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Italian Peach Cookies (Pesche Dolci)

December 22, 2014 by Jenn

When Paul and I first started dating, Christmas was only two months into our relationship.  Can you say awkward?  I had no idea what to buy him and ended up getting him some gift certificates to somewhere I don’t even remember.  It was a total cop-out, but I didn’t know him well enough to get him something more personal.  

During that first Christmas, I tried my first Italian Peach Cookie.  It was amazing!  When Italians get together, there is never a shortage of food.  Never.  A dessert tray is no different from a main course or the third, or the fifth- there is always a ton of food. The cookie platter that held the peach cookies, had a bunch of other pastries and sweets as well, so I’ve got a lot of cookies to replicate in the years to come. 

Finally last year, I tried to replicate the peach cookies on my own, without help (my stubbornness shining through!) and didn’t succeed.  This year, with my Mother In Law in better spirits (she has had some heart problems in the past), I approached her about teaching me, and then teaching everyone in a YouTube tutorial. Being that she is 80 years old, she has no idea what YouTube is, and barely understands a computer.  But, being the strong, confident woman that she is, she was willing to do something that she didn’t really understand the purpose behind.  She has been wanting to help us for years in our business, and she was so happy to finally be able to do so.  

 Paul and I will cherish this video for many years to come, and we are so lucky to have been able to include Pina in our tutorial. 

 

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Filed Under: Cookies Tagged With: Christmas, christmas cookies, cookies, Italian cookies, Italian desserts, Italian Peach Cookies, Peach Cookies, Pesche Dolci

Sugar Cookie Christmas Tree

December 3, 2014 by Jenn

Recently, we were asked by the local cable company, Shaw TV, to come and do an interview with us while I baked with one of the hosts, James Farnan.  I agreed immediately, as we had worked with both of the crew members before, and James happens to be our neighbour.  We know that he likes to mow the lawn at 10:30 PM- when we’re trying to film- and it’s dark!  Who does that??  Just James.  It must be an Australian thing.  He’s awesome!  We had a great time filming and joking with each other! 

When we started our baking business, way back in 2011/12, Shaw TV came to interview us back then.  We did the interview in the kitchen space we were renting, so this time, we were all crammed into our kitchen, both filming a video for our respective channels.  Shaw TV will have their piece airing on local television during the week before Christmas, and they’ll also have their video uploaded to their YouTube channel at that time. 

Making this sugar cookie Christmas Tree is skill wise quite simple, but it does take a day or so to bake, ice and allow to dry.  So plan accordingly.  It is an excellent activity that can be done with kids, as they can take part in the recipe creation, cutting and rolling of the cookies, as well as the decorating portions.  

The first task is to cut out the cookies.  Each cutter (there are 10 of them) need to be used twice, to cut out 2 cookies per star size, so all in all, you will be icing 20 star cookies.  You can ice them with royal icing like I did, or you could use buttercream.  I chose royal icing as I wanted to have a more smooth look to my tree, but if you’re doing this activity with kids, you could easily use buttercream for them to decorate with.  

Once the icing has dried, the next step is to stack the tree, and this is done from largest cut out, to the smallest one.  Each star should be offset on the previous star.  In order to “glue” the stars together, place a small dollop of royal icing in between each cookie.  Once it  is dried, you can wrap a small line of LED battery operated Christmas lights around the tree, and continue to decorated as you wish.  In order to get larger “ornaments” onto the tree, I used melted green chocolate as the royal icing wasn’t strong enough.  

 Hopefully you enjoy this Christmas treat! 

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Filed Under: Cookies, Holiday Baking, Other Baked Goodies Tagged With: cable network, Christmas, christmas cookie, Christmas dessert, christmas sugar cookies, green cookies, holiday baking, holiday cookie tree, holiday cookies, shaw cable, shaw tv, shaw tv kootenays, sugar cookie christmas tree, sugar cookie tree, sugar cookies, television show

Turkey Shaped Buckeye Peanut Butter Balls

November 12, 2014 by Jenn

Chocolate and peanut butter is one of my most favourite combinations!  Whose isn’t it?  All those people who yell at me in capital letters that they are allergic to peanut butter.  I feel for you, I really do as I couldn’t imagine being without my addiction, but finding a substitution is probably something easier for you to do, than me.  There is also this amazing thing called Google. 

This recipe is a special one to me, as my girlfriend Melissa made it for us during a Christmas Cookie Exchange one year.  Unfortunately, a number of years ago, she passed away.  I felt so lucky being able to continue on using her Dad’s recipe for this creation.  I know she would have loved it, and I appreciate my time that I got to spend with her, albeit too short. 

You can make these traditionally by rolling the peanut butter mixture into balls, and dipping them into melted chocolate.  But if you’re looking for an adorable Thanksgiving treat, you have to try these.  They’re super simple, and the only thing that takes time is the setting of the chocolate.  I address this in the video, but I chose to use melting wafers/almond bark as they set faster than regular chocolate.

 

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Filed Under: Cake Pops, Cookies, Holiday Baking, No Bake Desserts, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: american thanksgiving, buckeye balls, chocolate, chocolate turkeys, peanut butter, peanut butter balls, peanut butter chocolate, peanut butter chocolate balls, peanut butter turkey, thanksgiving, thanksgiving cake pop, thanksgiving dessert, turkey

Giant Cookie Cake with Leftover Halloween Candy

November 5, 2014 by Jenn
 If you have a bunch of leftover candy from Halloween, this is the recipe for you!  If you ate it all your Halloween candy, good news- it’s all on clearance at the local stores, so go and grab some more before it’s all gone!  If you do not live where you participate in Halloween festivities, you can use any candy you want to!  I’m solving all of the world’s problems this morning- finding solutions to a lack of candy.  You’re welcome.  
 
Some people (not naming names- ME) went out of town after purchasing Costco candy for all the trick-or-treators in the neighbourhood and have a ginormous bag of candy (that I don’t like) leftover- NEVER opened!  Oops.  If you’re like me, there is serious strategy to buying Halloween candy.  I buy what you don’t like, and then you won’t eat it.  Usually, that is a fail safe way ensure there is no snacking, BUT since I recieved so many requests for a new recipe on how to use up leftover candy, I had to go out and buy some. Had to.  HAD to!  Then I HAD to go out and buy more when we snacked our way through the chocolate candies.  HAD TO PEOPLE!! YOU MADE ME!!  I thank you for that.  My pants don’t, but I do.
 
 Making a giant cookie cake definitely saves time, rather than dishing out individual amount of dough to make smaller cookies.  You can do this with this recipe, but the fun is in serving a slice to your family or friends.  Triangular pieces are a change from the standard round cookie, as are chunks of candy!  If you choose to roll these cookies into rounds, bake them for 15-18 minutes, or until golden brown at 350F.  
 
Whether you choose to make this the traditional way, or in it’s giant cookie form as seen in our tutorial, it’s a delicious, and fast way to use up any candy/chocolate you might have hanging around! 
 

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Filed Under: Cakes, Cookies, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, candy cake, cookie, cookie cake, giant candy cookie cake, giant cookie, Giant Cookie Cake, Halloween, halloween candy, leftover candy, leftover halloween candy

White Chocolate Candy Corn Cookies

September 24, 2014 by Jenn

Target Canada can sometimes be a little slow on distribution of goods, especially when the shopper (me) is looking for Halloween and fall candies at the beginning of September.  Wait a second- is that my problem, or Target’s?   Sorry Target– I should have known better!  It was too soon for shopping for fall things!  The only candy that was out on the shelves while I was pre-season shopping was candy corn.  I don’t like candy corn, but as you’ve just heard from my ramblings, I had no other choice for a fun cookie add-in.   I couldn’t go without some sort of chocolate though, so to match the candy corn, white chocolate was in order.  And yes, Target had that in stock.

Candy selection in Canada can sometimes be dismal.  It’s not just a problem for one store, it’s a problem for all Canadian stores.  I’m not sure if candy corn is available outside of North America, but if you can’t find it in your country, I understand!  There are so many types of candies, candy bars, and chocolate bars that we can’t get here in Canada, so I have to travel over the border to get supplies for recipes.  Luckily, I’m only an hour away from the nearest border crossing, so I’m able to do that.  Unfortunately for some, that’s not an option.  I get lots of questions about where to find certain treats or ingredients from countries around the world, and I’m usually not able to help with locating them.  If there is a certain candy or ingredient that you need for a recipe, always try Googling it, and seeing if you can get it mailed to you.  I also have lots of success with Amazon. 

Since candy corn is made entirely of sugar, it is likely to melt in the heat of the oven, so try to keep the corn pieces away from the outside of the balls of cookie dough. You can place some on top of the cookie before putting them into the oven if you want the candy corn to be seen better.  

 

The recipe is after the break!  Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Cookies, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: candy, candy cookies, candy corn, candy corn cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Cupcakes and Cardio, halloween candy, halloween candy cookies, halloween cookies, white chocolate, white chocolate candy corn cookies, white chocolate cookies

Frosting Filled Birthday Cake Cookies- Chips Ahoy Copycat Recipe

August 27, 2014 by Jenn

I am obsessed with anything that is cake flavoured- birthday cake, cake batter- anything!  I especially love the ones with the sprinkles!!!  So obviously when I saw Frosting Filled Birthday Cake Cookies from Chips Ahoy on the shelf at the grocery store, I snatched them up before anyone else could steal them away from me.  

I don’t think I’ve been more excited to try something than I was to try these cookies- I’ve never seen frosting filled in a cookie before-  I took one bite, and was devastated!  They were not very good.  At all.  They didn’t taste like cake batter, and they sure didn’t taste like frosting!  Being the devoted sweets fan that I am, I new I couldn’t give up at that point, and I had to try to make my own version.  

To make the frosting filling, I ended up using shortening, which I don’t usually like to use.  I tried the recipe with butter instead, but the butter melted in the heat of the oven, and the frosting spread out all over the cookies.  I also failed when it came to the cookie batter.  I went with my go-to chocolate chip cookie batter, and found that it didn’t have enough flour, so the cookies spread out wide.  I needed them to keep their bowl shape around the frosting filling.  So, I fixed my errors, replaced the butter with the shortening, and added more flour.  One more practice batch, and I had it fixed!  

 I hope you love these as much as I did!

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Filed Under: Cookies, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: birthday cake cookies, birthday cookies, chocolate chip birthday cookies, chocolate chip cookies, cookies, frosting filled birthday cookies, frosting filled chocolate chip cookies, frosting filled cookies, frosting stuffed cookies, stuffed cookies

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Stuffed Triple Peanut Butter Cookies

July 23, 2014 by Jenn

 

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. 

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Filed Under: Cookies, Videos Tagged With: cookies, peanut butter, peanut butter chips, peanut butter cookies, reece's peanut butter cups, reece's peanut butter cups stuffed cookies, reece's pieces, stuffed, stuffed cookies, triple peanut butter

Giant Ice Cream Sandwich Cookie Cake

July 11, 2014 by Jenn
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.   

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Filed Under: Cakes, Cookies Tagged With: chocolate, chocolate cake, cookie cake, giant cookie, giant ice cream cake, giant ice cream sandwich, giant sandwich cake, ice cream, ice cream cake, ice cream cookie cake, ice cream sandwich, vanilla ice cream
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