"30 Days of Cookies" Guest Post!

This month, the talented Melissa over at Design Eat Repeat has been running a 30 Days of Cookies feature. I can't even imagine the organization and time that would take, but she was kind enough to offer me a guest post for my decorated sugar cookies! Not only does she have a great name (heh) but she has some great recipes with beautiful design and photography, so make sure you go take a look!

 

Perfect Cut Out Sugar Cookies with Easy Icing

Serves: 16-20 cookies

 

Ingredients

Cookies:

• 1 cup butter, cut into chunks and softened for about half an hour at room temperature (or if you’re impatient like me, in the microwave for three 5-second intervals)
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla
• 3 cups cake flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt

Icing:

• 2 egg whites
• 4 cups icing (powdered) sugar

Instructions

Cookies:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until they are white and fluffy.
2. Beat in egg and vanilla.
3. Combine flour and salt with a whisk, and add to mixer at low speed. I like to throw a dish towel over the bowl and turn the mixer up for a minute to ensure that everything is combined nicely.
4. Remove dough from mixer and paddle, and place on a piece of saran wrap on the counter. Pat the dough out to 2-3” thick, wrap, and chill in the fridge for 45 minutes.
5. Unwrap chilled dough, place between two sheets of parchment paper, and roll out to ¼ inch thick. Place in fridge, still in between the parchment paper, for 30 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 325 F.
7. Remove chilled sheet of dough, take off top piece of parchment, and cut out desired shapes with a greased cookie cutter. Use a greased spatula to transfer cut shapes to cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
8. Freeze trays of cut shapes for 20 minutes.
9. Place frozen tray in the center of the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. Cookies should look just barely golden on the edges.
10. After five minutes transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

To Make Icing:

1. Place ingredients in bowl of stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Mix slowly for a minute or two to combine, then on high for 5-7 minutes until the mixture is forms stiff peaks.
2. Divide mixture into smaller bowls, depending on how many colors you will be using. I like to use concentrated gel colors, as they don’t water down your icing and give really vibrant color.

Notes

TO DECORATE: Using the thick icing mixture in a piping bag fitted with a small round tip, pipe around the edges of your cookie. Lift the bag away from the cookie as you pipe to get neater lines, and make sure your borders connect- otherwise the icing flow will spill down the edges of your cookie! In a bowl, mix some thick icing with water, half a teaspoon at a time, until it is runny and drips off a spoon easily. Think the consistency of liquid whipping cream- that’s what you’re looking for. Use a teaspoon to carefully spoon a little of the runny icing onto the cookies. I use the back of the spoon to push it to the edges of the border, and a toothpick to push icing into small areas and to fix air bubbles. I like to dry the cookies for several hours before I attempt to stack them or put them in bags- if you’re making them with kids though, they probably won’t last that long!

Cake Crazy



Usually, I make a whole lot of cupcakes every week with the occasional cake thrown in. Lately, it seems like all I make is cakes, something I just noticed this weekend when I was looking for recent cupcake pictures to throw up. I have been a cake machine lately, churning out custom fondant occasion cakes, signature buttercream birthday cakes, and the ideas just keep coming! Although these are much more time consuming than cupcakes, I've really begun to love working with fondant, and I've started to plan for taking some of my "dream courses" next year. While I have a knack for decorating, I have sooo much to learn and I just don't think you can ever learn enough. There is always going to be room for improvement! Right now, I'm taking every opportunity to try something I haven't done before and to find the styles and techniques that work best for me. I never ever thought my cakes would be a big thing for Little Bow Sweets- they've always been an afterthought for me. Apparently, all of you lovely people have other ideas! Here's a little of what I've been up to lately.

 



This classy striped cake was made for a photography fanatic- her 19th birthday party was a photograph scavenger hunt, which I think is an awesome idea!

I made this Little Red Riding Hood cake for the Cake Central inspiration challenge. I would never normally enter a contest, but I thought it was a great opportunity to try something new and stretch my skills! We were given this inspiration board to design from, and there were some crazy amazing entries! The winning cake had the same painted silhouette idea as mine, although with considerably more skill behind it and another tier! I'm really happy with my entry though and will probably enter the next one just for the awesome practice!

Painted Pumpkins and other creations from the Fall season so far!

This cake was a last minute request- no time to plan ahead, no time to work our alternative methods...while I would have liked to put a little more effort into the prep, I'm actually really happy with the end result on this one, and the birthday boy was thrilled!



The glitter all over this top tier is still turning up in my clothes, on my face, in my hair...it just won't go away!

Turkey Day Sweets: Cranberry Almond Scones

I'm just gonna say it, I hate pumpkin pie. I don't get it, I don't like it, and I don't make it, so I always try to make something different for Thanksgiving festivities. We didn't do a dinner this year, so instead of some big decadent dessert, I threw together some fall-flavored scones to go with the several hundred litres of tea I have downed this weekend. They're pretty delicious, and since I haven't fallen off the wagon with a massive turkey dinner, I've let myself have one or two. Or three. Let's leave it at two for my conscience's sake though, and move along to the recipe!

Ingredients:

2 cups cake & pastry flour

4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
5 tbsp cold butter
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp almond extract
3/4 cup cranberries, halved & tossed in 2 tbsp sugar

Directions:

1) Move oven shelf to slightly higher than the center of the oven. You want your scones closer to the top element than the bottom. Preheat oven to 350. 

2) Stir vinegar and almond extract into milk- mixture will thicken and curdle slightly. Set aside.

2) Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together in a large bowl.

3) Cut butter into small cubes, and use a fork to cut it into the flour mixture.

4) Use fingertips to lift mixture and rub butter into flour until there are no pieces larger than pea-size.

5) Mix sugared cranberries into bowl.

6) Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour milk in.

7) Using a small fork, mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, starting to use your hands as the dough forms. Use your hands to knead the dough, scraping all the dry ingredients in the bowl into one elastic ball.

8) Pat the dough out on a floured board to about 1/3" thick, and cut with a pastry cutter.

9) Place cut scones 1" apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush with eggwash, and let rest for ten minutes.

10) Bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown on top. Let cool for 10 minutes.

*I drizzled them with a glaze made of 1 tsp milk and 1/4 cup icing sugar, but a dusting of icing sugar would also work just fine!

 

{WISHLIST WEDNESDAY} : Cupcakes & Clean Eating

 

I find it funny that our society, or at least consumers, are seemingly obsessed with things that contradict each other. Unless you live under a rock, you've probably noticed that health and fitness has become an obsession of instagrammers everywhere, and that the amount of selfies taken at gyms across North America has multiplied by about six thousand percent (figures are estimated) over the last couple of years. At the same time as this, the 'handheld dessert' industry has skyrocketed, with cupcake shops, donut shops, and now apparently "cronut" shops (croissant donuts, srsly), popping up everywhere, and doing damn good business to boot. Starbucks is celebrating the imaginary anniversary of a chemically-flavoured beverage this winter, and my newsfeeds are full of people frantically hashtagging "#cleaneating" on one picture and then "Yum #PSL Frappuccino" in the next. It seems that, as consumers, we love being sold extremes: extreme health, extreme indulgence, extreme beauty. And this is where it changes for me: I don't like extremes.

 AT LEAST twice a week, I get asked some variation of "how do you not weigh 300lbs?" People, women in particular, are fascinated to know how I can spend the majority of my time creating things made from the terrible trio- Butter(gasp), white sugar(sob), and wonderful gluten-rich white flour (OH the horror!) and not look like a rhinoceros wearing an apron. This always makes me wonder what people think I do while I'm making cupcake orders ("one for you, two for me" *chompchompchomp*) But seriously, my only honest answer is that I just don't stress about it. Outside of Little Bow Sweets, I try to take good care of myself- I meal plan, try not to eat "bad carbs", have the best intentions to exercise at least twice as much as I actually do...pretty standard stuff these days I think. But if I want to eat a cupcake, it's not a big deal. If I don't make it to drag myself up and down 200 steps a few times, its not a big deal. I don't feel the need to be extreme about my health- I just want to feel good and not get sick. I'm far from thin, but I'm the healthiest I've ever been and I'm also spending more time creating sweets than I ever have before. These two apparently contradictory things, to me, just showcase the actual "secret" to happy healthy people: balance. When we're all old and saggy, we're not going to be proud of ourselves for all the cake we didn't eat. So go do some exercise that you enjoy, eat your vegetables, and if you want a cupcake then eat a damn cupcake.

{THE WEEKENDER} BEE-DO BEE-DO

This weekend, I branched out from my little vintage round birthday cakes and took on an adorable challenge: a minion cake! Despicable Me is one of my favourite kids' movies...and I really, really like kids movies. (Sorry, not sorry) I wanted my minion cake to convey all the things that everyone loves about the minion characters: they're impulsive, playful, and full of childlike glee. That sounds like the perfect combination of things for an 8th birthday! Anyway, after battling with some really questionable pre-coloured fondant which led to a few tears and some pretty handy patchwork, I think he turned out pretty well for a first attempt! I've called him Jerry.

{WISH LIST WEDNESDAY: The Tale of the Whale (That Was Really A Snail)

This Wednesday, my wish is to be less blonde. And by that I mean less of complete idiot 90% of the time. I am an intelligent person, as far as people go....but at least once a day I have what I refer to as "facepalm" moments, where all I can do is shake my head at myself and seriously wonder how I manage to dress myself in the morning.

This week I bought some fantastic cookie/pastry cutters from Ikea, and I've been itching to use them because I'm cool like that. Since I like to keep Little Bow Sweets updates coming pretty consistently, I snapped a picture of my slightly confusing new cutters for Instagram.

Almost immediately, Faye from Bake Me Happy SF (@bakemehappysf) pointed out the blindingly obvious fact that the object of my confusion was a snail...and not a whale. Just...cringe. I still don't think a snail matches all the other cutters, but ANYWAY. I made cookies, they are delicious, and some of them are shaped like animals of questionable identity.

These are my favourite little bears. At Christmas they'll make perfect polar bears!

Most. Breakable. Cookie. Ever. ARGH.

My sister thought this one was a dinosaur, so I'm going to blame genetics for our animal identification issues.

I realize that there's a finger in this photo, but it's too nice to crop :)

SEE.

{THE WEEKENDER} New Goodies!

For a while now I've been putting some thought into expanding the Little Bow product line. I personally think there is no occasion that couldn't be improved with a little cake, a lot of cake, or a lot of little cakes...but different strokes for different folks, and different treats for different days! So on that note, I'm super excited to introduce the newest Little Bow Sweets: Custom sugar cookies and 'designer' popcorn!

Left to Right: Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn, Vanilla-Raspberry Sugar Cookies, Birthday Cake Popcorn