Saturday, September 10, 2011

Party Bunting Sugar Cookies


I'm recovering from a little bit of surgery at the moment and I'm pretty sure there will be no baking around here for about a week, also very little sitting in front of the computer or taking photo's.

So I've had a quick search through some of my photo's to see if there was anything worthwhile and found these pretty and simple bunting cookies I made back in February for a magazine photo shoot. They didn't end up using these ones, they took the flashy lollipop cookies instead, but I kinda preferred these ones with their simple shapes and white background.


After I found these I noticed my previous post with the cherry cookies were exactly the same round cookie cutter and white background with a simple design as well.

Obviously I'm all about the simple things, I like to think that's my strong point, here at Bubble and Sweet we're all for simply sweet treats.

So once again take a sugar cookie and cover in shop bought white ready roll fondant or home made marshmallow fondant. To do this you roll out fondant quite thinly and cut out the round shape with the same cookie cutter you have used to cut the cookie so they should be the same size. Brush a little water onto the cookie using a clean brush and adhere the fondant pressing it on lightly with a rolling pin.

Then cut out some small triangles and make the bunting shape. I used small ateco triangles from my fondant cutter shapes and trimmed a tiny amount of the top of each one, but you could just draw a template and cut them yourself with a sharp knife. Then adhere each of the little triangle buntings with a tiny amount of water starting from one end of the cookie and working your way across to the other end with a slight curve down to look like flags hanging from a string.

 

This design is easy to adapt to any colour theme, a light blue background with red and white bunting, or green with lilac and pink would look perfect. If you like you can even get an edible marker and write on the bunting.


Here is a link to my sugar cookie recipe or chocolate sugar cookie recipe

Here is a link to marshmallow fondant recipe

Monday, September 5, 2011

Cherry Love Cookies for the Polkadot Prints printable range


Do you love cherries like I love cherries.


If the answer is yes you must check out the gorgeous new Polkadot Prints Cherry Love printables range.
 

Yup Love It! Told you. Especially the straw tags. I Love them! They are the new must have bling for you party drinks and would also look great on cake pops as well.


I baked up some cookies and some little cherry pies to go along with the printables for a set of photo's taken by Naomi V Photography.



The cookies are so simple, just a large round sugar cookie topped with white ready rolled fondant, a couple of smaller circles of ready rolled fondant and then a hand shaped stem and leaves.


The green ones are a ruffled round cutter (I used one from my Ikea cookie cutter set) sugar cookie topped with a green round ready rolled fondant cut out. Hand shaped round balls of red fondant, hand shaped stems and leaves and then some dots of royal icing around the edges.

Cherry Love printables - totally sweet, you can check out Jordan from Polkadot prints blog post on it here.

Oh and the pie crust recipe is from my book being released in December, Sweets on a Stick, it's the sugar pie crust recipe I use to make all my pie pops with.



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.