Category Archives: Beater Testing

I Tried My Hand At Iced Cookies!!

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So what have I learnt from my experimentation with iced cookies?

That I need a LOT of practice!

😀

Apart from that, here are a few tips from a novice.
1. Once you find the right recipe- one that bakes nice and flat- bake your cookies the day before you want to ice them and several days before you want to serve them. The icing takes up to 24 hours to dry.
2. Do not underestimate the value of YouTube tutorials!
3. Decide on a couple of designs you want to try on your cookies. Trying to think of a design when you have your icing mixed and ready does not work.
4. Once your cookies are cooled and ready to ice, your mise en place is essential!!! Its a French phrase which means “putting in place”, as in set up.
5. Have three times as many piping bags as you think you’ll need. If you’ve never folded a paper piping cone, plastic disposable bags work really well and if you snip off the tip carefully you don’t need nozzles.
6. Mix your royal icing. I found that for me a 20 second icing was perfect for lines and a 14 second icing for flooding. What this means is that once you’ve finished mixing, count how long the icing takes to smooth out again. You want it a little runny for flooding, but for piping and lines it has to hold its shape.
7. If you’re not trying the wet-on-wet technique to start with, wait for the icing to dry!

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~ Cupcakes ~ Cakes and Cookies ~ Sugar Art ~

Holiday Baking!

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Even when I’m on holiday I bake! Its something I love to do so I think its fun.

It has gotten rather expensive to bake for fun though, so when I have a chance to try something different without breaking the bank, I go for it!

This December holiday, I visited the Southdowns Mall Deeghuys store to get something my mom-in-law wanted, and I was smitten. They have an unbelievable range of frozen pastries that can be thawed and baked at home!
Copenhagens, cheese burger pies, custard slices, all kinds of bread rolls, cookies, pizzas, breads, cakes… I didn’t know what I wanted to try first, and they are so reasonable priced! I bought a bag of 20 frozen chocolate croissants for my MIL for R72!
I eventually settled on a roll of double chocolate frozen cookie dough, mini frozen custard Danishes, and frozen focaccias – spending less than R200, including the croissants!

Today I defrosted and then baked a focaccia – topping it with cherry tomatoes, caramelised onions and caramelised peppers. I completely forgot to add the feta cheese I’d bought!
It was easy, it rose beautifully – I defrosted it for four and a half hours, in which time it more than doubled in size!

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I then squished it flat and spread it out with my fingers (I’ll roll it out a little more next time), pressed the already cooled onions, peppers, and uncooked, halved cherry tomatoes into the raw batter, and put it in a preheated oven for 20 minutes.

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It was delicious! It’ll be even better with the cheese on and next time I’ll bake it for about 10 minutes before I put the toppings on. Ooh, and I’ll roast the tomatoes in Balsamic vinegar a little first.

And the best part – I still have 4 frozen focaccias in the freezer! I’ll be doing a few more for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the family.

I must just state – as per my Lady Bloggers pledge – that I was not asked or paid to write any blog posts about Deeghuys. I went there of my own accord, and I purchased the frozen goodies to experiment with using my husband’s Christmas bonus!

Chocolate Cake “Beater Test”

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Laura and David are getting married next year, and they want their wedding cake to be gluten and dairy free.

We have already pretty much decided what the wedding cake is going to look like on the day, but we decided we would test a couple of recipes to make sure the chocolate cake they cut and share on their wedding day is simply delectable!

This was the first test…

gluten free chocolate cake, dairy free chocolate cake, vanilla butter icing, beta test

“Beater Test” Results

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Well, my results of the beta tests, not what people think of them… yet!

Heh heh…

Here is the result of the “rainbow cookies”!

I followed the recipe exactly and I am very happy with how they came out! They are a SHITE load of work, what with the cooking of the eggs first and then putting them through a sieve and mixing the batter and adding the colour and the rolling and the refrigerating and the glueing and the cutting… But they are so very yummy with an almost flaky texture to them.

I think I will add a little more colour to the purple layer next time, as well as rolling the dough a wee bit thicker for a wider cookie. Here they are cooling after they came out of the oven…

rainbow cookies

And here they are finished!

Ready to be collected and taste tested by Cybelle.

rainbow cookies