The Checkerboard Birthday Cake is Coming...

Ok, I have always wanted to make this cake and thanks to my good friend, C, who gave me the special pan....Justin is going to get a checkboard cake for his birthday tomorrow. At least I hope so!! Of course I have to try something I have never tried before for a large group of people.

Cookie Cutter Splurge in the Heartland

Well, I went on a bit of a cookie cutter and baking supply binge in Minnesota this past weekend and I am so excited for a few up-and-coming projects!! First, I went to Lunds grocery store where I bought two sugars: cardamom sugar and hibiscus sugar. These are made by Golden Fig Epicurean in Minnesota and I can't find them anywhere else. I already have a lavender sugar and lemon rose sugar. All are great for topping sugar cookies.

Then I took a trip to Sweet Celebrations which is formerly known as Maid of Scandinavia, in Edina, MN. There I bought:

• edible ivory pearls
• non pareils for a butterfly cupcake project
• mini tart pans
  
• a mitten cookie cutter
• two Christmas ornament cookie cutters
• a birdhouse cookie cutter
• a Christmas light bulb cookie cutter
  
• and a large wedding cake cookie cutter

I cannot wait to bake these cookies! And finally, to top off the splurge, I saw Little House on the Prairie the Musical and bought the Little House Cookbook. It is an old cookbook that I once checked out from the library but I am going to make a lot of the recipes in it including butter, pancakes, ginger water, candy and more. Don't worry, they will make the blog.

Now I just need some days off to bake!

Baker's Holiday

This baker is on a short holiday. A new post is coming soon. By the way, I received my St. Nicholas cookie mold and it is fantastic! Even more beautiful than I expected. Some test cookies will appear shortly!

I Heart Tarts

I'm officially in love with tarts- perhaps even more than pies and so much that we dallied together until 1:30AM. I was supposed to make one simple tart for a tea party that I was having with my friend Monica and Aunt Enie. Somehow it turned into five tarts and a peach galette. I started with a crust that I had made a few weeks ago and frozen. I baked it up but then I got nervous- what if it had a bit of freezer burn (i.e. drying out). 

So, I thawed a ball of dough that I had made and frozen and made four little tarts. I also used the leftover dough to make the peach galette in the previous post. I think putting dough in a tart pan is so much easier than putting pie crust in a pie pan. I love trimming the top to get the perfect edge!

The filling was blissfully simple: mixing cream cheese, orange zest, orange liqueur, and sugar.

I spread it in the baked tart shell...

and arranged the sliced berries, which I found to be surprisingly difficult given the variance in size of the berries. Some are petite and others are too large.

The berries were glazed with apricot jelly that was warmed and strained. I preferred this to an agar glaze. This tart turned out beautifully and the crust was perfect after all.

I finally got the hang of arranging the berries in the little tart pans. Ultimately, the best way is to put a large berry in the center- kind of like a peak. This photo of the four tarts reminds me of some plastic tarts that came with my Strawberry Shortcake dolls playset.

They were very delicious!

I think what I love most about tarts is how easy the crust is to make and how perfect it looks. The design of the tart pans is genius, as it easily lifts out without breaking. These tarts sliced very well, as the cream cheese filling was viscous enough not to run. This is the first time I have frozen my dough and used it and I found that it worked out very well. I do prefer the little tart pans. These little tarts were perfect for two or three to share but I am looking for the two-bite tart pan next.

Baking Magic After Midnight

Well, I know some of my best baking is done late at night and tonight was no exception as I finished my endeavor at 1:30AM. I started out with a plan to bake a strawberry tart with an orange zest and cream cheese base. I had a frozen tart crust in the freezer from the last time I made tart crust and I had a ball of pie crust dough.


But somehow one tart multiplied into 5 tarts and one peach galette with handcut leaves. The dough, which I made and froze a few weeks ago, was thawed and folded into a rustic tart. I handcut the tiny leaves.
I used a Full Belly Farm Egg to egg wash the crush.
The result was outstanding. This was the best galette I have ever made and I think I will experiment more with the handcut leaves on the crust. 
What about the other five strawberry tarts? Check out tomorrow's post...

Christmas in July? How about St. Nicholas in August?

I know it is only August but I am already anticipating starting a new holiday tradition. When I was growing up, my neighbor, Billie, would bring over the most wonderful cookies on December 6th- St. Nicholas Day. The cookies were a lovely recipe with cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and ginger and they were made with a unique ceramic mold that hung in her kitchen all year long. At my Catholic grammar school, we would put out one of our shoes and St. Nicholas would fill it with candy on December 6th. I have read of similar traditions in Italy, Europe and around the globe.

Well, I wrote my neighbor and asked her to send me the recipe and she did! Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the mold but I found another mold that is handcarved by a man named Gene Wilson at www.cookiemold.com I am buying this St. Nicholas mold in hopes of baking her recipe and giving them out to the kids on our neighborhood. It isn't really the religious tradition I am interested in carrying on but rather the tradition of being a special neighbor.

Now that I am looking at the site even more, I should have ordered a butter mold too! That reminds me of Little House on the Prairie where Ma would mold the butter with a strawberry patterned mold. Maybe that will be my next purchase- the strawberry butter mold is on sale!

These Cakes are Fakes!!

I nurtured my inner Martha this weekend in preparation for my dear friend Monica's bridal shower. I made "fake cakes"- one being a "cake" out of the sage towels she registered for a Macy's and the other were sugar cookies shaped like wedding cakes. Both turned out to be fabulous and delicious- in that order.

Cake Number 1: The Martha Stewart Egyptian Cotton Cake




This was the first time I have ever made one of these and I actually had planned to buy something else from M's registry but it had been purchased. When I saw the sage green Martha Stewart Towels, I seized the opportunity to do this. I went online for the directions but I realized I didn't have enough towels and safety pins- so I adapted the directions. Here's how I did it:

a) bought two sets of bath towels, hand towels, and wash cloths; bought ribbons (hooray for the dollar bin) and fake flowers from Michaels in the wedding section

b) folded and rolled the towels into the shapes thanks to Thinkwedding.com; did not use safety pins but tied things in place with the ribbon. I used a paper towel roll to fill out the hand towel and wash cloth layers because I didn't buy three of those just two. It worked out fine.

c) decorated with the faux flowers. There is a backside to this cake that isn't so pretty but everywhere else, it was terrific. And at the shower, the faux flowers greatly added to the bouquet that was made for M to carry at the rehearsal dinner!

I would definitely do this again and the sage green was a fun color to work with!

Cake Number 2: The Martha Stewart Wedding Cookies



I have been making sugar cookies using this Martha recipe for years. They are my specialty and I was up until the wee hours putting the final touches on- but I love doing it and all of the wedding shows were on TLC late at night, which was appropriate and fun! This time I used eggs from Full Belly Farms. They were expensive eggs but they are from chickens that are truly grass-fed and pastured (I've been there and seen it for myself!) and you know, the eggs look and taste differently. The eggs are speckled and the yolks are bright yellow and stand up. The dough turned a brilliant yellow and was the most supple dough I have ever made. Perfect!



The cookies have a simple royal icing frosting made with meringue powder- no raw eggs because of kids and pregnant women. The best recipes for this I have found in the Sugarbakers Cookie Cutter Cookbook, which is out of print but available used. It had recipes for outline, flow and base consistency icings with meringue powder or egg whites. So you can see the finished products. They were lovely. I put them in clear bags and tied them with ribbons. On my Great Aunt Enie's silver tray, they were lovely.







My final thought on these faux cakes is how many cupcakes and cake shaped sugar cookies I have made recently and how few cakes. I love making cake but it is a lot of dessert for the two of us to have in the house. When I was in college, I would make a sheet cake each week from scratch and share it with my friends and roommates. M reminded me of this at her shower today. I think I will have to make some cakes in between the pies. I love doing it too.

The "I Love My Mom" Strawberry Pie

I made this pie in May for my mom on Mother's Day. I recently discovered that I could get very creative with the crust and it led to this pie. Now, it wouldn't be a Lauren project without a few technical challenges to overcome:

1) I was up until 2AM the night before singing karaoke with our new karaoke system and my neighbors

2) I got up at 7AM to make the pie

3) I misread the recipe and didn't see the step about setting the pie for 4 hours in the fridge so I had to switch recipes.

3) I shortcutted the part where the berries and the sugar sit together and the water from the berries comes out

4) we took the pie before it was completely cooled on a three hour car ride to Yuba City

Despite the technical challenges, it was adequately thick and not too runny and delicious. It did make me a bit late for the three hour car drive which was the worst part. Sorry, Mom!! The moral of the story, get the pie done ahead of time and read the recipe more carefully.