Zoey, arrived carrying a grocery bag of goodies. For her last birthday, I bought her an apron & several spatulas. She has brought them with her to bake! Good to know when a gift is appreciated.

Zoey's Apron & Spatula

We get started but it’s not a very successful session. It’s not Zoey’s fault. It’s just too difficult for me to get enthused. It’s not about Zoey; it’s about the hole in my life. On the one hand, I’m delighted to see her. She’s a precious child & very loving. On the other hand, she’s young enough that she doesn’t fully comprehend death & the finality of it.

In the innocent way of a child, she asks me about Jim, then comments on his departure. She was here when they carried his body out. It fascinated her. In spite of the efforts of her parents, she watched most of the journey of his body out of our home. Zoey is still trying to process the event in her mind & has no idea of the pain her questions cause me. With time, we WILL get back to baking! Now is not the time though.

This is Geraldine's small fondant mat. It's the perfect size for this project!

Today is a great day for playing with one of the fondant molds I bought. I’m excited about it & quickly gather everything needed. Not sure what colors I want or what colors I already have, I grab some unopened fondant & the bags of leftover fondant. (Good fondant is very expensive & way too expensive to waste. Save any pieces you don’t use on a project. When you have time, you can make flowers, leaves or geometric shapes to use on a future project. Those are words of wisdom Norman Davis gave us at ICES.

Rolling out the fondant to use in the mold.

I have a wad of yellow fondant a little bit smaller than a half dollar & a wad of orange fondant about the size of a quarter. That looks to me like a good place to start! Place both pieces of fondant in the microwave & heat them just a few seconds. Even after being carefully wrapped in several layers of Saran Wrap & placed in Ziploc bags, fondant will get stiff to rock hard. A few seconds in the microwave will soften it enough to knead. Be careful though not to heat for anything but very short bursts. It is sugar dough & will get too hot to safely handle. Heated long enough it will even start to melt.

Gently place the fondant over the mold. Be careful to cover all sections of the mold!

Butterflies are not a solid color so I knead both pieces of fondant together until they are soft & pliable but not completely blended. I then take my 6-inch fondant roller out & proceed to roll the dough out on my mat. (I will do another post on the mat. It’s that good.) Once the fondant is rolled out to 1/8 thickness, I pick it up & gently lay it on the bottom part of the mold. Previously, I had taken my finger & dipped it in powdered sugar & rubbed it on the inside of the mold. Then I shook the mold so almost all of the powdered sugar was shaken out. With my fingers I gently pat the fondant into the crevices of the mold. Once I have a pretty decent impression, I pick up the top 2 pieces & lay them on top of the fondant lining them up on the indented fondant. Then I take the roller & firmly roll the top pieces into the fondant & bottom piece of the mold. If this is done properly, you get an almost clean cut of the butterfly pieces. Pull the top pieces of the mold off & you’re ready to gently push the fondant out of the mold. Now you have two beautifully impressed butterfly wings. I’ll use them in the future on a cake or some cupcakes.

In this photo, the top of the mold has had gentle pressure applied to force the fondant into all crevices of the mold. Excess fondant was carefully peeled away.

You can see the impressions from the mold once you removed the top portions of the mold. Then turn the mold over & gently tap to remove the butterfly pieces.

After removing the butterfly half from the mold, use a tapered spatula to do detailed removal of small bits of excess fondant. Do NOT use a knife as there is too much danger of nicking your mat.

After making a few of these, I pull out a small piece of blue & a small piece of green fondant. Knead both of these into the leftover fondant from making butterflies & make some more butterflies. The mold only needs to be rubbed down with powdered sugar after the fifth set of butterfly wings. That’s how well this mold works. It’s been a good afternoon. Played with one of my new molds until I’m very comfortable using it. As a result of using the mold, I have several beautiful fondant butterflies to use.

A pair of orange & yellow butterflies drying on a wire rack.

A multi-colored butterfly half ready to have the excess fondant gently removed.

Notice the shy smile this fellow has.

After baking & cooling the cookies, it’s time to decorate them. The cookies are coated with orange royal icing and brownish green royal icing & outlined. Now the fun begins! I have made pumpkin cookies where I tried very hard to get each cookie to look alike, but these are going to be jack-o-lanterns. We all know that each jack-o-lantern is different from all the rest & has its own personality. That’s the intention with these cookies.

Hmmm almost a beatnik look. Remember beatniks? Doobie Gillis anyone?

I loaded the piping bag with brown royal icing & start decorating. As I pick up each cookie, I study it & it seems to tell me what it should look like. Some have faces only & some have hair. A few of them call for beards. Then there are the shy ones that hide behind their glasses. On it goes, until each one is finished. None of them look alike so I’m pleased. Not sure they’re fierce looking, but they definitely don’t look like any cookies my mother would have made.

The more traditional look

Instead of just frosting them & getting the job over, I decided to experiment with 3 different techniques I had seen explained on the internet.

The finished tombstones. Notice the rough edges.

The first ones I worked on were the tombstones. They didn’t take long. I used the offset spatula to frost them. It’s a fast method, but it leaves the edges a bit ragged looking. I’m sure that’s suitable for some times. Gives the cookies a nice home made look.

I worked on the ghosts next. These I needed my icing to be thinner so I add @ 2 teaspoonfuls of water & mixed thoroughly. Outlined the cookies using a #3 tip & gave the outline a few minutes to dry. These I decided to “paint” with icing. This was more time consuming. It did give a more polished look to them though as the edges were nicely defined. I was only partially happy with this method, but I intend to try it again another day. The

The ghosts were outlined & then painted with icing. I used snippets of black licorice for the eyes.

reason I think I was unhappy with it was that my brush was too small. A larger brush would have allowed me to finish the cookies in less time & made it easier to drag the icing where I needed & wanted it.

The rest of the cookies were outlined using a #3 tip. After outlining them, I changed the #3 tip for a #7 tip & filled in the area zigzagging back & forth. If an area didn’t fill in quite right, I used the tip of my brush to push the icing in the direction needed to fill in the cookie. This method worked well & was fairly fast. I would have no problem using this method on a regular basis.

I had picked up several candies to decorate with & varied what I used according to my whim. I had black M&Ms, black licorice whips, red hot cinnamons, red sugar, mixed sprinkles in fall colors & Halloween shaped sprinkles to choose from. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning & we’ll enjoy eating the “tests”.

Pumpkin cookes decorated in various ways. A food decorating marker was used to make the stems.

An assortment of the finished nutmeg cookies.

I’m better prepared this time so hopefully it will go better. A particular favorite cookie here is Aunt Martha’s Nutmeg Bells, a recipe I got from Good Housekeeping several years back. The plan is to mix up a batch of them. While it’s in the refrigerator chilling, we’ll mix up & bake White Chocolate Cookies with Chocolate Chunks. This is a new recipe I’m trying. It can be found in Mrs. Field’s Best Cookie Book Ever, page 15. If you’re into cookie baking, this is a book well worth having.

Zoey hard at work cracking eggs.

We get off to a good start on mixing the cookies. Zoey must be cracking a lot of eggs at home; she does a great job of cracking them. She’s anxious to actually operate the mixer. I’m standing right there so that’s what we do. I tell her what number to move the slide to & she operates it. I suspect we have a baker in the making in Zoey.

The cookie dough is mixed in no time & ready to go in the refrigerator. Here’s where we run into  the first road bump. Zoey is hard to keep focused today. While I clean the mixing bowl, she clamors to play a game on the computer. She doesn’t argue when I tell her no. I point out that she came over to bake cookies not to play computer games.

Zoey carefully carrys the egg to the mixer.

While working on the second batch of cookies, Zoey runs back & forth from the tv to the kitchen. Again, cracking the eggs is a job she handles with finessse. We have the dough ready & I pull out the cookie scoop to use. Zoey says she remembers how to do it & proceeds to use the scoop. She keeps pulling the dough out from the middle of the bowl. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s certainly messier that way so I show her again how to pull the dough from the edges of the batch in the bowl. No biggie as she’s not even 6 & has lots of time to learn all the ins & outs of cookie baking.

She has to kneel in a chair to reach the mixer.

I put the pan of cookies in the oven & set the timer. While the cookies bake, Zoey runs & settles on the couch to watch television. I scoop out a  trayful of cookies to be ready when the first batch finishes cooking. As soon as that batch cools enough to eat, Jim, Zoey & I taste them. Have to be sure they’re good to eat. Zoey pronounces them yummy.

It’s time to scoop another trayful of cookies. She doesn’t seem that interested. Clifford the Red Dog has caught her attention. She’s young & it’s more important that this be a fun process then that she do everything, so I scoop & bake the cookies until all of that variety are done.

Oops! We need to practice spacing our cookies out!

I make the decision to take her home as she’s just not heavily into baking today. Everything distracts her. But it’s been a good day & she’s excited about the cookies she helped bake. She doesn’t ask about cooking the others so I know I’ve made a good decision to take her home.

After taking Zoey home, Sarah & I roll out & bake the nutmeg cookies. I picked 5 of the designs from a new pack of Halloween cookie cutters to use. We cut skulls, pumpkins, devil heads, ghosts & tombstones. Doesn’t take very long to cut & bake them especially beings we’re working together. Tomorrow, I’ll ice & decorate them.

At 6, scooping cookies can be a 2 handed job.

White Chocolate Cookies with Chocolate Chunks cooking on wire racks.

I thought I had it all planned out well. We were going to make cake truffles & bake a half batch of oatmeal cookies. I had checked & had most of the ingredients I needed for both. On our way to the house, we stopped at the grocery & picked up what few things I needed. We were all set. Beings I had planned this out, everything would go smoothly. Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law had other plans in mind.

Cake truffles you ask? Cake truffles are one of the wonderful ways to utilize bits & pieces of cake. If you carve a cake shape, you have leftover pieces. Save them! If a layer of cake doesn’t come out of the pan in good enough shape to use (it does happen sometimes), save the pieces! When you’re finished with those pieces no one needs to know these were a way to salvage cake scraps.

First crumble up the chunks of cake into crumbs. This is an awesome job for a food processor if you have one. In my case, a five-year old thinks it’s marvelous fun. Clean hands are a must for this job–even if you’re 5. Then the fun begins. You add your choice of “glue” to hold the crumbs together. Non-dairy creamers are good; the flavored ones add to the taste experience. Other choices include icing, jam, liquor, chocolate or caramel syrup or peanut butter. Just use your imagination. Keep your cake flavors in mind & who is going to be eating the truffles. Naturally, beings my fellow cook was a five-year old, liquor was out of the question.

The night before I had pulled a couple of zip-lock bags of cake diasters out of the freezer. Remember the problems I had with the wedding cake? Well the orange cake pieces are now coming in handy. I also had a smaller bag of chocolate cake pieces. I set up 3 bowls & Zoey & I went to work. One small bowl was for nothing but chocolate cake crumbs. A medium bowl was for a mix of chocolate cake crumbs & orange cake crumbs. Yum. The third bowl was for all orange cake crumbs. We had fun making crumbs out of our cake pieces. Didn’t take us very long and it was time for the next step.

Zoey hard at work.

I had debated for awhile what to use for our “glue”. Wasn’t sure that the non-dairy creamer would hold the crumbs together that well. Seemed to me that icing would be too sweet beings they would be dipped in chocolate. When in the store, I had bought some French vanilla non-dairy creamer. I poured some in the bowl of chocolate crumbs. It was too messy a job for hands so Zoey was given a spoon & stirred the mixture together. Once all the crumbs were damp, I handed her a cookie scoop and picked one up for myself. Showed Zoey how to pick the crumbs up in the scoop, press the mixture against the side of the bowl & then release the ball on the aluminum foil paper that was set up for them.

We worked together until we had used all the chocolate crumbs. Then we moved onto the mix of chocolate & orange cake crumbs. Again, I poured the non-dairy creamer in & Zoey mixed them together. Zoey’s beginning to get pretty good at scooping out the balls of  damp cake crumbs. Wanting to do a little experimenting, I check in the refrigerator to see if I have any orange marmalade to use with the orange cake crumbs. No such luck. Somehow strawberry jam just doesn’t seem the right combination with orange cake. I do have some vanilla icing left over from the wedding cake. I thin it down with the French vanilla creamer & add it to the bowl with the orange cake bits.

Zoey shows off her expertise in mixing the ingredients together. We have another batch needing to be scooped. Doesn’t take long & they are done. THIS is when plans start to unravel.

I check the oven so we can work on baking cookies while the cake truffles sit. Oops the shelf is still out of the oven. I had cleaned the oven a couple of days ago & hadn’t put the shelf back in yet. Ok no problem. Right?! Put it in this way. Won’t go all the way in. Must have it backwards. So turn it around & slide it in. Oops won’t go all the way in the oven. Maybe I have it upside down. Turn it over & try to slide it in. Nope that’s not right either. Try several times different ways & I’m getting nowhere fast. So I call for Sarah. She can’t get it either. I’m getting frustrated.

Decide to ignore that problem. After all, after I calm down & reapproach the problem, the rack will most likely just slide it as I handle the shelf the proper way. Let’s melt the chocolate. Not a big deal, right? Wrong. Remember, I said Murphy’s Law came calling. I remember buying a kit for melting chocolate in the microwave several months back. Get on the step ladder & find it in the back of the pantry where I vaguely remembered putting it. We’re good to go.

Open it up & find 2 cone shaped heavy plastic cups in there with a bag of chocolate melts. Oh boy! Things are looking good. Going to finish the truffles & move on to cookies. My innocence at this point is amusing looking back. Read & reread the directions for melting the chocolate pieces. This is going to be SO much easier than the double-boiler method. I’m so glad I remember I bought this!

Proud cook posing for the camera.

Well let me tell you, it was NOT easy. Following the directions the pieces did NOT melt into this wonderful chocolate lake. It got lumpy & then it BURNED!! Burnt chocolate does not smell good. It is not appetizing. Ok another bump in the road. Try the oven rack again. No go. DID this rack come out of this oven? I start having questions like this. Back to chocolate. Have lots of chocolate chips — both milk chocolate & semi-sweet.

Pull the semi-sweet ones out & throw them in the microwave. Oh oh too many small road bumps; Zoey’s beginning to get bored! Get them melted nicely & dip a few of the cake truffles. This is definitely cool. I leave them sitting on a piece of aluminum foil to cool down. Time to get the chocolate back on the heat as it’s beginning to reset. Oh no! It’s getting lumpy! Chocolate chips take a lot more coaxing when melting, but I don’t want to use the chocolate I have because it’s unsweetened. Not very likely to appeal to a 5 year old.

Try the oven rack again. Please!! We want to make cookies! No luck. Ok, must calm down & approach the problem more rationally. Find computer games for Zoey!! That will help keep her from having a melt down from boredom. By now, I’m about to throw the rack out in the backyard except that won’t accomplish anything. In fact, then I’d have to go out, get it & wash the blasted thing.

Sarah yells in triumph: “I got it!”. Zoey & I marched into the kitchen to make cookies. We’re going to make oatmeal cookies. Yep, the ones on the the Quaker Oats box; I like that recipe. Some things I measure & hand to her to dump into the mixer. Some things I show her how to measure & let her add to the mixer. Give her an egg and a small bowl to break the egg into. No problem.

Take the mixer bowl off the stand to hand stir the oats in the mixture. Hand it to Zoey & tell her what to do. She works very diligently at it. Of course, Rhoda (my rhomba) will get a workout later as the oats don’t seem to want to stay in the bowl. This is a fact when cooking with young ones; they are messy. That’s ok as part of the learning process is learning to keep the food where you want it. Add the chocolate covered raisins & Zoey stirs them in the cookie dough.

We scoop balls of dough on the cookie sheets. Zoey is getting the hang of this pretty good. Has a tendency to have the scoop too high in the air when pressing release, but doing a good job for the first time. Grandma slides the cookies in the oven & sets the timer. As soon as the first batch is out & cooled, I hand Zoey one of HER cookies. Yummy is what she says.

It’s now time to go home. I bag up almost all of the cookies for Zoey to take home so she can share what she did & show off a bit. On the way home, she wants to know if she can have another cookie. She’s had 3 but, being Grandma, I say yes. <G> She’s had fun; I had fun. We’re both wanting to do it again. I have relearned a few things I had forgotten since I first worked with my youngest child on her first cooking lessons. More planning & double checking will be done before the next time we do it. Hopefully, Murphy’s Law won’t have a chance. Another cook is in the making!