Easter Celebration

Happy Easter everyone!!

It is a Greek tradition to say "Hristos anesti" for 40 days following Easter. This Easter was a busy one since I had two events to attend the same day, so I had to double-book. Which meant double-eat! Nevertheless, here are some sweets I prepared for this year:

Tsoureki is a Greek sweet bread prepared for Easter (but sometimes also during the year). My grandma usually makes it but this year I decided to give it a try using this recipe from Greek Gourmand. I was very pleased with the result and would keep this recipe for next year!

Cannolis were a spontaneous thing I decided to make with my sister and her boyfriend. We had a bit of trouble making the shells, but then got the hang of it and I must say, they turned out pretty good! You definitely need to use a thermometer to get the oil not more than 350-375 degrees F. Also, we strained the ricotta overnight to get it a thicker texture for the filling, but I think a few hours would had been enough.

Allergen-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

I want to like Martha. I really do. I mean I do own her "Martha Stewart Cupcakes" and "Martha Stewart Cookies" books. But it's really hard to like her when it's 10pm and the swiss meringue buttercream is curdled. It even says so in the book that the mixture might appear to curdle after adding the butter and to keep on beating. So I kept beating and what was I left with? Some sort of mixture that tastes like butter. How will I frost the cupcakes with this? So I sort of turned the swiss meringue buttercream into a buttercream simply by adding sifted powdered sugar until I got the consistency I wanted. And it tasted better too! I don't know if you would call it a buttercream though because it had egg whites in it too.. But I really want to get that swiss meringue buttercream right! It looks really nice on the pictures, I would try it again another time. Has anyone ever tried it and succeeded? I'm sure I'm doing something wrong!

Anyways so I made these cupcakes for the daycare my mom is working at and anything brought there for the children must not contain any nuts. So I figured I can't go wrong with this recipe! I had my doubts with the cupcakes when I ended up with a very liquid batter and they did turn out a bit dense, but they tasted good. I don't know if I would remake them again though, I like my cupcakes moist and cakey!

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Allergen-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Makes 12

1 1/2 cups cake flour

3/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp distilled white vinegar

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin tin with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt.

With electric mixer on medium-high speed, mix together oil, vinegar, vanilla and water until well combined. Add flour mixture and mix until smooth (batter will be very thin).

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake, rotating tin halfway through, until a toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Place cupcakes onto wire rack until cooled completely.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Makes about 5 cups

5 large egg whites

1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar

pinch salt

4 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Combine egg whites, sugar and salt in heatproof bowl of a standing mixer set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly by hand until mixture is warm to the touch and sugar has dissolved.

Attach bowl to mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Starting on low and slowly increasing to medium-high speed, whisk until stiff (but not dry) peaks form. Continue mixing until the mixture is fluffy and glossy and completely cool, about 10 minutes.

With mixer on medium-low speed, add the butter a few tablespoons at a time, mixing well after each addition. Once all butter had been added, whisk in vanilla (I used lemon extract). Switch to paddle attachment and continue beating on low speed until all air bubbles are eliminated, about 2 minutes. This is when I added the sifted powdered sugar. Add gel-paste food color, a drop at a time (I use toothpick to add a dab at a time).

Bunny Sugar Cookies

This time of year is just hectic. All the final projects and assignments are due, finals are coming up so it's time to start panicking and hope I can still remember things I had studied for before the midterms. But then there's Easter with all the possible good things to make, like sugar cookies.

I've been wanting to make these forever. These websites are very helpful. They have step-by-step instructions and tips on how to decorate with runny royal icing:

http://www.cakejournal.com/archives/how-to-flood-cookies-with-royal-icing

http://www.sweetopia.net/2010/03/easy-easter-decorated-cookies/

It didn't look so complicated: bake cookies, make icing, pipe onto cookies. The baking was pretty simple. I used the sugar recipe featured in Canadian Living and made the runny royal icing found on the Cake Journal website.

Maybe it's because it was my first time using runny royal icing, but I had a bit of trouble making neat outlines of my cookies. It doesn't really matter though because it barely shows when you fill them in. At the end of the night I had purple icing on my pants, arms and on the whole table. It's pretty messy I tell you, but cleaning it up was delicious!

I had to let the first coat (purple icing) dry for 24 hours before making the little details in white. It skipped my mind to keep some icing aside before adding purple so I can make the tail, ears and nose in white and had to remake a mini batch the following day. It didn't take that long though because I knew what to expect!

These cookies were yummy but a little time-consuming. Call me lazy but next time I would divide the tasks like this:

Day 1: Bake cookies

Day 2: 1rst coat of icing

Day 3: 2nd coat of icing

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Vanilla Sugar Cookies

Adapted from Holiday Baking by Canadian Living

Makes about 30 cookies

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

In a large bowl, beat butter with granulated sugar until fluffy; beat in egg and vanilla.

In separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; stir into butter mixture in 2 additions to make smooth dough.

Divide dough in half and flatten into discs; wrap each and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. (I didn't do this part.)

On floured surface, roll out each disc into 1/4-inch thickness. With floured cookie cutters, cut out cookies as desired. Arrange, 1 inch apart, on 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or grease. Bake in top and bottom thirds of 350 degree oven, rotating and switching pans halfway through, until light golden on bottom and edges, 10 to 12 minutes. (Mine took about 16 minutes because they were thick.) Transfer to racks and let cool completely before decorating.

Runny Royal Icing

Adapted from Cake Journal

2 eggs whites

2 lbs sifted icing sugar (not all will be used)

1 tsp lemon

Combine egg whites and lemon juice in a bowl. Add some icing sugar and start the mixer.

Keep adding sugar until the icing looks like whipped cream and makes soft peaks. Then add 2 tsp at a time (because the icing will get stiffer faster) until the icing makes stiff peaks. To make it runny, add a few drops of water and stir. Keep alternating between adding drops of water and stirring until it gets a thin. A trick I read was that the perfect consistency is when you can run a spoon in it and then the icing surface becomes flat again between 5-10 seconds. Cover bowl of unused icing with a damp cloth, it tends to dry out fast.