Team Canada Hockey Cake

I started with two sheet cakes and tried to shape some arms with some extra cake. I did a thin icing coating over the cake and then laid down some fondant made with marshmallows. I was going to buy the packs of fondant at Michaels' with the different fondant colours...but in order the get black and red they were in different box sets and would have been over $30 plus taxes to get the colours I needed and then would have had a bunch of colours I didnt' even want. I find black and red hard to make...and was low on time, so went for the tubes of icing that you can even get at grocery store, I got mine at Bulk barn. The plastic tubes they come in are very stiff and you'd being making it harder for yourself if you didn't put the icing in normal piping bags. My printer was out of ink, so I pulled up an image of the jersey on the computer screen and literally taped saran wrap across the screen and copied the image with a marker. Then places the saran over top of the smooth fondant (which I had rolled out with a mixture of icing sugar and cornstarch so it didn't stick to table while rolling out). I took a tooth pick and just transferred the image onto the fondant and then was able to see where I was supposed to be piping or drawing. The drawing was done with the edible markers. Wonder what he'll ask for next year!!

Here's a good link to how to make marshmallow fondant on Cake Central

Vodka Crust, French Onion Soup

So here's the baking the last 24hrs...

First I've been dying to try the 'America's Test kitchen" Vodka pie crust, because I suck at pie crusts.... It's basically a food processor crust which gets extra wet with the vodka, and because the vodka evaporates, it is easier to roll out because it is extra moist without retaining the moisture when the vodka evaporates... if that makes any sense...anyways...here is a cross section of some of the crust (long story but I made another one, that one I forgot to put pie weights and it shrunk down into bottom and got too thick to use...) It's nice and flaky ... .

They don't usually let you see the recipe unless you subscribe to the website, so here's a backdoor way of getting it, someone wrote it in their forums

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/ibb/posts.aspx?postID=215231&postRepeater1-p=6#218552

Also, made the america's test kitchen french onion soup recipe. It's very long to make, and was good, but maybe not worth all the work? Start with the onions, I put a little over two pounds, you slice off both ends, and then cut in half and then make slivers (if that makes any sense). You put in a dutch oven sprayed with cooking oil and some butter dabs in bottom. Throw in a dash of salt to bring out more moisture. Put lid on and 400 degrees for an hour. Then vent the lid a bit and stir the onions, then an hour and a half more. (I got too sick of waiting so I pulled it out and did next step sooner). You will have the sugars caramelizing around edges of pot and that is what you want to make broth dark. I put on stove top and cooked onions down until the bottom gets a sugar coating and starts to brown, I was afraid to let it burn so I always did the next step a little earlier than recommended, but I didn't' want to ruin it after all that work. So you throw in a bit of water, and scrape all the brown off the bottom, and you cook off water again and do that three times, they say that's where the flavour comes from, the brown on the bottom. The last time, put 1/2 chicken broth and 1/2 beef broth, how ever much you want, I think I put 1 cup and half of each, and some sprigs of Thyme, and it could have used more broth, it was a bit too much onions for the amount of broth. Let that simmer for a while. I grilled the french bread with a bit of olive oil then placed on top of the soup in oven safe bowls, and sprinkled more than the recommended amount of cheese! (and I just used Mozzarella, I didn't want to go out and buy Gruyere just for this..). I put under the broiler and browned top and melted cheese. Served with some extra grilled bread. Not sure if it's worth all that work for some soup, but it was very tasty...guess it depends how bad you are craving French Onion Soup. There was some extra stuff they did like deglaze the pot with dry Sherry but I didn't have any so I didn't' use it.

Just found this link for some good information on caramelizing onions...way better than my sad description above!!! http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/007395how_to_caramelize_onions.php

Chicken enchilada with homemade sauce

Hi, here is how I make homemade enchilada sauce. Not for critiquing (I'm Canadian, I'm no authority on Mexican cooking) ~ just give it a try it's yummy.

First I use a few dried Ancho Chillies. For this recipe I used four large ones. In the end with all the other ingredients it ends up being a good heat, maybe other people would like it hotter~ last time I added a fresh Jalapeno to the recipe and was a bit hotter, so either add more ancho chilies for more heat or add heat another way ~hot sauce or Jalapeno. Soak the Chilies in water until soft and pliable. Remove the hard stem and discard, as well as the seeds inside. (a few seeds will stick to the skin~that is fine).

Dice up a couple white onions, or really whatever onion you have on hand. Mince up a couple cloves of garlic. Dice or slice up some red pepper or which ever colour you have on hand.

Heat up oil in pan or frying pan, add the onions and cook until almost translucent, add the garlic~careful not to burn, throw in the red peppers. Cook down for a few minutes.

I added red peppers I had previously frozen, doesn't matter the size/shape because this will all be blended later. Cut up the now rehydrated ancho chillies and add to the pan. 1/2 tsp cumin powder, 1/2 tsp chilli powder, salt, pepper to taste. You could even double these spices if you taste it at the end and needs more.

I added a huge ice chunk of frozen tomatoe chunks I had frozen. You could add 1/2 can of tomatoes. You could also add in chunks of fresh tomatoes. Cook this down for quite a while. I had mine on for almost an hour.

I let the mixture cool down a bit, then (blender broke) I put in food processor to liquify, then put through a strainer to get out the skins/etc.

Then assemble by dipping both sides of a tortilla bread in the sauce then laying out the fillings you would like. I put precooked chicken shredded, medium cheddar, a tiny bit of refried beans, and a bit of salsa. You could eliminate either one of those items, and you could also put rice inside. It's a little messy but roll them up with your hands. Top with cheese and bake 350degrees until cheese is nicely melted and they seem to be heated through.

Most times I make this, I take a bit of the extra enchilada sauce and put it in the rice water to make a sort of 'mexican rice' taste to accompany the enchiladas. I forgot to take picture before they went in the oven, so pulled them out halfway through baking.

Bakesale Bowling

Here's some cake pops I made for bowling bake sale, idea from Bakerella's website http://bakerella.blogspot.com/ Basically make whatever cake mix you like. I ground up the cake into crumbs in food processor. Mix icing into the crumbs (I used packaged icing)...a bit at a time, you don't want soggy mix, used the kitchen aid mixer and it worked well. I formed it into the proper shape, chilled it, formed it again, then put on chopsticks ( you can get package of them at dollar store). Only thing I might do differently next time is dip the sticks into the coating chocolate before inserting into cake balls ... because without doing that, they were turning around on the stick instead of being stable. I bought different colours of merckens at bulk barn, and melted then in a double boiler. then just dipped the chilled figures into the melted mixture. Only problem is some of the coating cracked, which is fine for a bake sale, but maybe not fine if you wanted to sell them. I think because the figures are chilled, that might be the reason they crack, because maybe the mixture expands a bit underneath the coating when thawing... I also used coating to coat oreos and put different decorations on them like crushed candy canes, and stripes of other colours.

The boxes aren't very Christmas, but I bought them in summer from Michael's Craft Store, It's the Martha Stewart brand of packaging boxes. The cake pops are stuck into foam covered in wrapping paper.

The chocolate cupcakes are using the recipe for the cake in the blackout cake recipe below (in a previous post) and used a unsweetened chocolate icing recipe, (since all I had on hand was unsweetened chocolate).

Icing Recipe

5 squares unsweetened chocolate melted in double boiler and cooled

1/2 cup softened butter

1/3 cup milk

4 cups icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Put all together in mixer and let it do the work!

I tried to make a shelf stable cream cheese vanilla bean icing using the jello no bake cheesecake mix, but the icing tasted grainy...not sure if it was supposed to be dissolved in hot liquid or what, I've never used it before, but It basically tasted gross, so I will not be bringing these... (although hubby disagrees that they taste bad)

Chocolate Blackout Cake

I saw it made on America's test kitchen. I love the show because they are very precise with all their recipe testing. The smaller cupcake versions didn't look as good as a large cake but whatever. Also the cakes do not seem to rise very much, but they are light and fluffy. I didn't want to pay to get the recipe from Test kitchen website so searched around and found this one which is pretty close if not exactly what they showed..(make sure you have your pop-up blocker on before clicking on the site). http://www.recipezaar.com/Chocolate-Blackout-Cake-327729 a couple of notes on the recipe, when making the pudding (icing), it just says 2-3 minutes after starts boiling or whatever, believe me if you only do that you will have to redo it...you have to boil over medium until it comes together like thickened pudding, otherwise you will have runny icing and have to reboil it.... make sure you have a heatproof spatula or similar to run quickly along the bottom of the pan so that the pudding doesn't' start to burn...make sure it is always being stirred. The recipe doesn't call for the drizzle but I just melted some mercens light chocolate wafers and drizzled. Also I don't have 'dutch processed cocoa' I will look for some next time and see the difference I just didn't have any. Basically it's a chocolate cake with pudding icing and one layer broken into crumbs and pressed into the icing. It is pretty rich so you only need a small piece.

What is it with Lemon Pie?

I made lemon pie for a family xmas thing, as soon as one person cut into it, it was gone within seconds...literally... I never remember everyone being so crazy over lemon pie before, weird... Guess I will make two or three next time!!

I just buy pie crusts, I know I can make a lot of things but I CANNOT make a crust, I suck bad. I use the 'special extra' instructions on inside of package which say to use egg whites room temperature for extra rise or whatever... For the lemon mixture I tend to try to pick out the yucky white cord thingies, I never used to care but I think someone told me one time that they do, and ever since I can't seem to leave it in, cause I keep thinking how gross if someone is eating the lemon part and comes across the 'umbilical cord' gross....