I found the most adorable little baking supply store!

And it's no more than 10-15 minutes from my house! She doesn't seem to have her own website but I did find this link to her store on a Henderson, NV website.


Tempting Treasures by Jan

She had tons of stuff I can't even find at Michael's or JoAnns. And I much rather support a small local business, than big corporations, anyways! She was sweet as can be, and I will most definitely shop there again. I even found disco dust! Jan said it's been hard to order since X-mas (probably due to all the hyp on various cookie blogs. Can't wait to use it. Also found a cool flower cookie cutter, which makes a hole in the middle. I got some icing colors too, but here is a picture of the neat stuff I found:


From left to right: Pink disco dust, Silver-y disco dust, Pastel Dragees, Oyster Dragees, Flower cookie cutter, Tulip cookie cutter, Silver dragees.

A Danish Apple Crumble, Made By a Swede in America...

I have made this recipe hundreds of times and never gotten a bad result. (although the edges DID get a bit burnt, because the American gas stoves are different than my previous Swedish electric one. Still awesomely good!)

It's an old Danish recipe, and meant to be baked in a cast iron skillet, but I just use Pyrex glass pans. I first tried it when I worked as a nanny in Sweden, after high school and fell in love with the simplicity of the recipe, and the hard, yet chewy crust. 

I use a cold Swedish vanilla sauce but creamy vanilla ice cream works really well too. After baking it, let it sit for a while before serving, to make the crumble chewy and yummy. You can microwave left overs, but I like to keep them in the pan and heat it back up in the oven for more chewy goodness.

Cut the apples into wedges and arrage in your pan. I normally use a 9" x 13" pan but only had three apples to work with, so I used a smaller one this time. Generously sprinkle cinnamon on top of the apples.

Crumble the 'dough' on top, making sure it's all covered nicely. The towel underneath is hand-woven by my late grandmother.

Serve with cold vanilla sauce (this one's out of a box from Sweden) or vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

Skaidrite's Apple Crumble

Heat oven to 425F

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

2 sticks + 1 tbs butter or margarine

1 3/4 cup flour

5-6 sour apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges.

Mix sugar and butter until well blended, with hand mixer. Add flour and blend until dough forms small lumps. Let it chill while preparing your apples. Arrange apples in an ungreased 9" x 13" pan. Sprinkle cinnamon on top of apples. Crumble the dough over apples, covering the entire surface. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let it sit for about 10-15 minutes before serving.

Be still, my heart!

I'm sitting here with Cox's tech support, trying to get my email to work, and figured I'd write a blog entry in the meantime.

I finally got around to making Valentine's cookies, on the 14th! Did some early in the morning, and had to stop and head to work to help out for a while. Then I finished the batch at night. Work was blessed with most of them the day after Valentine's and the family got some of them the day of.

I completely stole the idea from Glorious Treats but I used sugar cookies instead of chocolate. I think they are adorable. Even the district visual from L.A. was impressed.

Well, THAT was a learning session...

I have waited for Friday, Feb 11th for MONTHS. SO excited about Gnomeo and Juliet, the animated movie. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a gnome cookie cutter - THIS ONE from BakeItPretty.com. I baked gorgeous gnomes the other day and set out to decorate them yesterday. Epic fail. I learned the following:

1) Do not decorate right before you have to get ready for work. Baking/especially decorating does take some time, and the final masterpiece isn't much of a masterpiece when rushing.

2) Buy TONS of couplers and tips; you'll need one per color and a few extra when they roll behind your stove or elsewhere non-reachable.

3) If your royal icing is too hard, it doesn't flood whatsoever and the spreading you'll do with a tooth pic becomes uneven and ugly.

4) If your royal icing is too runny, it'll get streaky, run over the edge of the piped edge icing, and it'll also drip onto the almost-good-enough-to-take-pics-of-cookies you've already made.

5) Zip-lock bags work almost as well as real decorating bags, but they tend to leak around the coupler because they are thinner. Still, a good substitute if you find yourself out of decorating bags.

6) Adding water to the icing you already have in your bag is not a good idea. Very messy, especially if you add TOO much water.

This is what the sad mushroom looked like, with too runny icing. He's meant to look like Shroom, from the movie.

 

The white icing was too hard and didn't flood nicely into the corners and edges and the blue icing is obviously too runny and not well blended (see lesson 4 and 6!)

But, the best lesson of all:

7) They were just as yummy to eat and the hubby and the kids loved them just the same. Awh! I guess it IS the inside that counts, after all!

Footballs and.... footballs!

What else to make for the most American 'holiday', but footballs? I wanted to buy the whole pack of football-related paraphenalia at Hobby Lobby but never made it there in time for the big game. I have tons of round cutters, and with the help of a pair of pliers, I made my own football shaped cookie cutter.

I learned that brown is hard to make, it didn't turn out as dark as I expected but it worked well for this project. I used up my last Royal icing, making the brown part, and didn't want to make an whole new batch, so I used melted candy coating for the white stitches and stripes.

And of course I had to make cakeball-footballs! This year I didn't do the Oreo truffles. I did a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Yum!

Blogging, lately

I used to love reading blogs for inspiration and recipes. There were always new ideas posted frequently. But it seems like many bloggers are getting too wrapped up in give-aways, their sponsored trips and the product IN their recipes instead of the product OF their recipes. Maybe I'm just jealous... I just don't wanna see blatant product placement whereever I go. I HAVE found lots of new baking blogs though, by amateurs who all make AMAZING cookie creations. They are now, one by one, replacing the original blogs I used to love.