Golden Sparkle Cookies

I was sitting here, thinking about the coming new year and I kept thinking: Shiny! Glitter! Sparkles! It may have something to do with my bright red pj's with shiny gold stripes running through them, but mostly I think it's the fact that those things signify New Year's perfectly. Send out the old and ring in the new shiny somethings!

These golden sparkle cookies will shimmer and shine right along with your party shoes as you ring in the New Year! They are also great to dress up a dessert table at a wedding reception or other fancy event where sparkles are required.

Golden Sparkle Cookies [click to print]
Makes about 3-1/2 dozen cookies

2-3/4 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
1 c. sugar
1 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. sour cream
3/4 to 1 c. coarse gold sprinkles (I used about 3/4 of a 5.25 oz bottle of Wilton Gold Pearlized Sprinkles)

Whisk together flour, soda, nutmeg and salt; set aside. Cream butter and sugar together in large mixing bowl. Add eggs and vanilla; beat until well combined. Add sour cream and mix well. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture in about 3 additions and continue beating until well combined. Cover and chill for 1 hour.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper or coat with nonstick cooking spray. Shape dough into 1" balls and roll in sprinkles. Place on baking sheet about 2" apart; lightly press the end of a glass on dough ball to flatten slightly.

Bake at 375 for 5-6 minutes; cookies will not look done, but this is how they'll stay nice and soft so resist the urge to bake longer! Leave cookies on the tray for about a minute, then remove to wire rack to cool.

Source: Adapted from Peppermint Plum

Modeling Chocolate

I have a love-hate relationship with fondant. I love the vibrant colors, I love the shapes you can form and I love that it smooths over a cake so beautifully. But the eating part? Not so much my favorite. If you aren't sure what fondant is, just think back to the last wedding reception you went to...remember the cake? Chances are it was covered with something overly sweet and smooth that most people peeled off. Yeah, that's fondant.

Enter Modeling Chocolate. This stuff is a great alternative to fondant and is pretty easy to make, too. It can be colored just as vibrantly and sculpted and smoothed into whatever shape you want. (I haven't tried covering an entire cake with this yet, so I'm not sure how that works...) Plus, it tastes just like chocolate because it's made from chocolate!

Just to be clear...

Molding Chocolate: pure chocolate or chocolate made with vegetable solids and/or cocoa butter, like Wilton Candy Melts; this stuff is great for pouring into candy molds (get it? molding chocolate?)
Modeling Chocolate: this is chocolate mixed with syrup (in our case, corn syrup) to make it pliable

Modeling Chocolate   [click to print]

14 oz. Chocolate or Candy Melts
1/3 c. Light Corn Syrup

Melt chocolate in 15-30 second bursts in the microwave. Stir very well between each nuke, white chocolate melts very easily and also burns very easily. If you notice any graininess, it's probably already burned and you'll be better off just starting fresh.

Once the chocolate is melted and smooth, warm the corn syrup in the microwave for 45-60 seconds and add to melted chocolate. Immediately stir mixture but do not overmix! According to Chef Talk, "You will notice that as you stir, the chocolate will seize into a thick gooey mass and will clean the sides of the bowl. Look closely to make sure you don't have any streaks of unincorporated chocolate...this unincorporated chocolate will become lumpy grain later and you don't want that. The mass will seem a little oily, that's OK. But the more you stir, the oilier it gets and you don't want oil dripping off it either. It's a delicate balance."

When your done mixing, pour modeling chocolate onto large piece of plastic wrap. Flatten chocolate to about 1/4 in. thick and cover completely with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for a few hours until chocolate sets; it will be hard at this point.

To use modeling chocolate, remove from refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature. Break off a small piece and begin kneading it in your hands. It will be crumbly and rough and seem unkneadable at first but keep going! It will get softer and smoother as you continue to work with it. If it seems lumpy, the chocolate probably wasn't melted completely before adding the syrup; just try to pick out those lumps and knead until smooth. If it's your first time making this stuff, I suggest you use pre-colored candy melts, but if you prefer custom colors, add a little powdered food coloring until you read the desired color. If the chocolate gets too soft while you're working with it, set aside to return to room temperature or stick in the fridge for a few minutes.

Source: Adapted from Wilton and ChefTalk

Design It: Ah! Monster!

Most monsters these days are creepy and bloody and mean. Not Fuzzbucket.

When I was little, this short, hairy, googly-eyed monster would follow me around everywhere. I'm not sure where he went when we weren't having fun together, but he certainly wasn't hiding under my bed since that's where all the alligators hung out, waiting to snack on unsuspecting ankles dangling over the edge of the bed during the night. And he liked ice cream and hopscotch and occasionally glowed in the dark. Yeah, my monster was pretty cool. 

And boy did he love a party! So be sure to invite him to your next Halloween bash or birthday party!

If you'd like to invite Fuzzbucket to your next Halloween bash, first bake your favorite cake in small round cake pans. You want a lot of layers here to give the monster some height. I used three 6-inch round cake pans and sliced each layer in half. You may need to double the recipe if you have a bigger cake. You'll also need two cake pop eyeballs. (Check out this post on Cake Pops for instructions.) For the monster cake, I dipped the back of each eyeball in colored dipping chocolate to create eyelids instead of drawing bloodshot veins to make them a bit more friendly looking.

So, bake cake as directed. Once cooled, fill the cake and give it a crumb coating. Allow this to set. And now for the fun part!

Monster Fuzz Buttercream Icing (aka Crusting Buttercream)   [click to print]
1/2 c. butter
1/4 c. shortening
6 c. powdered sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
3-4 T. milk

Green gel food coloring
Yellow gel food coloring

Whip butter and shortening in mixing bowl until combined. Add sugar, salt, vanilla. Mix on low speed, slowly adding milk, a tablespoon at a time, until you reach desired consistency. You want this stuff to be fairly stiff; try holding the bowl upside down over your head, if the frosting doesn't threaten to drip onto your hair, you're good!

Measure about 1-1/2 cups of frosting into a separate bowl and add yellow food coloring until it's blindingly yellow. Like the sun. Scoop into pastry bag. Color the remaining frosting bright green. Frost your cake with a thin layer of green buttercream (you only want monster skin to shine through that fuzz!) and scoop the remaining green frosting into a separate pastry bag. Fit your green pastry bag with a grass tip; I used the Wilton 233 Multi-Opening Decorating Tip.

   

Holding the pastry bag about 1 to 1-1/2 inches from the base of the cake, squeeze out a string of monster fuzz until it reaches the cake base. Gently press decorating tip into the thin frosting layer to attach fuzz. Repeat process until your first row of fuzz is attached.

Make a second row of green fuzz about 1-1/2 inches above your first, overlapping the first layer by about 1/2 inch. Next do one row of yellow fuzz using the same size decorating tip. Follow this by two more rows of green fuzz. Your final row of yellow fuzz will be mostly on top of the cake, with about a 1/2 inch overhang onto the monster body. To cover the top of the monster head with fuzz, squeeze out strings of frosting and attach in concentric circles, slightly overlapping each row until the top is completely covered.

I know your hand is tired and shaky now from squeezing that silly pastry bag for so long, but hang in there! The last thing you need to do is poke those eyeball cake pops into the top of the monster body and you're done!

Source: Inspired by Sugar Turntable and Shindig Diva

Design It: Millipede Infestation

Ew. 

I'm not into the gruesome, bloody Halloween scene, but this has gotta be one of the creepiest looking cakes I've ever made. It makes me kind of shudder thinking about some long, nasty, thousand leggy bug crawling all over something so delicious.

This design, inspired by I Am Baker, is another idea for your most perfect creepy Halloween dinner. Use your favorite cake recipe and filling to prepare a round layer cake. I used a chocolate cake with Pumpkin Pie Filling and Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. Whatever flavors you choose, it's most visually impressive with frosting in high contrast colors like white and deep brown or black.

The Millipede is made out of Chocolate Buttercream Frosting with enough black food coloring to make it good and dark. I used a Wilton #97 Petal tip to pipe a long ruffled body, just make sure you go slow as you squeeze to build up a fat body. For the legs and wiggly worm bodies, I used a Wilton #3 Round tip.