The best frosting I’ve made so far.

I am not a big frosting or icing person. If you have read through this blog before, you’ll notice that most of my cakes go without it, because I think that it takes away from the flavour of the cake. Frostings are just too sweet for me, but when it comes to making sugar cookies for Christmas, I have to use it!

The trouble I’ve found is that most buttercream frostings I’ve made are too soft. I can never get them stiff enough without adding lots and lots of icing sugar, thus making them too sweet and inedible. Also, I like my white frosting to be white, not this off-white, buttery yellow colour that doesn’t take food colouring very well.

Happily, I came across a recipe in a gingerbread house kit that I bought. It’s terribly simple and super easy to make, and I will use it from now on whenever I need to make frosting.

The Recipe

1 egg white

A box of icing sugar

Method

1. Whip the egg white until soft peaks form.

2. Add icing sugar, a little bit at a time, until desired consistency is reached. The icing will harden when left to dry, and will also get shiny.

3. That’s it!

My Alterations

When I first used this recipe to make icing for our gingerbread house adventure, I made it very thick. Probably a bit too thick, because it started hardening while still inside the piping bags! Oops. I learned my lesson, though, because when I made it for my Christmas sugar cookies, I made it much softer and it was easier to spread. The icing still hardened as it dried, but it took a lot longer.

The Result

This icing is very easy to make and use. I added lots of different colours to it for my kids to decorate their cookies, and it worked very well. Even though the icing was watered down a bit because of the colouring, it still dried after a few hours so I could wrap them up.

The Verdict

This recipe will be a staple in my baking arsenal. It’s easy to remember, too, which is such a bonus. I like the sort of recipes where you can adjust them to your needs so easily.

The Rating

5/5, definitely. See how pretty my cookies looked?

Cookie-cutter Cookies: some Christmas baking!

I got this recipe from a friend; thanks, Cab!

The Recipe

1 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking powder

3 cups flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400F/200C.

2. Cream butter and sugar.

3. Beat in egg and vanilla.

4. Add baking powder and flour, one cup at a time. Mix well.

5. Do not chill. Roll out to 1/8″ thick and cut out.

6. Bake for 6-8 minutes, or until brown around the edges.

My Alterations

This was a new recipe for me, and since it was so simple anyway, I followed it pretty much exactly. The fact that I didn’t have to chill the dough made me very excited to try it!

Oh, one alteration I did make was to add some food colouring to the dough for my kids. I broke the dough into fourths, and coloured one part red and one part green. That changed the consistency of the dough a bit, but the kids enjoyed themselves. My daughter still has red food colouring on her hands, though, which looks a bit gruesome!

The Result

I love this recipe so much. It’s easy to throw together, and the dough rolls out beautifully. It isn’t sticky, which is a problem I have with other sugar cookie recipes, and I didn’t have to add any extra flour at all. I rolled the dough out on large chopping boards without having to add any extra flour to the board, either.

The cookies kept their shape when baking and weren’t brittle. My kids didn’t break any of them when decorating; a definite point in their favour! They have a great taste, as well.

The Verdict

I love this recipe! I don’t normally like baking cookies, because even though the end product is delicious, it takes a really long time to bake all the dough. This was so much fun, though! The dough was so easy to work with, and I think that made all the difference.

I baked and decorated several cookies to give as gifts to our family friends, and I’ve already received feedback about how good they taste. The cookies are soft, but not too chewy, and don’t just taste sugary. I can’t recommend this recipe enough!

The Rating

Definitely, definitely 5/5. I’m baking some more cookies right now, actually!

Ginger Biscuits

I made these for my husband, because ginger biscuits are his favourite. Since we have plenty of ginger in the cupboard now, I didn’t have to buy anything special for the recipe. The recipe is from a hand-written booklet produced by a local church that I bought for 25p. Three cheers for granny recipes!

The Recipe

4 oz margarine

1 Tbs Golden Syrup

pinch of baking soda

1 tsp ground ginger

3 oz sugar

6 oz self-raising flour

Method

Grease 1 or 2 baking trays and set oven to Gas 4 (that would be 180C/350F). Melt together to syrup and margarine, then stir in the rest of the sifted ingredients. With wet hands (keep a bowl of water on the table) roll into balls the size of a large marble and place wide apart on the baking trays (they spread). Cook for about 15 minutes or until done.

My Alterations

Well, I didn’t have any self-raising flour, so I took a really lazy short cut and just upped the baking soda to a full teaspoon. It seems to have worked. I kept everything else the same; Americans can use corn syrup or light treacle, if you can get it. The taste won’t be exactly the same, but it will work just fine.

I didn’t sift the ingredients because again: lazy. The whole wet hands thing didn’t seem to matter much, but my fingers got a little bit sticky.

The Result

I mis-read the recipe a bit, and rolled the dough into small marble-sized balls rather than large ones, so I ended up with a ton of itsy bitsy biscuits. They were cute, though, and they cooked faster than 15 minutes; more like 8 or 9 minutes.

They came out lovely. I let them cool for a few minutes on the tray, so they were a bit crisp. Be careful not to overcook them, especially if you make them small.

The Verdict

These were great! They had just the right amount of gingery taste, and the texture was very similar to my husband’s favourite store-bought brand. My kids adored them and we all happily munched on them for our dessert. The recipe was easy to follow, and the biscuits were very attractive when baked. I love their cracked tops.

The Rating

5/5

Not only were they cute and bite-sized, they were very tasty. The recipe was easy, and I liked the fact that my adjustment of throwing in a bit of extra baking soda didn’t ruin anything. We’ll definitely be making these again!

Day 28: Better than “Homework” Cake. Yeah… “homework”…

I freely admit that this is a cop-out sort of cake for this blog. The foundation is from a boxed cake mix, and the only fancy things that I had to do were decor-type things. Can you blame me for choosing an easy recipe? This is the 28th cake!

I have mostly heard this cake called “Better than Sex Cake” but I really didn’t want to google that term, so I found this version instead on About.com’s forum, posted by Pamiam12.

The Recipe

1 pkg, 2 layer-size German chocolate cake mix
1 – 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 – 12 to 12.5 oz. jar caramel ice cream topping
1 – 8 oz. carton frozen whipped topping
3 – 1.4 oz. bars chocolate covered English toffee, chopped

Prepare and bake the cake mix according to pkg. directions for a 13×9 inch baking pan. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack.
Using the handle of a wooden spoon, poke holes about 1 inch apart over the surface of the cooled cake. Pour the sweetened condensed milk over the cake.
Pour the caramel ice cream topping over the cake. Spread the whipped topping evenly over the top of cake. Sprinkle the chopped toffee bars over the whipped topping.
Serve immediately or chill up to 24 hours.

My Alterations

I had a bit of evaporated milk left over from a previous cake recipe, so I just used whatever was left in there. I didn’t measure it. I also bought some cream and whipped it up myself, but didn’t add any sugar to it because I figured this cake would be sweet enough!

The directions aren’t entirely clear. Should I have poked holes in both layers of cake? Only spread the caramel topping in the middle of the cake? My husband suggested that I spread whipped cream in the middle of the cake, making it prettier for the pictures (good idea, actually), but that wasn’t stated in the recipe. I just sort of did what I thought it said, which was to poke holes in the bottom cake layer and pour the milk in, spread the caramel on top, and left the top layer for whipped cream and chopped candy only. I used Dime Bars for the topping.

The Result

Very easy to make and put together. The cake itself came out soft and fluffy, as one would expect from a boxed cake mix. No problems with any of it, really.

The Verdict

I like this cake, but I wouldn’t classify it as better than sex. Homework? Of course! But not sex.

It tasted much better warm than cold, and because it has to be stored in the fridge to keep the cream, I wasn’t very happy with it. I don’t like my cakes cold.

The Rating

4/5

Good, but not AMAZING. A lazy cake that’s easy to put together and that will please the crowds. Nothing wrong with that!