Oh, How Sweet it is To Be Loved

Love is in the air!

I LOVE this time of year. I know I am totally crazy for saying that right? Mother Nature has been pissed off for over three weeks, dumping snow on us every other day causing all types of chaos but I don’t really care because I still love the month of February!

Not only is it my birthday this coming weekend, but it’s Valentine’s Day! Louis and I don’t usually do too much for V-Day.. Last weekend we took a trip to NYC and spent two nights eating the finest foods and walking at least ten miles a day to sight-see and just revel in the excitement of the city!  That was supposed to be our Valentines Day gift to each other but this morning he impulsively told me to make reservations at Barcelona Wine Bar Saturday night for dinner.. What!! I am so spoiled! 

I love Valentine’s because it is the best time of year for baking! I have so much fun with cakes, cookies, cake pops all in lovely pinks and reds with decadent flavors such as red velvet cinnamon and chocolate raspberry.  I have many orders in the works for the next few months.. so I decided to get into the spirit a few days early by sharing some sugar cookies I did last weekend. 

These were for a Valentine’s Day themed baby shower! How adorable, right?  

The more I practice flooded cookies, the better I get for sure. I love doing it, but it certainly is labor intensive and requires so much patience! I don’t want to let them dry I just want to keep going!! 

Tonight I get to work on another fun order of cupcakes for a catering company who is putting on a Valentine’s Day beer tasting in Springfield, MA! Can’t wait to share!

Stay warm, people of New England! It may be snowy but love will keep you warm! 

-Elena

Victory Cookies

It was a sunny morning in Connecticut and I was getting dressed, filled of excitement.  We were getting ready to hop in the car and head to Boston for the Red Sox game.  I asked my mom what the weather would be like, and she said it should be warm and sunny, as the sun was shining in CT and assumed it would be in Boston too.  We drove to the game, only to find clouds, but no rain, so we proceeded into Fenway Park.  As the game started, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped.  My brother and I were freezing, wearing shorts and t-shirts, and my Dad kept taking us under the stands to get food to keep warm.  I remember wrapping the plastic bag from the pizza stand around my arms to keep warm.  It was freezing!  Eventually my Dad ran to the car and brought back a sheet and we both huddled under it, cheering for our favorite team.  It didn't matter how cold and miserable we were, because we were in the best place in the entire world.  I'll never forget that game!

My brother and I grew up at Fenway, literally.  My parents took me to my first game when I was 5 and we were going to games every two weeks or so.  My parents never cared if we were up late on a school night... Dad would call Mom and ask if we wanted to go because he got free tickets from Coca Cola, so off we went. Coke box, 600 Club, bleacher seats.. we sat in them all!  At the time, we lived only 20 minutes north of the city.  When we moved to Connecticut, it was harder to get free tickets but we still went regularly.  I have been a fan my entire life. 

 Fenway Park is my favorite place to be. You may get older, and the park may add new seats or more ads on the Green Monster, but the Fenway experience never changes.  The smell of The Sausage King's onions and peppers fill the air as you approach the stadium, and boys standing on milk crates try to sell the game's magazine for a few bucks.  You enter the stadium and it is bustling with people rushing around, getting pretzels and beer, trying to find their seats.  The stadium is old.  You dodge pillars in the middle of your path, the floor is uneven, the wooden seats are tiny and cramped but that is what makes it so great. There's 100 years of history in that place.

The Red Sox are different than any other team in baseball.  Being a Sox fan is like being a part of a giant family.  You see a stranger in the store with a Sox hat on, and you're instantly bonded. There is that sense of unity.  The Sox can make you the happiest person alive, or they can break your heart.  Luckily, I've seen them win 2 world series (hopefully 3!) in my lifetime.  Before 2004 they hadn't won in 86 years...There are fans who literally never saw them win one.  Heartbreaking!

So, here we are tonight playing for our spot in the 2013 World Series!  It is an exciting time to be a Boston fan! In the spirit, I decided to make some flooded cookies in Boston's honor! I am sort of becoming obsessed with flooded cookies.  It is becoming a problem because I don't know what to do with all the cookie cutters I keep ordering on Amazon.

I decided to go with a chocolate sugar cookie. This recipe is delicious, the cookies taste like brownie ends.. SO GOOD! So I started by whipping butter, sugar and cocoa powder and essentially made chocolate butter. I could have stopped here, because it was so delectable I wanted to toast a bagel and spread this on!

But I didn't. I proceeded with the cookies. I ordered some awesome Red Sox licensed cookie cutters on Amazon (help I am addicted, seriously) and then baked for 8 minutes. The results were thin little cookies that are surprisingly chewy but hard enough the withstand royal icing.  

So, I spent this fall Saturday piping my little heart out, decked out in my "We Own The East" shirt for good luck!

Whipped up some royal icing. You know royal icing is ready when it looks like this--Elmer's Glue! If it drizzles into the bown and disappears within 3 seconds, it's ready for flooding.

I started with baseballs, using the toothpick technique to create the stitching.  

The Boston "B" logo was my favorite! A challenging pattern to pipe but it really ties it all together.

And here's the finished product!! 

I am really happy with how they came out.  I am going to continue to work on my piping skills, to clean up my edging... But otherwise, I am excited to enjoy them with my boyfriend tonight while we watch the game, and package a few up for my coworker Pete who is a giant Red Sox fan! He called them "Victory Cookies"! Let's hope we come out on top tonight and win our ticket to the 2013 World Series!  Fear the Beards! GO SOX!

-Elena

The Floodgates Have Been Opened...

This week I finally completed something I have wanted to do for a very long time-- flooding cookies!

I have read so much about cookie flooding and royal icing and watched so many youtube videos and I am absolutely fascinated with these cookies! The possibilities are limited to the cookie cutters you have but after that, they are endless! So many colors, shapes, flavors... I was asked by a neighbor if I could make some sugar cookies for her son and daughter-in-law's "Gender Reveal" party this weekend, and of course I said "Sure I can do those!" No, Elena. You can't possibly know you can do them, you've never done them! BUT, I am an experimenter and my skills are becoming more refined so I went for it!

First, I had to create the dough. I used a recipe for a thicker sugar cookie, one that could withstand heavy royal icing.  Three cups of flour, 2 sticks of butter, some sugar, an egg and some extract is all it takes to get a nice crumbly dough. I decided on pure almond extract for a flavoring, as I think it is a more mature flavoring than the boring, old vanilla.  I wanted these things to smell mouthwatering.. and the dough was just that. Smelled SO GOOD. So I kneaded the dough and rolled it out and cut out some adorable shapes...

How cute are the onesies!!??! Then, I mentally tied my hands behing my back (for no other reason than to stop myself from shoving all this delicious, almondy, buttery dough into my mouth) and threw these suckers in the oven. 350 degrees for 9 minutes.

Boom. Done. Beautiful little rattles and bibs!

Now it was time for some royal icing. Royal icing is very heavy and thick, but it contains NO oil like a buttercream icing does, so it hardens like candy and is used for piping decorations and when watered down, for flooding! So I whipped some up. Meringue powder, some water, corn syrup (for shine) and some almond extract.

I used this to outline each cookie.  You need the heavy icing to keep the "flood" in the cookie! So you outline the cookie first, then take the rest of the icing and water it down to the consistency of Elmer's school glue.  Then I had to color it with my beautiful Atecco, water based icing colors.  So gorgeous.

 AAAAAANDDDD the flooding began! I flooded onesies.

I flooded rattles... baby elephants... I flooded bibs.. I flooded everything.

Flood Flood Flood. It's like playing with glue as a child in kindergarten. The onesies were just my favorite. In case you are wondering how I got the designs.. Once you flood the cookie, while it is still wet you drop in another color, then you can use a toothpick to swirl it or cut it to makes tye-dye or hearts!  I added some cute sugar pearls as buttons and some candy hearts as bows. It is always the fine details that really get people's attention.

And.. finished product! 

 

My lines are not perfect on the edge.. but other than that I am super happy with how they came out, especially being that this is my first time ever flooding. I will definitely do it again soon... I think I have created a monster here... the floodgates are open... let the cookie flooding obsession begin. 

-Elena