Red Velvet Cookies for Valentines Day

 

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces

An airline ticket to romantic places

And still my heart has wings

These foolish things remind me of you.

                          Holt Marvel, These Foolish Things

Happy Valentines Day readers! It is a day that divides the crowds, but I like it, even though I don’t have a Valentine - I prefer instead to use the day to celebrate those dear and near to me in a non-romantic sense.

It is also Transfiguration Sunday in the Lutheran Church, being the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I think that is rather fitting for Valentines Day, as love for another transforms them in our eyes. To quote the finale song of Les Miserables, to love another person is to see the face of God.

One of the best things about Valentines Day is the opportunity to bake and decorate something fun. I made cookies again, but this year they are red velvet rollout cookies. It was  a challenge to find a recipe I could make, as the most popular recipe contained buttermilk powder, which I did not have.

I finally landed on a recipe from Baking A Moment, containing cream cheese instead of buttermilk powder for that red velvet tang. I used a quarter of the recipe - here are my cookies before being decorated:

To make these cookies, you will need:

225g butter

115g cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 tablespoon red liquid food colouring

3 cups plain flour

1/4 cup cornflour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line baking sheets with baking paper.

Put the butter, cream cheese and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat together until smooth.

Beat in the egg yolk, vanilla and food colouring.

Add the flour, sifted cocoa, cornflour and salt and mix until just combined.

Turn the dough out onto a piece of baking paper and press it together into a flat disc. Put another sheet of baking paper on top, and roll out the dough to a thickness of roughly 3/16”. 

Remove the top piece of paper and cut the dough into whatever shapes you like, and place each shape onto the lined baking trays. (If, like me, you find the dough is sticking to the paper, put the rolled out dough into the fridge to chill for 10 minutes or so.)

Put each sheet of cookies into the oven and bake for ~ 15 minutes or until the cookies are firm at the edges but still a little soft in the centre.  Cool the cookies on the baking sheets.

Now the fun part - decorating your cookies!  I brushed the top of each cookie lightly with water and stuck a thinly rolled piece of fondant cut into a matching shape on top of each cookie. I then used stencils to air-brush designs on top of the cookies. I used this Cookie Countess cartoon heart stencil:

and this Berry Sweet lips stencil:

They are a little bit blurred, but I think that’s part of the charm, especially for the lips - it looks a little like smeared lipstick.

Enjoy your Valentines Day!

Chocolate Valentine's Day Cookies Decorated Two Ways

It's getting late
Anticipation
And if we talk
Communication
And then you'll know
I ache for you

                                                                                                 
                                                                                           Ache for You - Ben Lee

The above lyrics come from one of my favourite songs by Ben Lee, Ache for You, from the excellent album Awake Is the New Sleep.  This song perfectly sums up longing and desire for someone - it can be illogical and confusing, but hopeful and exciting at the same time.  

Valentine's Day is an opportunity for those who are already loved up to confirm those feelings to their partner.  It is also an opportunity to reach out to someone you long for and express your feelings for them in the hope that those feelings are returned.

I am not a fan of all the commercialisation around "V Day", as it is known, but I am a sucker for all the red and white and pink and hearts symbolism.  It is a perfect chance for me to indulge my fondness for this symbolism in sweet form.

This year, I made chocolate cookies and decorated them in two different ways.  One method was something I had tried before, the other was entirely new to me.

I made Lila Loa's End-All for Chocolate Roll Out Cookies, which I love because you don't have to chill the dough before rolling and baking.  Unfortunately, I did have to do a bit of chilling of the dough because the rather hot and humid day on which I made them did me no favours.  I just cut out round shapes because that shape was the easiest to use with my decorating tools of choice.

First up, I marbled some ready-to-roll fondant in a pink and white colour combination, and embossed it with the cutest ever "Bee Mine" embosser from Custom Cookie Cutters.  I think they turned out really cute.  I had marbled fondant and used an embosser before.

The next technique I used was to decorate the fondant using an airbrush with various heart-shaped Wilton stencils (I picked up the stencils for just $2 on a throw-out at the Cake Bakes and Sweets Show some time in the distant past, and this is the first time I have used them):

My airbrush is a Cookie Countess model from Miss Biscuit (bought on sale earlier in the year), and I used Cookie Countess's Preppy Pink airbrush colour for the designs. I had wanted to try airbrushing for a while, and this YouTube video made it easy for me to learn how to use the airbrush. The biggest lesson that I learned is that less is more when it comes to using the colour with stencils, as it minimises colour bleeding, and the colour darkens up afterwards so too much colour may lead to an undesirable result.  I also learned the value of putting down paper towel all over the benchtop that you are airbrushing on to avoid undesirable mess.

All of the cookies are so cute.  I could have piped a heart shaped edging around each cookie to hide the chocolate edges peeping out of the fondant, but as I was making these cookies just for fun and not to sell or for anyone in particular, I just left them as is.

I could not let the opportunity pass to show off my new Quetzy Valentine's Day brooches:

I purchased the Love Galah, but the little heart brooch was a gift with my purchase.  It made me smile.

Wishing all of my readers a fabulous V Day!

TWD - Lavender-White Chocolate Pots de Creme

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Lavender-White Chocolate Pots de Crème.  This decadent dessert would be perfect to serve as the finale to a romantic dinner for two on Valentine's Day.

A pot de creme is a baked custard dessert.  This version is flavoured with white chocolate and dried lavender, which is not a combination I'd usually gravitate to.  However, in this dessert, the combination is delicious - the creamy white chocolate is given just a whiff of delicate floral from the dried lavender.  

I baked my two pots de crème (a quarter of the recipe) in beautiful tea cups that came with a dinner set that I bought when I first started work many, many years ago, in the misplaced belief that I was going to be hosting numerous dinner parties. Even when I have held the odd dinner party or two, people don't drink tea out of tea cups (or otherwise), so I welcomed the opportunity to use these dainty cups.

I decorated my pots de crème with crushed candied violets - I thought the purple colour was perfect to complement the lavender flavour.  I also served them with chocolate cookies (made to Lila Loa's End-All for Chocolate Cookie recipe) to scoop up the custard.

This dessert surprised me in a good way - it was creamy, decadent and elegant.  I would definitely make this again for the right occasion.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.    

Strawberries and Cream Cheesecake

Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you,

Embrace me, you irreplaceable you

                                                   Embraceable You, George and Ira Gershwin

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, you will know that Friday this week is Valentine's Day.  Love it or hate it, the shops are filled with red cards, and ads for chocolates, flowers and jewellery abound.

A dessert that would be fun to make for Valentine's Day is this Strawberries and Cream Cheesecake from Coles magazine.  I did not make it for that reason, but its gorgeous pink and white hues make it the perfect dessert for V Day.  It also sings of summertime.

This baked cheesecake contains real strawberries, but the pink colouring is enhanced by a splosh of pink liquid food colouring (OK, in my case, a bit more than a splosh).

I made three quarters of the  recipe and used only Granita biscuits in the base.  While my cheesecake is not as tall as the original as a result, it was enough for me.

To make this cheesecake (3/4 recipe), you will need:

1 x 250g packet Arnott's Granita biscuits, crushed
100g butter, melted
75g strawberries, halved
3/4 tablespoon sugar
500g cream cheese, softened
90g sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
3/4 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons plain flour
pink liquid food colouring

Grease and line a 20cm round springform pan. Put the biscuits in a food processor and process into fine crumbs.  Add the butter and process until well combined.  Press the mixture evenly into the base and up the sides of the springform  pan, using the base of a flat-bottomed glass to assist you in doing so.  Place the base in the fridge to chill while you make the filling.

Put the strawberries and 3/4 tablespoon sugar into a small saucepan, and cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then increase the heat to high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the strawberries collapse and the syrup reduces by half.  Allow the mixture to cool off the heat, then transfer to a blender and process until smooth.  Sieve the mixture, keeping the liquid and discarding the solids.

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Celsius.

Put the cream cheese, sour cream and remaining sugar into a food processor and process until smooth.  Add the eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla extract and process until well combined.  Add the flour and process until combined.  

Divide the mixture evenly into two bowls.  To one half, add the strawberry mixture and two or three drops of pink food colouring, and stir to combine.

Into the biscuit base, place alternating spoonfuls of pink and white filling mixture. (I found that the filling mixture was more liquid than solid, so I poured portions of each mixture in alternating pours into the middle of the base instead, creating alternating rings of colour.) Using a flat bladed knife, gently swirl the mixture to marble it.

Place the cheesecake on a baking tray and place in the oven to bake for 1 hour or until set.  Turn of the oven and leave the cheesecake to cool in the oven, with the door jar, for 2 hours.

Put the cooled cheesecake into the fridge to chill.

Slice and serve the cheesecake as desired.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Pound Cake - Queen Baking Club

Love isn't considered or wise. If love was sensible, it wouldn't feel as magical as it does …

                                                                             Kerri Sackville

It is Valentine's Day today.  It is a date which seems to be very polarising, with some people liking it and others loathing it.  I am pretty neutral, but I think it is a good way of spurring people to express affection for their loved ones even if in the hurly burly of life, they forget to otherwise do so.

The Queen Baking Club recipe for this fortnight is Raspberry and White Chocolate Pound Cake.  You can find the recipe online here.  I thought this pretty red and white cake was a perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day in a hearts and chocolate box kind of way.

Did I also mention that this cake is delicious?  It is moist, packed with raspberries, quite sweet because of the white chocolate (which is balanced out somewhat by the tartness of the raspberries), and is topped with a tangy cream cheese frosting swirled with raspberry juice.

Also on the subject of Valentine's Day, Krispy Kreme were selling Strawberry and Cream donuts and Chocolate Cream donuts in the shape of hearts:

I am not a huge Krispy Kreme or donut fan, but I enjoyed this tasty and visually eye-catching donut.

I hope that you had a wonderful Valentine's Day.

TWD - Dark Chocolate Mousse

… love feels so damn good.  Even the tiniest hint of romance can be intoxicating …

                                                      Kerri Sackville

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Dark Chocolate Mousse.  It is the kind of rich and decadent dessert that I believe would be perfect if you were making dinner for your Valentine on Thursday night.

This Dark Chocolate Mousse recipe was given to Dorie by Pierre Herme, so it is pastry-chef type material involving the use of candy thermometers and the like - that is, not what I would usually bother with.  However, for the purposes of this group, I went ahead and made a quarter of the mousse recipe (the original serves 8).

I think it went OK and tasted good, although chocolate mousse is a little too rich to rate on my favourite dessert lists.  I did find adding the hot syrup to the eggs a bit of a nightmare as I had used a hand-held mixer (having already used my stand mixer to whip the cream), but I just removed the few little solidified sugar clumps from the egg mixture before proceeding further.  This mousse also went better than the last time I made chocolate mousse from one of Dorie's books.

To see what the other Doristas made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Smoky Hearts

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Smoky Hearts, in reference to Valentine's Day in 9 days' time.  

These little biscuits gain smokiness from smoked paprika and smoked almonds peppering the dough, which perfectly complement the chocolate flavour from the cocoa.

The biscuits are cut into heart shapes for Valentine's Day, and Dorie found that they were popular with her male customers as treats for themselves.

I made a half batch but that made over 50 biscuits using a 1 1/2" cutter - plenty to go around.  These biscuits are truly delicious, so if you can retain the patience to cut out this many biscuits, it is well worth it.

I presented the biscuits on my kissing cockatoos' plate and decorated the plate with my Valentine's Sonny Angel and a kewpie to complement the spirit of these biscuits.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Valentine's Day Share-a-Heart

The second cookie recipe for Dorie's Cookies this month is Valentine's Day Share-a-Heart.  The idea is to make two huge chocolate heart shaped cookies and little ones with the scrap dough, and for the two large cookies to be shared.

However, in my universe, people would not dig the concept of sharing a cookie with other people.  To avoid this potential awkwardness, I just made a half batch of smaller heart shaped cookies.  I ended up with 13 cookies.

Maybe it was the hot weather, but some of my cookies spread so much in the oven that they no longer resembled hearts.  The remainder looked a whole lot better once they had been iced and sprinkled with sanding sugar and non pariels.

I think that these cookies ended up looking very cute.  I couldn't resist posing my mini kewpie and my brand new Valentine's edition Sonny Angel with these cookies.  They are just adawbs and perfect for setting the Valentine's Day mood.  I made these cookies and took them to work on Valentine's Day - I think people may have found it a bit weird if I had brought in a batch of heart shaped cookies at any other time.

The cookies themselves were surprisingly delicious - the chocolate flavour comes from cocoa, but the cookies are quite chocolatey and are light and buttery.

To see what everyone else made this wee, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Ina Garten's Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing for Valentine's Day

Now I wake up happy

Warm in a lover's embrace

No one else can touch us

While we're in this place

(Split Enz, Message to My Girl)

Love it or loathe it, it is Valentines Day today.  The story goes that it celebrates the life of Saint Valentine, who was imprisoned by the Romans for performing weddings for soldiers, who were forbidden to marry. Accordingly to Wikipedia, the day was first associated with romantic love by Chaucer.

I have been wanting to make Ina Garten's Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing ever since I first saw them on The Barefoot Contessa (it wasn't that long ago - the Food Network in Australia is still new).  I thought these decadent cakes would tie up wonderfully with Valentines Day - my excuse to make them!  You can find the recipe online here.

These little cakes are just magical - rich and decadent, and with the killer combination of chocolate and peanut flavours.  I substituted the sour cream in the cakes for Greek yoghurt, and it worked just fine.

To those who celebrate it, Happy Valentines Day!

Postscript:

A big shoutout to The Dessert Parlour and Collins234 for this delicious raspberry donut, which I received gratis as part of a Valentines Day promotion.  Thanks! 

Rose Ombre Layer Cake for Valentines Day

 

 

All you need is love

Love is all you need.

 

                                                                The Beatles

 



Love it or loathe it, today is Valentine's Day.  I for one am not adverse to this day of love, not because I float in a sea of flowers while lying back on a chaise lounge to eat decadent chocolates, but because I like the idea of a day to celebrate romantic love, and it involves lots of red and pink, two of my favourite colours.

 

 

I like to celebrate occasions with baked goods, and this year, I was immediately taken by the Ombre Layer Cake that I found on Tartine and Apron Strings.  Kayte had given me a set of Wilton 6" 5 layer cake pans for Christmas, and this was the perfect opportunity to use them.  (It astounds me that in Australia, we get charged twice the price or more of the US market price for such things, so I am grateful for Kayte's gift.) 

 

Instead of using the Swiss meringue buttercream in the recipe to ice the cake, I used my favourite Primrose Bakery Vanilla buttercream recipe, tinted palest pink, and flavoured with rose water instead of vanilla.

 

I bought Flowerdale Farm Turkish Delight rose petals to decorate my cake - a little pricey at $6.95, but they are surely the crowning glory of my creation: 

 

Here's an aerial shot - so pretty:
 

Once sliced, the true beauty of the ombre layers shines through:

It is a very impressive looking cake.  Even better, the cake tastes devine.

My only tips on making the cake layers are that they are quite delicate - grease your pan well, run a knife around the rim of the pans to unmould them, and oil your wire rack for cooling them, as the layers have a tendency to tear and stick.

Do you have any plans for Valentine's Day?  And do you like to celebrate Valentine's Day, or ignore it?

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Owl Cupcakes for Valentines Day

All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

                                                                   The Beatles

Happy Valentines Day!  I hope you are spending it with the ones you love.

I realise that not everyone celebrates or approves of Valentines Day, but I have always liked it, even as a mere bystander (which I have been mostly).  A day to celebrate love is a wonderful idea to me.

To celebrate this year, I have once again amalgamated the Valentine theme with my fascination for owls, and made Owl Cupcakes with a Valentine twist.  Again turning to Google, I found these cupcakes, which are a twist on these ones that have been made dozens of times by various bloggers.

I put my own spin on them by giving the owls heart-shaped pupils made out of strawberry sour straps. The eyes and ears are, of course, Oreos. To separate the Oreos, I used the tip to twist them apart, and smoothed over the icing following separation.   It was a bit of a nightmare cutting the Oreos in half for the ears, and in the end, I had just enough and no more.  The beaks are raspberry flavoured M&Ms, which are new to me and so delicious that quite a few went to the chef.
 

For the base cupcakes, I used the white chocolate mud cupcake recipe from the Australian Womens Weekly Cupcake book, which is online here, and coloured light pink.  The frosting is the Primrose Bakery Vanilla Buttercream, dyed pink.

I didn't have enough Oreos in a box to make all 11 cupcakes as owls, so I just decorated the 4 of them with sugar hearts:

Awww!

Happy Valentines Day!

FFwD Valentine's Cookie Exchange - Dark Chocolate Cookies with Sour Cherries

Despite this week being one of the most demanding of my working life, I left for work with a spring in my  step this morning - because I was off to the post office to pick up my FFwD Valentines Cookie Exchange package from the post office!  It arrived right on time on Valentines Day, but unfortunately I did not get home in time to pick it up before the post office closed.

Off to the post office I skipped at 7.30am today, and there was my parcel, neatly wrapped in brown paper.  The yellow tape on the outside and a note inside indicated that the Australian Quarantine service had been there before me:

but nothing could spoil my excitement at receiving a parcel of cookies all the way from the USA.

My cookies were from Maggie of Always Use More Butter - thanks Maggie!  Inside the Tupperware container in the package, I found some beautiful bright dotty paper:

which I lifted to reveal the carefully wrapped contents:
 

 
 
On top was a beautiful heart mobile carefully hand crafted by Maggie:
 

 
 
together with a card that was very appropriate to send to Australia, land of the marsupials:
 

 
 
with the following punchline and message inside:
 

 
 
and beautifully individually wrapped in wax paper were the Dark Chocolate Cookies with Sour Cherries pictured at the top of this post, in perfect condition.  These cookies were baked by Maggie from a recipe in Martha Stewart's Cookies book, and they are special to Maggie, as she made them as favours for her wedding.  Thanks Maggie for sharing such a special recipe with me.
 
And the taste of these cookies?  Absolutely scrumptious!  Chunky, deeply chocolatey cookies are offset by the zing of sour cherries, making them just right.  Because I opened my package at work, I shared my cookies with a select few people, who were amazed at receiving a homemade cookie all the way from the USA, and all of whom enjoyed them as much as I did.  I still have a couple of cookies left for the weekend, just for me.  I look forward to eating them very much.
 
If you are dying to try these delicious cookies for yourself, you will need:
 
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1 1/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups dried sour cherries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla extract; beat until well combined. Add the flour mixture, and beat on low speed, until just combined. Do not overbeat. With a wooden spoon, fold in chocolate and cherries.  Maggie also added in some white chocolate chunks.

Form balls of dough, each about 1/4 cup; place balls on baking sheet about 3 inches apart. Bake until puffed and cracked, 9 to 11 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Thanks to Alice of A Cooking Mizer for organising this fun event, and to Maggie for sending me my package.

 

FFwD - Coeur a la Creme

 

 

 

 

This week's French Friday with Dorie challenge had a Valentines Day theme, in that the dessert we made was Coeur a la Creme - literally a Heart of Cream.  To make this dessert, comprised of cream cheese, icing sugar, whipped cream, vanilla and alcohol of your choice (I chose Chambord, a black raspberry liqueur), you are supposed to have the special heart shaped moulds with holes in the bottom.  I used a strainer lined with cheesecloth instead, in the correct belief that I will never make this dessert often enough to justify buying the moulds, and hence we have Blob a la Creme: 

 

 

 

As the name suggests, coeur a la creme tastes overwhelmingly of cream.  I paired my coeur a la creme with some raspberry coulis (frozen raspberries and sugar warmed up together until a sauce forms).  The raspberry pairing is a good one, as it cuts through the creaminess.

Without a doubt, this dessert tasted nice if you are a creamy dessert fan.  For me, this was just OK, as although I love cheesecake, this dessert erred too far on the creamy side for my liking.  However, it got very good feedback at work - proving that I am a fusspot of sorts. 

To see what the other FFwD cooks thought, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.

Hope you had a Happy Valentines Day!