Cookie Swap

Over the weekend we met up with some very talented bloggers at a cookie swap hosted by the lovely Lydia of Lydia Bakes!  It was fantastic meeting Kirsten of High Tea With Dragons, Danelle of A Couple of Night Owls and who also runs a personal blog; Danelle Bourgeois, and Amanda of Here Comes The Sun.



What is a cookies swap you ask?  Cookie swaps are generally held at Christmas time, the idea is that you invite a group of friends, and have each person make enough of one kind of cookie to share.  The cookie swap is a chance to catch up with friends during the busy holiday season while you sample the treats, then trade and get an assortment of delicious treats to take home.  Everyone leaves with a lovely gift and plenty of new recipes (great for when people pop over at Christmas).  We were lucky enough to have some cute boxes to take home our cookies in courtesy of Little Ink.  Because of the cookie swap’s link to Christmas Lydia set everything up with a mid winter Christmas theme, it was so cute!



Since we all blog we didn't share the recipes at our swap, we will all be posting them on each of our own blogs, but we will link everyone’s recipes into this post as they appear.  Over the next week or so you will see our recipes for Monte Carlo Biscuits, Chocolate Sprinkle Cookies and Sprinkle Sandwiched Cookies.  Lydia made some Browned Butter Snickerdoodles, Kirsten made White Chocolate and Raspberry Crinkle Cookies and Danelle made some decadent Chocolate Truffle Cookies - so there is plenty to look forward to.


Have you hosted a cookie swap before? Maybe you are keen to give it a go... remember, if you do we'd love to see your photos.  Also if you bake something from our blog and send us a pic we will enter you into the monthly Billington’s competition.

Thanks for hosting us Lydia – it was a great afternoon!

Check out these links for event round-ups and recipes from the Cookie Swap (we will add them as they pop up on the internet):

• Recipe post for Mel’s Chocolate Sprinkle Refrigerator cookies
• Recipe post for Mel’s Monte Carlo biscuits
• Recipe post for Courtenay’s Cookie Pops / Sprinkle sandwich cookies
• Danelle’s Chocolate Truffle Cookies and post about the Cookie Swap
• Lydia's Brown Butter Snickerdoodles
• Kirsten’s post about the cookie swap and her White Chocolate Raspberry Crinkle Cookies recipe
• Photos and a quick write up about the Cookie Swap by Amanda on Here Comes the Sun

Vanilla Cupcakes by Lydia Bakes

Hello lovely followers of Baking Makes Things Better, it’s Lydia from Lydia Bakes here.  Thank you for having me today, I am truly honoured to be guest posting for Melissa and Courtenay.  As you know, the three of us organised a little get together and decided on a high tea picnic.  We were blessed with gorgeous weather (although I did end up getting severely sunburnt - my fault!) and had a great afternoon getting to know each other while sampling some delicious baking.

Although the idea was to bake something new and exciting I was having a bit of a blonde moment and thought I’d just bring something I’d made before.  Oops!  In any case, I think cupcakes deserve to be at a high tea!  So here is a very simple vanilla cupcake recipe.  This recipe is not your typical beat-the-butter-and-sugar type, but rather aims to be more like “packet” cake mix where you add oil to your batter. I adapted the recipe from Glorious Treats and find it has been more reliable than my last vanilla cupcake recipe!

Makes approximately 24.

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
2 ½ cups cake flour (see below for instructions on how to make this)
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup oil (vegetable or canola)
1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk with 1tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice)

Vanilla Buttercream:220g butter, softened
3 - 4 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 - 4 tablespoons milk

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C and line two muffin tins with cupcake cases. 
Mix up buttermilk (if you're making your own like I always do) and set aside, this will look funny and chunky when you go to use it later.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl, stir together and set aside.
Beat eggs for about 20 seconds and gradually add sugar.  Beat for another 30 seconds.  Add vanilla and oil to egg mixture and beat.  Add a third of the flour mix to the eggy mixture (make sure your beater is on a low setting or the flour will fly everywhere!) and beat.
Add half the buttermilk and beat, then add another third of the flour.  Add the remaining buttermilk and then the flour and beat until combined.
Pour the cake batter in to cupcake cases about ⅔ full and bake for 12 - 14 minutes.  Cool in tin for five minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.  Wait for them to cool down completely before icing.

Vanilla Buttercream:
Beat butter for a few minutes until nice and fluffy. 
While butter is mixing (if you have a stand-alone mixer) sift icing sugar into a large bowl and set aside. 
Add vanilla to the butter and beat for about 30 seconds.  Add the sifted icing sugar one cup at a time.  When icing starts to get lumpy add a tablespoon of milk.  Continue adding milk until you reach the consistency you like.
Tint your favourite colour and pipe on to cupcakes with a large star tip (my favourite is Wilton 1M).

Cake Flour Recipe (makes one cup):
Place 2 tablespoons of cornflour in a measuring cup.  Spoon normal flour into the measuring cup, use a knife to scoop away the extra on top of the cup.  Sift the cup of flours at least 3 or 4 times to mix them together.

I decorated these cupcakes using the famous cupcake swirl and topped them with a mini fondant rose. You can find tutorials for both of these techniques on my blog, Lydia Bakes.

Thank you so much for having me. I loved collaborating with Baking Makes Things Better and I get a feeling this will not be the last time we bake together!

High Tea Picnic Party

Happy New Year everyone! At the end of 2012 we got together and created this gorgeous high tea picnic. We’ve put together a couple of high teas before and they have been lovely, this one definitely takes the cake though! We had beautiful sunny weather, an amazing set up, so much amazing food and we got to meet and share it all with the lovely Lydia of Lydia Bakes. Lydia made some gorgeous cupcakes (that she will be sharing with you in a guest post very soon) and lots and lots of sandwiches. Melissa hosted us all at her house and made some too cute little mince pies, some feta and spinach pinwheels and delicious individual raspberry swirl cheesecakes, she had also whipped up some of these orange drop cookies. I made a raspberry and lemon cake with cream cheese frosting (which even if I do say so myself is delicious) and some apple and pork sausage rolls. 

We need to say a couple of thank you’s to the people who provided us with things that helped the whole event come together the way it did; The Vintage Table for supplying us with all the gorgeous vintage serve wear, the table cloth, tea tins and that sweet picnic basket, The Pretty Baker for providing us with the gorgeous pink and white honey comb balls and the bakers twine, and Karyn of Milly Made It who lent us the beautiful quilt.

We’ll be sharing all our new recipes with you over the next month. Just putting this post together made me hungry and has made me craving home made sausage rolls. We hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year, we are looking forward to sharing lots of new and delicious recipes with you this year.

Snickerdoodle Cookies

Cute name huh! I have been wanting to try these out for a while but kind of forgot about them until I made Mere’s Blondies, which can be topped with a snickerdoodle coating. I found a really easy recipe here on ‘Joy of Baking’ which includes video instructions.

Ingredients:
Cookies:
2 ¾ cups  all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup  unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ½ cups granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla

Coating:
⅓ cup granulated white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Method:
In a large bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.
In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until smooth (about 2 to 3 minutes).
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla extract.
Add the flour mixture and beat until you have a smooth dough.  If the dough is soft, cover and refrigerate until firm (about one to two hours).
Preheat oven to 190°C and place rack in the center of the oven.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 
Shape the dough into 2.5 cm round balls.

To coat:
In a large shallow bowl mix together the sugar and cinnamon.
Roll the balls of dough in the cinnamon sugar and place on the prepared pan, spacing about 5 cm apart.  Then, using the bottom of a glass, gently flatten each cookie to about 1.5 cm thick.
Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, or until they are light golden brown and firm around the edges.  The centres of the cookies will still be a little soft. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

I thought that they tasted a bit like ‘Elsie’s Fingers’ – so they are yummy!
Enjoy!

Cookie Dough Brownies

A few weeks ago I saw a cookie dough inspired post on ‘Love From The Oven’, a blog I follow – it reminded me of these amazing but incredibly easy brownies my idol ‘Bakerella’ made a couple of years ago,  I hadn’t attempted them as yet as we didn’t have some of her “cheat” ingredients here in New Zealand.  Sure enough Bakerella’s brownies were featured further down the post so I went back and looked at the original and decided that I could definitely make them (by swapping out the ‘Hershey’s Brownie Mix’ with another Betty Crocker mix – I used ‘Triple Chocolate Fudge’) and so can you!  They are super easy but sure to impress, all you need is:

 
Follow the instructions on the boxes, making the brownies first, pouring the mix into your tin or dish then placing blobs of the made up cookie mixture on top.  If the cookie dough doesn’t sink into the mix just give it a gentle push down.

 Pre cooking

Then place in the oven and bake according to the boxes instructions for temperature and about 30-35 minutes.

Baked Brownie (sorry about the photo quality – it was night time).

Now at this point you could allow your brownie to cool, cut it into slices and eat by itself or dusted with icing sugar.  Me, I took a lead out of Bakerella’s book and covered mine with a chocolate ganache – the hardest part about doing this is waiting for the ganache to set!

Chocolate Ganache:
1 Cup Cream
50 grams Butter
120 grams Dark Cooking Chocolate (cut up roughly)

In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before the boiling stage.  Pour over the chocolate.
Let stand about 30 seconds and stir until smooth.
Pour over brownies and let set before cutting (to help mine along I put the dish in the fridge to set).

Next time I make these I think I will try using ‘Natalie’s Brownie’ recipe, which I’m sure will only make them better!  Give them a go and if you get around to making them using Natalie’s brownie recipe before me, let me know how they turned out by leaving a comment.

Thank you Bakerella and thank you Betty Crocker!
(You will all be thanking me too – once you give them a go)

More beautiful baking blogs and foodie websites

CAKE JOURNAL
This is a cute site with heaps of really good decorating tutorials – lots of pictures and easy to follow explanations. A browse through the gallery on this site is great if you’re wanting some ideas for your baking. http://www.cakejournal.com/

 

MING MAKES CUPCAKES
I like how this website is set out like recipe cards – there is a picture of the cupcake or biscuit on the left and next to it is the recipe.  The cupcakes look amazing – they look simple but probably took ages to make.  Scrumptious.  http://mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com/

 

 
WHAT KATIE ATE
This is a really gorgeous food photography blog.  The photos, taken by Katie Quinn Davies, are just like something out of a Donna Hay book.  And I love Donna Hay.  Everything looks so delicious and inviting.  I love the vintage accessories that she uses to style her photographs.  http://whatkatieate.blogspot.com/

 

MY FOOD DIARY
I like the design of this website – scroll through the photos and when you hover over them the recipe pops up.  Cool.  The photos (taken by the boyfriend of the site’s owner) are really good too.  http://www.mycookingdiary.com/

Easter Treats

I love holidays! Not just because it means I get time off work, but, because it’s an excuse to theme my baked goods. I have made two different lots of Easter goodies this year. I have been wanting to attempt “flooding” biscuits for a while now and was inspired to after seeing this.

The recipe for the shortbread biscuit is there as well as the icing. I used the shortbread recipe found in the good old Edmonds cookbook as I am familiar with it and know that it works for me. To cut the cookies I used an Easter Egg shaped cookie cutter I already had. Finally, to pipe I used a Kuhn Rikon Deco icing set I got from Living and Giving.

  So without further ado…

  Cute but a bit messy. I am determined to practice and get better, but they did taste good and I just loved the colours. In fact, pink and blue have become my signature colours for Easter 2010.

My second lot of baking was a batch of cupcakes to take to a family gathering for Easter Sunday. I used my ‘Easy Peasy Chocolate Cake’ recipe from an earlier post and put the mixture into the gorgeous cupcake papers Melissa got me for Christmas.

Yum!

Yummier!

To ice I used a simple butter cream recipe and added pink colouring, and a Wilton 1M tip in a large disposable icing bag to get that pattern.

Check out those cute Easter Egg  sprinkles !

But they still looked like they were missing something…

Adorable chocolate bunnies = Perfect!

I made the chocolate bunnies by melting some chocolate buttons and placing it in a mould I picked up at Spotlight.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Beautiful Baking Blogs

BAKERELLA
Ok, so Courtenay and I LOVE Bakerella. If you haven’t checked out her blog DO SO IMMEDIATELY. http://www.bakerella.com/

SWEETOPIA
Right. Then, once you have finished falling in love with Bakerella, visit sweetopia – very adorable iced cookies to be seen here. I’m jealous because I don’t think I have the artistic talent to pull something like them off. http://www.sweetopia.net/

CREAM PUFFS IN VENICE
Lastly, take a look at Cream Puffs in Venice. Every picture on this blog makes my mouth water. I’m thinking this blogger would host the most fabulous dinner parties. http://creampuffsinvenice.ca/

Then of course you have our blog, which will keep getting bigger and better :-)
(I included a nose on the face just for you Courtie!)