Fluffy Vanilla Goodness (Aka Vanilla Marshmallows)

First off, this isn't me recipe. I got it here. The only thing I change is I scrape and add real vanilla bean to the gelatin mixture.

But here are some photo's of what I did.

Making the gelatine mixture

(where i added a bit of vanilla extract and the scraped vanilla bean)

Adding the sugar, 1/2 C cold water, salt & corn syrup

Boiling to temperature

Pouring into gelatin & mixing

(it will take about ten minutes)

Keep mixing...looking better

This looks about right

Pour to set overnight

Yum!

You can (sort of) see the black dots that are delicious vanilla bean

Have fun! Enjoy! And more importantly Don't Burn Yourself!

Overly Sweet Christmas

So I have been baking and making all the day long. Mainly to get stuff out of the way for tomorrow, but some things are gifts for people as well. so I will give a run down of things I made today.

Apple Spice Pie:

Walnut Fudge:

The mix:

Finished:

Homemade Mounds

(We didn't have almonds so I added almond extract)

Cookies Galore:

Look, it's Annie as a cookie

I also made chocolate covered fiddle faddle, oh and I'm not even done. Still have cookies to make for my friends mom. It's been a long day.

Pumpkin Cake Truffles (An Experiment)

Occasionally I get really random ideas when it comes to food, then I of course have to make them.
Random idea this time: Pumpkin Cake Truffles.
It's essentially the same idea as cake balls. I made pumpkin cake, mixed it with cream cheese frosting and put it in the fridge to cool. While it cooled I filled cups with white chocolate.

This is how they turned out:

Not too bad =)

Baking the day away

I spent 9 hours yesterday helping my mom make edible presents for her co-workers.

We made for them:
- Caramel & Chocolate w/ Toffee Pretzel Sticks
- Caramel & Chocolate w/ White Chocolate Drizzle Pretzel Sticks
- Red Velvet Cake Balls
-Chocolate Drizzled Fiddle Faddle
-Chocolate Dipped Spiced Walnut Biscotti

Though all very simple to prepare it is all time consuming. Melting chocolate, decorating, remelting chocolate, preparing mixes, making frosting...I was exhausted

The pretzels:

Making cake balls:

The Frosting

After forming them:

Decorating them:

Biscotti:

Finally how we packaged the Fiddle Faddle:

I was going to write a lot more but I just wanted this up for now. It was a long day and my kitchen is still a horror scene.

Peppermint Swirl Bark

So this is me trying to get more into the holiday spirit, though I'm not a fan the food of the season sucks me in. Plus I'm making thins for an upcoming secret santa party.

I decided to make Peppermint Swirl Bark. Why swirl? Well normally when you see it there's a layer of dark chocolate and a layer of white, but I've never liked that. So I pour the dark chocolate, pour the white chocolate/peppermint mix over it then swirl the two together. I like the overall look much better.

It's just as delicious as the layered style.

Here's a bit of an insight to my Christmas decorating.

My black w/ orange light skull tree:

The Zombies&Toys ornament towards the top:

The Nightmare Before Christmas spider snowflakes I'll be hanging up:

The template for those can be found HERE

(Thanks to the Spooky Vegan for the post or I never would have seen these)

Cake or Death?

Why not both? Death by chocolate anyway. It was my friend Brandon's birthday the other day and I decided to make him a cake.  I never asked him a flavor or anything, he just mentioned the word "grave" and I already had an idea. So it's a chocolate cake with dark chocolate peanut butter & strawberry filling, with buttercream frosting and a dark chocolate ganache. Mwahahahahahaha

The cake itself is the chocolate cake found HERE

I wasn't sure what to do for a filling, I took some strawberry jam and reduced it down with some balsamic but it still wasn't what I wanted. Out of the randomness of my brain (and the randomness of my cabinets) I added some Dark Chocolate Peanut butter Spread and folded in some of the butter cream frosting.

The buttercream frosting is just a transitional one:
2 cups confectioners' sugar (Some people use 3)
1 cup (2 sticks) butter (At room temperature)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons whipping cream

Whisk together butter and sugar until well blended. Add in the vanilla and heavy cream and mix for a few more minutes, add more heavy cream depending on desired consistency.

Then I added a dark chocolate ganache. I headed 1/2 heavy cream and 2 tablespoons butter together in a saucepan. I poured it over 6oz dark chocolate chips and mixed until combined then poured it over the cake. You can mess around with your amounts, I just wanted a thicker ganache.


The end result? (with chocolate decorations I used molds to make)

That's all, just a quick post.

It also reminds me of this: