sweet inspiration & fun baking ideas

I was in San Francisco this past weekend to help judge the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Adventure Contest. A day of eating sandwich cookie entries using Scharffen Berger chocolate and one of ten adventure ingredients. So much fun and so many cookies. Plus the winner is going to get twenty five thousand dollars. Hello. That’s a ton of sweet cookie dough. The winner will be announced in a few weeks. If you didn’t enter this time, I hope you will next year.

Now, I knew I would be eating a bunch of cookies on Sunday during the judging, but when I travel I like to try treats from sweet shops and such in the places I visit. Do you have this affliction, too? I mean I rarely go to bakeries at home, but when I hit the road … that’s another story. And on Saturday I almost overdosed on sweets. Have you ever been to the Ferry Building in San Francisco? Oh my gosh, such a fun place and so many amazing vendors and shops.

First stop was Ciao Bella Gelato. If I only ate one sweet when traveling it would definitely be ice cream. Ice cream. Ice cream. Ice cream. Or Gelato. Not sorbet though. Creamy yes. Icy no.

But in the case of the Ferry Building, they have so much more than just creamy treats to taste.

And once I started, I couldn’t stop.

This is slightly embarassing, but we’re all friends here.

Scharffen Berger had a little spot, so I grabbed a warm up for Sunday’s festivities with this dark chocolate sea salt bark.

El Porteño – I. Love. Their. Empanandas. Prosciutto and fontina cheese is by far my favorite. I first had them two years ago and oh man I was so happy they were still set up in the Ferry Building. Can’t get enough of these things.

Plus, they had alfajores – Argentine cookies sandwiched with dulce de leche … delish.

Black Jet Baking Company. I grabbed a super yummy brownie and one of their devil dogs which reminded me of a homemade oreo on steroids. I’ll be back.

Biscuit Bender. This was a fun place. And they have such a great name. I picked up a Mexican Hot Chocolate Biscuit and Breakfast Sausage for Sunday morning.

Up next … Miette. Oh, how I love thee. Let me eat the ways.

Your chocolate tart is amazing.

(P.S. All the bagged cookies and caramels were for friends … minus the bag of cookies I am eating right now as I type this. Those chocolate sables are hard to resist.) 

This chocolate macaron was my favorite sweet on Saturday…

… until I tried this Miette’s Mini Scharffen Berger cake on Monday. Oh My Gosh. So good and still moist after a couple of days. Look at that ganache. Often chocolate cake desserts don’t live up to how good they look, but this petite domed cake was just as incredible as it was beautiful. I’d definitely get this again.

So that’s a little tour of my treats from this weekend at the Ferry Building.

 

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And here’s a few stops I haven’t shared with you yet from the last couple of times I’ve visited San Fran.

Humphry Slocombe – an ice cream stop of course.

Butter Beer, Cinnamon Brittle, Secret Breakfast, Peanut Butter Curry, Cucumber Ice Milk and Sweet Summer Corn. You’ll be amused as much as you will be satisfied by their creative ice creams.

Craftsman & Wolves - This place definitely lived up to its reputation. But by the name, you’d never guess it was an amazing patisserie because it totally sounds like a steak house.

But instead it’s a place you can dine on perfect pastries.

Caramel chocolate pearl travel cake, pain au cochon, and a chocolate croissant stack. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Oh, Tartine. A must visit in San Francisco. So many pastries, breads, cakes and tarts to please.

This mini banana cream tart was superb and was probably the best thing I had that visit.

A flaky pastry coated in dark chocolate with caramel, pastry cream, and lightly sweetened cream. Try it.

Mr. & Mrs. Miscellaneous. Amazing ice cream and the absolute most adorable ice cream parlor name ever ever.

Try the Bourbon and caramel ice cream. whoah.

Chocolates anyone?

Schoggi is a beautiful shop with a stunning display of swiss chocolates. Plus they offer petite pastries and macarons, too. It was extremely difficult narrowing down my choices. They are all like pieces of art.

 

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And since we’ve been singling out San Francisco Treats, here are a few more that I’ve shared on the blog before, but I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place.

Bi-rite Creamery. Ice cream again. Go figure and go now and get the brown sugar with ginger caramel swirl. Cinnamon Snickerdoodle’s a winner too.

Pacific Puffs. Classic cream puffs. Perfect topped with powdered sugar or covered in a chocolate glaze.

We haven’t even mentioned cupcakes yet.

American Cupcake. These cotton candy cakes are just too cute.

And Kara’s Cupcakes – such yummy cupcakes and with several locations you’re in luck. This one in Ghiradelli Square was gorgeous. Loved the pink menu wall.

Back to Miette – They have cupcakes too … in addition to all the goodies I showed you at the beginning of this post. If you get a chance, visit the shop on Octavia Street. It is a real treat.

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Okay, those are all the places I’ve visited in San Francisco over the last few years .… I think.
Now, where to go next time?

If you live in or have visited San Francisco, what am I missing out on?
Doughnuts? Pies? Do tell.

What’s your dish on desserts?

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Happy Saturday and day before the Oscars. Whose gonna be watching Sunday night?

I wanted to re-share these fun sugar cookie statues I made a few years ago because I still get questions about them when the Academy Awards roll around. So I thought I’d do a quick update post to help if you think you’d like to make these one year for the film festivities.

The main question I get is “Where can I get the cutter to make those cookies for my Oscars party? Help!”

Well, I bought this one from Copper Gifts a while ago … and since then, the cutter is no longer available. Boo.

Good news though, they have another cutter that I think will work just fine.

This is the Mummy Cutter from their Halloween section.

Not as statuesque, but I think he’ll definitely do.

Just be careful when connecting the base since it’s not as wide as the one I originally used.

Here is the complete statue cookie how-to if you get a cutter and want to bookmark it for next year or another trophy party.

And if you want to make them totally last minute for tomorrow, get adventurous and use this template I drew for you from the one I have. Cut it out on a heavier paper card stock, lay it on your rolled cookie dough and carefully cut around it. Tedious but the final cookies will be the star of your party.

Or just make these easy chocolate comfort cookies and call it a day.

Either way, hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy!

A Handy Update: Check out the link in comment #7 and you can see how great Nicole’s cookies came out using the mummy cutter.

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S’mores Brownies.

Chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows all baked up in a fudgy, gooey brownie. What could be better?

It’s like having a campfire inside my oven.

I love a recipe that starts with chopped chocolate.

And ends in something like this.

The recipe for these is from one of my favorite cookbooks, Home Baked Comfort. At least favorite to look at anyway, because I’ve only made one other thing from it so far. But it’s one of the few books I have that I’d want to make almost everything in. Here’s the other recipe I tried out and love: Chewy Chocolate Meringues if you want to check them out. They are way good!

Melted chocolate is so pretty to me. So smooth, shiny, warm, and the beautiful beginning of these brownies.

Heat the chocolate with butter, whisk in sugars, add eggs, vanilla and salt.

And then sift in the flour and cocoa. Hello.

So, after I added the sugars, I realized I was going to need a bigger pot. But too late for that … no turning back.

So I carefully stirred it all together and added the crushed graham crackers to the mix before spreading in a pan.

Yummorama!

 

Then just top with marshmallows. I used 9 jumbo ones, but next time I think I’ll try regular size. Read the notes in the recipe below if you decide to make these. The giant amount of gooeyness from these seeped in and made the brownies take longer to bake.

But if you like gooey melt in your mouth brownies, you’ll love these.

Bake away.

And take a big bite.

Enjoy!

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I made mini and many cake pops for you this past weekend. I had this idea I wanted to try just using basic round pops and color to make a sweet little display. So I set out to dip enough cake pops to get the job done. That turned out to be 350 plus. Yikes. Not quite sure what I was thinking … Around number 70, I was really starting to reconsider. I thought … oh my gosh I have to make five times that many. But when I start something I can’t let it go until I get to the end and see how it works out. I know this project doesn’t help you much for this year, but I thought the heart display could totally work for a lot of other things besides Valentine’s Day.

So keep reading below for the how to… or check out my big “mini” giveaway at the end of this post. It’s a mini way for me to say Happy Valentine’s Day!

Okay, here we go.

You can’t tell in the picture, but these cake pops are tiny. Like Cake Dots instead of pops. So tiny that you use a toothpick to dip them with instead of a lollipop stick. Yes a toothpick. The cake balls are actually about the size of a penny. But they are small for a reason.

1. Regular size cake pops would take up a lot of table real estate.
2. The lollipop sticks would be much taller and people would have a harder time viewing the design from above.
3. I figured the proportions out so they would work on a pretty standard size piece of styrofoam to make it easier to recreate and transport.
4. I only had to make one cake. Score.
5. Mini is major cute.

I based the display design off of a template (see below) I made so that it works with a 12X18 inch or 12X20 inch sheet of styrofoam you can find in craft stores. Then I worked backwards to figure out how many cake pops you’d need to make the the shape look right. Once I had that, I knew how big to make the cake pops. Or how little.

• Crumble cake and mix with frosting
• Roll into tiny cake balls. (basic cake pop instructions here) You can use the circles on the downloadable template as a guide for the right size. They should be slightly smaller than the circle so that when you add the coating they will still fit together nicely.
• Keep rolling and rolling until you have enough
• Dip a toothpick into melted coating and then insert into a chilled cake ball.
• Dip entire cake pop into the coating and then sprinkle with non-pareils. They are tiny and will be the best size for these tiny treats.
• Place in styrofoam to dry.

A couple of things to note.

• Use a small plastic bowl to melt the coating. You can work with a smaller amount of coating when dipping. Just melt the coating in batches as you go. Then you can take breaks and watch the Walking Dead marathon on AMC in between.
• Buy more than one sheet of styrofoam. You’ll need more room than the display size so they aren’t touching each other as they dry.
• Invite a friend over to help you. It will go faster and maybe your neck won’t hurt like mine does right now from looking down and dipping for so long.
• I’d try Mercken’s candy coating for this project. It melts nice and fluid – you don’t want thick coating on these. It will add too much volume.
• I’ve probably discouraged you already. Kind of like I felt as I was starting making these. But I had a feeling they’d be cute when I finished so I went on… like I’m going to do now. And by the way, these completely make me giddy when I see them finished on the table (looking at them now), so I guess it was worth it. And it will definitely be worth it if one of you decides to try it out some day. Hope you do… with a friend.

Use multi-color non-pareils for the second candy coating color. Minus the static.

Super cute.

When all the pops are done, prepare your display.

• Wrap a 12X18 inch or 12X20 inch sheet of styrofoam with paper. I used the 19X25 inch single sheets you purchase at the craft store. You could also use wrapping paper though.
• Packing tape worked best on the styrofoam to tape the paper down.
• Print out the template provided centered on an 11X17 sheet of paper at somewhere like Kinko’s. The design is created for a 12X18 surface area but it is set up on 11X17 paper since that is a standard size to print. You’ll notice that some of the circles on the template are getting cropped off when they print, but that’s okay, you’ll have enough information to figure out where the pops on the perimeter should go. I hope that makes sense.
• Tape the template down temporarily and use a safety pin to poke holes into the paper.
• Remove the template and start arranging the cake pops using the template as a guide. Start in the middle and work your way out from the center. More than likely some of your pops will be bigger than you think and if you start at one end, left to right, they will start to tilt too much to make room as you place them in position. But if you start in the center, they will angle out equally all the way around. Again I hope that makes sense.

Full of heart.

But you can also rearrange them for a different look …

And spread a little love…

… Or some sweet hugs and kisses.

Here are the 11X17 inch templates for each.

And because I love you guys and all things mini, here’s a little giveaway for you.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

• To enter, just leave a comment on this post and tell me who your Valentine is, what your plans are (or were) for the fourteenth or just say hi.
• Deadline to enter is Sunday, February 17th at 7:00 p.m. ET. Sorry, Time’s Up. Winner Announced below.
• One winner will be chosen at random and announced sometime Sunday evening on this post.
• Winner will receive a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad mini.

Good Luck.

We have a winner! YAY!

Congratulations to Brenda! Hope you and your Peanut Butter Man enjoy the mini iPad!

Giveaway sponsored by me.

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Candy Hearts. These don’t just make cute little ears for puppy dog cupcakes, they can also be used to make perfect little bows.

Bows on top of pretty present cake pops for instance.

When I posted those candy hearts last week, it made me think of these sweet little presents.

They are actually a project in my Cake Pops Holidays book. I thought I’d share the how to with you for those that don’t have the book … yet. ; )

The white candy coating and especially the red candy hearts make them totally work for Valentine’s Day. If I had used red and green for the boxes in the book, not so much.

But these can work … especially if you add some cute little tags to the lollipop sticks.

In the book I used tags that look like gift tags for presents. So, I thought I’d give you some tags to coordinate if you wanted to give some sweet love for the fourteenth, too.

Download the tags and use them with a 1 7/8 inch paper punch for cake pops or make cupcake toppers with them, too.

Happy Valentine’s Day Tags
Conversation Hearts Tags – red
Conversation Hearts Tags – pastel (not shown)

And below is the in depth how-to for these. Have fun!

 

Enjoy!

 

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