White chocolate caramel macadamia truffles

These truffles came about when I agreed to take truffles to an event, but late at night after the shops were closed I discovered I didn't have the ingredients for my other recipe. 

I couldn't resist a photo for you that includes my ultimate truffle dipping tool, the humble toothpick. I've tried many of the fancy gadgets out there, but find nothing works better for me than a toothpick.

Ingredients

250g crushed Graham crackers (if you have trouble finding this biscuit in NZ, you can subsitute Round Wine biscuits)

1x Philadelphia Cream cheese block 250g.

1 Cup ground macadamia nut

250g Nestle caramel baking bits

125g white chocolate

(milk or dark chocolate to dip)

Method

Melt caramel baking bits & white chocolate together over a double boiler. Set aside to allow to cool. In a food processor, crush biscuits to a fine crumb. Add macadamia nut and cream cheese pulsing to just combine. Add cooled melted chocolate and pulse again, mixture should form a ball. Chill for at least one hour. Roll in to small balls and dip in milk or dark chocolate. Place in foil truffle cups (these are best placed in a mini muffin pan for support whilst setting) and allow to set.

Underwear Cupcakes from Karina at Kiwicakes

Many of you that call in store at Kiwicakes will have met Karina at the counter. She's the person responsible for making sure all our online orders are packed well to arrive in great condition at your home.

Karina recently held an Intimo underwear party at her home and made these awesome underwear cupcakes for our dessert afterwards. She used this silicone mould to make the bra & knickers. They were coloured using the same method we use to colour paua shells. The stiletto boot cupcake papers can be found here.

Karina swears by this chocolate cupcake recipe from The Farm Chicks. She says she likes it "becuase you just put everything in one bowl".

We had a great evening at our underwear party, catching up with friends and sharing a lovely meal afterwards. I think Karina did a great job of her cupcakes and I can assure you they tasted great, too.

Afghan biscuits - A kiwi kids favourite

My youngest is just starting to get interested in cooking and baking. He's always been keen to jump in to any decorating though. Today we made afghan biscuits together. The recipe comes from our friends at Chelsea.

Ingredients

200g butter, softened
½ cup Chelsea Caster or Organic Sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 ¼ cups plain flour
¼ cup cocoa
1 ½ cups cornflakes, lightly crushed
Icing:
1 ½ cups Chelsea Rich Chocolate Icing
1 Tbsp butter (softened)
1-2 Tbsp boiling water

Method 

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease or line a baking tray with baking paper.

In a large bowl beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Sift in flour and cocoa stir thoroughly with the butter mixture until combined before stirring in the cornflakes.

Place heaped teaspoonfuls on a baking tray, squeeze mixture together gently if necessary then press lightly with a fork.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack before icing. 

Icing: Mix chocolate icing sugar, butter and 1 Tbsp boiling water at a time until combined, adding more hot water if necessary until icing is a spreadable consistency. Ice biscuits and top with half a walnut.

Valentines chocolate box heart cake

What's better than a box of chocolates for Valentines day? A chocolate box cake of course. This cake was very quick and simple to make. I baked a heart shaped chocolate mud cake.

I coated it in pink buttercream, then covered with a layer of hot pink Satin Ice fondant. To form the sides of the box I used a ribbon cutter. I cut a strip of red Satin Ice fondant to which I added some tylose (to harden). Then a box of chocolates was arranged on the top of the cake. You can use store bought or make your own chocolates or truffles.

To fill in the little gaps between the chocolates I used strings of gum paste pearls, which can be easily formed with the help of a bead maker. A scrumptious decadent treat for Valentines day in under 30 minutes.

Heart cookie - simple & effective tips

Recently at our monthly cake guild meeting the committee members of our guild set up different "have a go" stations. In an attempt to get all of our members trying out new techniques. Laura made this pretty heart shape cookie. Some very simple techniques were combined, to make a stylish gift of love. The smaller white heart was cut from a piece of fondant, that has been embossed with a floral texture mat from this set. It is embellished with tip#2 piped royal icing dots.

Thanks to Ann, Anne and Janelle for setting up the have a go stations at guild night.

Rainbow Valentines Love - from Kiwicakes Test Kitchen

Today's rainbow coloured heart cookies are based on traditional cutesy valentines sweets. With the romantic day approaching we want to inspire all you bakers to get inventive and show your love through your craft!

The magic tools I used were LorAnns punchy flavoured oils and droppers, Progel food colouring, Heart Cutter  and most importantly the tiny alphabet Message Maker.

To make 6 coloured cookie doughs the total quantity of ingredients you will need is:

250g block of butter, softened
2 cups sugar
1 tin condensed milk
6 cups flour + extra for dusting
baking powder, flavours and colours.

It is a big yield of 100+ cookies. It'd be too difficult to work in smaller quantities but you could reduce the number of coloured doughs you make. I figure you can never have too many cookies anyway and these freeze beautifully in snaplock bags for whenever you are ready. 

This project is not light on prep time, but don't let this put you off as the results are so worthwhile! A stand/hand mixer is essential. As a day-off activity this is the perfect way to show your love! Here is the finished product again for some motivation...

Rainbow Valentines Cookies (x6 mixtures)

Cream together: 75g softened butter, 1/3c sugar, 65g condensed milk, 6 drops LorAnn flavour oil and a small squirt of Progel colour.

Mix in: 1 scant cup flour and a rounded 1/4t baking powder to form a dough.

Repeat 6 times and wrap individual doughs in clingfilm until ready to use. Cookies take 10 mins to bake at 175`c.

The message maker is fantastic for personalising messages on any of your baking and cake decorating projects. The letters are 6mm tall so could be inconspicuous if you want them to be! I found that a pair of nail clippers worked well to snap off the joining tabs between the letter and alphabet pieces. It'd be worthwhile doing this job in advance to add such a versatile piece to your sugar craft kit. Also remember to enter the words you desire back-to-front in the stamp for a mirror image on your cookies (or fondant).

Roll your dough out onto a well-floured board til it is 1cm thick. Dust generously. Cut out heart shapes with the cutter but leave in their cavities. The surrounding dough will support the shape when a message is punched into it.

Stamp messages one line at a time. I found it easiest to line my two index fingers up with the extremities of the message to make sure they were centralised on each cookie. Use a long spatula to transfer cookies easliy to a lined baking tray.

Another hint is if you do your batches in a logical order, you wont need to wash your bowl or mixing blade or spatula in between colours!! I recommend starting with 1.Yellow 2.Tangerine 3.Pink 4.Purple 5.Ice Blue 6.Bright Green.

Here are the individual combinations I made - there are some AMAZING flavours available!

THAT SMILE - Ice Blue colour Progel with Lemonade flavour LorAnn Oil

4 EVA - Tangerine colour Progel with Mango flavour LorAnn Oil

TWEET ME - Yellow colour Progel with Banana Creme flavour LorAnn Oil

YOU ROCK - Pink colour Progel with Cotton Candy flavour LorAnn Oil

LETS KISS - Bright Green colour Progel with Pistachio flavour LorAnn Oil (Kiwicakes girls fav!)

YES DEAR - Purple colour Progel with Pomegranate flavour LorAnn Oil

These lovely treats are perfect paired with flavoured milk. Ours is presented in a cute glass milk bottle with a matching retro pink paper straw.

You can go crazy with the messages you personalise! My advice is to keep them short and sweet. Here are some other ideas...

CUTE STUFF - IM IN LOVE - FRIEND FOREVER - CALL ME - DREAM - HOPE - PEACE - MY  MAN - WRITE ME - HI LOVE - ANGEL - CUTIE PIE - MY WIFE - MARRY ME - ITS LOVE - CALL HOME - BE TRUE - HOME SICK - SMILE - THANK YOU - TRUE LOVE - YOU & ME - UR A TIGER - ONE KISS - DARLING - FIRST KISS - PUPPY LOVE - DARLING - BE MINE - ONLY YOU - LOVE LETTER - CUTE - HINT HINT - FOR EVER - HUG ME - LOVE BIRD - MAGIC - DARLING - LOVE IS SWEET - CUP CAKE - DARE YA - LOVER BOY - SWEET TALK - I WONDER - SWING TIME - TWO HEARTS - SOUL MATE - FRIEND ME - TEXT ME - XOXO - CRAZY 4 U - EMAIL ME - IM YOURS - FRIENDS - BFF - TRUE LOVE. 

Quick and easy delicious chocolate mousse - Poppy bakes

Poppy (age 10) recently made chocolate mousse for dessert when her Uncle returned from overseas, we held a welcome home dinner for him. She raided the garden for garnishes. I love how to kids it doesn't matter that there was only 1 strawberry and one blackberry to be found, so the rest got grapes.

Ingredients:

200grams dark chocolate (we used cadbury melting chocolate from the baking aisle)

30g butter

3 eggs separated

1 cup cream - whipped

Over a double boiler melt your chocolate. Once melted, remove bowl from double boiler and stir in butter. Allow to cool slightly. Stir in egg yolks.

Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold half the egg whites and half the cream into the chocolate mixture. Repeat with the remaining halves.

Poppy put her mousse into a large piping bag for filling her small verrine glasses, to ensure they stayed  neat and tidy around the rims.

Allow to chill for at least three hours.

Summer strawberries - chocolate dipped with chocolate transfer detail

Chocolate dipped strawberries can be transformed with the use of chocolate transfers. It's quick and easy to do. Chocolate dipped strawberries are a fond memory of Valentines Day for me. My now hubby presented me with a bowl of strawberries for Valentines day that he'd dipped himself way back in the 1990s when we first started dating. At the time I was suitably impressed that he'd taken the time to make something for me. I'm still impressed today when I'm given a home made gift, made with love.

Chocolate transfers elevate the simple chocolate dipped strawberry to a whole new level. Chocolate transfers come in a wide variety of colours and patterns, to suit every occasion. You can view our entire selection here.

Simply melt your chocolate over a double boiler, dip each strawberry and place down on your chocolate transfer sheet. Once cool, lift your strawberries away from the sheet and place on your serving dish (I do not refrigerate my strawberries, as this makes them ooze juice).

Any portion of unused transfer can be reused for your second round of dipping, simply place your next strawberry down on any patch of colourful transfer, avoiding the clear spaces, where the colour has been removed by the previous strawberry.

My favourite rose maker EVER is coming to Kiwicakes

Lisa Templeton is my favourite ever icing rose maker. I mean just look at the photos. I still look at them and think "that can't be real?"

I'm super excited to announce Lisa is coming to Kiwicakes to teach these wonderful roses Tuesday March 11th 2014 12 noon-5pm. Spaces are strictly limited and will be filled on a first come first paid basis. Cost for the 5 hour class is $100 per person.

Look how huge they are (there is a hand in some of the photos) Lisa tells me she'll bring a variety of dusts with her, so we can colour the roses any colour we wish.

For those of you that don't know Lisa, she owns and runs Denheath Desserts with her husband Donald. World famous for their custard squares. Lisa will be bringing afternoon tea for us all from Denheath, so we can keep our stamina up for this 5 hour rose making class. If you want to join us. Book online at www.bookwhen.com/kiwicakes

Chocolate Courgette Cupcakes - Poppy bakes

My daughter Poppy used anniversary day here in the north of NZ to make use of the many courgettes we have growing in the garden. Our kids won't eat courgettes, they declare loudly they don't like them. However they were heard to say "you can't even tell there's courgette in here" And they're right, unless you were told, you'd struggle to guess. The grated courgette adds a wonderful moistness to the cupcakes.

Ingredients
1 medium courgette aprx 120g (leave the skin on if they're spray free)
85g milk chocolate
2 Tbsp cocoa
2 eggs
50g brown sugar
90ml vegetable oil
120g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
handful chopped walnuts

I've labelled this recipe with the tag "healthier option. It's a healthier option UNTIL you put the cream cheese icing on top. They make a great muffin, which kids will adore. With the addition of the icing, they're scrumptious.

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a cupcake pan with 12 liners. Grate the courgettes, discarding any liquid. Over a double boiler melt chocolate and allow to cool slightly.

Place the eggs, sugar and oil in a large bowl and whisk together. Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa. Stir gently until just mixed. Stir in courgettes and pecan nuts. Fold in melted chocolate. Spoon mixture in to cupcake liners. Bake 20 minutes.

Icing 

125g butter

250g block cream cheese

2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup cocoa

3 1/2 cups icing sugar.

Cream together butter and cream cheese, add vanilla. Stir together cocoa and icing sugar, add 1 cup at a time, beating well with each addition. Ice cupcakes when cool.

Strawberry pink champagne cupcakes

These cupcakes came about when I was tasked with making something for a cake guild meeting about "flavour profiles". I knew in advance what our demonstrator was making for the evening, so I tried to make something a little different to her flavours. The recipe formed and grew in my head as I was making them, and had a minor adjustment part way through.

To my regular vanilla cupcakes, I added two tablespoons of freeze dried strawberry powder. I baked them in the usual way, but the resulting cake was a little too subtle in flavour. Here's where they took a turn for the better: I decided to add a Strawberry creme  to the centre of each cupcake using Gobake Easy Frost and freeze dried strawberry powder. It's super easy, the recipe for creme is right there on the packet. Any unused portion can be stored in the fridge or frozen to make ice-cream like this. I used a Wilton bismark tip to fill the centre of the cupcakes (using Wilton's method, which you can see here).

To my buttercream icing recipe I added a few drops of Americolor pink gel paste colour and some Lorann champagne oil flavouring. It was piped with a simple 1m swirl (these cupcakes were all about the flavour not the decoration). We had a lot of items to taste test during our guild evening. These were a hit on the night and I will definitely be making them again.

V8 Racing flag cupcakes

When you're asked to bake for a charity bake sale with only a few days notice and you already have a hectic working week, what do you do? These V8 racing car cupcakes were  another of my quick bake sale solutions. Once baked they were decorated in under ten minutes. The V8 lollies are available from kiwicakes (they only come two colours).

The buttercream swirl is pipped with a Wilton 1m tip. The checkered racing flag food-picks can be found here. I heard they were a real hit with children (and big kids obsessed with V8s too) They would be a fun addition to any racing car themed birthday party.

Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies - Kids in the kitchen

These chocolate chip cookies were made by my 10-year-old daughter Poppy. The recipe is pretty fail safe, in fact she's made these repeatedly over the last year and they've always turned out great. They keep well in an airtight container.

Ingredients

125g butter softened

1tsp vanilla extract

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup flour

1 cup self raising flour

1 cup shredded or dessicated coconut

1/2 cups small chocolate buttons

Preheat oven to 180C. Line cookie trays with baking paper. In the bowl of your cake mixer beat butter, vanilla and sugar until creamy. Add egg and beat until well combined. Stir in by hand the flours, coconut and chocolate.

Place golf ball sized pieces of batter on your cookie tray, flatten slightly, leaving at least 2-3cm between each cookie, they spread as they bake. Bake 15-20mins until golden brown. Cool on tray, they will be soft when they first come out of the oven.

Cupcakes in Disguise

When you're asked to bake for a charity bake sale, with only a few days notice and you already have a hectic working week, what do you do? These crazy cupcakes were one of my solutions.

These were decorated in a matter of minutes (less than ten) using a buttercream swirl with 1M wilton tip as the base. The eyes are Wilton large candy eyeballs, which stay in place when pressed on to the buttercream. The mouths, teeth and moustaches are Natural Confectionery Co "Lolly Disguises".

I really can't decide whether I like "Hot-lips Cupcake" best

or "Professor Cupcake".

"Geeky cupcake" also has his own charm

As does "Mr Cupcake". One bag of lollies will make aprx 18-20 cupcakes. I did get a few malformed lollies in my bag, but the children didn't complain when they were given them to dispose of  eat.

My favourite new website - Eat your books

I was on a high the day I discovered Eat Your Books website. It’s always an incredible surprise when you come across something that prior to discovery you never knew you needed! Eat Your Books is a website which allows you to search the indexes of printed cookbooks you already own. With a database of over 125,000 cookbooks (which they're adding to all the time) you can create a virtual bookshelf by adding the titles of cookbooks you own. I’ve added my entire recipe book collection, and so far I’ve only come across two of my books that aren’t in their system (and they were very old books). It also indexes food magazines and popular online blogs.

Now, instead of searching for hours through my recipe books, I can with the press of a few keys search through all the recipe books I own.

I recently chatted with Fiona, who lives in Auckland and who together with her Sister Jane who lives in Boston created Eat Your Books. They work with a dedicated team of foodies to ensure every visit to the website is an enjoyable one. I believe it will only get better. I've signed up with a yearly recurring subscription.

The Eat Your Books website has a wealth of searching possibilities. Aside from searching your books recipe titles, you can search by:

* ingredients

* author

* ISBN

*season 

*occasion

*ethnicity

*meal type

Within your recipes you can add:

*personal notes

*tag recipes as favourites

*create menus and shopping lists

You can even add your own personal recipes, that once you may have typed out or handwritten in a journal.

If you subscribe to food magazines you can simply tick a box and have each new magazine automatically added to your online collection. 

You can also browse the huge collection of online recipes which have been indexed, and if you see one you fancy, with the simple click of a button it's added to your online recipe collection.

Each time I use Eat Your Books it seems I discover yet another great way to use it - I'm looking forward to easy recipe locating from now on. And now that I have an easy way to search within my cookbooks I'll happily continue to regularly add more books to my collection. Do take a look at the EYB website, I'd love to hear what you think.

Dog bone shaped dog biscuits - Kids in the kitchen

We have a crazy little Papillion dog, his name is Bilbo. Poppy (10 years) enjoys baking for him. Recently she made him these bone-shaped dog biscuits. They keep well in an airtight container for weeks.

Ingredients:

2 Cups wholemeal flour

1Tbsp baking powder

1 Cup unsalted natural peanut butter

1 Cup milk

Preheat oven to 180C degrees. Line cookie sheets with baking paper or silicone mat.

Mix together flour and baking powder. In a separate bowl mix together milk & peanut butter, then stir in flour mixture until well combined.

Turn dough out on to floured surface and knead until smooth.

Roll out to desired thickness and cut in to dog bone shapes, using a dog bone cookie cutter.

Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown. Whilst hot, add a few dog "chocolate drops" (you find them in the pet food section at the supermarket). The heat of the cookie will melt the chocolate, which can be spread with a knife if required to better coat each end.

Our little dog just loves these cookies. He's quite small, so he's limited to one per day.

Mini treacle loaves a scrumptious childhood memory

Treacle is a much loved flavour from my childhood, it was a favourite both with my father and my grandmother. These scrumptious little loaves were baked in pretty mini loaf cases. I recently made these for a gathering I attended, and they were very well received. 

Ingredients

The recipe is reprinted with permission from our friends at Chelsea.

½ cup (125g) butter

½ cup (100g) Chelsea soft brown sugar, firmly packed

½ cup (185g) Chelsea treacle

1¼ cups (190g) plain flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg, lightly beaten

2/3 cup (160ml) milk 

Lemon Icing:

1 Tbsp (20g) butter
2 Tbsps lemon juice
2 Tsps boiling water
2 cups Chelsea icing sugar sifted

Method
Preheat oven to 170ºC conventional (150ºC fan forced). Grease and line bases of 10 x ½ cup (125ml) mini loaf pans or friand pans. 

Place butter soft brown sugar and treacle in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 mins. Remove from heat and cool.

Sift flour, ginger and baking soda into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre of dry ingredients and stir egg, milk and cooled treacle mixture until well combined.

Spoon batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 20-25 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow the loaves to stand for 10 mins before turning out onto a wire rack. Drizzle with Lemon Icing and decorate with Candied Lemon Rind. 

Lemon Icing: 

Combine butter lemon juice and water in a small saucepan and heat until butter is melted or simply microwave in heatproof bowl. Add to sifted icing sugar and mix until well combined.

When I made my treacle cakes, lemon icing didn't appeal on the day, so I used Chelsea's recipe for caramel icing from their Halloween Treacle coffin cakes.

Caramel icing:

60g butter
1/2 cup firmly packed Chelsea soft brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 cup Chelsea icing sugar sifted

Stir butter and soft brown sugar in small saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves; bring to the boil then simmer, stirring, 2 mins. Remove from heat and add milk and icing sugar mix until well combined. Drizzle warm icing over cakes. Use licorice to create coffin shape and pipe dates with writing icing.

Treacle makes this an enchanting rich, moist cake with a subtle liquorice flavour. Decorate for the kids or simply serve warm with vanilla ice-cream for a special ‘treat’.