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Category Archives: dessert

Christmas food inspiration

Christmas is almost here. If you’re still in need of inspiration, maybe these very cute ideas can help get your creative juices flowing.

Santa Cookies by My Poppet
I love how simple yet effective Cintia’s biscuits are – two colours of dough, some white icing, some raisins and voila, little santas!

Reindeer Cupcakes by With Sprinkles on Top
Pretzels make great antlers!

Five-Minute Fudge Wreath by Rachael Ray
This doesn’t require any cooking, just mixing and you only need a plain old round tin.

Reindeer Cookies by mommy2owen on Cake Central

Reindeer Cookies by mommy2owen on Cake Central
Such a brilliant idea using gingerbread men shapes turned upside down!

Snowman Cheese Ball by Betty Crocker

Snowman Cheese Ball by Betty Crocker
Take two cheese balls, put one on top of the other, add a few garnishes and you have a snowman!

What fun food are you making for Christmas?

Nutella pizza stars

Nutella pizza stars

We had so much fun making our mini pizzas, that we’ve been using the pizza dough to make other things, sweet things!

Cooking the pizza dough a bit longer and without any topping, creates a lovely crispy biscuit texture. And even though the dough isn’t sweet, adding something sweet on top is enough to turn the savoury dough into a sweet treat.

Little ones can help make the dough, roll it out and cut out the shapes, and there’s no easier decoration than spreading Nutella and dusting with icing sugar. They’re going to love their creations!

NUTELLA PIZZA STARS

Prep time: 1 hr 40 mins (for dough to rise twice)
Cook time: 5 mins
Makes about 30 biscuits
Uncooked dough can be frozen

7 g dried yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 cups strong white bread flour such as “OO” flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup cold water
A handful of semolina (optional)
1 jar of Nutella
icing sugar to serve

Put the warm water in a small bowl and add the yeast. Leave for 15 mins for it to froth up.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, olive oil and cold water. Add the yeast mixture and mix until it comes together in a ball.

Knead the dough on a floured work surface for about 5 mins. It should feel elastic and soft, and be a bit sticky.

Put the dough back into the bowl, cover and leave to prove for 20 mins.

Divide the dough into two, place the second piece in another bowl, cover both and leave to prove again for an hour (the dough should double in size).

Heat oven to 220C and leave the tray you’ll use (preferably a heavy-based one) inside to heat up (this helps cook the bottom of the pizzas).

Lightly flour your work bench and roll out one piece of the dough as thin as you can. Use a star-shaped cookie cutter to cut out your shapes.

Lightly cover a cutting board with semolina, place your pizza stars on top and drizzle with a dash of olive oil. Open the oven and bring the hot tray out enough so you can  sprinkle on some more semolina and slide the stars from the cutting board on to the tray (the semolina will help them move more easily).

The time it takes to cook your pizza stars depends on the thickness of your dough, but they should only take about 5 mins so keep a close eye on them. They’ll probably puff up a little. They’re done when the dough is golden brown on the edges.

Put the stars on a wire rack to cool. Once cool, spread with some Nutella and dust with icing sugar.

Nutella pizza stars

Happy Halloween

In case you needed some more inspiration to create some fun food for Halloween, here are some more ideas.

My dear friend Kath sent me another picture of some more of her scary finger biscuits. These are less hideous and playing a tune!

These howling (or are they screaming?) strawberry ghosts from Taste of Home would be a quick and semi-healthy treat.

Meaghan over at the Decorated Cookie has loads of the cutest Halloween goodies. Kids would have lots of fun making their own zombie marshmallows.

And her monster cookie sticks are super easy and another great baking activity for kids (you could use the same biscuit dough as Kath’s scary fingers and make both!).

Gingerbread skeletons are all over Pinterest. These are from Family Fun. You could use any animal or person shape and add an icing skeleton.

Who said gingerbread houses were just for Christmas? You certainly wouldn’t if you saw the amazing constructions created on this year’s Great British Bake Off, and why not a Halloween house? Emma at Mummy Mummy Mum made this spooky house with her munchkins (and look to see what she used for scaffolding during construction).

Finally, what can you do with the leftover pumpkin after you’ve carved your jack-o-lanterns? Pumpkin muffins of course! And the Breakfast Lady has a lovely yummy recipe.

Happy Halloween!

Chocolate cheesecake slice

To celebrate National Chocolate Week (there’s a week or day for everything, isn’t there?) I’m sharing one of my favourite and oldest baking recipes on Mindful Mum. It’s also anticipating National Baking Week next week (I kid you not!). This slice never fails to please, and combines the richness of brownies with the tanginess of cheesecake (what more could you ask for?!).

Head over to Mindful Mum for the recipe.

Cupcake inspiration

It’s the last day of National Cupcake Week. I haven’t managed to make any more worth blogging about, but wanted to share some inspiring ones (and they’re super cute too!) that I can’t wait to try when Nicholas is just a teeny bit bigger.

The Mini Mes and MeSpace Cupcakes

Check out lovely Emma’s blog (I love the title!) for her fizzy flying saucers and edible glitter sitting on chocolate ganache. What kid (little or big) wouldn’t love these?!

Cindy Littlefield’s Squirt Happy Turtles

A few jelly sweets turn ordinary cupcakes into something super cute.

Annabel Karmel’s Piggy Cupcakes

A few marshmallows and some writing icing are all you need to create some piggies (and don’t forget the curly tails!).

Baking Bites – Rainbow Cupcakes

By dividing up the batter and colouring it different rainbow colours, you can easily create the happiest cupcakes.

Daily Dish Blog – Mummy Cupcakes

Shari at Daily Dish Blog found the perfect cupcakes to make  for Halloween (there aren’t any directions, but a few lines of white icing and some mini MandMs are all you need).

Update (22 Nov 2012): I finally found the original source for these cute mummy cupcakes and what’s even better is they’re low-fat! Gina at Skinny taste has detailed instructions, so now there’s no excuse not to make them!

Martha Stewart’s Toasted Marshmallow Cupcakes

Melting a marshmallow into the top is a super simple and super yummy way to finish your cupcakes.

Gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese icing

National Cupcake Week is drawing to an end, but I didn’t think I could let it pass by without trying to make some gingerbread cupcakes. While they’re probably more appropriate for Christmas (at least I’m getting ahead!), their warm spiciness and dark sugariness are perfect as the weather gets colder.

You could easily ice these with normal icing or vanilla buttercream icing; I just love the flavour combination of gingerbread and cream cheese. I also didn’t want to make a very firm icing because then the sugary flavour would overpower the cream cheese flavour, but if you want an icing you can pipe high on top of the cupcakes, then just add some more icing sugar to the mixture.

GINGERBREAD CUPCAKES WITH CREAM CHEESE ICING

Prep time: 20-25 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Makes 12 cupcakes
Uniced cupcakes can be frozen for up to a month

Gingerbread cupcakes

125g self-raising flour
½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
125g butter, softened
125g dark muscovado sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 200C (180C fan).

Sift the flour, baking powder and ground ginger together.

Sprinkle the muscovado sugar over the butter, breaking any lumps up as much as you can. Beat the butter and sugar with a handheld mixer, or in a food processor, until creamy.

At a slower speed, add the eggs (one at a time) and golden syrup.

Carefully fold in the flour mixture, being careful not to overmix it.

Divide the mixture between 12 cupcake cases and bake for 12-15 mins until cooked through when tested with a skewer. Cool on a wire rack.

Cream cheese icing

90g butter, softened
150g cream cheese, softened
400g icing sugar, sifted
A sprinkling of cinnamon to serve

Beat the butter until creamy and pale in colour.

Add the cream cheese and lightly beat together.

Mix in the icing sugar, lightly beating until creamy.

Once the cupcakes are cool, spread or pipe the icing on top. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon.

Tip: the cream cheese icing is quite soft; if you want a firmer icing that holds its shape better for piping higher, add more icing sugar to the mixture.

Shaggy bear cupcakes

My shaggy bear cupcakes would be perfect for a teddy bears’ picnic and are super easy to decorate. Why not get your munchkins involved, leaving you to eat them?

The recipe and all the directions are over on Mindful Mum.

I’ve also got a brand new Facebook page which is feeling a little unloved at the moment. It would make my day if you could ‘like’ it (just scroll down this page and you’ll see the ‘like’ button on the right).