Rainbow Cookies

I am way overdue with this post about my Rainbow cookies that I made for Easter, but you know how this is….work, kids, family life, and other stuff got in the way, as it always does, but here it is now.

I love everything colorful and bright lately, so it was sort of given that I will decorate my sugar cookies accordingly this time. I won’t say that it was not time-consuming, because it took time and preparation to have so many colors of icing ready, but just look at them, doesn’t it worth it? 

Ingredients:

For the Cookies:

-3 cups self raising flour

-1 cup white sugar (I used Caster sugar)

-250 g salted butter, cold & cut into small chunks

-1 egg

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-zest and juice of 1 lemon

For the Frosting:

There are so so many cookie icing recipes out there, find the one that speaks to you the most. Some will use in addition egg whites, some will use tartar powder, some will only use icing sugar and water…..

-icing sugar sugar

-1 tablespoon lemon juice or vanilla extract or any other flavourings

-food coloring

-water

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large mixing bowl add the sugar and lemon zest. Use your hands to work the zest into the sugar, releasing the oils. This smells so good!!!

Add the butter, and use an electric mixer to cream until somewhat fluffy. Since the butter is cold and not softened, it won’t get too fluffy…..Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon juice and mix until creamy and well mixed.

Add the flour and mix on low speed until combined, it will be crumbly.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough comes together. Now, if you want to do it like me, just cut it into 4 parts and roll them out separately before you put it in the fridge for the night, but at least 6 hours.

Bake each batch 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then move to a cooling rack to cool down completely before you move on the next stage of decorating. I have waited until the next day, so basically for me it took a whole weekend to make these cookie.

Have the sprinkles ready and sprinkle over your icing while it’s still wet to make sure they stick. When you prepare your different colored icing batches, use cling film to cover when not in use to avoind hardening. Once you decorate your cookies, the icing will get dry and hard quite quickly.

I also made a few other shapes along with the egg-shaped rainbow cookies, and some bunnies without icing but stacked two and two together and filled them with Nutella. Yummy!

Pretty in Pink -Valentine’s Day Treats

Not making a cake this Valentine’s Day, instead, we opted to bake pretty heart cookies and decorated pretzels in different shades of pink.

To achieve this look, we used pink and white candy melts, dipped the pretzels in them, then sprinkled pink and red Thousands. I popped them into the fridge for a few minutes to set the chocolate when they were ready before I sprayed edible glitter spray all over them to add more shine to them.

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It is for the first time that I am fully pleased with how my sugar cookies turned out, can you believe it? I am so so so happy with the result, and I will do it like this every time from now on. The secret?

Make the cookie dough the night before, and leave it in the fridge overnight. I went even further with it, I divided my dough into four equal parts, rolled out all four in between two sheets of baking paper each, then stacked them on top of each other leaving the baking paper in between each, and THIS is how I put it in the fridge. This way, the next day when my girls and I were ready for baking, I just pulled out one ready-rolled sheet of dough and just cut them and put them on a baking tray. While they were baking, the rest of the dough was still resting in the fridge.

Ingredients:

For the Cookies:

-3 cups self raising flour

-1 cup white sugar (I used Caster sugar)

-250 g salted butter, cold & cut into small chunks

-1 egg

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-zest and juice of 1 lemon

For the Frosting:

-500 g Mascarpone cream cheese

-12 tablespoons of butter, softened

-2-3 cups powdered sugar

-2-3 tablespoons freeze dried raspberry powder (I ordered this on Amazon)

-1 tablespoon lemon juice

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Method:

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large mixing bowl add the sugar and lemon zest. Use your hands to work the zest into the sugar, releasing the oils. This smells so good!!!

Add the butter, and use an electric mixer to cream until somewhat fluffy. Since the butter is cold and not softened, it won’t get too fluffy…..Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon juice and mix until creamy and well mixed.

Add the flour and mix on low speed until combined, it will be crumbly.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough comes together. Now, if you want to do it like me, just cut it into 4 parts and roll them out separately before you put it in the fridge for the night, but at least 6 hours.

Bake each batch 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then move to a cooling rack.

Icing the cookies:

Cream together the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer until smooth. Add lemon juice and the powdered sugar, one cup at a time until fluffy and creamy.

I wanted my cookies to have a few different shades of pink, therefor I divided the frosting in four cups before I colored them. The first cup was left white. I added one teaspoon of Raspberry powder to one of the cups, which became the darkest pink. I was careful to add much less Raspberry powder to the other two cups of frosting. Since the darkest pink contained the most Raspberry powder, these cookies tasted differently compared to the ones iced with the white frosting. The more the Raspberry powder, the stronger the taste 🙂

We left a batch of cookies without any frosting, becaue my daughter wanted to gift her friends for Valentines. These cookies taste very nice on their own, the vanilla and lemon zest are enough to make them delicious.

No bake Matcha Vanilla Cheesecake

We love cheesecake in this house, pretty much all kinds. It’s creamy, light doesn’t require many ingredients, and no need to bake. There are many recipes which are baked, but I usually make no-bake cheesecakes, we like them more.

I have used Matcha green tea powder in cakes before, but every time I made a different variation. This time I used shortbread cookies and vanilla to reach a different flavor.

Ingredients:

300 g shortbread cookies

90 ml unsalted melted butter

600 ml double cream

500 g Mascarpone cream cheese

Icing sugar (start with 2 Tbsp, and add more if you want it sweeter)

2 tsp Vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

2 Tbsp fine quality Matcha green tea powder

Green food coloring (optional)

Method:

Crush the shortbread cookies in a food processor. Stir in the melted butter, and divide the biscuit crumbs equally in a mini cheesecake pan. Alternatively, you can make these in a regular muffin pan using paper cases, or one large round cheesecake. The mini cheesecake pan that I have doesn’t need paper lining because the base of each individual hole is loose and the cheesecakes can be lifted out without being damaged when they are ready to be served.

When you scooped the crumbs in the holes, press down firmly with the back of o spoon and put the pan in the fridge for an hour to chill.

Using a large mixing bowl, cream together the Mascarpone with icing sugar, salt, vanilla, Matcha powder, and add the double cream until you get a smooth and even consistency. Add the green coloring at this point if you are using any.

Using a piping bag, divide the cream mixture evenly on top of the chilled shortbread crumbs and smooth the top with a small cake spatula.

Place the pan back in the fridge overnight or at least 6 hours before serving.

I decorated my mini cheesecakes with papercraft flowers.

Coffee lovers, THIS is for you!

If you love coffee and the taste of coffee, you came to the right place. I am very much a coffee lover, and from time to time I find myself craving for more apart from my daily coffee intake in my favourite mug. That’s when I usually make a coffee cake.

This cake is so satisfiying on every level, and bonus was that my kids didn’t really fancy it, so I could enjoy pretty much on my own.

I decorated this cake with Cappuccino flavour waffle rolls. I would mention though that the waffles lost their crunchyness by the next day because they absorbed moisture from the filling. So, if you want them to stay crunchy and fresh, you have to eat soon after finishing this cake. Alternatively, you can skip this step and don’t decorate your cake with it at all, just serve it as a side treat.

Ingredients:

5 Tbsp flour

5 Tbsp brown sugar

5 eggs, separated

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

a handful of chopped walnuts

Filling :

600 ml double cream

150 g coffee flavor chocolate

I pack Cappucino flavor waffle roles (optional)

Method: Prepare the filling cream for this cake one day ahead. Warm 600 ml double cream in a pan on the stove and stir in the chocolate broken into pieces. Stir until melts, don’t let the cream boil! When the chocolate is melted, place it on a cool surface to cool, then put it in the fridge for the whole night to chill, but at least 6 hours.

In a large bowl beat the egg whites with the sugar and salt on high speed until you get a shiny and firm consistency. You can hold the bowl upside down and the cream will stay put, that’s the hardness you want to achieve. Gradually, add the egg yolks one at a time, adjust the mixer to medium speed while beating. Add the vanilla extract, too.

Mix the salt and baking powder with the flour. Using only a large spoon, adding one spoon at a time, carefully fold in the flour mixture in the egg cream in a way that it doesn’t brake it. Using the electrical mixer is not recommended at this stage anymore, but if you do, use it at the lower speed and only for as long as the flour is all combined. Gently fold in the walnuts too.

I baked 4 separate layers for this cake. This way you spare yourself from cutting later.

After all the layers have cooled, whip the cream and fill in the cake. I put aside enough filling to pipe resettets on top of my cake.

Ischler

This is a traditional Christmas cookie originally made in Austria ever since 1849. It has different variations, I made a classical which means two soft cookies glued together with apricot jam and coated with dark chocolate.

My oldest daughter baked this batch, then I did the chocolate coating and decorating. The thing with these cute little cookies is that they take some time to do all the preparations and baking + assembling, then when they are finally ready to eat, they are gone in minutes because they’re so good!

I had a bit of fun making the Christmas trees from ice cream cones using green candy melts and white sugar sprinkles.

Also, I made the silver snowflakes from melted chocolate drawing them on parchment paper, then let them cool in the fridge. I sprayed edible silver paint over the snowflakes just before placing them on top of the cookies.

Off…I started writing the recipe then lost all the content and with the new WordPress changes, I can’t get my head around it. I have been strugling with this new version for the last couple of times too, and I find it odd and makes me NOT want to use it anymore…. I will have to leave it as it is for now, and try to come back at another time to edit my post with the recipe.

Marry Christmas to All my followers!

Best Carrot Cake Ever!

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Hands down, I just found THE best carrot cake recipe there is to find! I have tried many recipes so far, and this one has to be the queen of all. It so happened that I took a brake from eating for a week and I was only drinking fruit and vegetable juices, and to keep myself away from food I was watching cooking channels on YouTube. And it worked! Plus, I came across some delicious new recipes .and that’s how I found https://divascancook.com/easy-moist-carrot-cake-recipe/.

I followed the recipe for the cake and I baked cupcakes, but I decided to make my favourite Cinnamon Cream Cheese frosting, because I simply don’t like buttercream, and my Cream Cheese is absolutely soft, light and pure heaven. The other thing I changed is that I added about 100 g toasted pecans to the batter.

Ingredients for the frosting of you decide to follow me:

600 ml double cream

250 g Mascarpone Cream Cheese

Icing sugar (to taste)

Ground cinnamon (to taste, you go with 1 tsp at forst, then add more if you want it stronger)

Pinch of salt

Method:

Whip the Mascarpone in a large bowl using an electric mixer and gradually add the double cream and sugar, salt and cinnamon. Mix until you get a nice velvety piping consistency, but don’t over mix it. You don;t want a hard and stiff forsting.

Halloween Sugar Cookies

Last week we made a batch of sugar cookies, and they were so good, that by the time I got around to decorate them, I found that my stash of undecorated biscuits mysteriously decreased in number over the night….must have been those wicked witches eating my cookies or the ghosts.

The recipe I used for this I found on this website, and it’s pretty delicious, you may want to give it a go too: https://sweetphi.com/sugar-cut-cookies-actually-hold-shape/

I used colored fondant to decorate my cookies because it takes less time than piping royal icing and it’s also softer.

Curly Raspberry Cheesecake

I am saying goodby to Summer with this yummy cheesecake. It’s the time of the year I am trying to hold on the most every year. I will admit that I am a Summer girl and always been, and always will be. Sure, I love the colours of fall and the smell of warm spices, but I will swap those for bright sunshine and long warm days in a second anytime! Seeing my kids playing outside for hours and getting dirty from all the barefoot walking is priceless. Having my tiny garden full of fragrant roses is my favourite view when I lay down in my hammock, and I am not particularly looking forward to the windy and dark short days of winter.

But back to this cake now. It is everything you wish for on a Summer afternoon. Creamy, fruity and light. I took one step further with the decoration this time. I made a face of melted chocolate and gave her pretty curly hair from fresh raspberries. The base of the cheesecake is digestive biscuits.

Ingredients:

300 g digested biscuits
80 g melted butter

250+250 g fresh raspberries
250 g Maascarpone cream cheese
300 ml double cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
icing sugar (2-3 Tbsp)
few drops of lemon juice squeezed from half a lemon

Method:

Crush the biscuits in a food processor. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs.Spoon the biscuit mixture into a cake tin and press it down, and level with the back of a spoon. Place it into the refrigerator for an hour to harden.
In the meantime, you can make the filling.Put the cream cheese in a large bowl and using an electric mixer, beat until smooth and fluffy. Add the icing sugar, as much as you wish. We don’t like it overly sweet, so I never put more than 3 tablespoons of icing sugar. Add the vanilla extract and lemon juice, again as much as you prefer to reach your desired flavour. Beat until combined. Pour the double cream and throw in the raspberries. Mix until the double cream is fully combined and the raspberries are crushed. Your filing mixture should be creamy and fluffy.
Take the cake tin with the biscuit base out from the fridge and spoon your filling on top of it. Level it with a spatula.

If you want to make a chocolate face, melt the white chocolate in the microwave. Place a piece of baking paper on a tray and pour the melted chocolate in the shape of a face. First, make the contour of the face, then fill it in with the rest of the chocolate. Smooth it with a cake spatula. Place it in the freezer to set hard. In the meantime melt some dark chocolate as well and place it in a piping bag with a tip that has a small hole at the end. The smaller the hole, the thinner your writing will be. When the white chocolate face is hard, drow the eyebrows, eyelashes, nose and lips. Put it back to the freezer to set hard. I coloured in the lips with red food colour.  When your face is all set and hard, place it on top of your cheesecake, and use 250 g fresh raspberries to make the curly hair around the face. I sprayed pink glitter over the raspberries to make a frosty effect.

Coconut Buttercream Biscuit Cake

 

My son asked for his favorite dessert in the form of a cake for his 10th birthday two weeks ago. Hm….. I had to think a little how I am going to transform it into a cake, but I think I did a pretty good job eventually, and he was over the moon and very pleased!

This dessert it’s called originally “Kokuszos Keksztekercs“, which in English would be “Coconut Biscuit Roll“. I tried to translate it as accurately as possible, but there is the twist of transforming the biscuit roll into a cake, so I finally came up with calling this cake a “Coconut Buttercream Biscuit Cake“.

This is a heavy (literary!) and dense buttercream cake, my son was absolutely thrilled and so were my other two kids. They really love the original recipe which is basically a roll, very much like the decoration on this cake, only bigger.

I am not a fan of buttercream cakes, but this I like, maybe because I like the version with rum more than the one without. Anyway, this cake is something that I’m sure that every Hungarian ate at least once in their lifetime, but most probably more than once. It so common and loved, mostly because it is so easy to make, even for children, especially that you can buy ready-made ground biscuits which is the main ingredient for this cake. Some people use coffee in this dessert, but my children like it without, so I left the coffee out from the recipe.

Ingredients:

-500 g digestive biscuits (finely grounded in the food processor)

-200 g + 200 g icing sugar (400 g in total)

-6 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-220 g unsalted butter (20 g+ 200 g)

-shredded coconut (1-2 Tbs)

-milk

-rum

Method:

In a large bowl, mix together the ground biscuits, 200 g icing sugar, cocoa powder, 20 g softened butter, rum (only if you don’t want to serve it to children, and you can put as much as you desire) and as much milk as you need to form a dough.

I divided my dough into 7 parts because I made 6 layers of cake and the last dough I used to make the decoration on the top of the cake. To make the cake layers I laid a sheet of parchment paper and rolled out all 6 parts of dough separately into a round circle and I used a round bowl to cut all layers into the same size. The last part of the dough I rolled into a square shape and spread over a little buttercream, then rolled up into a sausage, put it into the fridge to set for about 1 hour.

To make the filling, I whipped 200 g butter with 200 g icing sugar and the vanilla extract and shredded coconut, then spread each layer of the cake evenly. I left a tiny bit to cover the side of the cake. It’s your call how thick you want your cover layer, I like my cakes to look rustic, uneven, so I didn’t need too much.

When your cake is stacked and covered, place it in the fridge for at least 1 hour to set. When you are ready to serve, take out the roll first and cut it into slices to decorate your cake.