French Vanilla Ribbon Cookies.

And boy do people go crazy for them. A simple sugar cookie dough, with a few secret additions, but there is something magical about them, even just the dough, that means that you can’t stop at one bite, or two. Then before you know it you’re finding reasons to go into the kitchen, so you can pick up a cookie on the way past.

For these reasons our friends have named them “Mind Control Cookies.” Maybe one day we’ll look into taking over the world with them

They’re made with the standard creaming recipe. Creaming the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, adding in the eggs and vanilla and then finishing off with the dry ingredients.

This is the only cookie we make using a cookie press, necessary to form their unique shape. This also means that once baked they stay nice and crisp. We finish them with a dusting of spice.

They have to be stored well, in an airtight container, as they are very hygroscopic and will get soggy if left out for too long.

Not that this matters anyway, they’re never around for long enough!

The CC kitchens were abuzz, sugar and cinnamon filled the air.

We were making pie, glorious pie, and lots of them!

The day started with making the dough and getting it chilled. Then lining all the tins.. Well, actually, the day started with a cup of tea, as it always should. Tea is an integral part of the baking process!

The apple pie is impressive looking. We use 7 whole apples per pie, along with sugar and cinnamon, so the pie looks like a giant pie mountain. We eggwash the top and sprinkle it with a little sugar and then it gets baked for a long long time. Low and slow, cooking all those apples thoroughly, letting all the juices mingle with the spices, without burning the crust. It comes out the oven looking magnificent.

Next up came the pecan pie, one of Michael’s family recipes. The pecans get put in the bottom of the pie and then topped off with the filling, as much as we can fit into one pie! The pecans float leaving a layer of the custard filling and then a layer of pecans. We like seeing the striations as we eat it.

The day wrapped up with key lime pies. We used a graham cracker crust for them, far more traditional. We use a mix of fresh limes, and bottled juice for optimal flavour, with plenty of zest too. It gets baked for a very short amount of time. Just enough to set the custard.

In other, very exciting news. We are pleased to say we will be attending our first food blogger conference. TECHmunch is being hosted by Steamy Kitchen and Bake Space as part of SXSW. We’re looking forward to meeting lots of cool people and learning as much as we can.

Come celebrate this time of year with a New Orleans favourite, the King Cake.

An enriched coffee cake style dough rolled up with cinnamon sugar and braided into a round. Topped with icing and coloured sugar, coloured of course in the Mardi Gras colours; purple, green and gold (for justice, faith and power respectively).

Mardi Gras runs from Epiphany until Fat Tuesday (the day before Lent), so it is no surprise that the history of the King Cake has roots in Christian tradition (and Pagan before that, but that’s a whole other story involving harvest and blood sacrifices). Traditionally baked on Twelfth night as a celebration of the Kings finding the baby Jesus, a bean would be placed inside bringing luck to whoever found it.

While the Twelfth Night customs that spread throughout Europe were subject to numerous variations, one element transcended virtually every culture that observed the holiday: the choice of a mock king for the occasion. In the case of the King Cake the person who found a bean, or a coin, in his piece was the lucky King (or Queen) for the night. Sometimes they picked their own partner, sometimes Fate picked for them, and a pea secreted in the cake conferred the honour on its finder. The temporary change in status was sustained with ceremony; the King was given a crown, the authority to call the toasts and lead the drinking and, sometimes, the more dubious privilege of paying the bill on the morning after. It is believed the cake is round to resemble a crown.

In time the bean was replaced by a porcelain doll, which in turn gave way to a plastic “baby” the Queen was obligated to have the party the following week. The young man she designated to be her King was responsible for supplying the king cake.

That is one tradition that has made it through the years, the finder of the baby gets to host the next party or provide the next King Cake, or maybe even both.

So let your hair down, join the celebration and come have some cake with us, and above all Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez

We made a caramel ganache to go in some molded truffles, and a cherry bounce cordial, we even coloured the chocolate accordingly. Our favourite piece (and the piece with the most reviews) was a white chocolate lemon truffle piped out and then it had sugar crystals grown onto it to form a protective shell.

Our first attempt at taffy was mostly a success, made with Godiva chocolate liqueur it had a rice smooth flavour. A little too chewy perhaps but fun to make!

We finished with peppermint sticks. Hand pulled and twisted, we definitely need more practice there!

We also made some bacon dog treats for the pups in our lives. All reports indicate that they went down very well indeed!

We hope 2010 brings you nothing but happiness.

The stars are pearl dragees and royal icing, for some variety in size, then we added some large stars on wires.

The one in chocolate had to be film or book themed so I went with Harry Potter. Using two big heavy tomes (titled from the series) as my base I then had the phoenix, Faulkes, rising from them. As a small additional detail I made a pair of Potter style glasses to sit on the corner. This utilised all three main flavours of chocolate (milk, dark and white) whilst also showing a combination of tempering work, and modelling chocolate.

The sugar showpiece was an abstract piece, demonstrating several techniques. Among them are pulled and blown sugar, net sugar (the backdrop) and straw sugar (the large pink piece). Sugar does not keep well in the Texan summer so it didn’t last too long sadly.

The main challenge was how to decorate buttercream to look like marble, after a few practices we found a method that seems to work for now, giving light and dark variances in colour, and veins running through it.

We added the age in Roman numerals around the side and then researched the Latin equivalent for Happy Birthday (as I discovered, the Romans didn’t celebrate birthdays as we do, so there’s no direct translation, the inscription we found appears to approximately mean ‘congratulations on the moment of your birth/natality’

The cake was a vanilla butter cake with black raspberry filling.

This includes traditional items such as divinity and pralines, along with candied zests, marzipan squares and many other delicious items. Visit the gallery for more items. Hopefully in time many more confections will be joining them.

In the gallery now we are showcasing a range of styles and flavours of both the rolled and molded truffles. Other flavours and styles will of course be tried in later months, but we decided to share what we have for now.