Ryan's in the Kitchen-Caramel Apples Kiddie Style

I love caramel apples and this was a perfect project for Ryan to help me with.

Here are all of the ingredients we used to make this treat.

Ryan loved his job of unwrapping all of the caramels. He did a little, "criss cross applesauce" as he put the wrappers in one bowl and the unwrapped caramels in the other.

Mmmm...Caramels are so delicious even when they are not melted!  To melt them, add 2 tablespoons of cream to a pot on a low heat and mix continuously for about 25 minutes. Eventually, the caramels will be runny like syrup.

In the meanwhile, Ryan prepared the apples by placing the sticks into each apple. We used popsicle sticks that came with the caramels but you could also use rounder, thicker sticks purchased at Michael's or any craft store. Dip the apples one at a time into the pot of melted caramel. Allow excess caramel drip back into the pot. Place directly onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and decorate immediately.

The fun had begun. Ryan chose all of the decorations for his caramel apple: mini m&m's, Oreo cookie crumbs, and some mini chocolate chips.

And carefully decorated his apple. After he was done, I decorated the rest.

Sometimes, simple is best...

But for you chocolate lovers...this apple may be preferred.

Chill apples in the fridge for a minimum of an hour before serving.

Enjoy.

Cake Pops for the End of the School Year

I'm a little late at posting these cake pops. I made these for a friend's daughter to bring to school as an end of the year treat.  Lucky classmates she has!

This one's for you Amanda.

Sorry I have been M.I.A. over the past few weeks. I am in the process of moving and didn't realize how busy I would be!

For a cake pop tutorial, click here.

Thomas the Train Cake Pops

I made a train of cake pops for a birthday party this weekend.  They complimented Thomas' colours. Since it was a second birthday party, each pop was finished with a number 2.

To make these cake pops, begin by baking a white cake and let it cool for a few hours. Break the cake into crumbs and add your favourite frosting.  Using the back of a spoon, mix the icing and the crumbs together.  I added chocolate frosting to the white cake crumbs.

Use a mini ice cream scoop to scoop balls that are even in size.

Then, roll the balls with your hands and set on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Place in the freezer for about 20 minutes.

To make the pops, use 6 inch lollipop sticks.

Dip in melted candy and tap off excess coating. Place in a styrofoam tray to set.

Melt red candy melts and spoon into a piping bag.  Pipe the number 2 on each cake pop.

Place in the boxcars and add a Thomas train at the front. To make the boxcars I used shoeboxes and filled them with styrofoam. I covered the boxes with fadeless red paper as though I was wrapping a gift. Using a wooden skewer, I punched holes in specific places so the cake pops would easily fit in.

Package each pop individually by placing a clear cellophane bag over top each one, bunching the bag together at the base of the pop. Tie with light blue ribbon. Curl ends of ribbon with the sharp edge of a pair of scissors. 

Bring to a party and give away as loot bags.

For a more detailed tutorial explaining how to make cake pops, click here.

Happy Birthday Oliver!

Hamantaschen Part 2 - Baking with Ryan

Warning...

Cute alert, cute alert! 

When Fay gave me extra dough and filling to make more of Bubbi Hanka's Hamantaschen, I knew that I needed some help. Ryan and I had a date!  We made our own version of Bubbi Hanka's Hamantaschen with poppy seed and blueberry filling, and a round, scalloped edge cookie cutter. I was impressed with the final product of a two and a half year old! We made a great team.

We began by working together to roll out the dough...

Until Ryan wanted to try it on his own! The rolling pin was bigger than he was!  I tried to buy him a kid's sized rolling pin and apron, but had no luck.  Any suggestions of where to go?

He did such a great job using a cookie cutter to cut out the circles of dough.

Then he spooned the filling into the center of each circle.

Although he thought it was a little messy, he managed to squeezed each corner together.

"Ready for the oven!"

"Yummy! I made hamantaschen!"

Thanks Ryan...I had so much fun baking with you!

For the recipe and step by step instructions of how to make Bubbi Hanka's Hamantaschen, click here.

Elmo Cookies

I did it! Thanks to Sweet Sugarbelle who made a video tutorial showing how to decorate sugar cookies without using a fancy tracing projector, I made these cute Elmo and number 2 cookies. 

In this post, I will walk you through the steps to making more challenging cookies, minus the fancy projector.  (In the future, however, I may invest in a Kopykake projector.)

Items you will need for this project:

-sugar cookies

-printed image(s) of Elmo and the number 2

-black edible ink pen

-royal icing

-#1 Wilton piping tip

-squeeze bottles

-toothpicks

Bake sugar cookies and let cool. Print an image of Elmo onto cardstock and cut out around the face. (I found this image on Sugar Envy's Flicker photo stream.) Cut out mouth and poke holes around nose with a toothpick. Place printed image onto cookie and trace around Elmo's face with an edible ink pen to create the border. Since I was going to pipe the outline black, I used a black edible ink pen. Always try to match the color of ink to the colour you will pipe as the border.

Next, trace the mouth and the dots of the nose.

When the dots are connected and the eyes are joined, the face begins to take shape.

Next, pipe the drawn image with black royal icing using a number #1 Wilton Piping tip. (I used a #2 tip in the pictures. In retrospect, I think that a #1 tip would have been better.) Fill in the mouth with the same black icing. Repeat steps for remaining Elmo cookies. Let set and dry overnight.

The next day, flood the face with red royal icing. Use a toothpick to spread the icing into corners or hard to get to areas on the face. For the recipe that I use to make royal icing, click here.

Flood the nose with orange royal icing and the eyes with white royal icing. Let dry overnight. 

Use a black edible ink pen to draw and colour in the eyeballs.

Ta Da!

For the number 2 cookies above, print the number 2 image onto cardstock. Cut out, trace onto cookie and pipe with royal icing. Let dry overnight. Flood with coloured icing and let dry overnight.

The Lexie cookies were first outlined with black royal icing. The next day they were flooded with coloured royal icing and left to dry overnight. On the third day, the names were piped on top.

Happy Birthday Lexie!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Happy decorating,

Melissa ;)

Cookies for Hayden's Second Birthday

When my girlfriend Julia asked me to make some cookies for Hayden's loot bags, I began to search for ideas.

Thanks to Bridget at Bake at 350, I found this idea! Bake at 350 is also the same blog that inspired me to make Scrabble Cookies!

My neighbour Janet works at Redpath Sugar. If you live in Toronto, you may have seen her driving around in the Acts of Sweetness Truck!  She knows how much I love to bake, and gave me a new kind of icing sugar to experiment with. This icing sugar is 10 times as fine as regular icing sugars. That's what the DS 10X means on the bag of icing sugar pictured above. 

First, I piped the border of the cakes as well the number two above. This needed to dry for about an hour.

Next, I flooded the inside of the cake with baby yellow icing.

I then immediately added the dots to the wet yellow flood.  By using different sized tips, I was able to create larger and smaller dots. 

I began with the purple dots.

Followed by turquoise dots...the same color as the piped border.

And finally, I added the pink ones.

And that was it...the cookies needed a good 24 hours to dry and then I packaged them for the kiddies!

Happy Second Birthday Hayden!