Conversation Heart Cookies

These Conversation Heart Cookies are for my daughter and niece to hand out to their classmates and besides being cute, they are quick and easy to make.

All I did was outline and fill heart shaped cookies and then use an edible ink marker to add the writing. Really, the most difficult part of the whole process was mixing the colors.

So to help with that, here's the link to my previous post on coloring tips. The most important thing really is to remember to take your time and add just a touch of coloring at a time. Be patient. It's easy to add coloring but practically impossible to take it away.

Here are the colorings I used to get these classic Conversation Heart colors:

Lavender = AmeriColor Purple + AmeriColor Violet

 Yellow = AmeriColor Electric Yellow

Pink = Wilton Rose

And here's how I decorated the cookies:

Outline and immediately fill the cookies with flood consistency icing. Use a skewer or scribe tool to evenly distribute the icing and give the cookie a gentle shake to help the icing settle.

Keep working one cookie at a time and once they are all filled, set the cookies aside to dry completely. This took 10 hours for me but it depends on the humidity. The cookies must be completely dry before you add the writing or the pen will break through the icing. Patience is key!

Once the cookies are dry, use an edible ink marker to write on the cookies. I used AmeriColor pink for the yellow hearts and AmeriColor red for the lavender and pink hearts. After the ink dried, I brushed on some powdered sugar to help soften the color of the pen ink. This isn't a necessary step but I though it improved the look of the cookies.

A Guessing Game

Linda getting ready to pass a tray of green salads into the dining room. Each week, volunteers Linda and Leah work together to make and plate all of the salads, creatively using the available ingredients. Today's salads were topped with homemade croutons and Parmesan cheese.

When a meal is free and everyone is welcome, you just have to do your best to guess how much food you'll need in order to serve everyone who shows up.

In the nearly seven years since we served our first sit-down Wednesday Community Meal at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in March of 2008, I'm proud to say we've never turned anyone away for lack of food.

We've always had enough and the secret to our success isn't what you'd think. It's not about math, being hyper-organized, rigid or controlling. It's really the opposite. The secret to having enough is to be open-minded, flexible and positive.

Each week, we use the ingredients we have to make and serve the best food we can and when we are running low, we don't say, "that's it, close the doors," we say "alright, it's time to come up with something else." We might have to resort to using canned goods from the pantry but there's always something we can make and our wonderful guests are worth the effort. Plus, saying "yes" is so much nicer than saying "no."

The first guests in the door today got seasoned ground beef and gravy over rice. Next, we served sliced prime rib over rice, chili ribs, spaghetti and lasagna. Alongside these main dishes we served sides of roasted tomatoes and green beans. There was also hot soup, salad and dessert.

We served 259 meals today.

Every guest was offered a bowl of hot soup.

Seasoned ground beef and gravy over rice. We received many compliments on this simple dish we made using ground beef donated by Lift Urban Portland and rice from Good Samaritan Hospital.

Sliced prime rib over rice was especially popular in the dining room. The prime rib was donated by Good Samaritan Hospital.

Spaghetti topped with Parmesan cheese.

Red Velvet Cookies

Packages of Red Velvet Cookies. These sold quickly at a recent sale to benefit Hunger Ministries at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. A cute way to package them is to place the cookies in cupcake papers and slide them inside self-sealing cellophane bags. I used paper punches to make the homemade tags.

These Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies are sure to please all your sweeties this Valentine's Day and there's still plenty of time to make them.

The cookie is a twist on my favorite tried and true recipe for Chocolate Espresso Sandwich Cookies that's from Julie Richardson of Baker & Spice. I just swapped red food coloring for the espresso in the dough, cut heart shapes, and after baking filled them with cream cheese icing. They are easy to make and so delicious.  Here's the recipe:

Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies
(makes about 4 dozen 2-inch sandwiches)

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups Dutch process Cocoa, sifted
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 oz red food coloring
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 5 minutes or until light, scraping down the bowl occasionally as needed.

Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, blending lightly between additions. Add the red food coloring, make sure to mix this in on low so that there's no splattering!

Add the cocoa on low speed until combined.

Blend the flour, and salt and add to the butter mixture until just combined.Wrap the dough and let it chill for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

After chilling, the dough might need to warm at room temperature for a bit so that it can be easily rolled.

Roll the dough on a lightly floured work area to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into desired shapes, I like to use a 1.5-inch heart cutter and place on parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake for about 6 minutes or until the cookies are no longer shiny but still soft in the middle.

Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely before filling them with the cream cheese filling.

Adding the cream cheese filling to the cookies.

Cream Cheese Filling

2/3 cup powdered sugar

8 oz. (1 package) cream cheese 

1/4 cup softened butter

1 teaspoons vanilla

Whip cream cheese and butter thoroughly. Add the vanilla then the powdered sugar, a little at a time and whip until smooth.

Valentine Treat Preview

I just finished packaging my last batch of cookies for tomorrow's Valentine Sweet Sale at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and am happy to say everything is looking great and I'm anxious to start selling and raising funds for Hunger Ministries. 

Here are a few pictures from a busy week preparing for the sale and a few previews of what will be for sale tomorrow from 9 a.m. to noon in Kempton Hall at the church (147 NW 19th Ave, Portland Oregon). I hope to see you there!

I dedicated Thursday and Friday to cookie baking and decorating. These brushed embroidery cookies were the first design I tackled.

I also had to include a heart design. I used a heart cookie cutter to make an impression in the cookies before baking. The first step in decorating these was to paint the heart with pink royal icing.

These cookies demonstrate the three steps to decorating the heart cookies.

Finished cookies that just need to dry before packaging.

Of course I also had to make some French Macarons. I thought cherry would be a good choice for Valentine's Day.

I filled the macarons with a Morello cherry buttercream.

I also made some salted caramel macarons because they are always well received and I thought they would look nice packaged alongside the  cherry macarons.

The final touch in packaging the macarons was a homemade tag and some butcher's twine.

Saturday morning it was truffle packaging time. Here I am filling truffle boxes with Dave who with his wife Cheryl made all of the truffles. Our friends Cindy and Terri also came by to help with the packaging.

Each five-piece box contains three dark and two milk chocolate truffles.

The final touch to the truffle boxes was adding a pretty bow and a paper heart. Terri and Cindy tied all of the ribbons and did a wonderful job. I love the way the boxes turned out and I have my friends to thank. If the bow tying was all up to me, I'd still be struggling — it's definitely not my talent.  But like Terri said today, "many hands make light work." It was a team effort and I'm grateful.

Valentine Sweet Sale

These mini Valentine cookies will be for sale!

It's time again for the Valentine Sweet Sale to benefit Trinity Episcopal Cathedral's Food Ministries which supports The Wednesday Community Meal. The annual sale is one of Food Ministries' largest fundraisers but last year's sale sadly had to be cancelled because of icy winter weather. We're hoping to make up for it this year and sell out.

I've been busy making cookies and my friends and cohorts Cheryl and Dave Richardson have been busy making Belgian chocolate truffles. All of the sweets will be beautifully packaged and ready to give to your loved ones.

Here are the details:

Valentine Sweet Sale to Benefit Food Ministries
Sunday February 8, 9 a.m. to noon in Kempton Hall at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (147 NW 19th Avenue, Portland, Oregon). Buy Belgian chocolate truffles and cookies for all your loved ones and at the same time support Trinity’s Food Ministries. The sweets are handmade by chocolatiers and bakers from The Wednesday Community Meal and will be beautifully packaged and ready to give.

Happy To Be Back

I got Carol to pose for a quick picture at the kitchen window today.  She is a longtime regular volunteer who works nonstop in the dining room delivering food to the guests.

It felt so good to see my friends at The Wednesday Community Meal after two weeks of being away. I know this might sound sappy because it was just two weeks, but I really missed them. Volunteering at the meal is something I look forward to each week and to me it's much more than just about feeding those in need. It's also about creating a community where everyone is welcome and everyone feels comfortable and safe.

The main entree today was spaghetti and meatballs and our guests seemed very pleased. The pasta and sauce for the spaghetti came from The Oregon Food Bank and the ground beef we used to make the meatballs was donated by Lift Urban Portland.

Today's entree.

Of course we also served hot soup, salad and dessert. The latter was pudding topped with crushed cookies which is always popular. There's just something very soothing about a cup of pudding.

Cups of butterscotch and chocolate pudding ready to served.

We served 233 meals today.

My Sweet NYC Experiences

Eleanor and I on top of the Empire State Building.

Okay, I admit it. I eat a lot when I travel because in addition to seeing new things, I want to taste new things, especially sweet things.

My recent trip to New York with my family was lots of fun and I tasted quite a few sweet treats that I won't forget and am just going to have to try to recreate.

It was nice having my husband and daughter with me so that together we could taste a lot without over-indulging. Each day, we'd splurge on a sweet treat and split it three ways, enjoying it slowly together and then taking turns rating it and giving it a thorough review. There's no doubt about it, we take our sweets very seriously, but doing it this way is also lots of fun and gets us interacting.


In order, here is my list of the best sweets we tried:

Cereal Milk Soft Serve from Momofuku Milk Bar

Cereal Milk Soft Serve

Hands down, my favorite was Cereal Milk Soft Serve from Momofuku Milk Bar which has multiple locations throughout the city. The company has trademarked the process of making Cereal Milk so darn it, I don't know if I'll ever be able to taste it anywhere else.

Cereal Milk is lightly sweet with a hint of a cereal taste just like the milk in the bottom of your cereal bowl. I'm pretty sure the cereal they use to make it is cornflakes but that wasn't divulged. You can buy Cereal Milk and Pretzel Milk in a bottle to drink straight up or you can have the Cereal Milk Soft Serve and that's what I went absolutely bonkers for. It's sooo good! It's not too sweet and the best part is you get to eat it with a wooden spoon which in my opinion always makes a frozen treat taste better.

Corn Cookie from Momofuku Milk Bar

We noticed that just about every patron at Momofuku Milk Bar ordered a Corn Cookie and that's why we had to try one too.

My next favorite treat also came from Momofuku Milk Bar and that was the Corn Cookie and unlike Cereal Milk, the recipe can be found online and in the cookbook "Momofuku Milk Bar" by Christina Tosi. The Corn Cookie was, like the Cereal Milk Soft Serve, sweetened just right.

The best way for me to describe the Corn Cookie is to say it's dense, chewy, very corny and satisfying. It's a simple looking cookie with complex flavors and unlike any cookie I've ever tasted. There is one conundrum about Tosi's recipe though, it calls for freeze-dried corn powder which I can only imagine is hard to find if you don't live in NYC.  Momofuku Milk Bar sells it at its locations.

Rosemary Olive Oil Macaron from Macaron Parlor

Macarons from Macaron Parlor. Clockwise from top left: Rosemary Olive Oil, Party Time, Earl Gray and Corn — I'm thinking corn might be the next hot dessert flavor!

Then there was the Rosemary Olive Oil Macaron from Macaron Parlor. It wasn't a savory macaron but a sweet one filled with a rosemary scented olive oil ganache. It was different but divine. My husband and daughter's faces just lit up after one taste because they didn't know what to expect and were very pleasantly surprised. This is one I'm going to have to recreate for sure.


Banana Caramel Macaron from Financier

A giant Banana Caramel Macaron from Financier.

Another top-notch macaron we tasted came from Financier which lucky for us had a shop just a few blocks from where we were staying. Their macarons got my attention right away because of their size, they are at least 3.5 inches in diameter, and as a macaron baker this impressed me because they were still cooked evenly with a perfect texture — crunchy on the outside and dense and chewy on the inside. The larger the macaron, the more difficult it is to get the texture right and I have no idea how they did it.  Our choice at Financier was a Banana Caramel Macaron which fortunately was made with real bananas and not artificial flavoring. It was delicious.


Flourless Chocolate Cake from Magnolia Bakery

Flourless Chocolate Cake from Magnolia Bakery

A final treat that I have to mention is the Flourless Chocolate Cake from Magnolia Bakery. It was soft, light, dense and chewy all at once and very very chocolaty. "Um, now this is good," declared Eleanor, my chocoholic daughter, after her first bite.  One $4 cake, split three ways, was completely satisfying and now I know why the clerk at the shop said "Now that's a good choice" when I said I was buying one dessert to share.

Other food related highlights from our trip:

My husband kindly helped us navigate our way via Subway to N.Y. Cake at 56 West 22nd Street. It was worth seeing but I have to say I found it overwhelming and overpriced. The space is tight due to the jam packed shelves and there weren't any deals — just a large selection. I saw some Valentine cupcake liners that I liked but they were $25 for 500 — yikes! that's .20 each. Even with shipping, the deals are better online. Well, now I know.

While walking in the West Village I saw this magnificant bakery with a crazy long line and people pressed up to the large picture window outside just watching and taking pictures. I was immediately intrigued and snapped this picture from the outside through the window. The really strange part is that there was no signage indicating the name of the bakery. What was this place?!

Then I saw there was something on the boxes they were packing and snapped a pic and had my eagle-eyed daughter read it. It said Aux Merveilleux de Fred. So I researched it online and found that it's a French pastry shop owned by Frederic Vaucamps and famous for it's one-of-a-kind light meringue and cream coated Merveilleux Cakes and soft brioches that the shop calls Cramiques. The NYC shop is the first outside of Europe and just opened this year on January 9th. After learning this I wish I had waited in line for a taste but it was fun playing investigator and I'm going to have to make a bee-line for it the next time I visit NYC.