There's a monster in my closet! (And my tummy!)

AH! MONSTER!

Who? Me?

A COOKIE monster that is!

Let me begin with a bit of backstory as to how this cute, yet ultimately doomed little sucker came into being.

My favourite lecturer is leaving.

*cue wails of despair*

And he loves the Muppets, and Sesame Street. I am not kidding, every lecture has to have some form of puppet character mentioned in it or it just isn't complete.

And he's leaving us. Forever.

So what better send-off could there be than one of his favourite characters in cupcake form?

Seriously, can you think of one?

I thought not.

This entry is essentially going to be a 'how-to' decorating entry. You can use whatever cupcakes you like for this, I just used a plain vanilla cupcake, so as not to detract from the simple cuteness of the decoration.

And because my brain goes into meltdown if I have to make special cupcakes AND decorate them.

Not shown here: the flaming flecks of my frontal lobe coating the walls

So, to start off with, make the buttercream.

My recipe uses two tablespoons of butter/margarine to 1/2 a cup of pure icing sugar, I ended up making about 4 times this amount for 24 cupcakes.

Once your icing is all beaten to perfection, dye it blue.

Note: this will stain teeth, tongues and small children

Take a generous amount of your icing, and spread it evenly over the cupcake.

Or as evenly as you can manage

Next, take 1/2 a cup of dessicated coconut, place it in a zip-lock bag, add a few drops of blue food colouring, then knead it until the colouring is evenly distributed.

Mmmm... appetising...

Then, add the coconut to a bowl.

This step requires great skill, and hand-eye co-ordination

And dunk the cupcake in to coat the icing layer.

Goodbye, cruel world! *dunk*

Once you've iced and dunked your cupcake, take some large white chocolate melts, and attach smaller dark chocolate buttons to them with a little melted chocolate. Voilà! Eyes!

 Toothpicks are your best friend when decorating, you can use them for detailing, fixing mistakes, and poking in the eyes of sibling who try to pinch a snack

Press the eyes into the top half of the cupcake, feel free to make your cookie monster look as crazy, or as normal as you like.

I'm not sure what was in those cookies, but I like it....

Then comes the cookies, I just used the sugar cookie recipe found here:

http://procrasti-baker.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/cookie-capers-biscuit-bonanza-and.html

And added about 3/4 of a cup of chocolate chips to the mix before adding the flour.

Roll out the dough, cut it into circles, then cut off one edge, this will help it sit properly on the cupcake.

Off-cuts can be disposed of at your discretion... om nom nom

Now, fully assembled, these cupcakes are quite high and wouldn't fit into my container, so if you need to travel with them I'd recommend transporting the cookies separately and assembling them later.

C is for cookie, or it would be, if I had a mouth that could form the letter C

Once you have reached your destination for the gustation, simply jam the cookies flat-side down into the cupcakes and enjoy the cuteness!

Or stark-raving insanity, whichever you prefer

These were a great hit with my lecturer and classmates, and I never cease to be amazed at how popular baked goods can make a person!

Now that I think about it, he kinda looks like he's choking on that cookie, that's why his eyes are so big

Anyways, enjoy!

Procrasti-baker out.

Cookie capers, biscuit bonanza, and decorative deliciousness (Part 3)

Umm... Hi...

Yes, I am well aware of quite how long it's been since my last post.

I did tell you that this was not going to be a regular thing, didn't I?

I know I did.

Anyways, in typical me fashion, I shall make it up to you by completing my next few blogs in rapid succession.

 Maybe. 

If I can be bothered.

To be perfectly honest, it's kinda cold here, there's every likelihood my fingers will freeze off.

I hope you appreciate what I go through for you.

I was going to type 'Anyways' as a segue into my next line of thought, but then I realised I'd already done that...

Anywho, this blog is going to be the final in my cookie capers series, and it's on...

VEGAN CHOCOLATE-COATED SUGAR COOKIES

(le gasp!)

Om nom nom shiny deliciousness

There are two reasons I got into vegan cooking:

1. Because I have quite a few vegan friends.

2. Because tacking 'vegan' onto the front of something instantly makes my family think it's going to be all vile and healthy, and thus they won't eat it.

No matter how cute and delicious they look

Selfish? Maybe. 

Effective? Very.

Now, my recipe for vegan sugar cookes is essentially the same as for normal sugar cookies, so I'm just going to copy and paste and make the changes I need to.

185g of Nuttelex™, or some other butter substitute

1 cup caster sugar

1 teaspoon of Orgran® no-egg* + 1 tablespoon of water

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 1/2 cups plain flour

• Cream Nuttelex and sugar until light and fluffy
• Mix no-egg and water together until there are no lumps of no-egg left (I always seem to make a mess of this step, can't figure out why!)
• Add no-egg and vanilla essence to Nuttelex/sugar, mix until well combined
• Add flour, around half a cup at a time, switch to dough beaters or by hand when mixture becomes too thick for normal beaters
• Wrap dough in cling wrap and chill for about 2-3 hours (or stick it in the freezer for 20-30 mins, if you're impatient like me)
• Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes (This dough is very soft, but not overly sticky, so if you're going to roll it between two sheets of baking paper, be careful not to roll it too thin)
• Bake at 150 degrees for about 10-12 minutes, or until bottoms are just lightly brown (cooking time depends on the size of your cookies)
• Leave to cool completely

*No-egg can be found in most health food shops, and apparently is available in a huge array of countries. If you can't find it, any egg substitute would be fine.

This recipe makes quite a lot of dough, which is great, because you can eat more of it before anyone notices

 Also, I often split my dough into two lots to refrigerate. It means it firms quicker and you don't have to have it all thawing out while you work with it.

 Funnily enough, no-one really notices if you've over cooked your cookies once they're smothered in chocolate

 Also, for this variation, keep an eye on your cookies while they're in the oven, because these tend to brown very quickly.

As for the chocolate,  I used Green & Black's® Organic Dark 85% Cocoa Chocolate. It's very bitter, but I think that works well with the sweetness of the biscuits.

NOTE: The label says 'May contain traces of milk solids' so it's at risk of containing contaminants, but the vegans I talked to had no issues with this. If it bothers you, or you're unsure, seek out a totally vegan brand of dark chocolate, or ask your friendly neighbourhood vegans for advice.

Melt the chocolate using whatever method works for you, I used a rather non-conventional double-boiler system:

It worked for me, so shut your cake-hole

Once it's all nice and melted, grab a spoon and just paint/spread a little chocolate over the backs of the biscuits, then leave them to set.

I'd recommend sticking them in the fridge for a bit, because mine didn't set too well sitting out on my kitchen bench.

Because who said veganism had to be healthy?

Now the more observant among you may have noticed that some of my cookies were half-dipped in the chocolate rather than prettily painted, this is how I started out, before I decided that it was a little too messy and fiddly and switched to painting.

Best part about baking is you can eat your mistakes.

Seriously, no-one has to know they even occured.

Unless you take photos, of course

All in all, I'd say this was a pretty decent baking effort. They kinda ended up tasting like teddy-bear biscuits.

So go forth and unleash your culinary prowess upon the masses of vegans starved for baked goods!

Procrasti-baker out.