My birthday came and went this year without an explicitly planned Birthday Cake of Immortality (BCI). It was no real skin off my back to skip a year, as the 13-course Peking Duck banquet we threw at Red Star suited me just fine.

It was brought to my attention, however, that the party favours that we created for our 30 guests not only made Halloweentastic gourmet treats but met the standards for a Birthday Cake of Immortality (a metaphoric eating of flesh).

Now that you’re done looking at previous BCIs and have managed to push your nausea down, I’ll share our tricks for creating these less controversial, delicious, and seasonally appropriate hand pies filled with pumpkin and Medjool dates.

The Filling

Time to meander over to The Cooking Photographer. Laura’s recipe is the one that came up when I Googled “jack o’ lantern hand pie”, and after seeing her handiwork, no other hand pie would do for my guests.

Since I needed 4x the number of hand pies that Laura’s recipe made, I naturally made 4x the amount of filling that a single batch called for. Big mistake!

That’s all we needed per hand pie: a spoonful! One batch of filling was therefore more than enough to fill the 30 hand pies we made. It’s not too horrible if you make too much, though; stuff the remainder into a normal-sized pie and you’re all set.

The Dough

My well-tempered friend Eagranie Yuh came over last August and taught me her tried-and-true pie pastry technique, which she had, in turn, learned from Kate McDermott, Seattle baker extraordinaire.

To give both ladies their proper due, I will simply link to their respective articles. Click away!

• Kate on making a plain pie crust and how not to stick your hand in an oven (bonus: recipe source from 1898!)
• Eagranie’s treatise on using leaf lard in pie

These particular hand pies were commemorating a Peking Duck dinner so I veered slightly off-recipe, using a smidgen less of leaf lard and making up for it with a heaping tablespoon of duck fat.

Specialized Tools

Since Laura clearly described how to cut, fill, and bake the hand pies, I won’t bother reiterating the assembly instructions here. Instead, I’ll share a few tips that may save you time and ruined tester pies.

To get your pies looking like a right old jack o’ lantern, find your neighbourhood Williams Sonoma and get these babies:

We chose not to cut out a nose in our hand pies, as doing so would have left us little room around the edges to seal the sides of the pie together. Similarly, we opted for the mouths and eyes that balanced our desire to have the filling stick out with our need to keep the pies sealed.

I didn’t want to create a separate label in the party favour bag to say thank you, so spending $30 on this message cutter set just to be able to press “Thank You” on the back side of the pie was well worth it. Also rationalized that this set would come in handy for future occasions where I feel like writing graffiti on my desserts.

I thought they came out pretty well, don’t you?

My 30th birthday called for another Birthday Cake of Immortality project. This time, we decided to re-create Ghostbusters’ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in – of course – homemade marshmallow. No corners were cut: it was 3D with a little bit of help from my large cutting board to stay upright, with legs made of marshmallow fondant so not to collapse in an immediate heap during the party.

What you’ll need to make this yourself

Ingredients per marshmallow batch (2 batches made a week ahead)

We needed two batches of marshmallow for this project. The first gave us the first dome halves of the head and body plus Mr. Stay Puft’s hat. The second gave us the other halves of the head and body with enough leftover batter for a mini-muffin pan that would mold us cute little arm segments.

• 1/2 cup white/light corn syrup or the equivalent in liquid glucose
• 2 cups of granulated sugar
• Two separate 1/2 cup measurements of very (ice) cold water
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 2 egg whites
• 2.5 tablespoons of gelatin (~47.5mL)

Ingredients for marshmallow fondant (1 batch, split into several colours, made days ahead)

Since we needed a denser base for the legs of our marshmallow man, we decided to employ marshmallow fondant for the legs. We also reserved a bit of this fondant, tinged with the appropriate food colouring, to give us Stay Puft’s clothing and hat detail.

• 1 16 ounce bag of mini marshmallows
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 lbs confectioners’ or icing sugar (~8 cups)

Ingredients for royal icing (1 batch on Assembly Day)

We used royal icing to glue together all the body parts. In retrospect, we should have allowed the body to set in the freezer so that the icing froze or dried before we made the cake upright. Keep this in mind if you re-attempt this project.

• 3 ounces (pasteurized) egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 cups confectioners’ or icing sugar

Supplies

Most marshmallow recipes call for a 9×13 baking pan, resulting in about 96 cubes of 1″ marshmallow goodness. Since we were creating a monster, we had to figure out how to mold our creation into round shapes instead. This is the arsenal we wound up collecting for this project:

• Parchment paper
• 3 round bowls for molds – we used 2 stainless steel mixing bowl for head + body and a tiny ramekin for the hat
• Mini-muffin pan or piping bag for arm segment molds
• Piping bag for marshmallow fondant / icing detailing
• 2 large cutting boards
• A heckofalot of icing or confectioner’s sugar at the ready (at least one package, but have 2 just in case)
• Cooking spray or vegetable oil
• Vegetable shortening
• Stand mixer with balloon whisk attachment
• Hand mixer
• 3 quart saucepan
• Candy thermometer (one that works!) and knowledge of what the candy soft ball stage looks like

Making the marshmallow

Grease molds with oil and line bottom with parchment paper. Sprinkle crazily with icing sugar till it looks like a blanket of snow. Better to have more icing sugar than you need, because marshmallow is extremely sticky.

Pour 1/2 cup of ice cold water into your stand mixer’s bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin on top and let bloom while you move on to the next step.

In your (small to medium sized) saucepan, stir together the sugar, salt, corn syrup or glucose, and remaining cold water with a wooden spoon. Set element to low heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to medium and stop stirring, using a combination of your candy thermometer and cold water tests to stop at the point where your sugar syrup reaches the soft ball stage.

Don’t rely just on a thermometer reading like we did for our first batch. Your syrup should be clear, around the 230-240F mark depending on your altitude, and should form a pliant ball when dropped into cold water. You’ve gone way too far if your syrup turns colour.

Pour your sugar syrup over the bloomed gelatin. It’ll start to bubble and froth so just be careful not to get hit by the candy splatter.

Set your bowl into the stand mixer and gear your whisk up to high (8-10 on a Kitchenaid mixer), starting slowing from Stir and making your way up to high speeds in increments. This will let your super hot sugar cool without splattering you and your home with liquid that will burn your delicate spots.

Once up to speed, whip for approximately 6 minutes until your mixture has tripled in volume, turned marshmallow white, and starts to pull away from the edge of the mixing bowl like chewing gum from the underside of a desk.

During those 6 minutes, whip your egg whites in a separate bowl with your hand mixer until stiff peaks form. Don’t do this step any earlier or you’ll find that your egg whites will deflate or re-liquidate on you.

Slip the vanilla and whipped egg whites into your stand mixer batter and whip just long enough to incorporate the three together into one silky smooth batter of marshmallow yum. It should look like this:

Pour into your readied molds, using a spatula if you need to, but try not to get anything else in the batter — it’ll stick to everything!

If you have extra batter left over, pour it into a prepped rectangular baking pan sized small enough to contain the batter in an inch-high layer.

Dust with another generous layer of icing sugar and place in your fridge, uncovered, at least 3 hours or overnight.

When your molds are set, take out your icing sugar and an airtight container system that you can use to store your marshmallow in the fridge. Dip a small, sharp knife into icing sugar and pry the marshmallow out of the molds. Remove the parchment paper from your marshmallow and dust the areas that were in contact with the mold with more icing sugar. Close your container and place in your fridge until assembly. These babies will keep like this for up to one week.

Making the marshmallow fondant

I don’t have pictures of this process as Jason had followed this recipe and this two-part video tutorial from the comfort of his own home. Hayley, our resident fondant expert, did email the following steps and tips to share with you:

1. Prepare a workspace: Using shortening, grease a counter top or cutting board large enough to knead the fondant. Keep shortening accessible and in a container from which you can scoop out additional shortening with your fingers (I usually put about 1/2 c. in a small bowl).  Open your bag of icing sugar.
2. Put entire bag of marshmallows in a microwave-proof bowl and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of water.
3. Melt marshmallows in 20-30 second intervals, stirring between each.
4. When all the lumps are melted, start adding icing sugar in intervals, stirring gently to incorporate.
5. After several additions of icing sugar, the dough will become stiff enough to knead. You will use almost the entire bag of icing sugar.
6. You are now ready to start kneading. Grease your hands generously! Front and back of both hands plus in between your fingers.
7. Remove mixing spoon and with greased hands, begin kneading in the bowl until all the incing sugar from the bowl has been incorporated.
8. Remove dough from bowl and knead on greased cutting board/counter top, adding additional icing sugar as needed.
9. Keep your workspace well greased! Until your dough comes together, it will be very sticky and re-greasing of both your hands and kneading area will be necessary.
10. If your fondant looks tough or dry, add additional shortening.
11. Knead until the dough comes togther and is smooth in texture.

Your end product should be smooth and even in texture, very pliable but strong. Rub fondant with a small amount of shortening on both sides and cover well in plastic wrap until ready to use.

Game Day finishing touches

Piecing together the head and body

Prepare a batch of royal icing using this Alton Brown recipe or something similar. Spread a layer of icing on each of the flat sides of the 4 domes you have for the head and body. Form a large sphere for the body and a smaller sphere for the head.

Unlike what we did, place spheres uncovered in the fridge or freezer to let the icing harden as you assemble the rest of Mr. Stay Puft.

Marshmallow fondant and icing details

Based on the size of your body, warm up and shape flattened discs of marshmallow fondant to create 2 stacks of fondant legs, like above. We used 75% of our fondant batch to form 6 discs.

The rest of the fondant was then tinged generously with blue food colouring and rolled out into a 1/8 or 1/4″ thick layer, from which we cut a large rectangle for Stay Puft’s bib and a long stripe to wrap around the base of his hat. We draped the bib over the top of the body and piped lines of white royal icing to achieve his sailor panache.

We bought a tube  of brown gel and red icing paste to paint on eyes, a mouth, and the red ribbon at the bottom of the blue bib. You can do the same or choose different methods to attach these details to your marshmallow man.

Final assembly

On a cutting board wrapped in cling film, we attached the head, body, hat, and fondant legs to each other using the remaining royal icing. We pierced the body with two bamboo skewers where the arms should go, and stacked the arm segments from our mini-muffin molds onto the sticks until we achieved an arm length we liked. The final arm was not skewered through all the way and was stacked with the non-flat side out to imply ghostly fingershapes.

It’s Alive!

Throughout our house party where we served him up, Mr. Stay Puft remained horizontal on said cutting board until we were ready for dessert. We then used two cutting boards to get him upright for 5 minutes – long enough for our guests to take rounds of photos with him intact.

Before long, our hunger and the non-set state of our royal icing caused our dear marshmallow man to be pulled apart and knifed into 1″ segments, to be served on the cutting board along with graham crackers and mini-Rolos for a s’moretastic cake alternative for my 30th birthday.

To our immortality and amateur vampirism…the secret is eating babies.

I cannot fathom how this inside joke was ever spawned, nor do I fully understand their propensity towards the macabre, but ever since my cousins described this rite to me a few years ago, a spin-off ritual emerged. We’ve become known for holding baking days for Birthday Cakes of Immortality: concept cakes that do not cater to mainstream tastes.

Have you run away yet? No? Then take a look at the three cakes that we’ve concocted in my kitchen to date.

The Baby Cake

The first Birthday Cake of Immortality evolved out the discovery of my cousins’ birthday ritual. We pondered how to append the “eating babies” part of the toast to the act of drinking red wine without getting arrested for indecency, cannibalism, or worse. The answer: rounds of sponge cake layered with strawberry jam; flesh-coloured buttercream frosting; licorice umbilical cord. A friend belatedly suggested a strawberry Jell-o placenta.

Of the 5 witnesses present on this day, only myself and my cousin Leanne were able to dig in. Team member Jason could only stomach the cake bits that were shaved off the final product.

I know I will look back at this project after birthing our daughter in January and throw up in my mouth a little.

Operation ‘Operation’

My 29th birthday was the occasion for trying a cake that looked and acted like one of our favourite Milton Bradley board games. Dubbed Operation ‘Operation‘, the project called for a gigantic dessert in the shape of a man under surgery. Jason, Leanne, and I again formed the core cake-making team. Four red velvet cakes layered atop a large wooden cutting board formed the basis of the body and flesh-coloured fondant was rolled on top. Marshmallow fondant bones were precisely shaped by our guest contributor, Hayley.

We took this cake to Boneta and had a blast playing and ingesting this edible board game with our dinner guests and curious kitchen / front-of-the-house staff.

The Bacon Cake

Our latest project focussed on Leanne’s favourite ingredient: bacon. I had long wanted to make her a cake infused with pork — can you think of a better way to pay compliment to a Filipino?

The logistics fell into place as Leanne, Jason, and I toured the grocery store on Baking Day for inspiration. The cake base would be savoury rather than sweet, the cornbread recipe coming from the new cookbook by Memphis Blues (my cousin’s favourite eatery). Use of maple syrup and Pralines & Cream ice cream would eliminate the tedious task of making and applying frosting. My recently acquired skill of bacon weaving would be leveraged to top the cake with the star ingredient; the remaining bacon slices in the pack were crumbled up and inserted as layer filling along with a generous drench of maple syrup.

The outcome was divine. It was like breakfast, lunch, and dessert rolled into one.

Brainstorming for October 28th

The next Birthday Cake of Immortality will be for my birthday around the Halloween season. We’re currently at a loss for what to make, but there’s still time to think of something. Any ideas? Please share.

And you are more than welcome to participate in the next round…as a baker, eater, or both.

Jason Lau did, and he not only won the Tiny Bites Grand Prize, worth $450, but a batch of Winnipeg Folk Fest cookies to boot.

After I shared the good news with him yesterday, he pointed out a few things:

• He is already a happy Lifetime Member of Rouxbe and its Online Cooking School
• He is already getting a batch of Winnipeg Folk Fest cookies as part of the Grand Prize
• He’d like to bake a bundle of goodies himself to give away to a fellow Blogathon 2009 contributor.

That means that we have 3 more draws to do from our pool of donors!

Jason’s baked goodie bag

Congratulations to Mark B. for winning 3-4 varieties of baked treats from Jason Lau, who I can attest to be a baker extraordinaire. We’ll share pictures and recipes here once Jason passes them along.

Winnipeg Folk Fest cookie bag

Congratulations to Scott W. for winning a batch of Winnipeg Folk Fest cookies, baked by yours truly. I’ve posted the recipe for those of you that wishes to try it in your own kitchen.

One-year premium membership to Rouxbe

Congratulations to George F. for winning this 1-year premium pass to Rouxbe’s Online Cooking School, worth $99. We hope you get as much value out of it as Jason and I already do.

As she says, “These are not the official cookies of the Winnipeg Folk Fest, but they are so wholesome and hippy-like that they should be!”

I baked a batch of these to share with our fellow Blogathoners at The Workspace, and another batch will be made for the Tiny Bites Grand Prize (that you might win if you donate before 6am!)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup flax
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 1 1/4 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup grated coconut

Directions

1. Mix butter with sugars.
2. Add eggs, water & vanilla and mix well.
3. Add all the dry ingredients and stir.
4. Chill dough for 30 minutes.
5. Drop by the spoonful onto a greased baking sheet and bake at 350F for 12–15 minutes.

When done, they should be lightly browned and firm to the touch. Makes approximately 4 dozen cookies.

Giveaway alert!

Another unannounced giveaway for all you generous Blogathon 2009 donors. Please give a round of applause for Jason L., who has won a batch of these Winnipeg Folk Fest cookies, made with love by yours truly.

It’s not too late to get in your donation to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank and for the last 2 prizes left to draw: the $450 Tiny Bites Grand Prize and the Top Donor dinner for 2, traipsing through the culinary excellence of Blue Water Cafe, CinCin, and West!

The layout is split into two physically separated areas, soft serve ice-cream sundaes in the larger corner space, and hard, scooped ice cream in the smaller adjoining space. Also served are ice cream floats, malts, cookie ice cream sandwiches, splits, and a host of other related treats.

The store sign itself promotes “Olde Fashioned Ice Cream Concoctions” and I haven’t quite made up my mind whether the interior décor is ironic, an avant garde take on retro, or just confused. Old time charm is attempted to be blended with modern design ethics; LCD screen menus are side-by-side with stained glass light fixtures and signs in “Olde English” at the same time that wooden accents merge into bold granite fixtures. Although I have to admit, I am a fan of the uniforms. It’s the hat that does it, really.

I tried one of the more conservative sundaes on their menu. Yes, the drooling beast in the image below would be considered conservative in terms of number of toppings – vanilla soft serve ice cream rimmed with nuts, a Rogers’ chocolate medalion, and finished with caramel, whipped cream, and a marachino cherry.

My favourite part of the sundae was actually the nuts. But I’m an odd fellow who claims his tongue is abnormally full of too many sweet receptors. It wasn’t until after I was happily crunching on my sundae toppings that I noticed a sign advertising cookie ice cream sandwiches. That’s one childhood indulgence that has stayed with me all these years.

Looks like I’m going to have to make another trip to ye olde soda shoppe sooneth.

Rogers’ Chocolates Soda Shoppe
801 Government Street | Victoria
(250) 382-4249
Official Facebook Page

This article contains the third of several Early Bird Blogathon 2009 prize giveaways.

Don’t miss this opportunity to support the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. Read on or skip to the contest details.

My recent trip to Victoria with Coast Hotels & Resorts gave me the perfect opportunity to take on the mother of all high teas in British Columbia: the historic Empress Hotel.

At an eye-popping price tag of $55 (make that $67 for Royal Tea), I was a huge skeptic. Even if the tea really is fantastic and the dainties to die for, can a bunch of micro sandwiches, scones, and leaf-infused hot water really be worth all that money?

Read on and decide for yourself.

First impressions

Our group of six strolled around the ivy citadel that is the Fairmont Empress, already in awe of its Victorian glory. The room that housed us for tea was no less impressive: 

The Tea Lobby was elegant, airy, luxurious, and filled with the tinkling from a baby grand piano. I clapped my hands with glee when it became clear that he was playing the theme song from the Harry Potter films. Fittingly majestic and magical for a space such as this.

Full service afternoon tea

Have you ever gone to a tea house in Vancouver and had the equivalent of a butler see to your every need? If you have, you must tell me where, because this has only ever happened to me at the Empress.

Paul, our stately server, welcomed us with full pomp, pulling out the chairs for the ladies and placing our napkins on our seats as one would expect at a fine dining restaurant. His delivery of our strawberries and chantilly, presented elegantly in cut crystal goblets, was crisp and expedient. It was bettered only by his performance with our tea. Apparently, we were to have him wait on us completely, with our teapots set on its own table as he poured cup after cup for each of us. He even executed the cream and sugar himself on the first round.

He was so prepared to continue pouring our tea for us, having remembered what each of us had ordered, that we had to stop him in the middle of service after we decided to sample each other’s teas. After one incident where he poured Angela’s tea into the teacup she had already half-filled with Anny’s tea, Paul realized that we were quite happy to help ourselves. He consequently pulled back a bit, returning only occasionally to top up our cups and plop more cream and sugar into those that warranted it, confirming the tea we wanted from then on.

Giggle! All the attention made me feel like a princess.

A closer look at the food and drink

It may be partially due to the service and our surroundings, but by God, did I ever love the tea here!

I naturally had to try the The Empress Blend, made exclusively for the hotel with the express intention of pairing with the dainties of afternoon tea. Here’s what the menu told me about it:

Exclusive to The Fairmont Empress, this delightful blend boasts a bright coppery colour and takes milk exceedingly well. The Assam component lends a rich malty character, while the Kenyan black tea provides subtle floral hints. Kenyan green tea infuses a bright and lively aroma, complemented by the fruity, sprightly, and airy piquant flavours of Dimbula from Sri Lanka. Small amounts of Kemum draw the elements together with a burgundy depth and light oaky notes.

Half the table had the Empress Blend along with me, while others selected from the menu of eight delicious sounding options. We all seemed to prefer the ones we ordered for ourselves, and my tastings of the rest, while personally paling in comparison to the Empress Blend, were fragrant, colourful, and beautiful with the food that we had in front of us.

Anny evidently enjoyed her strawberries and chantilly, as did I.

The presentation of our dainties was utterly refined. My eyes were immediately drawn to the marbled chocolate tulips on the top tier and the smoked salmon pinwheels and mushroom crostini on the bottom one.

For me, the savouries were clearly a cut above your average afternoon tea fare. The plate popped with colour and contrast, and the flavours were bright and full without being overbearing. A lot of care seemed to be put in to ensure that these items would complement the teas (which still should be the star of the meal, no?). Best cucumber sandwich I’ve had; the horseradish in the spread was the magic ingredient, I think.

The scones were good but not anything to write home about. They weren’t a match for the scones that I still fondly recall from Secret Garden, but they are better than those from T Room & Bakery and Bacchus. Although I downed every bite, I do wish they had served us the crumpets instead (their cookbook has a recipe dating back over 100 years).

By the time we reached dessert, our group was pleasantly stuffed. I was barely capable of trying even a mouthful of each of the sweets on the top tier. Besides, I find that the desserts are often made much too sweet to be served with tea, so this part of the service was not one that I was particularly looking forward to.

Again, as you can see, Anny enjoyed whatever had been put in front of her. Others reported the deliciousness of the sweets, ultimately favouring the the most delicate ones due to their pairings with the tea. From my nibbles, I leaned towards the lemon tarts and the shortbread with crumbles of Earl Grey tea leaves baked in.

Our verdict

Is high tea at the Empress expensive? Hell, yes! All told, the six of us spent nearly $400 for an afternoon that didn’t even qualify as a full meal.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. Best afternoon tea experience I’ve had to date, in an atmosphere of opulence and a city of much Victorian charm.

Make your own Empress afternoon tea at home

Anyone that helps us give to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society for Blogathon 2009 has the opportunity to win a tin of The Empress’ Centennial Blend plus a copy of If Teapots Could Talk, which is filled with recipes for the food you see above and more. See full rules and eligibility below.

1. By day’s end on July 24, 2009, every $10 that you donate towards Tiny Bites’ Blogathon drive for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society grants you 1 entry to the draw. If you donate $50, that equals 5 entries for you and $50 x 3 = $150 worth of food for the people that the Food Bank helps. 
2. Please contact us about your donation and/or bookings before July 25th so that we can make sure you get all the entries that you deserve.
3. The winner will be announced at 4:30am on July 26, 2009, while I am on shift for Blogathon 2009.

Thank you for your donations and best of luck in winning this Early Bird prize!

I imagine this surprise was a thank you for the 3-course meal I slaved over the night before and have been planning for over a week.  Here are the recipes that inspired my menu along with the improvisations made along the way.

The Hamilton household’s Valentine’s Day menu for 2009

Crab meat, apple, and mango salad with cumin apple chips

• Salad recipe (Epicurious)
• Apple chips recipe (Epicurious)

I am not a fan of presentation that is difficult to eat.  The original recipe suggested a mille feuille layering of salad between giant slices of apple chip.  Instead, I opted to find the smallest red apples available on the market and stack the slices in a tower next to the salad (which were scooped into the half-shells of the mango used).  We ate our portions on a shared plate like we would nachos with salsa. An intimate way to kick-start a meal.

Beet-infused linguini with crab, grape tomatoes, garlic, and chili

• Original tagliatelle recipe (UKTV Food)

My hunt for a pasta roller in Vancouver did not produce results in time, so instead of making fresh tagliatelle stained scarlet with beet juice, I had to make do with “fresh” Olivieri linguini from the grocer downstairs.  Prelim tests with food colouring paste and gels prepped me for the fact that my pasta could only go pink with a 3 minute exposure.  When it was game time, I chopped up a beet and threw it into the salted pasta water rather than use non-natural dyes.  Besides, “beet-infused” sounds a hell of a lot better than “dyed with Spectrum Super Red 101210″.

I also had to give up the idea of tying the linguini into bundles of bows and cooking them that way.  Luckily, the pasta seemed amenable to being shaped into a heart – a pattern I replicated with the bits of Dungeness crab that I picked out from the finished pasta.  Pushed the grape tomatoes out to ring the dish, sprinkled parsley and squeezed the whole thing with some lemon, and a light, love-themed crab linguini was ready for consumption.

Red velvet cupcakes with cinnamon heart cookies

• Red velvet cupcake recipe (Epicurious)
• Cinnamon cookie recipe (Recipezaar)

I’m cutting it close for a submission to Nolwenn’s Cupcakes de l’amouuuur contest, but I hope this makes it in!  Car le concours à écrit en français au départ, voici un peu de français par hommage =)

This red velvet cupcake recipe is different from the one I used for my birthday cake last year, and I have to say that I prefer its lighter cocoa essence and more intense colour.  5 tablespoons of regular (watery) red food colouring was mixed with a few drops of Spectrum food colouring gel to achieve the scarlet I was going for.  The recipe makes just over 2 dozen cupcakes, so I baked the remainder in ramekins for the presentation I had in mind.

Cupcakes alone weren’t enough to finish this dessert; I also baked a dozen heart-shaped cinnamon cookies to spear into the ramekins. Replaced the typical vanilla frosting with softened french vanilla ice cream as requested by my husband.  The decadence of this dessert balanced the delicacy of the first two dishes nicely.

That was our Valentine’s Day.  Hope yours was just as lovely and sweet.

Did you know that the Tiny Bites sidebar displays micro blog posts using Twitter?

If you haven’t noticed it before, pay attention now, because I’m nearing my 1000th Twitter message (or “tweet”) and I’ve baked some goodies to mark the occasion.  They’ve *just* come out of the oven:

Would you like a dozen of these muffins this weekend? Do you live / work / play in downtown Vancouver, or will you be in the vicinity in the next few days? If you’re nodding, drooling, or both, here’s what to do:

Tiny Bites’ 1000th Tweet Contest Details

1. The publication of this blog post will auto-generate my 999th tweet. That’s when the fun begins.
2. Send me a message through Twitter between now (8pm) and midnight. Tell me why you’d like muffins this weekend. Don’t forget to include @tinybites in your message or I won’t see it!
3. Out of the responses I get between the contest period, I’ll randomly draw the winner of the muffin giveaway and announce it as my 1000th tweet.

Contest Conditions

1. You’ll probably need a Twitter account. =)
2. Your message must include @tinybites and have a timestamp between 8pm and 11:59pm on Saturday, February, 7, 2009 to be eligible for the draw.
3. You need to be available between now and Monday evening to have your muffins delivered to you. No one likes stale muffins.
4. Your meeting place to receive said muffins needs to be within Vancouver proper (downtown Vancouver, ideally).  Sorry suburbia, but my feet can only take me so far from my Yaletown abode.

Prize Details

The winner of the 1000th Tweet Muffin Giveaway will receive 6 blueberry and 6 Buddhaberry* muffins topped with streusel, baked by yours truly and stuffed to the brim with TLC.

Contest Update – midnight

7 Twitterers responded and the winner was announced.

Click to read each candidate’s qualifying entry:  @nolwennp, @carolbrowne, @eagranieyuh, @christinachoung, @jedmarc, @cecilialu, @fuzzydave.

The Base Muffin Recipe

• Recipe source: adapted from Betty Crocker Cookbook: Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today
• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Baking time: 20-25 minutes
• Yield: 12 muffins

For the streusel topping

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons butter, firm

For the muffin batter

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For blueberry muffins

• 1 cup fresh, canned (drained), or frozen blueberries

For cranberry & citrus muffins

• 1 tablespoon grated citrus peel
• 1 cup cranberry halves or 1/2 cup dried cranberries

Baking directions

1. Grease bottoms only of 12 medium muffin cups or line your muffin tray with baking cups.
2. Pulse all streusel topping ingredients in a food processor until crumbly.  No processor? Use a pastry blender or criss-cross with 2 knives until you achieve the same effect. Set streusel aside.
3. Beat egg in a large bowl with a fork or wire whisk. Whisk in the milk and the oil. [If you're adding citrus peel, whisk it in here.]
4. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Dump the mixture all at once into the bowl of wet ingredients and fold until the batter is just moistened. It’ll still be lumpy. That’s a good sign.
5. Fold in your blueberries, cranberries, or preferred fruit into the batter.
6. Heat your oven to 400F.
7. Using an ice cream scoop or large spoon, divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Sprinkle each with about 1 tablespoon of streusel.
8. Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.
9. If baked in greased pan, let stand about 5 mins in pan, then transfer muffins to wire rack to cool.  If baked in baking cups, immediately remove from pan to wire rack.

Good luck, everyone!

*What the heck is Buddhaberry?

It’s a term I made up to describe the ingredients I chose for this muffin variation.  Rather than do the typical cranberry and orange peel combo, I used the peel of a Buddha’s Hand, which is an unusual citrus I came across today at Choices and Urban Fare. I wanted to taste test it – if you win, you’ll get to as well!

Fellow wine enthusiast Karen G. rallied a group of us together at her home to showcase our baking prowess and exchange a dozen of our home baked goodies with all the participants.  If your arithmetic gears are already turning, yes, that did indeed require each attendee to churn out a whopping eight dozen treats for this affair.  Yikes!

Everyone’s contribution was so yummy that I asked the group’s permission to compile the recipes** into a Christmas cookbooklet, with a sidebar for the baker’s special notes and representative photos from yours truly.  Here it is in PDF format for you to enjoy.

Christmas Cookie Exchange 2008 Cookbooklet
(3.6 MB, PDF)

Below is a brief of what everyone made last week:

Lorretta made a batch of lovely peanut butter cookies.  One half was mixed in with white chocolate and coconut while the other contained cranberries.

Lori made a batch of no-bake, refrigerator bars crammed with cocoa, oatmeal, and coconut.

Crystal made a batch of brown sugar cookies that seem a breeze to make and a delight to nibble on.

Lucia made a great shortbread with pine nuts and fresh rosemary.

Nicole made ginger snap cookies wrapped like giant Christmas crackers.  Some were made with organic sugar (like my dozen) and others with normal sugar. There’s also some molasses in there – yum!

Katie broke the rules by making chocolate chip cookies (as with gingerbread cookies, chocolate chip was discouraged) but we were all glad that she did. Her take on the classic contained heaps of dark chocolate chips, Christmas-coloured M&Ms, and dried cranberries.

After making what I’ve dubbed the candy canes from hell last year, I decided to find something along the same theme that was a little more practical.  This year’s candy cane cookies were still a trial to shape and twist into dual-coloured hooks, but with a lot of help from my talented mother-in-law, who flew in that morning from Winnipeg, we got 8 dozen out of the oven in 2.5 hours…thanks Mom!

Our hostess with the mostest made almond biscotti dipped in white chocolate, with miniature cookie cutters attached to each bag as a parting gift.  The biscotti that we reserved for our private cookie jar are already gone, and I’m tempted to knock on Karen’s door to ask for more.

Want some cookies?

So here I am at home, staring in dismay at this plethora of fantastic cookies that we cannot possibly ingest before we leave for our 3 week trip to Asia.  They are too good not to be shared, so how about this: meet me this Friday and walk away with a sampler tin of Christmas cookies!

The Details:

Uva Wine Bar
900 Seymour Street | Downtown Vancouver
Friday, December 12, 2008
10am – 2pm (continental breakfast, lunch and espresso bar available throughout the day)
Look for me or for the table with a heapload of cookies

The Conditions:

Be the first one to serenade me with a Christmas jingle and this lovely poinsettia tin of cookies is yours!

For those of you that show up after the tin has been claimed, don’t fret.  The other tins are set aside for everyone to snack on, and I’ve thrown in some of the other holiday baking that we have in our pantry as bonus treats.

So enjoy these recipes and come on down on Friday to indulge in some Christmas baked goodness with me!

** To date, we have compiled 6 7 all 8 recipes represented at the exchange.  Many thanks to all of you for your patience and feedback while we finished amalgamating these recipes.