid out in a single layer and frozen very quickly in a blast chiller. This prevents them from sticking to each other. Never buy a bag that is just one solid clump. That means that it most likely thawed and was re-frozen at some point. You definitely do not want that fruit. That is why if you freeze it yourself, you have a lot of control over how the fruit is treated in the freezing process. I just prep the fruit how I would for a pie, lay it out in a single layer on a baking sheet and freeze it. Once it is frozen completely, I put it in a freezer bag and label it. So, if you find an exceptionally good batch of Chambersburg peaches, go ahead, buy a bunch. Now you can have peach turnovers, pie, dumplings or whatever you like all winter long when you cannot buy a decent peach.

Fresh Beat Band Cake

I was asked if I could do a Fresh Beat cake. When I first read this in an email, I read it as Fresh Beet being that I had never heard of The Fresh Beat Band. I reread the email because I knew this cake was for a 5 year old girl and I thought fresh beet cake might be an odd choice. While I myself, and most likely my kids too, would love a fresh beet cake, most people contact me for a cake with a character or something of the like on it for their kid's birthday parties. I was right to reread this email. Apparently, Fresh Beat Band is a very popular show :)

I did a little research on the show and realized that they are real people. I am not quite that talented to make real people out of fondant, so I decided to just do a cute little guitar to replicate one that one of the characters plays on the show. She asked for dark purple icing because she loves purple so much, but the other colors on the cake were based on the logo for the show. One of the things that baffled me about the cake, however, was how to do the strings on the guitar. It takes a lot of practice to be able to pipe super skinny strings. It is a skill that I have not yet mastered. My wonderful husband suggested that I do the strings out of fondant. I thought it was a great idea, but was a little nervous about moving them onto the cake for fear that they may break. My wonderful husband then offered to make the strings for me. I knew it would be quite time consuming to make these super skinny fondant strings that were strong enough to be moved around. It took him a while to do, but he did it, and I think they were fantastic. All in all, I was proud of the cake. I thought it was super cute, and I know the vanilla cake and French buttercream tasted yummy :)

Have you ever experimented with different extracts or flavorings? If you have a nicely stocked baking cabinet, you most likely have several different flavorings. You can change your vanilla white cake to a white almond cake easily if you have almond extract. You can turn your simple yellow cake into a lemon cake by adding a few drops of lemon extract. You may not always have a fresh lemon, but it's easy to keep a bottle of lemon extract in your cabinet. Just make sure you buy the best extracts and flavorings that you can. Obviously, "immitation" flavorings or extracts are not going to yield as good of a flavor as the real thing. They can often lead to off flavors along with undesirable, underlying alcohol flavors.

Piano Cake

Before I start my blog post today, I would like to say that my family suffered a loss of a family member almost 2 weeks ago. His presence was greatly missed at L's birthday party this past weekend. This post is dedicated to Mark who will forever live on in our memories.

My older daughter turned 4 recently. I absolutely cannot believe it. We had her birthday party last weekend. At first she said that she wanted a guitar cake, but since she takes piano lessons, I asked if she would rather have a piano cake. She said yes, so a piano cake I made.

I always make some white, almond cake and some chocolate cake for my kids' birthday parties. I just like to have a little of each flavor for everyone to choose, although most people have a little bit of both. I decided to do chocolate icing this time around for several reasons. I thought that I could just use the chocolate icing to ice the piano so that I would not have to use a bunch of food coloring. Plus, my chocolate icing does not need to be refrigerated. We have a teeny tiny refrigerator and I knew this huge cake would not fit in it with all the other food for the party. I cleared this with L first, and she excitedly said that she would definitely like chocolate icing! I carved up the white cake in the shape of a grand piano and iced it with my chocolate buttercream. I always consult with my husband on cake design because he is superb at coming up with great and interesting ideas. I was not quite sure how to do the piano keys. After talking it over with him, I decided to use white chocolate and dark chocolate for the keys. I think it turned out very well, and my girl was happy with it. Plus, it was quite yummy :)

Birthday cakes have been a part of western culture since the middle of the 19th century. The addition of the candles to the cake began in America in the 18th century. The use of cakes at birthday celebrations however, dates back to Ancient Rome. Originally, birthday cakes were reserved for only the wealthy. Many variations on the birthday cake or in some instances the birthday pastry exist around the world.