2012 The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap

I am so excited to once again to take part in The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, this is the 2nd year it is running, and it runs internationally with it being mandatory that there is at least 4 Food Bloggers that enlist in your country to qualify.

I am actually super excited as my 1st Cookie Swapper sent me one of my cookie packages already and they smell soooo delicious and chocolaty its seriously not funny. My household has been pestering to eat them for the past 2 weeks, so they are in lock down! The cookies that is.

As I used my traditional family gingerbread recipe last year and opened up the vault and shared it with you all already, this year I have taken a recipe from one of my Cookie Idols and I have made them and used her design to show that the Cookie Queen Kitsch'n can implement any design that takes your fancy (within reason of course hee hee)..  I thought these little Nutcrackers were gorgeous and I have been itching for over a month to start these babies up!

The Gingerbread is based on Orange and Molasses and I wasn't sure how it would go, but I LURRRRVE gingerbread so it wasn't hard to please me and on many nights I have wanted to devour the lot... in fact I even made a whole extra 12 cookies just so I get to keep some myself this year (which i never ever do)!

So here we go......

My recipe is from Sweet Sugar Belle Adventures, here is the link I used:
 sweetsugarbelle.com - Nutcracker Ornaments
Now brace yourselves for a wonderful aroma that you are about to enter into when you bake up this baby, its like entering a world of Willy Wonker in the Gingerbread land...

Orange Molasses Gingerbread Nutcrackers

(as usual I have made some slight adjustments to the recipe)

1 cup Butter - room tempreture
1/2 cup Castor Sugar
1/2 cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 1/4 cup Molasses
2 Eggs
1 tsp Orange Rind
1 Tbsp Orange Juice
5 1/2 cups Plain Flour
1 tsp Bi-carb Soda
1/2-1 tsp Salt
2 tsp Ground Ginger
3 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
2 tsp Ground Nutmeg

Pre heat oven to 190 (or 375) degrees UNLESS you do what I do and chill dough in fridge overnight.

Cream together the butter, castor sugar, brown sugar and molasses, they will become a thick silken mixture that looks devine. Personally - I start with the paddle attachment and swap to the dough hook when I begin adding the dry ingredients.

Whilst you cream the above, sift all of your dry ingredients into a large bowl and set aside.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix them in well, then add in your orange rind and juice.  Using a cup measure, add your dry ingredients a cup at a time into your wet mix in your mixer, and eventually after a few minutes it will start to form a dough.

Once the dough has formed into a ball, remove it from the mixing bowl, and split it into 3 balls, flatten the balls into discs and wrap in cling film (or glad wrap), and place into the fridge for at least an hour.  This will chill and firm up your dough for rolling.

It is recommended to roll this dough between baking paper but I personally just rolled it out on a floured surface, and it was easily managable.

Roll and cut out your cookie shapes, place them onto baking paper lined tins, bake them for approximately 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of your cookie. They will brown up a little but should be baked longer then 20 minutes or else they will burn.

Wait for your cookies to be completely cold before you set about icing them, otherwise the icing will heat and run.

Decorating Stages:

Stage 1 - Pipe your outline of the green hat and red chest.
Stage 2 - Flood or fill the green area
Stage 3 - Flood or fill the red area
Stage 4 - (wait overnight) Pipe the face/skin tone of choice
Stage 5 - Flood or fill the face area
Stage 6 - Pipe on the darker green triangles onto green hat
Stage 7 - (wait overnight) Pipe on the nose
Stage 8 - Flood or fill the cravat with yellow
Stage 9 - (wait a couple of hours) Pipe on black eye dots
Stage 10 - Pipe on the black buttons onto cravat
Stage 11 - Pipe on red mouth dot
Stage 12 - Pipe on black moustache
Stage 13 - Pipe on red dots onto hat
Stage 14 - Optional (wait overnight) Pipe on white line on hat trim and coat with white non-pariels

HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

STAY TUNED... for my post soon on the delicious cookies and who baked them with linky links to their fab blogs once I receive them all as I have one to go!

Lets kick off the Silly Season with Rudolf Cupcakes!

HO HO HO Merry Christmas...... I can hear Santa preparing his sleigh already for his Elves to fill with goodies for all the good boys and girls worldwide!  And in light of this excitment I am kicking off this Silly Season with a fun cupcake to do that the kiddies will all love!!

Because who doesn't love a fun, happy, giggley reindeer that we all know and love? Noone? Excellent! 'Cause I have just the activity and you can even get the kidlets to help you.

I used my personal recipe I always follow for a great chocolate cake as its dark and fluffy and super quick, my Miss 3 often assists in the mixing stage, and as opposed to a dense chocolate cake its great for cupcakes.  I came up with these after I found a packet of chocolate coated pretzels at the shop that I thought looked just like antlers!

I am entering this Rudolf the Red-Nosed Cupcakes in the Creative Holiday Recipe Contest hosted by Kristan at Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and Shelly at Cookies and Cups! Just because I follow them both religiously and love to bake there prized blog posts myself... I feel honoured to be able to share one of my recipe creations on their Blog with you all.  In fact I have only just posted today a whole Christmas Post on Food Bloggers I LOVE! Kristan & Shelly are right up there, dont miss the post for a great lot of Food Bloggers to enjoy...

Rudolf the Red-Nosed Cupcakes

Cake (OR you can use a Betty Crocker Packet Cake Mix in Devils Food):

1 3/4 cups Plain Flour
2 cups Castor Sugar
3/4 cup Dark Cocoa Powder
2 tsp Bi-carb Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
1 cup of Milk
1/2 lemon - squeezed
1/2 Vegetable Oil
2 Lrg Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 cup Boiling Water

Decorating :

Tub of Chocolate Frosting
Red MnMs (or skittles)
Chocolate Coated Pretzels
Icing Eyes (Wilton or similar)
Snouts (I used my Gingerbread Cookie recipe, but you can use a store bought small round cookie)


Preheat oven to 180 (350) degrees. Grease and flour your cake tin or line cupcake pan with patty cake wrappers.

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, bi-carb, bakign poswer and salt. Set aside.

Fill jug with 1 cup of milk and squeeze in the lemon juice and set aside (this will curdel like yoghurt) leave for 5-10 minutes.

Crack your eggs into the eletric mixer and whisk until foamy, then add in your vegetable oil and vanilla and mix well for 3 minutes.  Add in the milk concoction and mix well.  I suggest to change your beater from a whisk attachment to the paddle.

In 3 instalments add in the dry sifted ingredients and mix on a low setting. Once just mixed (do not overmix) then add in the cup of boiling water and I recommend stirrign this through with a spatula, ensuring you are scraping mix from the bottom so with all ingredients are mixed in well without a risk of over beating, as this will cause it not to rise.

Pour your mixture into your patty cake wrappers, I use 2 soup spoons to fill wrappers and I fill them 1/2 - 3/4 to the top with batter.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Once completely cold, you can begin to decorate as follows :

I cheated... shhhhhh... I used a tub of Betty Crocker pre-made Chocolate Frosting to save time at Christmas Crazytown time.  Soooo cover your cupcake in chocolate frosting and stick the snout onto one side of the top of the cupcake.

Next add your eyeballs and antlers (pretzels)!

Finally arrange on a fabulous cupcake stand to show off your hours (cough cough - not) of hard work creating these babies!!

A Very Bloggie Christmas - My Fav Bloggers!

All I want for Christmas is......

Some Great Blogs to Read!

I often wonder what people like to read, books, magazines, blogs etc... what do you enjoy reading?  Mine are recipe books, foodie magazines, a non-fiction novel with a strong storyline usually based pre 1950, and BLOGS! But not just any blogs, mainly baking blogs! Occassionally I jump onto a blog for home decorator or craft idea reasons but I often jump back off it as they dont usually hold my attention as much and I can't afford to clog up my email.  I do prefer to get them on email as not all of them appear in my Blogroll Feed and I dont get to my Bog every day or as often as I like to....

So anyways.... I have decided to collate a list of the blogs I REALLY REALLY and TRULY TRULY follow religiously that I LOVE, and its mainly for the recipe ideas and the content and how well they are written or photographed, a couple are for Cafe/Restaurant write ups as I love to try new places locally that you may not hear about otherwise, I value peoples opinions such as Lorraine at Not Quite Nigella.  I constantly cook from some of my fav bloggers such as Ree from The Pioneer Woman and Heather at Sprinklebakes and lets not to forget Shelly at Cookiesandcups! and we all know I Lurrrve Marian at Sweetopia!!

I also absolutely love finding new Blogs out there, I stumble across alot via simple Google searches when hunting down a recipe idea, but please add comments below of the Blogs that you follow or read and use regularly, I would love to take a squizz and maybe join them too...

Links to MY FAVOURITE BLOGS:

1. The Pioneer Woman
2. Not Quite Nigella
3. Cookies and Cups
4. Sprinklebakes
5. Bake @ 350
6. Sweetopia
7. Sweet Sugar Belle
8. Haniela's
9. The Decorated Cookie
10. I am Baker
11. My Baking Addiction
12. The Girl Who Ate Everything
13. Bubble and Sweet
14. Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

 Some piccies of my Bloggers:

Mallows! (Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies)

I have been honestly drooling over this old blog post that I somehow came across by accident.  It was a Daring Bakers Challenge from 2009. I haven't been able to close the post down, it has remained open for over 4 weeks on my laptop.

As usual I have made my own amendments to the recipe to suit my needs which i feel make it work a bit better.  It was a fairly easy recipe but time consuming in the sense that you had some wait time periods that were necessary with a couple of stages like the dough refrigerating, the marshmallow setting and the glaze to set. Handy Helper.... at the Ready!

http://draganabakes.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/daring-bakers-challenge-chocolate.html

These are called Mallows, and they are D - licious!

Mallows

Biscuit Base

3 cups Plain Flour
1/2 cup Castor Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
3/4 tsp Baking Powder
3/8 tsp Bi Carb Soda
1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
170g Butter - unsalted & room temp
3 eggs - whisked together

Marshmallow Centre

1/4 cup Water
1/4 cup Light Corn Syrup
3/4 cup Castor Sugar
1 Tbsp Powdered Gelatin
4 Tbsp Cold Water (to use with gelatin)
2 Egg Whites
1/4 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

Chocolate Coating

12 ounces Dark Good Quality Cooking Chocolate
2 ounces Cocoa Butter or Vegetable Oil or Shortening

This recipe makes at least 2 dozen Mallows.  Pre heat over to 375 or 200 degrees.

Sift the dry ingredients together, and add room temp butter and mix in electric mixer (paddle attachment) until it resembles a sandy consistency.  Then add the eggs one at a time and mix until combined.  Remove dough from the mixing bowl and knead into a ball and form a large disc, then wrap disc or discs in cling wrap/film. Refridgerate the dough from 1 hour to 3 days.

Remove from the fridge and roll out your dough on a floured surface.  Line a cookie tin tray with grease proof paper. Cut out 1 1/2 - 2 inch rounds, approx 1/2 inch thick and place at least 2cm apart on the tray.  Place the tray into the oven and bake the cookies for 10 minutes, they shoudl change to a light gold but not brown, they will be a very pale cookie.

Remove after ten minutes from the tray onto a cooling rack, leave to cool.

Make the marshmallow.

Take a medium saucepan, combine the water, corn syrup and sugar and bring mixture to the boil, or using a candy thermometer it needs to register "soft ball" stage, or 235 degrees.  Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water and let it dissolve.

Remove hot syrup from the heat and add in the gelatin and mix it through. Next in a separate bowl on mixer, whip the egg whites into soft peaks and then pour in the syrup still mixing on high.  Finally add the vanilla and continue whipping until stiff.  Transfer mixture into a pastry bag with size 10-12 pastry tip.

Pipe a marshmallow kiss onto the top of each cookie.  Then rest the topped cookies for 2 hours to set solid.




Finally after 2 hours, take a small saucepan and melt the 2 ingredients together over a double boiler method, to make the chocolate ganache.

Once the chocolate mixture is melted, raise the temp, reduce it back down and heat a 2nd time.  Remove from the heat.

Take each cookie and dip it upside down into the chocolate ganache.  Place back onto the cooling tray, allow a half hour for the chocolate to dry.

Then feel free to devour SEVERAL... because you won't be able to resist!