Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio

Sand Dollar Sugar Cookies- Backpack Baking at the Beach Recipe

July 26, 2014 by Jenn 1 Comment

Recently, we went to Vancouver Island, which is about a 10 hour drive west, plus a two hour ferry ride from our home. As much as we would have liked to have been able to call this a vacation, we were working throughout the couple of weeks we spent there with our friends. We are fortunate enough to have the type of job that allows both of us to travel and be able to work while doing so. YouTube is the best! Both Paul and I were also lucky enough to have lived in Victoria for a period of time, and I was born on Vancouver Island, so heading back to the Island was something that we were both really excited about doing.

As soon as I knew we would be travelling to the West Coast, and the Pacific Ocean, I knew I wanted to bake something that would be “ocean” themed. What I remember very vividly about the Island from being a child (not so much as a University student) was looking for seashells, sea stars and sand dollars on the long beaches . . . and the idea for sand dollar cookies was born!

These cookies can be made at home, and like our other Backpack Baking recipes, you don’t have to have a backpacking oven. These cookies can be made in the comfort of your kitchen with you following the same directions. I can’t promise you the beautiful sights along the way though!

The beach that we hiked down to was along the start of the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail, which is a 47 km hike along the western edge of Sand Dollar Cookies. We started at the China Beach trailhead, and hiked two kilometers down to Mystic Beach. It was stunning coastal scenery along the way. The trail was in fabulous shape, and seems to be well maintained. There were many man-made walkways, staircases, and there was even a suspension bridge! The best part of the hike down to the beach is the final decent as you walk along a huge fallen tree that opens up to a beautiful view of the Mystic Beach. This hike is definitely worth it and it can be done by people of all ages and fitness levels.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Stuffed Triple Peanut Butter Cookies

July 23, 2014 by Jenn 5 Comments

If you are a peanut butter lover, you need to add this to your list of MUST make recipes.

Are you ready? These cookies have peanut butter, peanut butter chips, Reese’s Pieces, and all of that deliciousness is wrapped around a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!

Obviously, if you are NOT a peanut butter fan (what is wrong with you?) these are not the cookies for you. I apologize to you for having to lose out on the amazingness of these cookies. If you’re allergic, how to do you live life?!?!? I really feel for you. Seriously. No sarcasm. THAT’s how bad I feel- bad enough to not be sarcastic! I would guess that you could substitute the peanut butter portions for a nut free alternatives, but I haven’t checked that out yet.

This is a pretty straightforward cookie recipe, so following the steps to combine the ingredients is relatively easy. When baking these cookies, you want to make sure that you wrap the dough entirely around the peanut butter cup. This will prevent any of the peanut butter cup/chocolate from escaping during baking. I didn’t have that problem, but if you do freezing the peanut butter cups ahead of time might help as well.

Frozen Cake with Elsa

July 18, 2014 by Jenn 6 Comments

This is one of my most favourite videos that I have done; the reason for that being that I got to make it with my adorable niece, Elsa! We have been inundated with requests for a Frozen themed cake since the movie came out, but I HAD to wait for Elsa to come and make it with me. I couldn’t do it without her as it’s her favourite movie, and Disney clearly named their main character after her.

Elsa is three years old, and she stood on a tiny stool for over an hour while we put this cake together. She was patient, helpful and did an amazing job for any child, never-mind one that is only three! She loved clapping along with me to sync our mics, and when the time came to decorate, or follow instructions, she was right on and eager to do it! Being that my brother and his family live in Minnesota, I don’t get to see them often. I can sure tell that he and my sister-in-law have done an amazing job raising two lovely children. It was such an honor to be able to put this cake together.

To make this cake, you have to learn how to make candy. It’s really simple, despite the fact that you need to use boiling hot, liquid sugar!! Follow my previous post and video tutorial on how to do that here.

I can’t make a video of a Frozen cake without commenting on what a great movie Frozen is. Disney did a great job with appealing to the masses, and the ages. I’m not one to watch Disney, or cartoons much anymore, but with this movie, I loved it so much that I bought it. I loved everything about it, and sang along with each song. Call me crazy. I’ll let it go.

How to Make Lollipops and Hard Candy

July 14, 2014 by Jenn 6 Comments

I had never tried to make my own candy up until three weeks ago, and now, hot diggity, I’m an expert!

I was scared of the candy thermometer.

No need to be scared of it people- it is surprisingly easy! You can get away with NOT using a candy thermometer, and using the “cold water test” but I found that way unreliable.

To make your own candy you need very few ingredients- sugar, corn syrup, candy flavouring and water. You can skip the flavouring if you want, but that’s the best part! I found all of my flavours, and many more, at Bulk Barn. I know you can also find them at many online sources, while Amazon and ebay will have lots of choices for you.

The only difficulty that making homemade candy presents, is the act of patience. The liquid seems to heat up fairly quickly to 200F, and then . . . nothing. Wait, and wait, and wait while the thermometer ever so slowly climbs past 200F on it’s way to 300F! I didn’t want to leave the candy on the stove unattended, so I each time I made it, I patiently sat stirring, and watching each. and. every. notch. on. the. thermometer. rise. Once it’s up to temperature, you have to work quickly. The candy will start to harden as soon as you remove it from the heat, so you want to add your flavour and colour, and get it into the molds, or onto the pan quickly. Be careful not to touch the syrup though, as it is HOT!

Once the candy is cooled in the molds, you can easily pop them out. If you have chosen to pour it onto a pan, you can smash it up, or cut it up quite easily. Coming up at the end of this week, we will be releasing our MUCH requested Frozen cake! In order to make the Frozen cake, you need to know how to make hard candy.

Giant Ice Cream Sandwich Cookie Cake

July 11, 2014 by Jenn 11 Comments

I made homemade Vanilla Ice Cream a couple of days ago, and I had so much of it, that I knew I had to come up with something to make with it, in order to use it up. There’s only so much ice cream that you can give away!

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a local store (The Superstore) and on sale was a silicone pan shaped like a giant cookie! I didn’t know what I was going to use it for, but I knew I needed it. My storage room does not need it, but I did!

Fast forward a couple of weeks and ice cream plus cookie pan equals ice cream sandwich! I wanted a cake-like topping and bottom for the sandwich, and I’d been wanting to use a simple recipe, sometimes called a “wacky cake”. It doesn’t have any eggs, and uses ingredients that were easy to find back in the day. The baking soda and vinegar combine as the leavening agent and make a light fluffy cake which is the perfect pairing for the ice cream. As far as the cake pan goes, you definitely don’t need a new pan for this though, and you can bake the cake in a regular 8″ cake pan if you wish.

If you want to use homemade ice cream, follow our recipe here. But if you prefer, getting yourself a couple of liters of ice cream from the grocery store works as well.

How to Make Vanilla Ice Cream with KitchenAid Ice Cream Attachment

July 8, 2014 by Jenn 12 Comments

Making homemade ice cream is a tutorial that I have been wanting to do for forever!! I love ice cream. Unfortunately it doesn’t love me. But, I keep coming back to it, expressing my love, and never ending commitment. It doesn’t matter. It wants nothing to do with me.

Also having love and devotion for my KitchenAid mixers, I had my sights set on the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment. I had seen it for over a hundred dollars from a couple of stores, so when I found it on sale for $90 CAD, I ordered it right away from Golda’s Kitchen, which is an online baking supply store in Canada.

I was set to love this attachment. I always do that to myself. I set myself up for adoration, and when it doesn’t live up to my level of love, I’m disappointed. I think I thought that this attachment would magically make ice cream, pretty much instantaneously. But, you actually have to MAKE ice cream! Well, duh Jenn . . . life is not meant for laziness!

In my naivety, I thought I would just have to throw the ingredients into the freeze bowl and turn it on, and viola, ICE CREAM. Nope, not how’s it done. You have to warm and cook the creams, sugar and eggs, and THEN you can throw them into the freeze bowl?! NOPE. You have to chill the warm mixture first for eight hours, and THEN you can throw the mixture into the freeze bowl?! YES! Finally.

Other than the fact that this machine is not a magic machine, I liked it. You have to be prepared though since many of the steps require freezing and chilling. The freeze bowl needs to be completely frozen before using it, and in the directions it says not to take the bowl out of the freezer until you are ready to pour the cream in- and they mean it. I tested that accidentally. If the freeze bowl is not completely frozen, the ice cream will not freeze, no matter how much you stir it, will it, or scream at it. Trust me on that one.

I would also like to make a comment to the parts “namers” at KitchenAid . . .”freeze bowl”, “dasher”, “driver”. . . seriously KitchenAid? You couldn’t have found better names for these parts? It took me like a million takes to get those names right! It felt like I was reading off Santa’s reindeer.

Transformers Cake- Using a Shaped Cake Pan

July 5, 2014 by Jenn 1 Comment

Learning how to use a shaped cake pan was how I learned to decorate cakes- so therefore, it’s how you should learn to! Hahaha!! Just kidding. Using a shaped cake pan is ONE of many ways you can learn to decorate, and since it’s the way that I’m familiar with, I chose to show you in this tutorial. When using a shaped cake pan, the lines and indentations are made for you, so the spatial piece that comes with design isn’t as tricky. There is still some amount of challenge as you have to figure out where each line is connected, but all in all, it is way easier than free-handing a complicated design.

When baking the cake batter in the cake pan, I will be honest and tell you that using a box mix is probably the better choice. For whatever chemical/preservative reason, the baked box mixes come out of the cake pan much easier than a cake from scratch does. I’d rather not think anymore about what that reason is!

There are many ways you can go about decorating a shaped cake, but I find it easiest to start with the outline, and then do the little areas that are other colours, or specific shapes etc, so once those are all done, you can quickly fill in the rest of the cake with the main colour(s).

There are a number of companies that sell shaped cake pans, but Wilton seems to lead the way in shaped Character pans. A simple Google or Amazon search will offer you hundreds of choices of characters! Garage sales or yard sales are also an excellent source of cake pans. Cake pans sometimes serve a one time birthday purpose, and then collect dust in the bottom of a cupboard. If you are lucky like me, you head to a garage sale from a former cake decorator and you hit the mother load of shaped cake pans! That is how I acquired the many shaped pans that I had, but when I stopped decorating cakes as a business, I sold them on an online site- which brings me to the point that online buy and sell sites are also great places to get cake pans. There’s no need to pay the full amount (usually $25-$50) when you can get it for $5 second hand.

As when exploring anything as a beginner, reaching perfection takes time. Don’t give up. Practice until you’ve got it perfectly decorated. And then you can thank me later. Haha!

Poutine Cupcakes (French Fries in Gravy)

June 30, 2014 by Jenn 3 Comments

Poutine is a favorite Canadian dish that originated in Quebec, a province in Canada. It’s made with French fries, smothered in gravy and topped with large chunks of cheese curds. Being that Canada is upon us tomorrow, I thought I would make the cupcake version of it to share with all of our viewers!

The cupcake version consists of vanilla cake, and vanilla buttercream but you can choose any flavour of either for you version. In Canada we also have something called Hickory Sticks- basically they are thin slices of potato chip that look like mini fries- you can make do with slicing your own potato chips.

For the gravy that covers the fries, you can use butterscotch, or caramel, depending on what colour you want your gravy to be. As the cheese curds are usually large chunks of white cheese, I chose to use white chocolate chips, but you can use anything that is similar in colour, or shape to cheese curds.

For the video, we wanted to make sure that our viewers would be able to truly appreciate the look of poutine, so we “had” to go and get the best poutine there is in our town. We have one food truck in Cranbrook. One. It happens to be the best thing on the earth, thank goodness, and in addition to poutine, it also has fabulous burgers, and smokies. We headed down to Smokey Bro’s BBQ & Grill prior to filming, and “had” to grab two poutines!! Life is tough.

Sand Dollar Sugar Cookies- Backpack Baking at the Beach Recipe

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Stuffed Triple Peanut Butter Cookies

Frozen Cake with Elsa

How to Make Lollipops and Hard Candy

How to Make Vanilla Ice Cream with KitchenAid Ice Cream Attachment

Transformers Cake- Using a Shaped Cake Pan

Poutine Cupcakes (French Fries in Gravy)

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