It's a Hedgehog!

A cupcake mosaic project. To make one, you can follow the Yellow Cupcakes and Buttercream Icing reciepe. This one was made of 3cm cupcakes! 

Gingerbread Structure

The Ferris Wheel is ready for action! Lalala!

Ingredients:

250 mL shortening 250 mL sugar 2 eggs 300 mL molasses 15 ml vinegar 1370 mL flour

5 ml baking soda 5 ml salt 5 mL ground ginger 5 ml ground cinnamon 5 ml ground cloves

Method:
1) Cream shortening.
2) Gradually add sugar and cream well again.
3) Beat in egg, molasses and vinegar.
4) Stir togerther 250 ml of the flour along with the  baking soda, salt and spices.
5) Gradually blend that first cup of flour and spices into the creamed mixture and mix well.
6) Add another 250 mL of the flour gradually, blending well.
.        Your dough should feel soft and workable but not sticky. If it too dry and crumbly, recrumble into a bowl and sprinkle with alittle bit of water until it's workable. 7) Gather dough into a ball then flatten it into a disk and wrap tightly with plastic wrap.
8) Roll out dough to 3 mm thickness
          Place between parchment paper for easy transfer. 9) Cut into shape.
10) place 2.5 cm on parchment lined cookie sheets of jelly roll pans.
11) Bake @ 375F or 190C for 5-6 mins or until firm and lightly browned.
12) Cool slightly on the sheet for about 5 minutes, in which time it will start to crisp. Remove to racks to cool comepletely.
13) If desired, retrim cookies at this time since they may've distorted during baking.

Constuction:
Refer to here for royal icing recipe.
 







Happy Holidays! C:

Pumpkin Carving and Roasted Seeds

Eeeeh, didn't have my camera that class, so not alot of photos...;A; 

Anyways, my pumpkin was the last in the bunch, so it's pretty odd looking, hahaha. Unfortunately, I didn't take a before picture either.

The pattern I did was based off of the Kodamas featured in Princess Mononoke.Instead of trying the usually carving, I thought I'd try something a little different. Scrapping the rind proved to be quite the challenge...turns out I didn't have enough time to do a decent job on it. XD




Quite the creepy looking buggers. X3

Roasted Seeds

Spicy
Ingredients:

• 15 mL olive oil
• salt
• 1 mL Tabasco Sauce
• 5 mL cayenne pepper
• 1 mL cumin
• 15 mL chili power

Sweet
Ingredients:

• 15 mL olive oil
• salt
• 15 mL sugar
• 1 mL cinnamon
• dash of nutmeg
• dash of allspice

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C.
2. In a small bowl, toss together pumpkin seeds, olive oil, and all the spices; season with salt.
3. Evenly spread pumpkin seeds on a baking sheet and transfer to the oven.
4. Cook until toasted and fragrant, 10-12 minutes.

Spider Web Cookies

Finished product!

Ingredients:

375 mL flour 200 mL cocoa powder 2 mL salt 185 mL margarine

300 mL icing sugar 1 egg 3 mL vanilla

Method:
1) In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, salt. Set the mixture aside.
2) Use an electric mixer to cream the margarine and icing sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
3) Add the flour mixture; mix on low speed until thoroughly combined.
4) Divide the dough in half; wrap in plastic wrap.
5) Chill the dough for 10 minutes in the freezer.
6) Heat oven to 350°F or 180°C
7) Roll the dough out between two pieces of wax paper until about 5 mm thick.
8) Cut out a tracer for the web shape from scale paper.
9) Cut out each cookie.
10) Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.
11) Cool completely on wire racks.


Royal Icing

Ingredients:
250 grams sugar 2 mL cream of tartar 15 mL whip powder
black food colouring/ 30 mL chocolate chips/ black icing paste 50 mL water
Method:
1) p together the ingredients in a medium bowl
2) make the cobweb design, begin by icing the cookie with white royal icing.
3)To 50 mL of the icing add 30 mL of melted chocolate chips or black food colouring or use black icing paste.
4) Pipe out a spiral of black icing starting from the center to the edges of the cookies
5) Draw a bamboo skewer or use the tips of a sharp knife and drag it from the center to each point of the cookie, then from the inner curves back to the center

Classic Buttercream Icing

Rosettes and a woven border

Ingredients:

250 mL vegetable shortening (you can substitute with butter but makes sure you have the correct amount!) 5 mL vanilla 30 mL water

454 g or 1000 mL icing sugar 15 mL egg white powder Food colouring

Method:
1) In a large bowl, cream shortening, icing sugar, egg white powder, vanilla and water.
2) Add the dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all the ingredients has been thoroughly mixed together.
3) Blend together for an additional minute until creamy.
4) This icing can be refrigerated or you can freeze it.
5) For the piping of the icing, it depends on you.

Yellow Cupcakes

Yellow Cupcakes chilling out

Ingredients:

375 mL cake flour shifted 5 mL baking powder 1 mL salt 220 mL granulated sugar

85 mL margarine 1 egg 5 mL vanilla extract 150 mL milk

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C.
2) Line a muffin tin with paper liners.
3) Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.
4) Cream sugar and butter together until light.
5) Add the egg and vanilla to creamed mixture and beat until thoroughly mixed.
6) Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating well after each addition. Continue beating for one minute but be careful not to over mix!
7) Scoop into the muffin tins. Bake for 18 - 20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean
8) Cool for 10 minutes in the muffin tins on the rack then remove and cool completely before decorating.
9) You could freeze the cupcakes if you don't want to decorate them on the same day you bake them.

Rainbow Cookies

Rainbow Cookies

Ingredients:

250ml margarine 250ml sugar 2 eggs 5ml vanilla

625ml flour 5ml baking soda 10ml cream of tartar 2ml salt

Method:
1) In a large bowl, cream together margarine and sugar. Add one egg at a time. Beat until well incorporated. Add the vanilla.
2) Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
3) Slowly stir the flour mixture into the creamed mixture.
4) Divide the dough into 5 unequal amounts

5) Mix in 2-3 drops of food colouring in each amount.
6) Start by rolling the smallest ball into a snake. Surround the snake with the next largest ball until all dough is used up.

7) Put in the freezer for 10 minutes or until dough hardens.
8) Slice the cookies in half and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.




9) Bake in a 350°F or 180°C for 8-10 minutes.
10) Let sit in the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then move them to a cooling rack to cool completely.






Unfortunately, we had one causality in the oven...