Wildish

Show someone you think they’re swell with sweet sugar cookies.

I made these buttery heart shaped cookies for Valentine’s day. They are great for sharing with the people you love any time of year. Cherry juice gives the icing a subtle flavour and a lovely pink colour. They are pretty, keep and transport well, and are fun and easy to make.

Sugar Cookie Dough:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour,
1/2 tsp salt,
2/3rd cup fine sugar,
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla,
1 lrg egg

Whisk together the flour and the salt in a bowl (or sift the mixture) and set it aside.

Cream the unsalted butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy. This will take several minutes with an electric mixer. Add the vanilla and the egg and mix well. Finally stir in the flour and salt.

I usually roll it out and use it right away, but you can roll it out and put it between layers of parchment paper if you want to chill it or make it in advance. It will be fine in the fridge for a day or so, but if you intend to make it further in advance than that, you should freeze it.

Cherry Icing:

Ten ripe cherries, chopped,
1/4 cup of water,
1 pkg of confectioners sugar

Chop the cherries and put them in a small saucepan with the 1/4 cup of water. Simmer over medium heat until the cherries release most of their juices into the water and become soft. Strain out the fruit and set it aside. Reserve the juice for the icing. Throw a tablespoon or so of sugar over the remaining fruit and store it in the fridge (spoon the fruit over toast or vanilla ice cream later).

Pour some of the cherry juice into a bowl and slowly stir in some confectioners sugar. Add more juice and more sugar, adjusting your consistency until it is quite thick. You can test you consistency by turning a cooled cookie over and dipping its surface into the icing. Hold it above the bowl and let the excess run off back into the icing. The icing should be thick enough to coat the cookie well and not look translucent. If it looks too thin, add more sugar. If it won’t stick or is too thick, just add more juice and adjust. A little liquid goes a long way, so make adjustments slowly.

To finish up the cookies, dip the surface of each one in the icing, smooth out any spots that didn’t quite get covered with a spatula as you go. Return them to the cooling rack so the icing can set up. It can take a few hours or up to a day or so for the icing to set all the way. Even though this icing is quite sweet it ends up only being thin layer on top of the buttery cookie, so don’t worry about adding too much sugar and enjoy.

Happy Baking!
xo
kelly

I’m not sure if it was Karyn or my mother who suggested that I make a black forest whoopie pie, either way I am glad they did because these turned out so delicious.

The Black Forest Cake we are most familiar with here in the west is a chocolate cake with whipped cream, dark chocolate shavings and maraschino cherries. I will eat the occasional maraschino in a cocktail or something, but I never bake with them. They are too processed for my liking, and nothing beats the flavour of fresh cherries anyway. Good quality chocolate, fresh cherries and cream are key to making this recipe work.

I decided to use half my cherries to make a cherry sauce, the other half I pitted and quartered and added to the sauce after it had cooled. This worked out wonderfully, the cherry sauce was colourful and juicy but still had the flavour and texture of fresh cherries too. Yum.

This is very easy to make, you can make the cakes a day in advance and make the sauce and cream as they bake.  Assemble them right before serving. =)

Equipment to have on hand: an electric mixer or stand mixer, a pastry bag with a large round tip, parchment paper for lining pans, and a small kitchen scale for weighing ingredients.

Cherry Sauce:

250g fresh cherries, pitted and chopped into medium size pieces.
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup of sugar

250g cherries cut into quarters (reserve to add to the cooled sauce)

Combine the first three ingredients in a small saucepan with a heavy bottom and stir over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved, turn the heat down to medium/low and stir occasionally as the sauce bubbles and reduces. It is done when the cherries have become soft and the sauce has become bright red and thickened to the consistency of a light syrup . You can drop a few drops on a plate and put it in the fridge to see if it is ready or not.

Remove it from heat and pour it into a heatproof bowl, let it cool a few minutes on the counter and set it in the fridge to cool completely. When it is no longer hot you can stir in the remaining prepared fresh fruit. Set aside until you are ready to assemble your cakes.

Cream:

1/2 cup whipping cream (250ml) + 2 tbsp sugar or maple syrup

Place the cream and sugar in a bowl, whip with an electric mixer until it is thick and delicious.

Chocolate Shavings:

Use a vegetable peeler to shave little shavings or curls off a good quality dark chocolate bar. Do not use baking chocolate. It only takes a little chocolate to make these desserts, so use a  good quality chocolate bar (like Lindt, Just us, or Callebaut.)

Chocolate Cake:

I’ve been using the cake recipe of Claire Ptak of Violet cakes, it’s the best. If you like this I highly recommend you check out her new book “Whoopie Pies”. It’s lovely and the recipes are great. The only thing I do differently is use pastry flour rather than all purpose.

100g cocoa
175g pastry flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

125g unsalted butter, softened
200g sugar
1 large egg
225ml buttermilk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Line baking trays with parchment paper and trace out hearts or 2 ” circles on the underside with a pencil. Cookie cutters make great templates.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa, salt and leaveners in a bowl, set aside.

Cream the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer or an electric hand mixer . Mix in the egg until just combined, followed by the buttermilk and vanilla mixture (make sure it’s room temp). If it curdles a little it’s not the end of the world, it will work out just fine. (If you have a little kirsch on hard you could also add a tsp of this to the batter to give the chocolate cake a hint of cherry flavour as well.)

Add the flour/cocoa mixture and mix until just combined. Do not over mix.

Spoon into a pastry bag and pipe onto the parchment paper. Bake at 350f until the cakes are almost set, when you touch them they should get a slight indentation. This doesn’t take long, so keep an eye on them.  It is important not to over bake them. Set finished cakes on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Assembly:

Spoon a generous amount of cream onto the flat side of a cake, top with a spoonful of cherries and sauce, make sure there is enough sauce to run down the sides and onto the plate. Sprinkle with chocolate shavings and top with a matching cake top. Decorate with a little dollop of whipped cream, a sprinkle of chocolate, a couple of juicy cherry pieces and a teaspoon or so of cherry sauce.

Since I’ve been enjoying her new book so much, here is a little video to introduce you to Claire and her shop Violet. (If you are in anywhere near London you should go! If not you can order her book online.) Finally here is a super cute video of Claire Ptak baking whoopie pies and talking about her new book.

This month I’ve been testing out all sorts of recipes from Claire Ptaks new book “Whoopie Pies”, so far I have loved every one, not once have they let me down. The book is mostly a variety of recipes for whoopie pies (a cross between a cake and a cookie) paired with delicious fillings.  There is also a small section at the end with other sweet treats like peanut butter sandwich cookies, peach cobbler and brownie sundays. Crystal and I both think it is a wonderful book, it is available through amazon.

I tend to pick up the book and flip through it for ideas when I have a craving.

We were snowed in by a winter storm for a couple of days and it seemed like the perfect time to whip up something sweet to have with hot cups of coffee. So, as per usual I perused the book, when I saw the peanut butter cream filling I was set on making the sandwich cookies (the boys were upstairs playing synthesizers, and I knew they’d like something peanut buttery too). I set to mixing and measuring straight away and due to my enthusiastic haste I failed to notice that I had ran out of all purpose flour and roasted nuts, both of which I needed to complete her version of the recipe.

In the end I improvised, I used 100g of pastry flour and 80g of whole wheat flour. I also threw in 40g of rolled oats for good measure, and because I love those packaged “pirate” cookies when I was younger and while I am not sure of their ingredients list, I remember the flavour of oats in the cookie somewhere. Since I didn’t have a packet of salted nuts, and my peanut butter contained no salt I added a 1/2 tsp of fine sea salt to the batter. I think if I were to make them again I’d throw in a hand full of crushed salted peanuts next time and lower the salt accordingly, but I must say they were really yummy regardless!

To make these cookies you will need a scale, the whoopie pie book is from the UK so all the measurements are in grams. I use a small, inexpensive scale, its not fancy or digital, but it does the trick and I am so very glad I have it. Not only does it allow me to make European recipes, it helps me bake with more precision in general. Baking is a science, and there is a big difference between the mass of a packed cup of flour and a sifted one. Enough of a difference that it could make or break finicky cake recipes. I highly recommend the use of a kitchen scale.

I piped the cookies onto parchment paper with a very wide, round tip. You could pipe them into heart shapes for valentines day and pack them up in boxes for the people you love.

Peanut Butter Cookies:

3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
100g pastry flour
80g whole wheat flour
40g rolled oats
200g natural peanut butter (room temp/ softened)
225g butter softened
200g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 whole egg (lrg)
1 egg yolk

-Preheat oven to 350f and line trays with parchment paper.
-In a small bowl whisk together the flours, baking soda, oats and salt.
-Cream together the softened butter and sugar until it is very light and fluffy, this will take several minutes with an electric beater. Add the eggs and mix well, then add the vanilla and peanut butter and mix until completely incorporated.
-Add the flour mixture last and stir gently, just until it is all incorporated.
-Scoop into a pastry bag fitted with a wide round tip and pipe into 2″ circles or heart shapes. Bake until the middle is slightly set and the edges are a touch golden.
-Set on a cooling rack to cool. When they are completely cool you can use a spatula or a piping bag to fill them, (the latter is a little neater, but the spatula makes it look more “home made”, either way they are delicious).

Claire Ptaks Peanut Butter Cream:

225g unsalted butter, softened
250g peanut butter (she called for crunchy, but all I had on hand was creamy)
300g icing sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Make sure everything is at room temperature and whip it all up in a stand mixer or with an electric beater. It is done when it is fluffy and light.