Viennese Cresents

These cookies are a family tradition in my house around the holidays. Somewhat similar to a shortbread cookie, they just melt in your mouth. I adore these cookies while still hot out of the oven.

Recipe:

4 cups flour
2 cups butter
2 cups pecans (or walnuts or almonds or hazelnuts)
1 cup icing sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla

Keep in mind this is a double batch. You will get at least 3 dozen cookies from this batch. More if you make them bite sized.

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix (easy right?).

It will be done once you have a crumbly mixture that holds its shape when you squeeze it. If the mix is too dry add a couple of tablespoons of milk or water.

Roll it in a ball and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for an hour.

After the hour is up, take out of fridge and have a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper prepared. The oven should be preset at 350degrees.

Take small balls of dough and roll it out with your fingers to the shape of a crescent moon.

Here is a before and after shot of what they look like going into and coming out of the oven.

Cook them for only ten to twelve minutes until very slight brown shows up at the base.

Let them sit for a minute and in the meantime grab a bowl and fill with a cup or two of icing sugar. While the cookies are still hot take them one at a time (careful, the cookies are fragile) and coat them in the icing sugar.

Do the whole try quickly, then let them sit a few minutes, letting the icing sugar melt into the hot cookie. Then coat them a second time, this one will stay on thicker and give the cookie it's sweet taste.
Let cool completely (or if you're like me, eat them now) and arrange on a plate.

These cookies don't last long in my house. I only baked off half the batch tonight and then I freeze the other half of the dough so I can have fresh ones from the oven anytime.

And there you have it! A simple, delicious holiday cookie. ^_^ Enjoy!

Alice in Wonderland

So I have really let this blog fall the the wayside, but I finally found some time to post something! It may be two am, and I may have to work in a few hours, but oh well. Sleep can always be had later.

I am really quite excited to start work on a couple of at home projects I plan to do soon. A couple of cakes, a few for random fun and practice. The first and the one I can`t wait to start on is an Alice in Wonderland cake. My friend Nelly has suggested we do a Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween and since then, I've been thinking a lot on that. I watched the movie the other day for the first time since I was five and I've been very tempted to pick up the books.

I've suddenly gone crazy for all things Alice. Hence, I am quite excited about making an Alice cake. It's only half formed in my mind, but I would like to start working on the fondant figures in the day few days. I'll post photos of my progress as I go.

Look forward to it!

Blueberry Explosion!

Tonight I made two different blueberry recipes. I'll start with the turnovers. I used premade puff pastry dough I had left from the last time. Just a frozen square will do nine turnovers. Let thaw and then place on a floured surface.

You probably won't need as much flour as is pictured, I went a little crazy ^_^ Roll out the pastry as thin as possible without wrinkling it then using a pizza cutter or a knife cut it into nine squares. Now to make the blueberry filling. It's really simple. Use a couple cups of frozen or fresh blueberries in a saucepan (you can substitute in any fruit or do a bumbleberry mix.) Add around half a cup of water. It doesn't matter if you add to much, because you can just boil it off. It will just take a little bit longer to make.

I don't usually measure, but I would say it's probably somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 a cup of sugar. I usually do it to taste.

Leave it to boil. In the mean time, take a couple tablespoons of cornstarch and a couple tablespoons of water and mix them in a cup. Once the blueberry mix is boiling, add in the cornstarch. Stir as it will start to thicken almost immediately. Boil a few minutes longer to cook off the cornstarch taste, stirring occasionally. Then take off burner and set aside for a few minutes.

Take this time to put the squares of puff pastry on a cookie sheet. Then spoon a small amount of the blueberry filling onto the side corner of each square.

I used a little bit of water to seal the sides and then took a fork and pressed down to create a pattern.

Do this with all nine. Then brush the tops with a small amount of water (or you can use egg white) and sprinkle the tops with sugar.

All that's left to do now it bake! Have the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake until a light golden brown. I forgot to time it (sorry!) but I think it was around fifteen minutes. I would check around ten minutes just to be sure though ^_^.


And voila! I over filled mine a bit and they leaked, but that's pretty much to be expected.

They are actually very simple and require very little ingredients, so they are great for a quick and easy snack. These ones are already gone, they were eaten within the first hour of being out of the oven. ^_^

Happy Birthday Nelly!

So it was my friend Nelly's birthday the other day and this was the cake I made for her. I loved the chance to try a tiered cake for once and was quite happy with how it turned out.

It was two ten inch devil's food chocolate cakes on the bottom, one and a half layers of eight inch white cake in the middle, and a four inch chocolate cake on top. Chocolate icing in between all the layers, and cream cheese icing on the outside.

I kept it very simple with the decorations, just a purple swag with small shell borders. Piped petal flowers and vine completed it quite quickly.

Then came the time to show it to the birthday girl... She came, she saw... and she dropped her cake flat on the floor. Here is what it looked like after it fell. That is the birthday girl in the top corner, sitting on the floor with her cake.

We still used it in the celebration though, not much else we could do and the mood was kept light. It was no ones fault, just a crappy accident. And as Nelly said, next time she won't be the one to carry the cake. ^_^

Christmas at Work

Some of the most recent cakes I have pictures of. I did these last week. And yes, I know, it's only November... just a tad early for Christmas. A smidgen.

BUT! I had a good reason. At work we had a "Christmas Walk-Through". Managers from 40 stores came to our store to gather ideas to use in their own come Christmas. So I had to do up a small amount of "fancy" Christmas cakes. Except at my work, I have a time limit to what I can do. My boss will not let me do something if she thinks it will be time consuming or too "difficult". It's vaguely annoying to be stunted in my creativity, but to think of things within those boundaries can be a fun challenge too. These cakes are mostly regulars with a Christmas twist. The most commented on cakes were the Christmas tree cake and the blue snow cake. Everybody was thoroughly impressed. I wish had a chance to show them what I could really do, but at least this was fun anyways.

Now here are the gingerbread houses she asked me to make up for display. The base is from a kit we sell in store that I just fancied up. I love to make gingerbread houses. I am actually in the middle of making up a template for a larger more complicated house. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures of the making of process for this one.

In the gingerbread houses in the picture here, I have ice cream cone trees, fondant snowmen, tootsie roll fencing, and chocolate shingles. Most of the rest is in royal icing.

Can't wait to make mine!

Ducky Cookies

My first real post. These are my ducky cookies. It had been a long time since I had made any cookies really so I wanted to try something again. I bought some cookie cutters and this one was instantly my favorite.

The cookies themselves are just a sugar cookie with a little orange zest and juice in them to add a tinge of flavor. The icing (which is just a basic royal icing with lemon juice) also continues the citrus-y feel.

I used the run out technique to make the icing look smooth. It can be a little time consuming but in the end the cookies look awesome. Most people think I bought them from a store!

A Beginning...

Welcome!

This blog is really just a feature for me to go a little more in depth about what goes into the cakes and creations I make. I adore decorating all things sweet and I am looking to improve my skills. So I'll be posting some of my older works and then as time goes by newer creations and maybe, just maybe, we'll begin to see an improvement.

Wish me luck!