Cafe Quality Chocolate Cookie Base

This weekend I was in search of the best chocolate cookie base recipe that I could add my beloved reese's peanut butter chips to. Chocolate base cookies are always tricky and up until now all the cookie bases I've tried are either too crunchy, too cake-y, or just didn't taste all that great. This recipe is the perfect harmony between a chewy and crisp cookie. The edges have just enough crispness and the inside is just chewy enough that you don't get cookie crumbs all over your face when you dig in.

Chocolate Cookie Base

*Add in your favorite nuts, chocolate, or maybe even peanut chips to this base!

Ingredients

1 cup of butter, softened
1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 cups of all-purpose flour
2/3 cup of cocoa powder
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of salt

Directions

1. Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add in the eggs on at a time.
2. Sift together the rest of the ingredients. Stir into the butter mixture until combined.
3. Fold in any desired add-ins.
4. Drop by the spoonful onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

* It is very important to leave these cookies to cool on the cookie tray after you take them out for about ten minutes! Do not touch them, they will break if you do not let them rest*

A chocolate-y evening yum! :D

Zebra Purse

Something new that I haven't ever made before; a gumpaste purse. The purse was not as hard as I thought it would be to make, although I did have to make a wooden internal structure so that when it dried it would dry straight. This cake was alot of fun to make and fun looking too. It was red velvet and italian meringue buttercream.

Cake Time Total: 3 hours

A Hat Fit For A Queen

So I promised my Godmother a birthday cake. She lives far away and things were happening so long story short I made her this cake almost three months after her birthday. It was a red velvet cake with italian meringue buttercream and homemade caramel. For the design I was free to do whatever...in the end it ended up looking like a hat worn by an old english lady but I liked it.

Cake Time Total: 2 hours

Baby Shower

This was my first baby shower cake. I was given free will to decorate as I pleased. I had seen before people who made gumpaste baby booties for shower cakes when I was researching how to make gumpaste heels. As soon as I was given the opportunity to make this cake I knew I needed to make booties. I also decorated with a rattle, baby blocks, and a safety pin. The cake was lemon filled with lemon curd.

Cake Time Total: 2 hours

Fitness Retirement Cake

I'm coming to the end of my visit here in Canada with my family but before I leave there are cakes to be made! This week I made a retirement cake for my friend Alison's dad. He has been spending the last couple of months working out so the theme was fitness. This was the first time that I made custard for a cake. I was worried it wouldn't hold up well but it did just fine. The cake was alternating layers of chocolate and white cake filled with vanilla custard, masked with Italian meringue buttercream and covered in fondant. I decorated with little pieces of gym equipment.

Cake Time Total: 3 hours

Father's Day

Since we were celebrating Father's Day at my aunts house, I thought it would be fun to make a quick cake and a way of experimenting with new flavours and getting feedback quickly from many people. The cake I decided to make was a red velvet cake (the recipe was from an amazing book I got for christmas last year called the Modern Cafe). For the inside filling I decided to make a pineapple reduction and mix it into some italian meringue buttercream. For the outside I was running low on time and just decided to skip the fondant and finish the cake with buttercream.

Bridal Shower

This is a cake I made for my soon to be sister-in-law's bridal shower. The theme was tulips. It was my first time making gumpaste tulips and I can say that they look a lot easier to make then they actually are. I wish that I had made more flowers but I ran out of time and came across the dilemma of the wire I used being too thin which is another story in itself. The cake was delicious. I decided to try something new by making a coconut cake with raspberry Italian meringue buttercream. I also saw a picture online of a cake that was covered in chocolate pieces giving it a sort of "bark" effect and I though that was quite interesting so I tried it out...it was very quick and easy to do, tempering the chocolate took a bit of time but it was worth not having to spend the money on fondant.

Cake Time Total: 3 hours