My Adventure With Marshmallow Fondant

***This is an old post moved here from my old blog.*** 

    I have always wanted to try my hand at decorating a cake with fondant. In fact, a few years ago, I bought some ready-made from the cake decorating isle and planned to use it for my daughter's birthday cake. I went online for some ideas and tips, then I started reading about the taste of this store-bought fondant. That worried me. I went to the kitchen, tore open the package, and pinched off a bit and tasted it. YUCK! It had a fake chemical taste to it.  I was NOT going to use that on my daughter's cake. I threw it in the garbage and made a traditional butter cream frosting instead. I put my fondant aspirations on hold.

    A couple of months ago, I was reading about a marshmallow fondant recipe on Allrecipes.com. Click here for the recipe. It didn't look too hard to make... and since it basically had vanilla, marshmallows, powdered sugar, and butter, it had to taste good, right? I decided to give it a shot for my youngest daughter's first birthday "smash cake".

    The marshmallow fondant was so easy to make! Sure, it was sticky for a while, but it was EASY! Did it taste good? YES! It was really sweet, but it was really good!

Sticky mixing!

Buttering up your hands for kneading is a MUST!

A nice ball of fondant! :-)   

Yup... the right tools sure would have helped!     

    I admit that I need a LOT more practice, and I am sure that the proper fondant tools would have helped. (AKA, buy a fondant roller instead of washing a can of diet Coke, greasing it up, and using  that as a rolling pin... Yes... I did it... I'd like to think of it as ingenuity... I really would....) But, it was fun! It was so easy to make, that I will definitely be playing with making something with fondant again!

    Besides, my daughter liked it, and that's what counts!

Susie's Pumpkin Roll

One of my favorite things about fall is PUMPKIN!
I love pumpkin cakes, pies, breads, cookies, latte's, cheesecake, etc.
One of my favorite things about pumpkin is PUMPKIN ROLL! YUM!
The first time I had a pumpkin roll was about 4 or 5 years ago from a shop in Apple Hill. It was sooo good!
I immediately went on the search for a recipe. I tried a couple, but none of them quite measured up. I went out on my own and through trial and error, I did it! My husband even likes it better than the one we bought!

I've made this pumpkin roll several times, every year since!
The one you see pictured, was made a bit smaller by dividing the batter into 2 pans. I served this one, sliced at my husband's, son's, & daughter's birthday bash brunch (yes... they all share a birthday)!
The other one, well... in an effort to ensure good quality control, we ate the night before!
Here's how you make it:

Soft Ginger Spice Cookies

'Tis the season for baking up some yummy spice cookies!
I really wanted to make some ginger spice cookies, but I was seriously lacking ingredients. I had no butter and no molasses, which are both pretty key ingredients in most ginger spice cookie recipes... believe me... I searched!
I didn't find a recipe that would fit in with the ingredients I had on hand and, did I mention? I really wanted to make some ginger spice cookies.
OK. I probably would have been happy with making any kind of cookie, so perhaps I should re-word that.
I really wanted to eat some ginger spice cookies.
That little fact played a huge role in coming up with this super yummy recipe!

I mixed up some ingredients... and some spices... and started baking. The dough was sticky to work with. I won't lie. It was kind of a mess. If I'd have had a bit more patients, I probably could have refrigerated it a while and it would have been a bit easier to work with. But no. I trudged on.

Once I was ready to bake the cookies, I put a couple in to see how they would do. They stayed puffed up and rounded. I needed to flatten them. By this time I was really getting impatient. I mean, don't get me wrong... I did eat the puffed up round ones... you know, quality control and all. But they were YUMMY and I wanted more!

I loaded my pan up with balls of dough, then I took a fork and dipped it in sugar and flattened the cookie dough a bit. You know, like you do with peanut butter cookies. I had to re-dip in sugar between each flattening because, like I said before, the dough was sticky. It worked ok, though. See?

They just aren't as pretty as I would have liked. It wasn't until I made a second batch a few days later (I told you they are yummy!) that a "duh" moment struck me. Dip the bottom of a glass in sugar and use it to flatten the dough. It worked much better. Just look at the picture at the top of this post.
Prettier, right?

If you have a sharp eye and can tell (despite my crummy photography skills), you'll notice that the cookies in the top photo are slightly lighter than the other photos. Let's just say that this is a forgiving cookie. I didn't realize that I had almost no brown sugar left. I had half of the recipe made and ready to go. Oops! I used what brown sugar I had and I made up the rest with regular ol' white sugar.  It worked pretty well! Sure, that batch lacked the richness that a brown sugar gives to a cookie, but if you didn't know it was supposed to be there, you wouldn't even be able to tell that something was missing.

While these cookies are perfectly tasty as is, I would love to try them with a glaze.
A cream cheese frosting glaze.
With a bit of orange zest mixed in.
Yum!

My family loves these cookies, and I hope yours will too! (Yes! Of course I am sharing the recipe!)

Snickerdoodle Cookies

You may have noticed that I am on a cookie kick lately.
What can I say... I LOVE cookies. My kids LOVE cookies. My husband LOVES cookies. I LOVE baking cookies.
So you know how fall and baking kind of go hand in hand?
Yeah... you might see a few cookie recipes here in the following weeks.
I already shared my family's favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies with you earlier this week.
Here is our favorite sugar cookie variety... SNICKERDOODLES!

 

They are yummy, chewy, and super easy to make!

Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

My family LOVES cookies!
Seriously.
Like an addiction.
It works out well, because cookies are one of my favorite things to bake!
I want to share our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe with you, along with a tip on making your cookies nice and soft and chewy.

Homemade "Cake Mix" Cookies

You know those yummy, soft, cake mix cookie recipes floating around the internet?
The ones that call for boxed cake mix and oil and eggs?
The ones that turn out soft and cakey-like, yet cookie-ish?
The super- easy ones?
Yeah, those!

Well, I wanted to make some one day, but I didn't have cake mix.
I could have easily just whipped up a regular ol' batch of yummy chocolate chip cookies, but, I really wanted the cake mix kind.

Here's what I came up with. (They were pretty darned yummy!)

Lemon Squares Recipe

I love lemon.
That is all.

Okay... that's not really all. I really do love lemon desserts, though. A couple of years ago, I researched a ton of lemon square recipes. Some were too sweet. Some were not sweet enough. Most didn't have enough lemon flavor. What was I to do?

Giving up was simply out of the question.
I fiddled around and made my own!

These lemon squares are sweet, but I think the sweetness balances out the super-lemony flavor. If you want a little less sweet, simply reduce the sugar a bit.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries (and recipe link-up)

I love the Spring! The weather is nicer, but still not too hot yet. The cherry blossom trees are in bloom. Everything starts to turn green again.
One of the very best things about Spring, though, is STRAWBERRIES!!!!
We love strawberries!
Some of the very best strawberries we've ever tasted come from an area near the Monterrey Bay in California. They are sweet, flavorful, juicy, and quite possibly the yummiest strawberries you'll ever taste! If you are ever driving through Watsonville, CA, then stop by a roadside stand and buy a basket... or a flat. Or if you are in Northern California, check out your local farmers market. We have gotten them from our local farmers market many times. Just ask where they are grown. And show up early- they sell out FAST!
You'll occasionally notice strawberries from Watsonville in stores, and while they are good, they just don't compare to the ones sold in the stands or the farmers markets.

My husband bought some strawberries from the store last week. They weren't from Watsonville. They were still good, though. Just not the best strawberries EVER. He also bought some dark chocolate chips and white chips. Yum! Chocolate Dipped Strawberries!!!

I'll share my Chocolate Dipped Strawberries recipe, and I would love it if you will link up your strawberry recipes, too!

Quick Mexican Chocolate Pudding Recipe

Mexican Hot Chocolate is one of my favorite drinks. There is just something about the blend of the spices together with the chocolate that I love.
...Mmmmm... Cinnamon and chocolate... *sigh*
Sorry! Where was I?
...Oh yeah...
The other day, I was about to make something chocolaty. I had some cocoa powder and cornstarch on hand, and I thought chocolate pudding would be yummy.
I really like a recipe from Allrecipes.com called  Hasty Chocolate Pudding. It's "hasty" because it's made in the microwave. I mean, come on... microwave pudding... how much easier can you get?
Then it hit me... why not make  Mexican Chocolate Pudding? Something that has the flavors of Mexican Hot Chocolate, but the creamy texture of pudding? Yes please!
So, I set out to make it happen... in the microwave!