Baked and Delicious Magazine Review

Bitter Chocolate Pudding recipe from Baked and Delicious Issue 1

The people at Baked and Delicious sent me a copy of the 1st Issue of their magazine to have a look at the other day.

It's one of those regular magazines that makes part of a complete set when finished, this one comes out every fortnight and includes some type of silicone bakeware with each issue.

Issue 1 was only $2.99 and included a 6 pack of cupcake bakeware. I noticed at the IGA today that to just buy a similar set of bakeware on it's own was nearly $12, so I'll have to say that issue 1 is a bargin without even taking the magazine into account. Issue 2 is a special price of $7.99 and from then on the issues will be $14.99 for the magazine and the bakeware.

There is also an enticing subscriber offer valued at $75 which includes a binder, cake slicer/server, set of cake tins and Electronic Scales.These gifts are sent gradually with your first 4 subscription deliveries which will come every 2 weeks for $14.99 + $1 P&P (which is the regular price after the first couple of introductory issues). Although you can cancel your subscription at any time it's worth remembering there are about 60 issues in total at $14.99 so take that into consideration when working out if those free gifts are worth it.

Also make sure you check out the fine print, there may be extra special issues and binders as well which would be extra on top of the fortnightly amount, so you'll need to tick the applicable boxes if your not interested in those extra's.

Anyway onto the actual magazine. It's a 28 page magazine which kinda seems small in comparison to lots of other magazines out these days, but it didn't have any advertising so I guess that's a plus. Also there are lots of colour pictures which I always love. In all the index shows a total of 8 recipes plus a step by step technique to making choux pastry and information on using silicone bakeware. Most of the recipes had a variation to try and a couple had step by step photographs.

The recipes were a mix of savory and sweet with a definite leaning towards sweet in this issue and included cupcakes, macarons, chocolate puddings. You can actually check it out yourself on their website, the first issue is available to view online.

I decided to try out the bitter chocolate pudding, it took under an hour from start to finish for me to make these, and that included reading the recipe, getting out all the ingredients, baking and plating up. I cooked mine for a couple of minutes too long, so it didn't have a really melty oozy middle, but it was still very delicious and soooo easy to make. Only 5 ingredients and hand mixed in a bowl......oh and it used up a couple of egg yolks which is always a super plus for me.

I was also impressed with how easily it turned out of the ramkin as I was expecting it to stick. In all honesty I would make this recipe again due to it's ease and how great it tasted.

OK so to round up, I guess $14.99 is pretty expensive for just the magazine with a few recipes but this magazine is aiming to build your baking skills and bakeware at the same time and includes an item of silicone bakeware with each issue. Issue 2 has a silicone brush and spatula set and issue 3 a silicone loaf mould.

As I mentioned you can pop over to their site and check out the magazine yourself to determine if you think this magazine would be worth the investment.

Wedding Cake Sugar cookies and a Handmade Wedding DIY shoot with Luminoso Blu and Naomi V

Photography Naomi V Photography : Milk Glass: Hummingbird Vintage Hire

A little while ago, I made some treats for Luminoso Blu for a 'Handmade' Wedding shoot for the Queensland Brides magazine to accompany an article Renee from Luminoso Blu wrote.

Styling Luminoso Blu Events, Cake: Miss Jane's Cakes, Flowers: A Sculpted Leaf 

I provided some simple swirl cupcakes, upside down cake pops decorated with a white fondant sugar heart, rustic stacked trio of cookies and large wedding cake shaped cookies decorated with red hearts.

Styling Luminoso Blu Events

All photo's by Naomi V Photography.

Tissue paper bouquet: Ah-Tissue

The cookies are a great idea for a DIY bride as they can easily be made a week and a half before, placed in cello bags with ribbon and card or boxed and stored in large airtight containers. Just make sure everything is super clean when you are making them and that you give them a chance to set/dry before you bag them.

To make the large wedding cake cookies I simply made a batch of sugar cookie dough (click here for a link to my sugar cookie recipe). Cut out the cookies with a large cake shaped cookie cutter, baked and allowed to cool. Then I rolled out the ready roll fondant on a cornflower/ cornstarch dusted workbench (I use Bakels ready to roll fondant it's available online at specialty cake stores try Cakes Around Town or Baking Pleasures) and using the large cake shaped cookie cutter I cut out fondant and adhered it to the already baked and cooled cookie using a small amount of clean water and a brush you only use for food purposes.

Then I used a small amount of fondant coloured red with gel food colour (knead the colour into the fondant very well, try and do the night before for best results) rolled it out thinly and cut out hearts with 2 different sized heart cutters. I carefully pinched the ends and pulled them to the side to give the heart a bit of a funky look. I adhered the hearts to the white fondant covered cookies with a tiny amount of water and allowed them to set uncovered.

Flowers: A Sculpted Leaf 

Like I said perfect DIY and you can easily change the colours to match your own special event.

Invitations and table place cards: Kijaro Invitations

Here is a list of the lovely contributors

DIY crafting and styling: Luminoso Blu Events
Photography: Naomi V Photography
Invitations and table place cards: Kijaro Invitations
Cake: Miss Jane's Cakes
Cookies, cake pops and cupcakes: Bubble and Sweet
Tissue paper bouquet: Ah-Tissue
Milk Glass: Hummingbird Vintage Hire
Flowers: A Sculpted Leaf 

 

This is just a quick shot I took myself before the shoot to show the stacked cookies up close

and a quick link to my book of kid friendly cooking and decorating available for pre order for December release.

Pearly Cake Pop and Macaron Tower for the Mermaid Party tutorial

When I started to plan Lilli's mermaid party I had a vision of a macaron tower starting in white and graduating to a deep green like I ended up making the actual birthday cake. I had seen some pictures of macaron towers with the macarons placed sideways instead of flat and I loved the look. I was going to pop in some extra little embellishments to bring in the mermaid theme and had them worked out, I ordered my custom cut styrofoam from kool foam for the support structure, I was ready to go.

But then I got stuck with the cake pops, I had a couple of ideas which I was not completely loving. I could have decided to not have cake pops (eeek the horror) but then a couple of days before the party I decided to replace the white macarons with cake ball pearls.

I'm feeling pretty good about this tower, I have never actually seen one like it so it was kinda exciting for me to do.

It's a little bit trickier than the stuff I normally post mostly because it has so many steps involved, and it involves making macarons. You can always buy ready made macarons or if you like you can leave them out and have a totally popalicious cake ball tower.

Also I am not describing here how to actually cover styrofoam and cakeboards with the fondant. There are stacks of great tutorials out there and I feel my tower tutorial will be a bit huge and unwieldy if I add it.

Here is a pic of the full table, see there is the macaron tower next to the ocean wave cake. If you would like to see more of Lilli's Mermaid Party Click Here.

Pearly Cake Pop and Macaron Tower Tutorial

Ingredients
30 cake balls or cookie truffle balls covered in white chocolate dipped using toothpicks instead of lollipop sticks (see below for how to dip)
pearl luster (I used the PME spray)
20 light blue macarons (click here for macaron recipe, divide macaron batter into half and colour one section light blue and one section light green)
20 light green macarons
Ivory/Cream fondant
Light blue fondant
Light green fondant
round styrofoam 9cm (3.5') diameter by 9 cm (3.5") high
round styrofoam 12cm (4.7") diameter by 9 cm (3.5")high
rectangle styrofoam 20cm (7.9") X 25 cm (9.8") X 9cm (3.5") high
lots of toothpicks
Cake board and ribbon

#all the styrofoam was custom cut by KoolFoam, the rectangle is also the size I used to display the cookies pops on the dessert buffet.

Cover the small styrofoam with the ivory fondant and the larger round with the light blue fondant. If your not sure how to do this pop over to you tube.

Cover your cakeboard with the light green fondant and adhere the light blue fondant styrofoam round onto the cake board with some royal icing or a bit of fondant thinned with water. Click here for a tutorial from Cake journal  on how to cover a cake board.

I attached ribbon to the edge of the cake board to finish the edge. The cake stand is really just a candle stick from Ikea that I adhered securely to the bottom of the cake board.

Make the cake balls. I used white tim tam cookie truffles, and made them a little smaller than usual (14 grams or 1/2oz), when it is time to dip them in chocolate follow the normal instructions using a toothpick in place of a lollipop stick. So melt the candy coating/ white chocolate, insert the end of a toothpick into the cookie truffle/ cake  ball, repeat for all the cookie truffle/ cake balls and pop in fridge to chill. Remove from fridge, ensure the candy coating/ white chocolate is still melted and holding the end of the toothpick dip the ball into the melted candy coating/ chocolate. Place in styrofoam upright to set.

When you are ready to assemble the tower, push toothpicks into the fondant covered styrofoam rounds. To give you an idea of where to insert the toothpicks place some of the macarons against the round to resemble what they will look like when finished. It should give you an idea of where to place the toothpicks. It's ok you can move them around if needed.

Place the Green macarons on the bottom layer and then the blue macarons above them to make a second higher layer.

Carefully pull the toothpicks out of each cookie truffle/ cake ball. Using the same technique as you did for the macarons push the cookie truffle/ cake balls onto the smaller ivory covered styrofoam round. Insert the toothpick into the holes that have already been made (where you earlier removed the dipping toothpicks from).

Once all the cookie truffle/ cake balls have been placed on the styrofoam round spray all over with the PME pearl luster spray.


Allow to set for a while and then using a spatula/ egg flip carefully pick up the tower and place on top of the light blue macaron covered tower, using some royal icing or fondant thinned out with water to adhere.

Ummm...I've been trying to work out how to pop a link to my book on the side tab but I just can't work it out so sorry you are going to have to put up with my blatant self promotion in each post just a tad longer.

Blue and Red Bird Macarons for MacAttack #22

 I've been missing from the Mac Tweets monthly challenge for a while and I've been missing it. This months challenge #22 was to Kick it Up and create a macaron with alcohol.  So before you get all excited, I didn't do that, but I did stick with the theme and I made some Blue Bird Cocktail inspired macarons. I must admit it was more of finding a cocktail to fit my macarons, as I have had this idea for a while, but once I saw the picture on google images of this pretty cocktail I knew I had found the inspiration.

 

My macarons are my normal recipe coloured red and light blue with Wilton Gels and then decorated with a fondant bird made using a PME robin cutter. The filling is whoopie pie (marshmallow fluff, icing sugar and crisco). This filling looked pretty but not really the best I think for a macaron as the filling is a touch to sweet. I really used it as I had it left over. I normally make up a mix of ganache and Italian Meringue Buttercream which looks just as light and pretty and tastes dreamy and if you wanted to add a dash of liquor it would be a perfect match.



Thanks to everyone over at MacTweets I love looking at all the creations and look forward to seeing all the fun macarons you will come up with this month.

Oh and have you heard......I have a cookbook coming out in December, it's only $12AUD including postage from book depository (also available from Amazon See the tab at the top of the blog for the link to my book). It's a US release by Adams Media and is called Sweets on A Stick and is pretty much what the title states but it's all kid friendly recipes you can make with your little ones. How fun is that!

Here is a link to The Book Depository:

Sweets on a Stick

Lilli's 7th Birthday Party Mermaid Party inspired by Driftwood, the ocean and dreamy little girls

 

I have finally put together a quick post to show you the pictures of Lilli's Mermaid Party and I must mention the party was featured over on the wonderful Kara's Party Ideas which we adore.

Lilli's party was inspired by driftwood, the ocean and dreamy little girls.

As usual I made all the sweet treats. I had seen a tiered macaron tower in a wedding book which I really liked. But I decided to add my own twist and popped on some Tim Tam pearl Truffles for the top layer. Don't worry I'll be popping a tutorial up for this soon.

The cake was inspired by the ocean and was three tiers with the cake wrapped in graduation fondant. Inside the cake was flavored with Blue Haven Jelly Crystals and Italian Meringue Buttercream once again flavored with the Blue Haven Jelly Crystals. I know it's weird.....but blue is one of the birthday girl's favorite flavours. The pretty cake stand is from Sharnel Dollar Designs.

The Mermaid Cookie pops were a huge hit of course and are a vanilla cookie decorated with fondant. Once again I will post a tutorial shortly.

We also had hand dipped oreo's topped with a fondant 'pearl' and the candy and bowls are from Sharnel Dollar designs.

I've found in the past that with a complete candy or sweet buffet there is so much left. As it was sea themed and sushi is one of the birthday girl's favorite things we had Sushi 'de la mar' and 'sea' cucumber sandwiches to balance out all the sweets.

All the amazing paper pom poms were from Ah Tissue.

The mermaid dresses and tablecloth were hand made by Karen McCubbin and had the most amazing swirly detail. The mermaid fabric on the tablecloth was so pretty and is from Spoonflower. If you love fabric you must check them out, they custom print.

Invitations, party bags, party bag tags, candles and napkins were from Paper Eskimo.

We had pass the parcel and made mermaid necklaces with 'pearls' and shells with premade holes from the local discount store which the kids took home as a memento.

Every one had blue lips from the candy, sorry to all the other parent's Xx

Lovely Suppliers

Cake, Macaron and cake pop Tower, Mermaid Cookie pops and dipped oreo's by Bubble and Sweet
Pom Poms Ah Tissue
Cake Stand, Glass Jars and Green Beanies Sharnel Dollar Designs
Invitations, Party Bag and Tags, Napkins and Candles Paper Eskimo which I bought from Details Details (they were super helpful)
Wooden Scoops for Lolly Jars Polka Dot Prints
Table cloth and Mermaid Costume by Karen McCubbin
Photographs by Terri Vandermeer
Mermaid fabric from Spoonflower

Special thanks to mum for making the cucumber sandwiches, Dad for the orchid's and the lovely people at the sushi shop at Arnedale Springwood for coming in on a Sunday to make up Lilli's favorite Sushi.

Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US the book is available at most online book stores:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Xx

Owlisious O is for Owl cookies

So I haven't let go of my square cookie lovin' at the moment and I created these super easy to make Parliament of owl cookies.

I called them O is for Owl cookies because they are basically made from a O shape cutter, deep huh. It took me a while to come up with a name for them....I wanted to call them something Hootish, but everything kept sounding a little bit seedy so I gave up on that angle.

Before we get into the tutorial I'll give you some helpful hints, kinda a do as I say not as I do. I was rushing these and using left over stuff, popping out to the shop and looking after 3 kids so they were not quite as well finished as they could be.

Ok do wait for the brown branch piping to dry before you start sticking on other stuff...don't just keep on going which may result in smudgy knuckle marks in your branch.

Do make sure you cut out the correct number of owls and corresponding wings and beaks. Don't get distracted and go to the shop part way through resulting in a weird pink owl with no nose ending up in the mix.

Do mix up some nice fresh royal icing, don't use that stuff that has been sitting in the piping bag for 2 days since you made some cameo cookies and has separated. People will notice. Well ok most people won't notice actually. They will just see some cute owl cookies for 3 seconds before they munch the evidence away.

Instructions for O is for Owl cookies

Batch of square cookies 5cm (2") CLICK HERE for the chocolate cookie recipe I used
White fondant
Small amount of colored fondant (I used Red, Blue, pink, orange, yellow and purple)

Small plastic rolling pin
cornstarch
brush and water
Square cookie cutter Approx 5cm (2")
Set of small oval cutters (I used my 3 set from the Ateco shapes tin I have around 2, 3 and 4cm)
Small flower plunger
Small triangle or tear drop cutter.
Royal Icing, white, brown and green. Small amount of black for eyes (optional you could use an edible pen or just use up some of the brown)
Piping bags and #1 and #65 tips

To start roughly work out what types of owl cookies you are making, I made cookies which had 2 small owls, 1 medium owl, or the top of one large owl with a small in the background. You will need to cut out your shapes accordingly. For this tutorial I will give rough numbers for 18 cookies with 6 of each mentioned/pictured design.

Knead the white fondant and roll out to a couple of mm thick using the small rolling pin. Cut out squares using the square cookie cutter and adhere to the cookies using a small amount of water brushed onto the cookie and then using the rolling pin to gently press the fondant into place.

Roll out pink fondant and press out a bunch of flowers (around 18) using the mini flower ejector. Repeat with the purple (24), orange (6) and yellow (18)fondant.

Place the brown royal icing into a piping bag with a #1 tip and pipe on some wiggly branches. I drew some squares on paper first and decided where I wanted the branches and owls to go, then I practiced piping the brown over the paper before I started on the cookies. You will need 6 cookies with a branch near the bottom for the medium owls, 6 cookies with a branch at the bottom and a smaller branch in the top right corner for the small owls, and 6 cookies with a small wiggly branch just over half way up on the left side for the cookies with the large owl (eyes only) and small owl in background.

Roll out the red fondant. Cut out oval shapes and then place the bottom of the oval cutter onto the top of the oval fondant shape and press out a small semi circle shape. See the picture example. The remaining shape should resemble a simple owl. Cut out 3 medium red owls, 9 small red owls and 3 large red owls. Use a sharp knife to cut off the bottoms of the large red owls, use your original drawings to determine where to cut.  Repeat for the blue fondant cutting out the same number of owls in blue.

You will also need to cut out the thin wing shapes, use the oval cutters to do this as well. I used the offcuts from the tops of the owl.

Take the excess fondant and cut out a thin wing from each side, so you will end up with 2 wings for each semi circle. The large owls will not need wings so you will end up with 6 medium red wings, 6 medium blue wings, 18 small red wings and 18 small blue wings.

Roll out the remaining orange fondant and using a small tear drop cutter or triangle and a sharp knife cut out a beak for each owl.

Pop your white royal icing into a piping bag with a #1 tip. Using your original drawing or my cookie pictures as a guide, stick the owl cut outs onto the cookies with a little royal icing. Add on the owl wings and beak and then pipe some eyes onto each owl. Adhere the small fondant flowers decoratively around the branches and then pipe a small dot of white royal icing into the center of each flower.

If you find that bits of the royal icing squish out use a small stiff clean brush (you have only used for food purposes in the past or new) to brush away the excess

Fill a piping bag with green royal icing and a #65 small leaf tip. Pipe some leaves around the branches by holding the piping tip on the branch applying pressure and then pulling away.carefully. (practice on some paper first if you like).

Once the eyes have dried pipe on a tiny amount of black royal icing into the center of each eye, or you can use brown royal icing, or an edible pen which ever works best for you.

Also Don't forget the Handmade Wedding Giveaway

If you haven't already entered the Handmade Wedding Book Giveaway pop on over here to check out my review and enter.

and finally here is the link to preorder my book Sweets on a Stick from Amazon, its due out in December. Did I mention I took some pops I made using the chocolate cake pop recipe to kindi the other day for Sweet's birthday and the next day the teacher told me in amazement it is the first time every kid has eaten up the whole treat. I'm taking that as a winning endorsement.

Handmade Wedding - Book Giveaway and Review

I received an early copy of Handmade Wedding over Forty Gorgeous Projects to help you style your wedding your way published by Penguin Books Australia in my mailbox the other day.




Handmade Wedding is a charming book full of gorgeous colour photography that beautifully portrays the finished projects, along with a host of other inspirational pictures.

The book is a collaboration of a host of well known and well respected bloggers, stylists and talented artists and is divided into sections such as Before the Wedding, Getting Dressed, Ceremony, Table, Party and Details.

There are detailed step by step instructions on how to make all the pretty projects, including templates where required and the Party section includes a few recipes including macarons (by Macaron cookbook author Alison Thompson), truffle pops and cookies. I did notice that the macaron recipe recommended a few trial runs before the wedding, so I would say the book offers pretty sound advice as well.

I fell in love with some of the diy craft projects and the day the book arrived found myself ordering items to make the super cute cupcake toppers from the Party Section. Sooo totally in love with them! Many of the 48 projects in the book would be easily transferable to any fabulous soiree you might be hosting, and are not just wedding specific.

I had hoped to floor you all with my super crafty skills and show you all some pictures of the amazing things I had made from the book (hello cupcake toppers) but sadly my stuff is still in transit somewhere.

Anyhoo to round up I guess it says a lot that I was willing to attempt some projects, cause although I'm ok at dipping cakeballs and baking macarons I'm not the craftiest gal around and after reading the book I was pretty confident that I could attempt quite a few of the projects.

Giveaway - Win A Copy of Handmade Wedding

I have the precopy of Handmade Wedding to offer as a giveaway. Just leave a comment here by 12pm Monday the 15th of August and I will randomly choose a winner. Any comment will do, just say Hi if you like. If you would like me to contact you and let you know that you are the winner make sure you leave your email address in the comment as well, otherwise I will announce on Tuesday here and on the facebook page the name of the winner and you can have until Friday to contact me before I redraw.

Good Luck!

Oh and here is my everyblog announcement about my book, which is by the way totally not related to the book I reviewed above......In case you haven't heard I have a book coming out in December available for preorder. It's a US release and is aimed at cooking with kids specifically sweet treats on a stick and has lots of recipes for cake pops, cookie tutorials, pie pops, candy and more.

Here is the link to buy my book Sweets on A Stick by Linda and Vandermeer at Barnes and Noble :)

WINNER  update

Random Org came up with #6 so the winner is Karla

Thanks everyone who entered