Gingerbread Gals - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Here's a good activity for the school holidays. Kids love to help with all the steps in the process and the mixture makes 40, so you fill the weeks baking tin! 

First, prepare your cookie mix so it can relax in the fridge for half an hour before you start rolling.

Gingerbread Gal Mixture

Cream together:

125g softened butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

Mix in:

1/2 cup treacle/molasses/golden syrup

1 egg yolk

Add the following to make a firm dough:

2&1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
2 Tablespoons ground ginger
1 Tablespoons mixed spice

Wrap dough in gladwrap, rest in the fridge and then you're ready to roll. Knead mixture for a minute until it's completely combined and glossy.

Roll out with your heaviest cake decorating rolling pin  until mixture is 3-4mm thick. Use a gingerbread cutter (set) to press out shapes. These 4 cutters have options of man, lady, boy and girl. I find an angled spatula is perfect to slip under the shapes and transfer them to your baking sheet without distortion. 

Bake at 175' for 6 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool. The cooking smells will make your mouth water.

Meanwhile, prepare your royal icing for decoration. Always keep the top surface covered with gladwrap until ready to use. Fill your reusable piping bag with coupler fitted so you can readily change the piping tip width for finer facial type detail.

I opted to use a royal icing mix that I just had to whip up with water. A great item to have on standby in the cupboard and leftover royal icing keeps fine in the fridge for a month.

Then let your creativity take over and create features for these gingerbread gals with the royal icing. While it's still wet you can add sugar pearls and sprinkles or cupcake candy bling for individuality.

These farmer gals have googly eyes and green grassy feet.

Pineapple Bran Muffins - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Warm up a cold day with these healthy yet flavoursome fruity muffins. They are quick to make and smell amazing!

Mix together with a spatula:

1 t baking soda dissolved in 1 & 1/2 C hot water 

1/4 C butter/margarine, melted

1 egg

1 C brown sugar

1 1/2 C flour and 1 t baking powder, sifted

1 C bran

1 pack Freeze Dried Pineapple Chunks (reserving 12 pieces for the top)

Spoon mixture into Muffin Tins and top with an extra piece of pineapple each. Cook on fanbake 150'C and test with a cake probe after 10 minutes. They cook to golden in 10-15 minutes depending on your oven. Transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an airtight container. 

Adding margarine instead of butter can make this recipie dairy-free and lower-fat but personally I enjoy natural butter. 

I love these traditional muffins, but boosted with the intense pineapple chunks they are to die for, and you won't feel guilty about enjoying this yummy snack.

Homemade rosemary olive oil crackers

Lately I've been trying to make a lot more of the food our family eats, rather than always buying processed items. When I saw this post from Chef in Disguise I just had to give making my own crackers ago, as I'd never tried before. If I knew how easy and incredibly tasty they would be, I would have done it years ago.

Together with my husband we've been trying to grow more food and buy more locally grown food, particularly spray free or organic. My husband recently arrived home with olive oil that is grown & pressed locally by V-Oliva. Now it's all I want to use! There's just no comparison to what I used to bring home from the supermarket.

The olive oil is probably the only expense for these crackers, but the recipe makes a large quantity, which is still cheaper than store bought crackers. The crackers I grabbed from the cupboard to compare had over 20 ingredients, many of which were numbers or names I couldn't  pronounce, while these have just five ingredients.

I split my batch of dough in half and sprinkled one batch with paprika and one batch with parmesan before baking. In my photo above a paprika cracker is shown with the best ever feta from Grinning Gecko and yummy pesto from Hydro Healthy. Both of which I bought at the Whangarei Growers Market. We have so much fresh rosemary in our garden I opted for fresh over dried (as used in the original recipe).

Ingredients:

1 Cup flour

1 Cup wholemeal flour

A good handful of fresh rosemary chopped finely

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup of olive oil

1/2 cup warm water

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl, make a well in the centre and add olive oil, and at least half of the water. Stir together, until it forms a nice dough, add more water if needed (you may not use it all). Rest for 5 minutes.

Roll out very thinly on baking paper, or a silicone baking sheet. I use a pizza cutter to cut them into rectangles, it's much faster than a knife and prevents dragging.

Bake at 200C for approx 10 minutes or until golden brown.

White Russian Walnut Cake Pops - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Today I made a dozen dessert cake pops flavoured with Kahlua liquer. These would be scrummy served up with an espresso coffee for an easy dessert treat. Great for a fun dinner party event. 

White Russian Walnut Cake Pops

2 T Kahlua (or your liquer of choice)

100g room temperature traditional sour creme

20g finely chopped walnuts

250g cake crumbs (I used vanilla)

Mix liquer into the sour creme first and then incorporate all 4 ingredients, until you have a malleable mixture. To decorate you will need 200g white chocolate and a handful of roughly chopped walnuts

It was my first time making cake pops. I used our set of 4 cake pop moulds which I found gave me smooth and consistent shapes to decorate. It helped to roll balls of the mixture before placing into the mould. I used a palette knife for easy release .

When all your shapes are made, refrigerate them for half an hour to firm up. Then melt white chocolate and dip your lollipop sticks into the melted chocolate before inserting into the cake shapes. Let this chocolate dry to become a base for your cake pops.

Then coat your pop all over with melted white chocolate and roll in nutty pieces while chocolate is still wet.

Here is the finished product ready to serve.

They can also be packaged in clear cellophane bags for individual takeaway treats.

Rachel Jenkinson from Operation Sugar is NEXT Woman of the year nominee

I can hardly contain myself, I have the most exciting news to announce. Rachel Jenkinson from Operation Sugar is a finalist with NEXT magazine for "NEXT Woman of the year".

Earlier this year I nominated Rachel for this award. I spent quite some time preparing a detailed application for everything Rachel does behind the scenes for Operation Sugar. This was an eye opener for me, as she does a lot more than any of us could imagine. I had great fun collating all of the wonderful press clippings about Operation Sugar that have appeared in newspapers, as well as on radio & TV across New Zealand.

It's been hard to keep the secret for the last month, until NEXT magazine came out today. Rachel is one of 5 nominees in the Community category and joins 24 other wonderful New Zealand women. 

The winner will be announced at a gala event in October at the Orakei Bay function centre. I'm extremely proud to be accompanying Rachel, along with her sister Tracey to the event as her date. 

Rachel and I have spent each afternoon for weeks messaging the odd thought for what we'll do while she is in Auckland (Rachel is from Balclutha, so her trip to Auckland will be her first time visiting). I think all of the ideas Rachel and I have come up with so far will require a year to do, so we'll have to work on narrowing our list down.

Rachel has received a snazzy invite for dinner and we've organised our glad rags

I am really looking forward to the awards evening. I was a nominee in the business category of the Inaugural "NEXT Woman of the year" in 2010 (you can read about my involvement here & here & also here). It was a humbling experience for me to be surrounded by such high achieving woman. I am thrilled to be accompanying Rachel in recognition of her amazing achievements with Operation Sugar. I'll be bringing you updates of our Auckland jaunts, as well as bringing you details of the awards night next month.

Please head on over to Operation Sugars Facebook page and leave a note of congratulations for Rachel here.

You can find out more about Operation Sugar here. If you are in a position to give a little, to help with the running of Operation Sugar, you can make a donation of any amount here. And Operation Sugar is always looking for more volunteer bakers & photographers too - check out their website. 

Go The All Blacks - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Show your support for our national team by whipping these up on game day. I'm sure you will be popular! Tomorrow we play South Africa in Auckland.

The flag picks give height to your favourite everyday cupcake recipe and the black foil cases are both stylish and make for easy kitchen cleanup.  If you are a committed fan, or just want to go crazy, check out our full range of All Blacks party ware here for loads of inspiration.

There are matches against Argentina, Australia, France, England, Ireland and Japan coming up soon.  For a full list of the remaining 2013 All Blacks fixtures click here. 

And you can pick up a set of these Top 8 Rugby Team World Flag Cupcake Picks ahead of time to be really prepared!

 

Pecan nut truffles

These delicious pecan nut truffles are so moreish. The Kiwicakes team have declared them "the best new thing they've tasted in ages."

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups pecans toasted and finely chopped
1 cup of Super Wine biscuit crumbs (or Graham cracker crumbs if you can find them in NZ)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Generous 1/4 cup maple syrup
1/8 cup Brandy
1 tsp of vanilla or vanilla bean paste (I used paste)

Use at least 250g chocolate for dipping - more allows you to fill the dipping container, which makes it much easier to dip the truffles. Any leftover chocolate can be used to dip some dried fruit, always a lovely addition to a dessert platter.

With my leftover chocolate I decided to dip dried mango. Because dried mango usually comes in quite large pieces, I cut mine up using scissors and then dipped the cut edge in the chocolate.

I used 30 orange mini foil cupcake papers for the truffles, as I thought they looked great alongside the dried mango slices.

Chocolate Modelling Paste Digging Doggy - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

We made these cute (and tasty!) little doggies' backsides for SPCA Cupcake Day.

This little guy sits on top a cupcake in a foil cupcake wrapper and is surrounded by candy bones. He's made out of tasty chocolate modelling paste sold individually or in a handy rainbow pack.

The 'dirt' is made from crushed up Oreo-type chocolate biscuits, with any creme filling removed. 

Pop the biscuits into a snaplock bag and let loose with a rolling pin until you have the desired texture. 

The dog's bottoms are hand-shaped with white and black chocolate modelling paste. The magic of working with this medium is that no glue is needed to stick the components together, they just magically hold their shape nicely.

Begin by portioning your modelling paste, so that your figurines will turn out even. Cut white pieces for the bottoms, feet and tails. Roll mini balls of black for the pads.

To assemble, smear a sticky icing-like buttercream or ganache over the entire surface of your cupcake. Sprinkle liberally with the crushed Oreo dirt. Use a teaspoon to clear a spot in the centre for your digging doggy to be pushed into. The dog won't stick to the crumbs, so it's essential you make a hole in the dirt - this also creates a build up of dirt against the dog's body, which makes it more realistic looking.

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