Woodland Cookie Set

I had been thinking about designing a set of Woodland Cookies for nearly a year, but it was a recent trip with my friend Cindy to Blake's Decorette Shop that really pushed me into action.

I already owned the gnome and large mushroom cutter but found the smaller mushroom, deer and small plaque on our shopping trip and immediately couldn't wait to get started. 

I devoted a good amount of time to planning and designing the cookies, and two full days to baking and decorating them.

The mushroom and tree cookies were by far the easiest of the set to make. The deer was a little frustrating because it was hard to release the cookie dough out of its long thin legs. Cindy mentioned this might be a problem when I picked up the cutter at the store but the deer's cuteness won me over and trumped practicality.

Then there are the gnomes — The only way I could figure out how to bring them to life was to base coat them and then after that dried, add more details by painting on thinned royal icing. Each gnome took a good 40 minutes to decorate but despite the work, I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Stay tuned for detailed tutorials on how to make each cookie in this set. Up tomorrow will be the mushrooms.

Great Gleaning

Desserts gleaned from New Seasons Market.

Just like last week, had lots of good luck with our gleaning for Trinity Episcopal Cathedral's Wednesday Community Meal and were able to keep our costs low.

Thanks to three local businesses, today's dessert course was well covered. From the New Seasons Market on NW Raleigh, we got brownies, cupcakes, tarts, and cakes; from the Trader Joe's on NW Glisan we got pies and cheesecake; and from Ken's Artisan Bakery we got chocolate chunk cookies and an assortment of buttery pastries and tarts. 

All of the soup and entrees we served today were courtesy of Lift Urban Portland, Good Samaritan Hospital, Phil's Uptown Meat Market and The Oregon Food Bank. Because of their generosity, our guests today got treated to sliced pork, leg of lamb, chicken, salmon, crab cakes and as a side, tortellini that we baked in a cheesy red sauce and topped with oven roasted tomatoes.

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral purchased the ingredients for the salads that we served. 

An entree of sliced pork, tortellini and green beans.

But that's not all, as guests were leaving, we handed out bananas and the cutest little red delicious apples that our gleaners picked up from The Oregon Food Bank. 

Our gleaners picked up a case of these cute red delicious apples from The Oregon Food Bank.

Thanks to the work of our gleaners and volunteers and the generosity of our community partners and Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, we served 277 meals today.

Sour Cherry Cupcakes

These Sour Cherry Cupcakes are fresh tasting, not too sweet and even better when topped with a very light cream cheese buttercream.

I made the cupcakes by whipping up my favorite buttermilk cake recipe and adding a splash of almond extract and three cups of sour cherries that I cooked down with a bit of sugar and cornstarch.

When it comes to the frosting, I'm almost too embarrassed to share my recipe because it's so basic and takes just a few minutes to make. It's only cream cheese whipped with unsalted butter, a bit of powdered sugar and vanilla —  and I hope proves that difficulty doesn't correspond with deliciousness. There really is no need to ever use sickly sweet frosting from a can.

Here are the recipes:
Sour Cherry Cupcakes
(makes 30 to 36) 
3 cups frozen or fresh pie cherries
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs plus 2 egg yolks, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, room temperature

In a saucepan combine the cherries, 1/3 cup sugar and cornstarch. Heat the mixture over medium high heat until simmering and the juices exude and thicken. Use a potato masher or back of a spoon to break apart the cherries as they cook. This takes a good 5 to 7 minutes.

The cherry mixture after cooking.

Let the mixture cool completely to room temperature.

Now for the cupcake batter — Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cupcake pans with papers.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy, about 6 minutes.

Beat in the eggs plus egg yolks, one at a time, until combined. Beat in the vanilla and almond extract.

In another large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. With mixer on low, add a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beating to combine. Beat in 3/4 cup buttermilk, another third of the flour mixture, another 3/4 cup buttermilk, and remaining flour mixture until just combined. Scrape down the bowl as needed. Once the batter is mixed, add the cooled cherries.

The cupcake batter and the cooled cherries are ready to be combined.

Pour the cherries into the batter.

Fold the cherries into the batter just until they are combined.

Gently fold in the cooled cherry mixture. Don't over mix.

Fill the cupcake papers 3/4 full.  Bake for 18 to 22 minutes in a 350-degree oven or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

Before baking.

After baking.

Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

Easy Cream Cheese Buttercream
12 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup powdered sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whip the cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and whip again.

Frost the cupcakes after they have cooled completely. I used a piping bag fitted with a 1M tip to add the frosting but you could also just plop on a few spoonfuls and spread it with a table knife. 

A Fantastic Bargain Of A Meal

A meal of beef fajitas.

The most expensive part of putting on the Wednesday Community Meal is buying the protein. It's hard to find donations of lean meat. So typically each week, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral purchases it for the free-for-everyone weekly meal.

Of course, there's a budget that we need to stay within, so we shop sales and look for deals. We usually buy pork or chicken.  

Beef is the protein that rarely makes an appearance on our menu. But today was different. The best part: It was all free!

Our guests were able to enjoy homemade beef fajitas because of donations of high-quality beef from two of our wonderful community partners, Lift Urban Portland and Good Samaritan Hospital.

Lift Urban Portland donated two giant roasts; Good Samaritan Hospital gave us 40 six-ounce steaks.

We chose to make fajitas because we knew slicing the beef thin and adding peppers, onions and tomatoes would make it go farther, feeding more people.

After the beef fajitas, we served chili-topped baked potatoes, chicken skewers, meatloaf, ribs, chicken curry and ham. The latter was a gorgeous spiral cut ham from Whole Foods, donated by a Trinity parishioner.

A ham meal.

All of the proteins we served today were donated and helped us stay way under budget. Here's the breakdown: We spent $149.08 on ingredients for today's meal and served 398! That's soup, salad, entree, dessert and drinks for .37 cents a person! It was delicious, too.

Berry Swirl Macarons

These pretty Berry Swirl Macarons are filled with a lightly sweet raspberry/strawberry buttercream and tinted with fuschia gel coloring.

Besides drawing lines of the coloring on the inside of my piping bags, I also added a touch of the coloring to the meringue for sweet layered pink look.

Since I've discovered this marbling technique for macarons, I just want to keep experimenting with it since I so enjoy a baking/art project!

Here's the recipe:

Berry Swirl Macarons
180g ground almonds, sifted
270g powdered sugar, sifted
150g egg whites, aged 2 to 4 days in the fridge and then brought to room temperature
100g granulated sugar
Fuschia gel coloring

Line four heavy baking sheets with good quality parchment paper and set aside. Also, set aside two pastry bags for the piping of the macarons.

Sift together your ground almonds with the powdered sugar and set aside.

Whisk the egg whites (at room temperature) to glossy firm peaks adding the granulated sugar gradually in four parts. Tint with just a touch of the fuschia gel coloring.

The tinted meringue. I just used a touch of the fuschia coloring.

Incorporate the dry ingredients into the beaten egg whites using a large rubber scraper.  Mix well. 

Fold the mixture with the rubber scraper by pulling down the sides and flipping the mixture over. Do this until you have a smooth mixture that falls like a “ribbon” off the scraper.

Using a small brush, paint some stripes of fuschia gel coloring on the inside of the piping bags. Get the color all the way down to the tip but don't go crazy and use too much or you will have a mess. A little goes a long way.

Transfer the mixture into the two piping bags. Use rubber bands to close the piping bags.

The coloring on the inside of one of my piping bags.

A piping bag filled with batter.

Clip the tip of the bags, one at a time, and pipe small quarter sized rounds, leaving 1-inch of space between each because they spread as they set. Leave to set for about 30 minutes or until the top has formed a crust and is not sticky to the touch.

Piped macarons.

While they are setting, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. A convection oven is preferable.  Bake one sheet at a time in the center of the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes or until the cookie is firm, matte and doesn't wobble when touched. Leave on the baking tray until cool then lift them all off the parchment carefully. You may need to use a thin knife or spatula to help lift them off.

Sort into pairs and fill with Raspberry/Strawberry Buttercream.


Raspberry/Strawberry Buttercream
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup raspberry preserves
1/3 cup strawberry preserves
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Whip the butter until it is light and smooth. Add the preserves and sea salt.

Whip this together until the filling is light and creamy. When you first start whipping the ingredients together, it will look like a curdled mess, but don't panic. The filling will eventually come together and be beautiful. Just whip it and whip it good! 

Filling the macarons

All done! Keep the macarons chilled until you are ready to serve them.

Jack-o'-lantern Cookies

If you are a beginning cookie decorator looking for a simple design that makes use of multiple decorating techniques, Jack-o'-lantern cookies are for you!

There's some brush work, edible ink work and some segmented piping and it's all basic and easy to do.

To get started, bake mini pumpkin cookies and an equal number of larger base cookies and also have ready a black edible ink marker, a small "food only" brush, a batch of royal icing, gel colorings (I used orange, delphinium blue and moss green) and two pastry bags fitted with #2 tips.


Here's how to decorate them:

Start off by outlining and flooding the base cookies with white royal icing using one the pastry bags and a #2 tip.  Let the base cookies dry completely before moving onto the next step.

Once the base cookies are dry, mix up some blue royal icing and thin it to medium consistency. Drop about a teaspoon full onto the cookie and use your brush to spread it out evenly. It won't look perfectly smooth but that's the point, you want to add a textural look to the cookie.

After you have covered all of the base cookies, set them aside to dry. Reserve any leftover icing to use as "glue" when it's time to stick the cookies together.

Now it's time for the mini pumpkins, mix up a very small amount of medium consistency moss green royal icing.

Paint the stem of all of the pumpkins.

Mix up some medium consistency orange icing and place it a pastry bag fitted with a #2 tip. Following the curves of the cookie add orange to just the center segment. Do this to all of the pumpkins and let them dry for at least 20 minutes.

Add orange to the outside segments. This segmented piping adds so much texture and realism to the pumpkin. Let the icing dry completely before moving onto the next step.

Add a dollop of icing to back of the pumpkins and stick them onto the base cookies.

It will look like this.

Now for the fun part, get out your edible ink marker and turn the pumpkins into Jack-o'-lanterns.

Let the ink and the "cookie glue" dry completely before packaging.

Handmade Scarves

Volunteers Sam, Justine, Martha and Leah modeling scarves made by Chieko.

Guests at today's Wednesday's Community Meal at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral were gifted handmade scarves all lovingly knitted and donated by a wonderful woman named Chieko who is the mother of volunteer Nancy. 

It was such a generous gift and everyone enjoyed choosing their scarf from the large array of choices. It was so kind of Chieko to make them for our guests and I can't even begin to imagine the hours of knitting that she must have put in to make them.

Look at all of the scarves Chieko made! And that's not even all of them — there are more in the bag under the table. This photo was taken by volunteer J. Anderson who laid all of them out and oversaw their distribution.

We served 349 meals during our two hour service today and our entrees were also extra special because of a generous donation of chicken quarters and legs of lamb from Lift Urban Portland. Alongside the chicken and lamb, we served mashed potatoes and gravy and peas and carrots — Real comfort food that pleased our guests.

A baked chicken meal.

A roasted leg of lamb meal.