May The Fourth Be With You

Star Wars Day (May the 4th) was this week so it's the perfect time to post these BB8 cookies.

But really, you don't need an excuse to make them - look how adorable they are!

I used this sugar cookie recipe, royal icing and M&Ms.  BB8 is a really easy character to make as you only need circular cookie cutters.

I hope that everyone had a great Star Wars Day!

Captain America & Winter Soldier Sugar Cookies

Ever since I saw this video, I'd been longing to create my own Captain America shield cookies.  To spice things up a little, I thought I'd also attempt Winter Soldier cookies inspired by Bucky's metal arm.

While I made these cookies with only cookie dough and food colouring, the same effect could be achieved by using coloured royal icing - however, I find that the cookie-only method provides a seamless blend between the colours and looks nice and natural.  I absolutely adore the way that they turned out!

I hope that you'll enjoy seeing how I created these cookies.  This simple sugar cookie recipe can also be used as a base for so many different creations.

Recipe adapted from: Gorgeous Biscuits by Family Circle
Ingredients
125g butter
125g caster sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
250g flour
2 tsp baking powder

Method - basic sugar cookies
1. Preheat the oven to 180 C (355 F).  Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add the egg and vanilla, beat until combined.

3. Fold in the flour and baking powder until a soft dough forms.

4. At this point, you can colour the dough with food colouring if you like.
Then, roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper until it's about 5 mm thick.  Cut out your desired shapes with cookie cutters, place the cookies spread out on a baking tray and bake for about 12-15 minutes (until the cookies are light golden brown).

Method - Captain America shield & Winter Soldier cookies
The basic method I followed is shown here by Rosanna Pansino making Captain America ice cream sandwiches.  I definitely recommend watching the video to get a visual idea of what I did, though I'll go through it step by step below.

I started by making a double batch of dough, then dividing my dough into portions.  The smallest was coloured blue, medium amounts coloured black and grey, a medium amount left white and the largest amount coloured red.  To create the grey, I just used a small amount of black food colouring. 

I rolled small portions of the dough out and used a small star cookie cutter to make the stars for the centre of the cookies.  I baked these first so that I knew what size I needed to make the circle parts of the cookies.

To make the main part of the Captain America cookies, I rolled the blue dough into a log about the size of the star.  I froze the log while I mixed an egg white with a small splash of water to make an egg wash so all my different colours stuck together properly.

I rolled out some of the red dough into a sheet, then brushed the dough with a small amount of egg wash and rolled it around the blue log.  I put that in the freezer and repeated the process for the white and the rest of the red, until finally I had a complete log!  (For the Winter Soldier, I followed the same method with the grey and black dough).

I let that freeze some more, trying to take the log out and roll it every now and then to keep from forming a flat side.  You can also freeze it in a hand towel roll or something of the sort if you have it on hand so that it can rest in something curved.

After the logs had hardened sufficiently (I left mine in the freezer for a few hours while I went to work), I used a large, sharp knife to cut them into slices about 5 to 6 mm thick.  I baked the cookies for about 15 minutes.  The baking process made them spread out a bit and form nice circles when, as you can see from the photo above, they were far from perfect right after they were cut.

Once the cookies were cooled, I attached the stars.  I recommend using royal icing for this part, as it will ensure you get a cement-like seal and the stars won't go anywhere.

I'm rapt with how these cookies turned out - they were exactly how I wanted them to be and they looked amazing!

Hello Kitty Cupcakes (Take Two)

One of the first posts I ever published on this blog was about the Hello Kitty cupcakes that I did for my cousin's birthday.  It remains, to this day, my most popular post.

So, when I had to make some birthday treats to fill an order, I tried my hand at making Hello Kitty cupcakes again.  I used the same cream cheese pound cake recipe as last time...

...but to jazz things up a bit, I poked a frozen raspberry into the middle of each cupcake and then buried it under the batter.

After the cupcakes had baked and cooled completely, I continued by spreading white royal icing over the cakes, attaching the fondant ears and bow and piping royal icing over the join of the bow

After the royal icing had dried, I used an edible ink marker in black to draw Kitty's facial features.

They were just as cute as last time, and happily the birthday recipient was a huge Hello Kitty fan and loved them!

La la la la, Elmo's World

La la la la, la la la la, Elmo's wooooooooorld...

I made these Elmo Cupcakes for a 3 year-old's birthday.

Recipe Source: Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'
Ingredients - Cupcakes
125g butter
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 - 3 tbsp milk


Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
2. Blend all ingredients except for milk in a food processor.
3. Add milk while pulsing to combine.
4. Add cocoa or other flavouring/colour if desired.
5. Line a 12 space muffin/cupcake tin with patty pans.
6. Spoon batter into the patty pans, make sure there is an even amount in each.
7. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

After baking the cupcakes, I whipped up some simple buttercream - a pleasant change from the more complex French version I've been making recently.

Ingredients - Buttercream

125g butter/margarine

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

2 tbsp milk

Method

1. Beat butter until soft and white.

2. Add icing sugar and beat.

3. Add milk and beat until a spreadable consistency.  If needed, add more milk.

4. Add food colouring and combine.

Mum and I spread red buttercream onto the cupcakes, making sure that the icing looked fluffy and Elmo-like.

We then tinted some fondant black, and rolled it out thinly.  Using a circular cookie cutter, we cut out big circles from the fondant then cut them in half for Elmo's mouth.

Two other portions of fondant were left white and tinted orange respectively for Elmo's eyes and nose.  We rolled them into balls, making the orange ones a bit more oval-shaped.

Using my fantastic edible ink marker, Mum drew dots onto the white balls for Elmo's eyes.

We placed the eyes near the top of the cupcake, the nose partly overlapping onto them.  The mouth was placed below.  Here is our first Elmo with his face put together:

He's a bit cute, huh?  Mum tweaked the rest of the black semicircles up at the corners so Elmo would look more smiley.

[Insert frenzied fondanting here]

Hooray, it's...many Elmos!

After admiring them for a bit and snapping some photos, I loaded them into a big box and stuffed them in the fridge.  It was pretty difficult to put them all in the box without getting red-coloured sugary goodness all over my fingers, because the buttercream went right over the edge of the cupcake; difficult to grab.


That aside - apparently everyone liked the cupcakes at the birthday girl's party, and they were recognisable as Elmo.  (Phew!)

Hello Kitty Cupcakes

It was my little cousin's birthday recently, and she really likes Hello Kitty.  Her parents were making her a Hello Kitty cake, so Mum and I did a bit of research and decided to create Hello Kitty Cupcakes.  For those of you who don't know Kitty (God forbid) here is the real deal.  That's just her face.  She does have a body.

Now, on to the cake.  I used a cream cheese pound cake recipe found on Bakerella's blog for the cupcake, with royal icing, fondant and edible ink marker for her face.

Recipe Source: bakerella, Australian Women's Weekly

Ingredients

Pound Cake

115g butter/margarine

115g cream cheese

270g sugar

3 eggs

100mL milk

210g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

Royal Icing

1 egg white

2 tsp lemon juice

Icing sugar

Decoration

Fondant

Edible ink marker

Pink food colouring

Method - the Cupcake

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

2. Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar using electric mixer for about 6 minutes.

3. Beat in eggs one at a time.

4. Add vanilla and milk, beat until combined.

5. Add flour and mix in until combined.  This cake batter is scrumptious, and you can barely taste the cream cheese!

6. Prepare a cupcake pan (or two) with paper patty pans.

7. Using a spoon and spatula, fill the patty pans 1/2 to 3/4 full with the cake batter.  Smooth the tops down with the spatula and make sure the amount of batter in each patty pan is about even.

8. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until well risen and slightly browned.

I could just eat them.  But I didn't.  Don't be worried if they seem too rounded, they sink a little and become more or less flat.

Method - Royal Icing and Decoration

1. Separate the egg yolk from the egg white.

2. Using a whisk, beat the egg white until foamy - not peaks.  Just foamy.  Add the lemon juice and beat that in.

3. Add some icing sugar (go about 1/2 a cup each time) and mix it in.  Depending on how runny you want your icing, add the icing sugar to your tastes.

For these cupcakes, I made the icing sugar stiffer but still runny.  Test the icing by picking some up with the whisk and dribbling it back into the bowl - for Hello Kitty, make sure that the dribbled icing 'melts' back into the icing in the bowl.  This will mean that Hello Kitty's face will be flat.

4. Set the icing bowl aside and sprinkle your clean workspace with pure icing sugar.  This is so the fondant doesn't stick to the table.  Sprinkle the fondant with icing sugar and knead until it is workable.  With a rolling pin, roll the fondant out to about 1 - 2mm thick.

5. Use a cutter like the one shown below, a triangle or a knife to cut out Hello Kitty's ears.  After cutting out the shapes with the cutter, I chopped off the points with a knife for her ears.  Save the offcuts - you'll need them.

6. Using the ear offcuts and more fondant if needed, add pink food colouring and knead until the fondant is a solid pink with no streaky bits.  Using a small heart cookie cutter, or a knife, cut out two hearts for each Hello Kitty cupcake.  These hearts are for the bow.

When you're done, pair up the hearts and stick the pointy bits together.  Use some water if needed.  Don't worry about squishing them too much, you won't see them under the bow 'knot'.

7. Using a spoon and spatula, drop some royal icing onto the cupcakes.  Make sure you don't put too much on, as they'll overflow, but make sure there's a generous covering.

While the icing is wet, stick the ears on and then the bow over the base of one ear; like so:

Leave them to dry.

8. When the icing is completely hard, use an edible ink marker (or, alternatively, royal icing tinted black) to draw on Hello Kitty's eyes, nose and whiskers.  Look at a picture of her face on the internet first, model one cupcake on that then copy the design onto the other cupcakes.

Put some of the royal icing into a ziploc bag, and cut a small hole in one corner.  Push the icing to that corner so it can squeeze out the hole.  Squeeze small amounts of icing onto the join between the two hearts of Hello Kitty's bow.

9. Admire their cuteness and simplicity of design.  As Mum says, "Kitty is designed with the 'decoratively challenged' in mind."

Tips and Suggestions

 - Make sure Kitty's bow isn't too far down her face/too slanted.  If it is, then you have to make her eyes closer together which squishes her face up a bit.  (e.g. the cupcake on the far right in the above picture).

As I said before, my Auntie and Uncle made a big Kitty cake.  They used a buttermilk butter cake recipe with buttercream icing.  Her bow had strawberry essence in the icing so it was lovely and fruity.  They did an amazing job!

Lookit!  It's Hello Kitty and all her little minions!

Yummy Kitty.  Yummy minions.