Mini gingerbread cupcakes are delicious and the perfect size for holiday parties

I know the fad of cupcakes have come and gone, but for (holiday) parties I must admit they are still very fun to make and people still do enjoy them. I found a wonderful recipe for mini gingerbread cupcakes on the Style at Home website. The recipe is very easy and straight forward except I altered a few things. I lessened the bake time to about 12 minutes because my cupcakes were mini; also, the recipe for the icing is way too runny. I made these cupcakes for my girlfriend's Ugly Sweater Party and let's just say that I spent more time cleaning up after the piping bag than anything (I used a mini spatula to spread the icing on in the end). Needless to say, the icing was delicious because it's a mixture of cream cheese and butter. I made these cupcakes for Christmas dinner at my cousin's for dessert, but this time added about 1 cup of butter and a few tablespoons of cream cheese (I eyeballed the consistency). This time around it came out of the piping bag a lot easier!

Here's the recipe:

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• ¼ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup unsulfured dark (robust) molasses
• 1 cup boiling water

Rum-raisin frosting

• ½ cup dark raisins
• ¼ cup dark rum
• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, at room temperature, cut into small pieces
• 4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into 4 Piece
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

1 Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line 24 mini muffin cups with cupcake liners.
2 In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and ginger. Set aside
3 In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat together the butter and brown sugar until creamy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs and then the molasses until well combined. Immediately stir in the boiling water. On low speed, add the flour mixture and mix until smooth.
4 Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Bake in the center of the oven until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean and dry, about 20 minutes. Let cool completely in the pan(s) on a wire rack.
5 While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, prepare the frosting. In a small bowl, mix together the raisins and rum and let stand for 15 minutes. Strain, reserving liquid.
6 In a food processor, combine the cream cheese and butter and process until smooth. Add the confectioners' sugar and pulse until a smooth, spreadable frosting forms. Transfer to a bowl. Stir the raisin liquid into the frosting until evenly combined.
7 When the cupcakes are cool, tip them out of the pan and frost them with the frosting. Top with raisins.


Makes 24 mini cupcakes
(courtesy of styleathome.com)


HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Verdict: scrumptious!

Baking for the holidays: these cookies could beat the Girl Guides kind

For the month of December at work, a few of us at work (we call ourselves "The Decorating Committee")  have decided to bring treats every other day until Christmas. It works out perfectly because there are exactly 11 people in our branch, and every other day would work out just perfectly right before Christmas.

I found a recipe on Food Network Canada. It's Anna Olson's Chocolate Mint Cookies from her days on Sugar. I have to be honest that I wasn't a big fan of her show, but I've tried a few of her recipes and they've all turned out so well. Especially after mastering this recipe for the first time, I am looking forward to try more recipes from her! I spent a total of 2.5 hours toiling in the kitchen (although I did escape to take a shower while the dough was chilling in the fridge), it was worth it. I think they could beat out the Chocolate Mint Girl Guide cookies-they don't have preservatives and all flavouring is natural. What could possibly be better? I'll definitely be making more of these during the holiday baking season.

Here's the recipe if you would like to give it try. The only thing I recommend is to keep the filling inside the mixing bowl while beating--the recipe says to knead it on a flat surface then add the peppermint extract. I found it too sticky so I just left it in the bowl to mix. Turned out great!

Ingredients

Cookies

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 6 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• dash salt
• dash baking powder
• icing sugar, for garnish

Filling

• 1 egg white
• 1 3/4 cups icing sugar, sifted
• 2 drops to 3 drops peppermint extract

Directions

To Assemble

1.Beat butter until smooth and fluffy. Sift together icing sugar and cocoa powder over butter and beat in. Stir in vanilla, egg yolk and milk. Add flour, salt and baking powder to cocoa mixture and blend until incorporated. Shape dough into disc, wrap and chill for 20 minutes.

2.Preheat oven to 325° F. On a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thick. Cut into 1 ½-inch circles and transfer carefully to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until cookies can be lifted easily away from the parchment. Allow to cool on baking sheet.

3.For filling, put egg white in a bowl and beat in icing sugar, a few tablespoonfuls at a time, until a soft dough forms. Turn dough onto a surface dusted with icing sugar. Knead in remaining icing sugar and peppermint extract, until dough is no longer sticky.

4.To fill cookies, roll a teaspoon of dough into a ball and flatten a little. Sandwich between 2 cookies and press together to push icing to edges. Continue until all cookies have been filled.

5.Cookies can be glazed with chocolate to finish or dusted with icing sugar.

6.Yield: Approximately 2 dozen cookies

(Courtesy of Anna Olson from foodnetwork.ca)

My first royal icing flower cake (with a little too much buttercream icing)...

I just finished taking a cake decorating class at Michael's. My co-worker had reminded me about this course. I had taken the basic first course 2 or 3 years ago and for some reason didn't go on and progress to the other classes. She mentioned that she taught these courses and had a side business of making cakes. Bingo! I want to take the second class! I'm very spur of the moment person; if it's something that I want to do I'll do it. And quite often, I'm serious about it.

That being said, the course was only 4 weeks long. I had to miss the second class because I was on vacation. That actually left me quite far behind in class. Not only did I miss the one class, but I failed to bring royal icing to the next class to practice making flowers. Completely embarassed (face probably red), my other classmates were very kind to lend me their icing and some (most) of the materials I needed. Talk about vacay mode! But I still stuck around because the instructor wanted me to see what was going to be made for this class.

So over the weekend, I dwelled at flower making for nearly 4 hours. I'm not kidding. From making the royal icing to laying the flowers to dry and washing my tools. I had "pastry bag" hand because I was gripping the bag so tight that the tendons on my right hand were sore. That being said, I was quite happy with the results of my flowers. These very flowers ended up on my final cake.

Baking is fun. I cannot say I am crazy about it just yet because it's quite time consuming, especially these darn royal icing flowers. But do they ever look good! They taste good, too (according to my boyfriend).