That time of year that calls for the mass genocide of that little bug called a crawfish is almost at an end. I’m going to leave the boil details to the Southern boy but I couldn’t let the event pass without making a little something.

When we were buying king cake babies earlier in the year we saw some themed cookie cutters; gators, masks, fleur de lys and of course a crawfish. Well, we couldn’t pass them by… I think I may have a “thing” for random cookie cutters, you never know when you’re going to need one shaped like a margarita glass!

My lemon sugar cookies are my favourite for cut-out cookies, they hold their shape well when baked out. This time I decided to change things up a little by using lime instead of lemon, a minor difference but a tasty one!

The cookies were baked out and left to cool, I had a lot of them!

Next I made a deep red royal icing and piped my outline round each one of them. They’re really a simplified crawfish, doing all the details would be exceedingly fiddly and take a long while.. these took long enough!

Keeping a little bit of the dark red icing to one side thin the rest out and make it a little lighter. Flood inside the borders, using a cocktail stick to spread the icing to fill the gaps.

When that’s dry come back with that thicker dark red and pipe some spots on the crawfishs’ backs. As you can see an actual crawfish has these lumps all over, but that made the cookie look too busy and not so good. Again, this is a simplified crawfish.

Leave to set fully then store in an airtight container until you want them. Of course, I couldn’t let the crawfish get boiled without the “cousins” getting to meet each other!

Marshmallows don’t usually generate a lot of fuss.  They’re typically something most folks buy by the cheap bagful at the mega-mart, and never think twice about.  To these folks I say this: if you’ve never had a fresh, handmade marshmallow, you’ve never given your inner child a hug.

The texture is tremendously better, the flavors are fresher, and there is something that simply tickles the base of your brain whenever you have one.   They’re addictive, and once you’ve had them you’re spoiled for life.  What’s also good is that they are fairly easy to make… they just take a little time and some basic ingredients.

Traditional marshmallows are good, but something slightly more elaborate is even better — this time around I made mocha java marshmallows.

I started by blooming the gelatin in cooled espresso.  While that blooms, I bring the sugar, corn syrup and water to a boil, and just a tiny bit of kosher salt adds a more complex flavor down the line.

While the boiling sugar slowly reaches it’s destination temperature, prepare your pan.  A note here… marshmallows are one of the stickiest confections it has ever been my pleasure to work with, and it is inconceivable that you can over-prepare your work surfaces, tools, pans, etc.  I coat my pan with non-stick cooking spray, line it completely with parchment, coat the parchment with cooking spray, and dust thoroughly with a mixture of cornstarch and powdered sugar, and in this instance cocoa powder (Dutch process cocoa, please).  The first time I made marshmallows, I skipped the parchment step, and I tell you now that spraying and dusting alone are not sufficient.

Once the sugar mixture reaches temperature, set your mixer with the whisk attachment on low and slowly drizzle the sugar into the bowl.  Be sure to drizzle down the side of the bowl — and not through the whisk — to reduce the risk of flinging superheated droplets of molten sugar (a.k.a. “kitchen napalm”) in all directions.  Once all the sugar is in, advance the mixer to medium-high and let it run for 12-14 minutes.  Approximately halfway through slow the mixer and add a nice dose of vanilla extract, then resume high speed.

The goal is to incorporate a tremendous amount of air into the mix, and as the mixture cools the gelatin sets the air in place.  Your mixture will gradually increase in volume and the color will lighten dramatically.  Traditional marshmallows go from clear to bright snowy white, and as you can see in the progression of pictures below, the mocha java marshmallows that started out with gelatin bloomed in espresso that was a deep mahogany brown, end up a pale creamy white.

Once the mixing is done, pour/scoop the marshmallow into your prepared pan — be sure to coat all tools with cooking spray!  Spread the mixture evenly in the pan, taking care to get it into all the corners and obtain a smooth surface.  This is, I will add, a fight you will lose, as no matter how well coated your tools, the marshmallow with still stick to them somewhat.  The best you can hope for is to battle to a grudging draw.

Dust the top of the marshmallows in the pan with your cornstarch/powdered sugar/cocoa mixture, and set aside to cool and set for about 4 hours.  There is definitely a difference between these and traditional marshmallows, as you can see from the pans alone.

After the marshmallow has cooled, turn out the pan onto a cutting board and remove the parchment.  Give this surface another good dose of dusting powder.  I find the best tool for cutting up marshmallows is a well coated pizza cutter — you can work quickly and efficiently.  A standard metal ruler makes a good cutting guide, and gives me tidy 1¼” squares.  Cut in one direction, rotate your board, and cut in the other.

Have handy a deep bowl (or in my case, a clean 5 gallon bucket) with a generous amount of dusting powder in it, and pull apart your cut marshmallows and drop them in.  After a few rows, I like to give the bucket a shake to coat all the surfaces, then resume separating some more.  Once all have been divided, reach in and stir those little buggers up, separating any that may have stuck together and ensuring each one is dusted well.

Take a few handfuls of marshmallows and place them in a colander and shake it gently over your bucket to remove and reuse excess powder.

Once all of the marshmallows are out, share and enjoy them, and never look back at the store-bought aberrations.  They’ll keep just fine for about a month in a tightly sealed container… if they last that long.

“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!”

Thank you Oscar Wilde for that quote. Though of course, not wanting to waste any dough I made doughnut holes too *grins*

I’ve been wanting to make doughnuts for a while now, I don’t know why I never did get round to it but then suddenly the mood struck, and goddamit, I was making doughnuts!

I remember growing up, every fun fair, and even some car boot sales, would have a truck making doughnuts, you could watch them in the oil and then they would roll along a conveyor belt into the sugar where they could be tossed around and then thrown into a bag for you, shortly followed by being thrown into your mouth! Getting those doughnuts hot and fresh was perfect, there was nothing better. No fancy glazes, not filled, just a ring of warm fried dough coated in sugar. They were not so nice once they cooled down.

The dough is what’s known as a modified straight dough, so the fat and sugar is creamed together and the egg gradually added. Then the paddle is switched for the dough hook and all the flour is dumped in swiftly followed by the rest of the liquids.. It took me taking this photo to realise I had forgotten to change to the dough hook, no harm though.

It’s a relatively firm dough, leave it to double in size. While it’s doing that you can find some cutters. Of course, you can buy doughnut cutters which get them perfect, but two round cutters do the trick perfectly fine, lay them out to see what looks good, I went with the smaller pair here.

Once the dough is proofed knock it down and press it flat, you can roll it out, but it’s really not all that hard to just press it down, you’re looking for about 1/2-3/4″ thick. Cut out your doughnuts and place them on a greased sheet (not as close together as mine are in the picture, that didn’t end too well). I saved the “holes” to cook off as well.

You can’t re-knead the dough to roll it back out again, it develops too much gluten, but what you can do is mush the scraps together with some cooked apples and you’ll get some apple fritters.

Let them double in size and when they’re almost there start heating up your oil. I like using our Dutch Oven as it’s cast iron so it holds heat really well, this helps with temperature control once you start frying. I really didn’t use all that much oil, a couple inches in the bottom worked perfectly well. You’ll need a thermometer to keep an eye on the oil temperature, a candy thermometer is good as it clips to the edge of the pan.. I love the patterns oil makes as it heats up! You’ll want a spider, or something similar, on hand too.

Once the oil reaches 350F I start with the doughnut holes, first one side, then flip them over to the other. Drain them on some paper towels (I get my station all set up while the oil is heating), then toss them in sugar.

Next up the doughnuts, not too many at a time. Because I put mine too close together on the sheet I had to pull them apart which knocked some air out of them, hence the lumpy, uneven look with the odd ends hanging off!

I coated some in sugar, and the apple fritters in sugar (fry them last), the rest I left to cool. I made up some flat icing and some chocolate icing (flat icing with some dutched coca in it). Dip the doughnuts in the icing, then before it sets top with sprinkles of choice.

Enjoy! And try not to feel guilty for eating so many doughnuts, because you will!

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.