Butter Tart Squares

I woke up with butter tarts on my mind, but not the proper ingredients in the house to make them. So I googled butter tart squares and found a recipe on the Robin Hood flour website that seemed easy enough. Not only were they indeed easy enough, they were so easy that I'm adding them to my regularly baked treats rotation.

I modified the recipe based on the ingredients I had on hand and followed the method on the original recipe.

Ingredients:
Base
1/2 cup margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour

Filling
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup margarine
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and line an 8x8 baking dish with parchment paper.

2. For the base, beat margarine and brown sugar together in a bowl with an electric mixer. Add flour and beat until combined (mine had a cookie dough like texture). Spread evenly into prepared baking dish.

3. Bake for 20 minutes.

4. For the filling, beat margarine and brown sugar in a bowl until light and creamy. Beat in corn syrup/honey, eggs, and vanilla. Stir in flour and baking powder.

5. Pour over baked base, and return to oven for 25 minutes or until set.

Just out of the oven.

Unwrapped and ready for slicing.

Butter Tart squares. Delicious!

Chocolate Cupcake Toppers (Blue Jays Design)

I first got excited about chocolate cupcake toppers while reading Sugar Swings, and seeing her amazing superhero toppers. With the Blue Jays winning the American League East, I was encouraged to try making some of my own, choosing the Jays logo (and their maple leaf logo) as my toppers.

Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio has an amazing tutorial on how to pipe chocolate (candy melts) onto a design for cupcake toppers and watching this video gave me the confidence to go for it.

When piping chocolate designs, make sure you have an image that looks the same when reversed, or make sure you reverse your image so the design is backwards. You want the design backwards because the finished topper is flipped over, as the flip side is flat and looks a lot nicer than the piped chocolate side. I previously made numbers for a birthday cake, and you can see that example here. For the Blue Jays logo, I googled an image of it and then flipped it horizontally before printing it out. The maple leaf logo looks the same on the reverse side, so I didn't need to flip it.

To start, I printed out a number of pages of designs and taped them to the table.

Then I covered the pages with parchment paper and taped it to the table too.

Using piping bags filled with the four colours of the logo, I piped one colour at a time, waiting about ten minutes for each colour to dry. First I did the white outline of the logo, then the red maple leaf, then the light blue, and finally the dark blue. I didn't take photos of the process, because I always forget to capture what I'm doing while I'm doing it. #bloggerproblems

Here are all the chocolate colours piped onto the design.

Next, I very gently flipped them to the reverse, flat side.

Finally I piped some buttercream onto cooled cupcakes and placed my toppers on top.

Go Jays Go!

Blue Jays Cupcakes!

As a Toronto Blue Jays fan, this has been quite the season to watch. They won the American League East title, and are now playing in the postseason for a chance at the American League Championship. It's been stressful, fun, heartbreaking, and exciting to watch. No matter how far they make it in the postseason, I love this team. Go Jays Go!

To celebrate the Jays making it to the playoffs for the first time in 22 years, I decided to make some cupcakes. I have wanted to try making chocolate cupcake toppers using candy melts, and making a Blue Jays logo seemed like a good way to try them out. As is often the case with my baking projects, I started with something really challenging (a design that used four colours and had a maple leaf in it!), instead of perhaps practicing with something a little simpler. It all worked out and the toppers look as good as I hoped, but I'm going to try and remember that baby steps can be a welcome part of the process.

I will do a follow up post showing how I made the cupcake toppers, but for today I am showcasing pretty photos of cupcakes. I also made baseball themed cupcakes, for which there is a great tutorial on the Worth Pinning blog.

First Pumpkin Spice of the Season

We had a beautiful roast chicken dinner yesterday, which was followed up with some sweet potato pie. The recipe I use for sweet potato pie is just the recipe for pumpkin pie, using fresh sweet potato puree instead of canned pumpkin. I made two pies on the weekend because this pie is soooooooo good. I love love love it. Mmmmm.

Mom's (Nanny's) Awesome Fudge

'Mom's Awesome Fudge' is how this fudge recipe appears in my recipe book, although it's come to my attention that the source of this recipe goes a few generations further. I uncovered this fact after making a batch of it and being reminded of my Nanny. I asked Mom if Nanny ever made it and was informed that it was Nanny's recipe and, yes, she made it all the time. We were pretty young when we spent time with Nanny (she was Mom's grandma), so part of me forgot about it. I'm glad the recent batch I made tasted like memories, otherwise I wouldn't have realized I'd shared this treat with my Nanny when I was little.

This fudge tastes very old timey, sweet and yummy with every bite.

Mom's (Nanny's) Awesome Fudge

1/4 cup margarine
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup milk
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Put all ingredients except vanilla and walnuts into a saucepan. Mix together, heating on medium until margarine is melted and mixture starts to boil. Let bubble for 9-10 minutes. To ensure it has boiled enough, test to see if the mixture will form a ball in cold water. Put a spoon into the hot mixture and drop a small amount into a cup with cold water. It should form a ball. Take saucepan off burner and let sit for 10 minutes. Add vanilla and walnuts and start beating fudge with a spoon until it changes colour (turns lighter brown) and becomes thick. Put into a greased pie plate and place in fridge to cool. Cut into squares and store in an air tight container.

Enjoy!

Pride Week Cupcakes

Simcoe County celebrated Pride Week from July 31- Aug 8th, with many municipalities raising the rainbow flag to celebrate. We live in Tiny Township, and even though Simcoe Pride has been around for a few years, this was the first time our municipality participated. We went over to the township office to watch them raise the Pride flag, and I was very proud that our small town was celebrating diversity.

A fair amount of people showed up for the event, which was wonderful to see, and I made and shared cupcakes with the crowd to celebrate.

Making rainbow cupcakes is one of my favourite things so I always love an opportunity to bake them. The recipe for rainbow cupcakes can be found here. I also made some rainbow cupcake toppers, which I have previously posted about here.

(Mug) Brownie With Ice Cream #FoodPicFriday

There was vanilla ice cream in the freezer last week, and even though it is lovely on its own, I took it as an opportunity to make a fancy dessert at home. And fancy in this case is also easy, as I made a mug brownie in the microwave to go with it. There is something so simple and amazing about mixing a hot brownie with cold ice cream. The ice cream melts, the desserts blend... it is fantastic. It tasted like something I would order at a restaurant for $6. Love it.

The brownie takes no time to make, as I've memorized the recipe. (Dangerous).

I made this brownie before with coconut oil, and you can find that recipe here.

Mug brownie:
1 tbs margarine, melted
1 tbs water
splash vanilla
dash salt
1 tbs cocoa powder
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs flour

Method: Mix the melted margarine, water, vanilla, and salt in mug. Whisk in cocoa powder until fully combined. Add sugar; whisk to combine. Add flour, whisk to combine. Microwave for 1 minute.

Top with some vanilla ice cream and enjoy!

Almost Want To Make These Daily...

These are my new favourite cupcakes; chocolate small batch cupcakes from Celebrating Sweets. They are so easy and six is the perfect number of cupcakes to have when I'm craving them.

The first time I tried these I topped them with strawberry buttercream. This time out I made some vanilla buttercream and they tasted so good. Love chocolate and the sweet vanilla together.

I sprinkled a little cocoa powder onto the icing to give it a more festive look. This recipe calls for either 1/4 cup of hot water or 1/4 of coffee. I've made it both ways and highly recommend the coffee. It really enhances the chocolate flavour. So good!

'Ready For Banana Bread' Bananas

I recently picked up a bag of 'ready for banana bread' bananas on the reduced produce shelf at the grocery store. The overripe bananas are roughly half price and they are immediately ready for baking. No waiting or accidentally forgetting the fresh and full priced bananas.

I got all these bananas for $1

These bananas made up two loaves of Mom's famous banana bread. I enjoy it served with a little butter or marganine and a cup of tea. Perfect afternoon treat.

Further Reading

Mom's Banana Bread Recipe

My version of Mom's Banana Bread recipe (as muffins)

Puppy Dog Cake #FoodPicFriday

Our friends Colleen and Brendan recently threw a puppy birthday party for their son. There were hot dogs, dog shaped cookies, cheese and crackers (with the cheese cut out as dog bones), as well as assorted treats served in new puppy bowls. All very cute and well done.

Colleen, who decorated the Beholder cake from last month, also made the dog cake for the birthday party. She used a combination of piped icing and fondant to make this cute little guy. A lot of work, but the result was adorable. Her son had a very happy birthday!

My Favourite Bun Deal

Generally I make my own buns for sandwiches, but if I'm in the grocery store at the right time, I don't mind picking up a bag of deal buns. The local Foodland has an amazing bakery and getting a bag of the 'end of the day buns' is the dream. It is always crammed full and is often incredibly assorted. It used to be $2.00 for the bag, now it's $2.49, but it's still a great deal. Bought individually the buns are anywhere from $0.80 to over a dollar. The buns are still fresh for a few days, so we normally eat as many as we can and put the rest in the freezer for later.

This 'end of the day' assortment had bagels, plain rolls, garlic and plain dinner rolls, a cheese bun, an onion bun, and two soft pretzels (not pictured because we ate them). The pretzels tasted like they had been dipped in all the butter. Yum. A few times we've gotten a chocolate chip danish in the bag. So good! We love the bun bag!

Strawberry Buttercream Chocolate Cupcakes

I experimented with two new recipes to create some amazing cupcakes.

The first recipe was for strawberry buttercream that I saw on yoyomax12's youtube channel. No food colouring was added to the buttercream, that colour is all strawberries. I had some fresh Ontario strawberries, so it was the perfect time to make it.

I piped the icing onto six cupcakes, and this recipe made the perfect amount.

     Ingredients

     1/8 cup finely chopped strawberries (about 2 medium strawberries)

     3 tbs butter or margarine

     1 1/4 cup icing sugar

     Method

     Beat butter, strawberries, and 1/2 cup of icing sugar until blended. Add remaining

     icing sugar and mix. Add more icing sugar (if needed) to get to desired thickness. 

     Beat an additional 3-4 minutes.

The buttercream I made was a little on the soft side (it didn't run, but it was kinda runny), so if I made it again I would add less strawberries or more icing sugar to try to thicken it up.

The other new recipe I tried was for a small batch of chocolate cupcakes from Celebrating Sweets blog. These cupcakes were so easy to make and tasted really great! Check out the recipe here if you want to make just a few cupcakes. The only change I made to her recipe was to the baking time; my cupcakes baked for 20 minutes instead of 15.  Definitely making these again!

Beholder Cake #FoodPicFriday

My favourite thing about gaming with my D&D group is making and sharing treats. In the past I've made some themed D20 dice cookies, along with an variety of other baking experiments that were thoroughly enjoyed while we battled monsters and solved mysteries during various campaigns. 

I am not the only baker in our group, and recently our friend Colleen made a Beholder monster cake for her husband's birthday. Nothing says happy birthday quite like a D&D monster.

Cold Treat On A Hot Day

We had some wonderful weather on the weekend, with Sunday getting to a high of 32°C (90°F). Beautiful. After walking (and then relaxing) in the hot sun, I threw together a homemade ice cream sandwich that was cold and sweet. Yes the ice cream all smooshed out when I bit into it, but it was all part of the fun.

This is my current favourite oatmeal cookie recipe. It has 1 tsp of cinnamon in it that really adds to the flavour. Love it.

Springtime Cake

It's been Spring for a few weeks, but it finally feels like it's actually here. Temperatures are above zero (during the day anyway), and we had a good amount of rain that has taken away a lot of the snow. There is still a lot of it hanging around, but I can feel it leaving. It feels good.

I experimented with colour and cake and made a multi-layer cake with Spring colours. I normally like really bright cakes, so I had to really hold back when adding the gel colour. The colours weren't exactly what I wanted, but that just means I get to experiment more (and eat more cake).

The Cat and The Cupcakes

Gary has a strong love of sweets. She loves caramel corn, banana bread, muffins, and pancakes, to name just a few. I don't let her have these treats because (a) they're mine, and (b) she doesn't brush her teeth. I have never known a cat to like so many baked goods, and I have a theory that she is actually after the butter contained in them. This week she was very interested in buttercream frosting.

As I frosted my Mint Chocolate Swirl Cupcakes, Gary was sitting close by, eyeing any potential for the buttercream to become hers.

She does this adorable thing where she puts one paw on the table, a clear indicator of her intention, but also a sign of self control, as she holds herself back from getting entirely on the table (she knows she is not allowed on the table). But just her paw? Just a paw is fine, right?