New Year's Eve Cupcakes

I liked the Christmas cupcakes so I decided to make them for New Year's Eve too! These chocolate cupcakes were decorated with golden yellow fondant stars and white snowflakes. I used a gold glitter dust on the stars and the same silver luster dust as I used for the Christmas cake on the snowflakes.

I think they all came out lovely and festive, although I particularly like the gold ones for New Year's Eve. I think the snowflakes are more generic winter rather than New Year's party--of course we didn't really have a party so much as we stayed home, ate blinis and cupcakes, and watched TiVo. That's my kind of New Year's party!

Cocktail Blinis with Smoked Salmon

These were delicious! We used really good quality Scottish smoked salmon and organic crème fraiche on these silver dollar sized dill blinis. We served them with hard boiled egg white and egg yolk and scallions. Yum!

On a side note, I served these on a new wooden chopping block I got for Christmas. I am only using it to chop fruit, veg, and bread on, so it makes a lovely serving platter. I think these look so nice all lined up with the descending sized glass bowls on one side of the platter. An elegant presentation for an elegant New Year's Eve at home.

Pesto Pizza

I'm not sure this is really pizza. I used homemade pizza dough (left over from the pizzas I made yesterday), but the basil and pine nut pesto and Parmesan cheese topping isn't quite the stuff of pizza. It's more of a garlic bread type creation, but with pesto instead of garlic butter. Regardless of what you call it, it was a delicious afternoon snack!

Homemade Pizza

I love pizza and nothing beats homemade pizza on homemade pizza crusts. The homemade dough really does make a difference; the flavor is better and the dough is more tender and the crust crisps up a bit better. We made four mini pizzas, two each of two flavors. Both types had basil pesto and fresh mozzarella, half had slices of heirloom tomato and the other half had truffle salami and a drizzle of truffle oil. Yummy!

Christmas Cake

I made two Christmas cakes this year: the chocolate clementine cake I brought to Christmas dinner and a second one, just for fun. It's a plain old chocolate cake (well a deliciously rich and moist chocolaty cake with a springy crumb) covered with a light layer of coffee buttercream and a nice sheet of marzipan. I did a much simpler and quicker decoration for this cake, but I think it still looks lovely. Using only circle cutters (icing tips, actually) I cut holly leaves from green marzipan and large holly berries from red marzipan. I made a simple border of small, red circles to hide the slightly sloppy bottom edge. It served its purpose and finished the cake nicely.

Chocolate Clementine Cake

In addition to the mince pies, I made a flourless chocolate clementine cake. It is a simple, moist cake, with a dense crumb but a with a surprising lightness. As it happens, I've been wanting to try making this cake for years, ever since I noticed it in the chocolate cake section of Nigella Feasts (she makes it with oranges, but clementines seem more Christmas-y.) The problem with the cake is you have to purée whole cooked oranges. Nigella gives instructions on how to do this by hand, but it seems like a lot of work for a not as good result (it could be an equally good result, but I'm not confident that I'd have the patience to the patience to chop it as finely as necessary.) Well, now I happen to have a food processor at my disposal, so I had to try this! As I said, it is a delicious cake, but then again I've always been partial to the combination of chocolate and orange.

Look at the inside of that cake--pure chocolaty goodness!

Since I was making this for Christmas dinner, I couldn't just leave it plain as Nigella suggests. So I got some marzipan and went crazy with luster dust. On a related note, I have noticed that in England most marzipan and fondant covered cakes are made with the covering stuck directly to the cake. I did what they taught me at the FCI and spread a layer of buttercream on the cake before covering it with marzipan. That makes for a smooth surface with a thinner layer of marzipan (or fondant) and adds a layer of buttercream which is always a good thing in my book.

A close up of the decorations

I used the natural creamy color of the marzipan as the base and decorated the cake with marzipan snowflake cut outs and silver dragées. I dusted each marzipan cut out with silver luster dust before sticking them on the cake, so they popped nicely but didn't contrast too starkly with the almond-colored base. So pretty!

Mince Pies

Aren't they pretty?

I'm sure I've mentioned that I have a cousin who can't eat gluten. Well I happened to spending Christmas with him and his family (they are my family too, obviously) in London. Apparently the non-celiac part of the family loves mince pies and can never find decent gluten free ones, so my cousin never eats them. They were making dinner, so I promised to bring desserts (including mince pies). I made a traditional apple filling, which is simple enough (and already gluten-free.) The problem was the crust. I wanted to try a shortening based pie crust, but I couldn't find crisco, so that plan went out the window. My next idea was my favorite crust, pâte brisée. Unfortunately I cannot find my favorite gluten free flour here in the UK, so I'm experimenting with other brands while I visit. The brand I happened to be trying is heavy in potato flour and my pâte brisée tasted like potato. Yuck. Third time was the charm, happily. My pâte sucrée didn't come out perfectly but it was good and not strongly potato-y. Plus the filling was the real star. (Get it, star? Because I made little stars on top... Okay, bad joke, I know.)

Anyway, everyone seemed to like them. The whole family thought they yummy even compared to mince pies with gluten in them--and coming from Brits, that's high praise!

Christmas Cupcakes

I really like decorating sugar cookies with royal icing, but I don't have a terribly steady hand with a piping bag and I have a very small oven, so making batches of cookies gets old fast. Still, I'd seen a cute idea about decorating a round cookie to make it look like a Christmas ornament. I decided to pair this with another technique I've been wanting to try: cupcakes decorated with fondant. Since delicious chocolate cupcakes (the same ones I made for July Fourth, by the way) are lovely and round, I just coated with buttercream, topped with circles of white fondant and had some fun with my aspic cutters (don't worry, I have never made and never plan to make aspic--but the cute little cutters are perfect for decorations.)

Plain cupcakes,
 frosted cupcakes (it's sort of like a crumb coat on a cake),
and one cupcake with its fondant on

I opted for classic red and green decorations with little yellow hangers that I dusted with gold luster dust. I think they came out really nicely! By the way, to get different sized circles, just use piping tips as cutters, it works like a charm.

After I made a few of those, I decided I was having far too much fun playing with fondant to keep repeating the same few patterns, so I fiddled around and made some Christmas-y ones with trees, candy canes, Santa hats, etc. I think the ornament ones look more elegant but the others are a ton of fun!

Homemade Viennois

At the FCI we used fresh yeast when we made bread. For the life of me I could not find it anywhere. Well I recently found a store that sells little cubes of it, so I'm getting back to making bread. I'm very happy; I like making bread and I love homemade bread.

By the way, I obviously could use dry active yeast but I like the FCI recipes and I have yet to figure out an exact conversion between the two, so to use dry active yeast (or instant yeast for that matter) I have to use other recipes. If anyone happens to have a good conversion (that definitely works) between the different yeasts let me know--I think that's the one thing I didn't learn in culinary school that I wish I had learned.

I digress. I decided to make Viennois, which is one of my favorite breads (I like it so much I chose to make it for my bread exam). It is sort of a light brioche, less egg and butter but a similar taste. I decided to make rolls, rather than the baguette shaped loaves I made in school. The little rolls made the perfect little sandwiches: cucumber with butter, egg salad, and cheese. The bread holds its own, even with the strong English cheddar, but doesn't distract from the flavors of the filling, even the mild cucumber and butter. It's a nice lunch sandwich bread, a lovely bread for non-traditional finger sandwiches, and even for dipping in the homemade tomato soup my mom made. Yum, yum!

Tomato Soup

I admit I did not make this, my mom did. But I bought her the cookbook (Jamie Oliver's "meals in minutes" or something to that extent) she used, so that counts...right? It is a delicious soup, but not a comfort food type tomato soup. It's onion-y and has an entire red chili pepper in it, but it has no cream at all. This is not to say it's bad--it was excellent! Actually the non-comfort-food-ness of it actually makes it better in a way, because it is a totally different type of soup.

We served it with a sprig of basil, a dollop of crème fraiche, and a piece of the homemade bread I made (I'll write more about that tomorrow). It was delicious!

Gingersnaps

Remember the gingersnaps I made when I was at the FCI (they were on my first exam)? These are the same recipe. I really love these cookies, and I don't ordinarily like ginger so that's really saying so something. They have a delicious taste and a perfect texture. Plus they look beautiful--partly because I'm crazy and actually scale out the dough rather than eyeballing it, so all the cookies are the exact same size. They make a great gift since they transport well and last a reasonably long time at room temp. Of course that assumes you want to give any of them away!

Digestive Biscuit Ice Box Cake

This was fun--and it's simplicity and speed makes it perfect to do during the holiday baking rush when everyone in the house is whining that I'm not making anything for us to have. I digress. It is not at all attractive--it's just layers of whipped cream and dark chocolate covered digestive biscuits--but that's half the fun of this simple, homey cake.  I made the whole thing in a springform pan and stuck it in the freezer. It's important to let the whole thing sit over night (or for a full day) so that the cookies get a bit soft. Take it out of the freezer and leave in the fridge for an hour or so to let soften a bit. It's a terribly easy and unsophisticated dessert but gosh it's yummy!

Oatmeal, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Scones

Remember the oatmeal and peanut butter scones? These are the same recipe, but vastly improved with chocolate. (Let's face it, chocolate improves nearly everything.) Actually, that's a lie (chocolate does improve nearly everything, the lie is that these were vastly improved by it). The plain ones very nearly as good. In this case, the chocolate did improve it by they did so by changing it into something quite different. The plain scones were delicious, simple, and almost bread like (almost, but certainly denser and more delicious). These were indulgent and richly chocolaty. The peanut butter and oatmeal added dimensions to the deliciousness. I like both, differently. Of course if I do make these again, I'll probably go for the chocolate version--I just love chocolate too much not to choose it.

Chocolate Crumb Muffins

I've made this before as crumb cake and it was very good. I wanted muffins this time around so I gave it a shot and it was almost as good as the cake. I found that the crumb ratio was off (there wasn't nearly enough cinnamony, buttery goodness) and they weren't quite as moist (that could have been because I used fat free Greek yogurt instead of the full fat sour cream the recipe calls for) but they were still delicious. And don't they look lovely?

Cocktail Party Snacks

I may have mentioned that we are entertaining quite a bit lately. We've made some lovely hors d'oeuvres lately and I thought I'd share them.

At the top we have endive with English Stilton and a pecan. This is so simple to make and absolutely delicious. It's also very nice to serve--and clean up--since there are no utensils (or even toothpick) required. If you want to get a bit fancier, you could use a candied pecan--it's delicious but you lose the ability to pretend that you've made the cheese healthy by paring it with endive and a nut (they have omega-3 fatty acids).

Another simple one is radishes with salted butter. I make my own salted butter by mixing softened butter with good sea salt, but you could obviously use some nice store-bought salted butter. I'm not a huge fan of radishes myself, but this French staple is delicious if you do happen to like radishes.

This platter of saucisson sec and cucumber is also absurdly simple. All you have to do is slice the salami and the cucumber to the same thickness and spread them out on a platter. Just don't forget to provide toothpicks if you are having a standing shindig.

This last one is one of my personal favorites. It's not quite a high brow as the other three, but it is still lovely to serve at slightly less formal occasion. It's a very fresh, simple avocado and heirloom tomato salsa with scallions. Delicious served with blue corn tortilla chips!

All of these are fresh, simple, and delicious for a cocktail party, an appetizer, or even an afternoon snack.