Valentine's 2010

What a busy weekend it was, kind of glad Valentine's has come and gone. I made my heart shaped sugar cookies with red poured cookie icing. The icing needs to dry for better than a day before writing on them. I personalized them all - twenty for Stirling's class party for Monday and fifteen for Madison's on Tuesday. The kids really love them, although with the grade ones reading I think I should have printed their names as some of them didn't recognize the written forms of their names, which is to be expected - they are only six and seven. :o) I had frozen icing I used up first, but had to make new for Madison's. I made it a little on the thin side and was still not completely hard by Monday afternoon, so wrote on them anyway. I would hate to see Wilton's idea of a thick FoodWriter, I found it difficult to not have fat letters with the softer icing. Still had a couple dozen for us to munch on, beginning Saturday, I baked them all Saturday evening and started icing them Sunday morning (just for those of you who might think we ate them in one day, lol)- they didn't last long - kids ate the last one yesterday, lol.


I also spent Monday making our cake for the family. We are on a tight budget right now, its funny how with nothing really to eat in the house I can still bake! Wow! I officially used up my butter with this cake. It didn't need egg yolks so I used Meringue powder for the 8 whites it needed. It is a delicious moist white cake. I used up the last of the frozen Europe's best blueberries I had leftover in the freezer from Declan's cake in November. Defrosted them slowly and added some Knox gelatin and a bit of sugar. How do I avoid my gelatin being grainy? Anyone know? Is it best to dissolve it in choice 1 or 2 on the package? Choice 1 seems not to fair so well on two occasions now. Didn't notice texture while eating the cake and it all came together well with simple buttercream icing. I'm having issues with my apple blossoms lately too, for some reason I'm getting peeks at the centers of my flowers, maybe I'm turning my bag the wrong direction...hmmm. It was a really yummy cake - looking forward to another piece after lunch.

See my writing is getting better too :o)

Our Christmas Open House

Aside from all that other baking I finally had all the baking to do for our holiday festivities. We had a little open house and this was what I put out. Lots of h'ourderve type stuff (meat, cheese, crackers, veg and dip, spring rolls, meatballs), but I rebaked all the goodies I baked for the Christmas concert and then some.

I doubled the toppings on these as I found them on the thin side in the 9x13 pans I made for the Christmas concert that I had 1 1/2 x the recipe - raisin squares and lemon squares, I would quadruple the original recipe next time! The date squares and chocolate cookie buttons (biscotti like) didn't need any change, so I just made another recipe of those. I also made rumballs, which I ground for the first time with my Magic Bullet, the cake crumbs I dried in the oven. A little too fine though, so it was a little more difficult to get the ball to bind, but once it sat for a bit the moisture started to help; frangipan tarts, mincemeat tarts, reindeer antlers. I never got back around to making more shortbread or making the gingerbread house that I had planned to work on with the kids. The time just ran away from us all. We are almost finished all the goodies - only a few more rumballs to go. I did however buy fruit cake that turned out to be too dry - will buy from regular supplier next Christmas, and I also bought stolen, which I should have bought from the German supplier in our old neighbourhood :o( You eat and learn right? I wish I had pictures of my 28 pund turkey to share, but no one bothered to take a picture of dinner before it was devoured as I have always. This year I was too busy making sure everything was on the table and forgot all about it, until yesterday when I downloaded all the pictures. :oP

Gingerbead Boys and Girls

I made Gingerbread boys and girls for forty seven for Madison's Christmas party craft in December. I provided enough for the three year (Tues/Thurs, AM/PM) and four year old (Mon/Wed/Fri, AM/PM)programs. This was part of the Gingerbread Man theme for the month. I sent them in individual bags so the kids could take them home after decorating them during the party. It was a success. It was a craft that the teacher and I put together and I did it free of charge. Much more time consuming than anticipated as well. Was expecting to make two batches of cookie dough - ended up making four, as each batch only made about twelve 5" cookies, unlike the 24 it mentioned! The dough also needed to rest for two hours in between. Now I know if I offer my services next year.

I had a little dough leftover so instead of making cookie dough balls I used some cookie cutters and made a couple special ones for my kids. I don't usually take the time, but they had waited so long to try them.

Next year I'll supply the royal icing too :o)