Unique Edible Valentines
We like to give edible valentines each year at school. This year, I was having trouble thinking of something easy (medical issues were making it tough to stand on my feet for too long without my heart rate getting out of control and completely fatiguing me). I was going through some scrap booking paper I had gotten probably over a decade ago and came across this cute paper with chocolate chips and cookies all over it. I had gotten it to do a page showing my daughter baking with me, but I obviously never followed through. Anyway, when I saw this paper, I instantly said “I’m ‘kookie’ for you!”, and our valentines were born!
These chocolate chip cookies were so tiny! I used little baggies that were meant for cake/lollipops and fastened the paper to ‘seal’ off the bags with heart-shaped eyelets. A little cookie paper heart and some lettering and the Valentine’s were good to go! So adorable!
🍫Chocolate-Covered Chocolate Cookies with Chewy Caramel🍫
To celebrate the end of my daughter’s ⚽️ soccer ⚽️ season, I created these AMAZING chocolate-covered chocolate cookies with a chewy caramel layer. I stayed up entirely too late making them (due to the Chocolate mold only having 2 soccer balls on it!!). But, they are so totally worth it!! The melty, creamy milk chocolate, the not too soft but not hard and crunchy chocolate cookie, and the chewy delicious caramel… if it didn’t take so long to make each one,I think I would have made several dozen and froze them!
First, I made some dark chocolate cookies. Flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, salt, egg, and oil-rolled out between 2 layers of waxed paper, to make cleaning up a snap!
I rolled them super thin, cut them, froze them on a lined cookie sheet until hard, baked them off, then trimmed them if needed.
(If dried out and thrown in the food processor, they would make a nice cookie crumb crust for a cheesecake!)
While the cookies were baking, I rolled out some caramels and used the same cookie cutter to cut them into rounds. The ‘scraps’ that were cut off, that weren’t eaten!, were combined and rolled out to make more caramel discs.
Also happening while the cookies were baking, the chocolate was being melted. This ceramic covered metal bowl fits perfectly into the top of my big pasta pot, without falling in! I just throw a little water in the pot, set the bowl in the top, and turn on the stove. The chocolate melts and I turn the heat down to the very lowest setting just to keep it warm and melty.
Now comes the part that takes forever-the chocolate molds! I highly suggest that you have multiple molds if you want to try these. It will go much faster that way!! I used a baby spoon to place the melted chocolate and spread an even coat into the soccer ball molds. Then into the freezer to let it set up. Back out of the freezer to add the caramel and cookie discs. Coat the bottom with more chocolate to close it off and pop it back into the freezer to finish setting up. When they were set, I turned the chocolates out of the mold to reveal these soccer cookie/candies.
They are my current favorites! They are sort of like having a chocolate version of the Twix bar! Delicious!
(Sorry about the chipping nail polish-mine doesn’t last very long, even the gel kind! But, I’ve been painting it turquoise every few days this whole month of October for Dysautonomia/Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) awareness month!! #makesomenoiseforturquoise)
A better shot of non-chipping turquoise
My beautiful POTSie soccer player. She may have been winded from her POTS, but she still did her best and I’m super proud!
Great season, Team Nicoletta’s! Thank you, Coach C and Nicoletta’s Italian Cafe!
🍎Apple Crisp Cookies
The same great taste of apple crisp in an easily portable, mess-free cookie!
🍎Apple Crisp Cookies 🍎
Recipe:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter at room temperature.
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons yogurt (I used salted caramel Greek yogurt)
1/4 cup apple cider
1 large apple (I used Spygold)
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups oats
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Peel, core, and small dice the apple. Place apple pieces on a microwave-safe plate and cook for 2 minutes to soften apples. Let cool.
- In a medium bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar.
- Stir in the cooled apple, the yogurt, and the apple cider.
- Add the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and oats and combine.
- Drop by scoop or teaspoonful onto a baking sheet (I line mine with parchment paper first).
- Bake for 8-10minutes. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- Store cooled cookies in an airtight storage bag or container. These cookies freeze well.
🍎🍎🍎🍎Happy Fall!🍎🍎🍎🍎
🍎Autumn = Apples🍎
I have said it before, but I will say it again-I love Fall! The crisp morning air, the changing of the leaves, hoodies and scarves, and of course apple picking! And what comes with apple picking? Aside from the family FUN tradition of picking apples together, comes the family YUM tradition of 🍎pies, 🍎crisps, 🍎bars, 🍎sauce, 🍎 chips, 🍎 Ooey Gooey Butter Cake, 🍎breads, 🍎sauce cookies.. all things apple!
🍎🍏 Windy Hill Orchards 🍏🍎
My first 🍎 creation of the season is this twist on apple crisp!
I used my tart pan for this delicious treat. I made up a cake mix from scratch (minus the wet ingredients), added some melted butter and pressed it into my pan. After baking it for about 5-7 minutes, I layered in my thinly sliced apples. A little drizzle of caramel sauce and a cinnamon oat crumb topping, and it was off to the oven to finish baking. The hardest part was waiting for it to cool (I don’t care for hot apples)!
Simply Nautical
Simply Nautical.
The bride wanted a simple cake with a touch of a nautical theme (the rope knot) and their color was navy.
5 tiers of white chocolate cake with raspberry filling and blue velvet with cream cheese filling, all with vanilla buttercream and covered in vanilla marshmallow fondant. This was probably the heaviest cake I have ever made! The bottom tier alone weighed more than the average 3 tier cake. I had to call upon help when it came time to deliver it (Thank you, Andrew!).
And as a surprise for the groom, the bride wanted a small cake to display some of his interests… like golfing, cigars, Fireball Whiskey, boating, and Chihuahuas. I have to say that I really didn’t think I could pull that one off. None of these things really went together… or did they! Thanks to my talented sister, Brandy, who dreamed up the idea to tie them all together, this little guy was born!
A Chihuahua adorned with a golf cap (complete with a dimpled golf ball for the pompom), holding a shot glass of Fireball Whiskey in one paw, and a cigar in the other, while floating in the water on a life preserver! And to ‘tie’ it together with the wedding cake, I bordered it with a rope and the same knot!
Congratulations to Brittany and Daniel!
~September 6, 2014~
Golf Gathering
Teddy Trossett tees off as family and friends gather in support. Some cupcakes and cookies I made for the gathering.
Chocolate Truffle-filled white chocolate golf balls on chocolate or vanilla cupcakes with piped buttercream grass.
Cookie platters: Lemon Poppyseed, Coconut, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal, and Sugar.
Baby Bump Cake
Before today, I had this silly notion. I told myself that I wouldn’t do one of those cakes-you know, the ones where the cake is part of a human body. I know, I’m strange. But it just didn’t seem right to me to be cutting a cake like that-like I was taking a slice of a person. Like faux cannibalism or something. Lol. Especially a baby bump cake.
However, there comes a time when every cakorator is asked to make such a cake. I was asked to make a baby bump cake for today. I figured that I wasn’t going to be the one cutting into it-I wasn’t even going to be there. And I do so love making cakes, so why not? After all, I like to make the client happy. And seeing how much they loved it made me happy, too! 
After seeing their reaction, I would gladly make another human cake. They loved it!
Congratulations to the mom–to–be!
Crunchy Sweet Potato Chips
I recently got a food dehydrator and decided to make some healthy snacks with it. For instance, I made some apple fruit leather and some strawberry fruit leather that the kiddos took for their school snacks. So easy to make and the best part was that I know exactly what was put into them. Tasty AND healthy!
So, when I was wandering through the produce section, I saw these big sweet potatoes and it got me thinking about crispy chips! Of course, thinking about sweet potato chips made me want them.
I sliced the sweet potatoes on the mandolin so they were very thin. 
Then I placed them on the dehydrator trays and sprinkled them with pink Himalayan sea salt. In to the dehydrator they went. 
155* for 3 hours and voila! Crispy sweet potato chips that are not only tasty, but healthy, too. 
There were so many sweet potato slices that they didn’t all fit on the dehydrator trays. What to do, what to do? How about using the microwave to make some of the chips?
The end result was a bit different. They browned up some, not such a pretty melon-orange color like the dehydrator chips. They were also a little cheesy, not so crispy.
In the end, I preferred the dehydrator chips, but 3 minutes in the microwave is so much faster if you’re in need of an immediate reward.
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