Breast Cancer Awareness - P&G Giveaway

Have you noticed our new look? October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we're participating in "Pink for October: Raising Awareness for Breast Cancer One Website at a Time." The organizers ask bloggers, tweeters, and website owners to turn their site pink for the month so we thought, why not!?

To promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Proctor and Gamble is giving away an amazingly cute Good Cooks kitchen set ($40 value) when you spend only $25 on P&G products at Publix in one transaction!


The giveaway includes a 10-inch covered deep saute pan, a set of 4 pink plastic measuring cups, a pink ribbon timer, and a high temperature spatula. How cute is that!?

And $25 is easy to spend! By the time you buy an 8-pack of Bounty paper towels, some Puffs tissues, and some Tide laundry detergent, you're almost done!

Here are some other cute breast cancer-related finds at ETSY:

Love this Scrabble tile pendant available from dwilcox!


Get this Tickled Pink Soft and Cuddly Scarf from yarncoture. Just in time for the cool months!


Pink for a Cause coasters with words of encouragement on the back by FigTreeBoutique. Ooo, these would make a great Christmas gift, wouldn't they?!


Get this adorable Pink Ribbon Stretch Bracelet from BlackBrookShop.


And check out this Jolly Roger Biker Pirate Pendant by storytales!

HappyHaven is giving away one pendant every week for the month of October! It's only $0.20 to enter so get over there and do it!

A Mini-Treats Mini-Series: Part 5 - Pumpkin Dog Cookies

We can't leave out "man's best friend" from this Mini-Treats Mini-Series, can we?! I stumbled across this amazing website, aptly named Best Dog Treat Recipes, and I just had to try the recipe for Pumpkin Cookies.

Here's what you need:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 tablespoons dry milk
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon dry yeast
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup canned pumpkin


Note: Do NOT use pumpkin pie filling because it usually contains spices, and nutmeg is toxic to dogs!

This recipe is designed to be super easy. You can put all the ingredients in your bread maker and set it for the dough cycle. But, if you're like me and don't have a bread machine, load it all in your stand mixer and mix with the dough hook. Once the ingredients are mostly combined, knead the remaining flour and oats in by hand.


Roll the dough into 1/4-inch thick sheets,and use a cookie cutter to cut out the desired shapes. This dough is not sticky like rolled cookie dough for humans so you should have no problem rolling it out. In fact, I took an extra precaution and rolled the dough directly on a SilPat, but it turned out to be unnecessary. The cookies can be easily transferred to a cookie sheet, without shape distortion, after the shapes are cut.


Carefully remove the excess dough from around the cut-out shapes.


Transfer the cut-out shapes to a lightly greased cookie sheet and let them rise for 1 hour on the countertop.


Bake the dog cookies for 45-60 minutes at 275 degrees F. After baking, turn off the oven, and let the cookies continue to dry overnight in the oven. In the morning, they will be hard and crisp. They can be stored in an airtight container, at room temperature, for about 30 days.

Of course, I wanted to decorate the dog cookies before I distributed them to the neighborhood dogs, but Nani knew something was up and was very excited about them. I couldn't resist giving her a taste of an undecorated pumpkin cookie.

*sniff, sniff* "Hmmm...what is this exactly?"

"Ooo, tastes pretty yummy!"

"Thanks, Mom! You're the best!"
(Excuse the obnoxious glare from the fireplace. The picture was too great not to include in this collection.)

"Mom, don't even THINK about taking this away before I'm finished!"

Nom, nom...

"Oops, look at that! I dropped a piece!"

"No sense in letting that go to waste! Yummy!"

Anyway, time to decorate the cookies. There are many different ways you can decorate your dog cookies, including royal icing, Candy Melts, and carob (looks like chocolate but is not poisonous to dogs). For these cookies, I chose to use Candy Melts. When you pick out your Candy Melts at the craft store, be sure you do not get the chocolate ones! You must only use the white chocolate candy melts for your puppies!

Not having the best decorating forsight, I forgot to pick up green Candy Melts for the stems of the pumpkins so I had to make green by mixing blue and yellow.

In any event, melt the Candy Melts in a microwave-safe bowl and load it into a piping bag fitted with a tip 3. Then, let your imagination run wild!

Once the white chocolate has set, you can package the cookies to give to the neighborhood pups. The doggies who benefited from this batch of cookies are Nani, Sugar, Baby, Tonka, Grincher, Bella, Harley, Otis, and Max.

Happy early Halloween!

This concludes this Mini-Treat Mini-Series. Thanks for tuning in! Are there other mini-treats you'd like to see featured in a future series? Or is there another series topic you have in mind?

A Mini-Treats Mini Series: Part 4 - Petit Fours

Anyone interested in some individually decorated, bite-sized cakes??? Oh, me, me, MEEEE! [frantically waving my hand in the air like an excited schoolgirl]

Petit fours come in many different shapes and sizes. Some people use the term "petit four" when referring to chocolates, small desserts, or cubes of cake dipped in icing, but the traditional petit four is comprised of thin layers of delicate cake separated by jam or flavored liquor syrup and covered with icing.

Typically, petit fours are made with a genoise cake, which doesn't contain any chemical leavener. Instead, air is whipped into the eggs, and it is this air that causes the cake to rise during baking.

What you'll need:
1 genoise cake recipe, below
1 roll of marzipan (available at most grocery stores, aka almond paste)
Candy Melts in various colors (available at craft stores)
powdered sugar or shortening for rolling out the marzipan

Classic Genoise Cake
1 cup sifted cake flour (I just used multi-purpose flour...I know it's a baking sin. I repent!)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 pinch salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
4 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a jelly roll pan (12 x 17 x 1") and line it with parchment paper, allowing the parchement paper to hang over the edges. This will allow you to lift the entire cake out of the pan after baking, and the grease will hold the parchment in place while you pour the batter in the pan.

Sift together the flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, and salt. Place the eggs into a mixing bowl set over a pan of hot (not boiling) water. Add the 1/2 cup sugar to the eggs and whisk until the mixture feels warm (not hot) to the touch. Remember, the whisking is very important here so no slacking off!


Place the bowl onto a mixer and beat on medium speed until the mixture becomes pale yellow in color and falls off the end of the whisk attachment in long ribbons. Add the vanilla.


Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the beaten eggs and fold in. Continue to add the remainder of the flour, folding it in each time. Be careful while you fold in the flour mixture so you do not deflate all the air you incorporated into the eggs.

Place about 1 cup of the batter into the bowl containing the melted butter and then combine with the rest of the batter by folding. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.


Immediately bake for 25-30 minutes or until the edges and top are lightly browned. When the cake is fully baked, the center should spring back when you touch it. Allow it to cool in the pan 10 minutes. Gripping the parchment paper, carefully lift the cake to a cooling rack to cool completely.


With a serated knife, cut the cake in quarters and cut off the rough, carmelized edges.


Let's zoom in, shall we?

Oooooo...aaaaaaah.....

If you'd like your petit fours to be 4 layers of cake, cut each of these quarters in half horizontally. Because I actually used a larger jelly roll pan than the recipe suggested, my cake came out thinner so I did not cut these in half horizontally. They're your petit fours - do what makes you happy!

Spread a thin layer of jam over one of the quarters and top it with another quarter. Hint: You can microwave the jam for a few seconds to make it easier to spread over this delicate cake. The jam layer should be so thin that you should be able to see the cake through it.

Next, we need to top each quarter sandwhich with marzipan. Roll the marzipan to approximately 1/16-inch thick, being sure it's larger on all sizes than your cake quarters.


Brush one side of the marzipan with a little water to make it sticky. Then place it on top of your cake quarter. Trim the edges with a knife or scissors, and repeat until all cake sandwhiches are marzipan-topped.

Cover the cakes tightly in plastic wrap (if air is allowed out or in, your cakes will become stale), and refrigerate overnight.

Cut the cakes into 1 x 1" or 1 1/2 x 1 1/2" squares, keeping your serated knife as straight as possible.


Cover the cakes with plastic wrap and freeze while you prepare the Candy Melts.

Place Candy Melts in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and melt over low heat, stirring occasionally. When all the lumps are gone, remove the saucepan from the heat. Working quickly, dip the petit four, marzipan-side down, into the candy melts and coat all sides, except the bottom. For ease in handling the petit fours, I skewered 2 toothpicks through them.

Immediately place petit fours on a wire cooking rack set over a cookie sheet, which is there to catch drippings. In fact, you can remelt the drippings later if you need to.


Once the icing has set, you can decorate the petit fours with cute little flowers, sprinkles, etc. I drizzled melted pink and blue Candy Melts over mine.

Then the petit fours can be packaged or placed on a serving tray. More importantly, they're ready to be eaten!

A Mini-Treats Mini-Series: Part 3 - Sugar Cookies

Today, October 1st, is National Homemade Cookie Day! What better way to celebrate than to make some of your own!

I like to use this Sugar Cookie Recipe from Cooking Light - it's tasty and has slightly less fat & calories than normal cookies.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (about 11 1/4 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
10 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large egg whites

Lightly spoon flour into measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt with a whisk. Place granulated sugar and butter in large bowl; beat with mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract and egg whites. Gradually add flour mixture, beating at low speed just until combined. Divide dough in half. Shape each dough half into a disk; wrap with plastic wrap. Chill 1-2 hours or until firm.

Remove 1 dough portion from the refrigerator. Spray the Silpat and rolling pin with Pam's Baking Spray. Roll to a 1/4-inch thickness on a Silpat.

Cut out shapes in the dough with a cookie cutter, leaving approximately 1/2-1 inch between each cookie. Carefully remove the excess dough from the Silpat. **Hint: Rolling the dough directly on the Silpat prevents distortion when you try to transfer the shape to the cookie sheet for baking. You will bake fewer cookies per tray this way, but they will be perfectly shaped!


Bake the cookies at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. I like to remove mine from the oven JUST BEFORE they edges get browned. This changes with each cookie shape and size so you'll just have to watch them carefully.

Let the baked cookies cool on the Silpat for approximately 3-5 minutes. Then, place them on a cooling rack to cool completely.


Once the cookies are completely cooled, it's time to decorate! For this batch, I choose to decorate them with Satin Ice Fondant. Fondant has gotten a bad rap lately. People think all fondant tastes like plastic, but that's not true! There are many brands of fondant that taste very good, including Satin Ice, FondX, Chocopan, and Fondarific. Of course, you'll pay a little more for these brands than the ones you can find in your local craft store, but I think it's worth it! And, fondant tastes especially good on sugar cookies!

Fondant can be colored with gel/paste colors, just like icing. Knead in the color a little bit at a time - you can always add more color to make it darker. However, it's more difficult to lighten the color if you make it too dark at first. If your fondant is sticky while you knead the color in, coat your hands with shortening and dust your work surface with powdered sugar. Keep fondant wrapped tightly in plastic wrap because it will crust and dry out when exposed to the air.

Ok, I've got all my cookies and fondant ready to go:


I like to smear a little buttercream on my cookie to hold the fondant in place. You can also just brush a small amount of water or corn syrup on the cookie. Roll the fondant to about 1/16-inch thickness. Using the same cookie cutter you used for the cookie, cut the shape out of the fondant.

Place the fondant on the cookie, and begin decorating! I wanted these purple cats to be cute but slightly spooky at the same time so I just added eyes. Too create the eyes, I used my dresden tool to make grooves in the face.


Then, I pushed a tiny amount of yellow fondant into the groove. Top that with a black pupil, and you're done!

Let the cookies sit out for several hours so the fondant can harden. When the fondant is hard, the cookies are stackable and shipable! In fact, these cookies went all the way to TX with only 2 (out of 50) broken!


By the way, Mrs. Fields is helping us all celebrate National Homemade Cookie Day by giving away FREE COOKIES today from 11am til 1pm! Be there!


And, if you sign up to receive CookiE-mail from Great American Cookies during the month of October, you'll receive a coupon for buy one cookie, get one free! This is confirmed - mine just arrived in my inbox!