In my last post I shared the cookie recipe provided by Penny McConnell at the Capital Confectioners' Sugar Art and Cake Competition. For Valentine's Day this year, I decided to give her recipes a try and make cookies for my sweeties and my friend, Gloria, who was home sick.

The dough was perfect. It was heavy but soft. It rolled out beautifully and there was no need to refrigerate it overnight like so many sugar cookie recipes require. I rolled the cookie dough out about a quarter of an inch thick.

At the cake show, Penny showed us the coolest technique that I was just dying to try. Following her instructions, I took a chunk of dough and slowly added water until it was the consistency of buttercream and could be piped out of a piping bag. I then coloured the mixture using Americolor decorator gels. I spooned the mixture into paper piping cones and just cut the very tip off the cones. I then piped this mixture onto the cookies, outlining them in red and purple.

I have to say, I LOVE the Americolor gels. They come in squeeze bottles and the colours are more vibrant than Wilton's.


I popped the cookies into the oven at 325 and baked them for approximately 15 minutes a tray. I took them out of the oven and the piping was just as vibrant as when they went into the oven! They were so pretty, in fact, that I really didn't need to decorate them.

But, of course, I did anyway. Hey, they were for Valentine's Day, after all!

I made up the royal icing and decided to do a couple of different techniques. Firstly, I took some of the cookies that I had not outlined and dipped them in coloured icing. To do that, I watered down some of the royal icing and tinted some red and some purple. Why purple? Well, it happens to be my friend, Gloria's favourite colour. The icing has to be thin enough to dip the cookies but not so thin that it all runs off. You should be able to dip the cookies, pull them out, give them a little shake and set them on a drying rack, and have them look pretty smooth.

Next, I took the remaining thinned icing and thinned it even more to use as a flood colour for the outlined cookies. The cool thing about these cookies is that the outline already provided a dam so I didn't need to outline them with a thicker icing to hold in the flood colour. This icing should be fairly runny. I spooned it into piping cones and cut just the tip off. It's runny enough that it will run right out the tip and back up the cone and leave you a bit messy. I should have put gloves on right away but I didn't so I ended up with red hands for a bit. Ooops. Heh. I set these to dry, too. The outlined borders provided a pretty contrast to the icing.

I had some pretty sanding sugar in purple and a really nice red/gold and I dipped some cookies into the sanding sugar.

With a half dozen remaining cookies, I melted some dark chocolate and dipped half the hearts.


I let the cookies dry overnight and packed them up in pretty boxes the next day and delivered them to my loved ones. The cookies not only looked fabulous but they were also the best tasting sugar cookies I'd ever made.  They were big hit!

If you love beautiful and tasty sugar cookies please try this recipe yourself!

I just wish I'd thought to take a picture of them all boxed up.

(Edit: My girlfriend managed to snap a  few picture of her cookies. Yay.)

Innovations in bread baking don't come along every day so when I saw an article in the NY times for a no-knead bread with the taste of bakery bread, I was excited. There is even a video! w00t!

The news spread quickly across the Blogosphere and pretty soon I was seeing blog after blog touting the simplicity and beauty of this new recipe.

Encouraged by the success of my friends, I set out to make my own no-knead bread.

The recipe was simple:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon instant/dry yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 5/8 cups water

Mix all the dry ingredients, add in the water and stir well.  Cover your bowl with plastic and put in a warm place for 12-18 hours. You'll know it's done when the surface is dotted with bubbles.

Lightly flour your work surface and scrape your dough out. It will still be quite sticky. Turn the dough in on itself a time or two then sprinkle it with a light dusting of flour and cover it with plastic. Allow the dough to rest for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile lay out a cotton t-towel and generously cover it with flour, bran, cornmeal, or any combination thereof. Dust your hands with flour and move your dough onto your prepared teatowel and quickly shape your dough into a round loaf.

Once again, dust the top of your loaf with flour/cornmeal/bran and cover with a second cotton teatowel. Let sit for two hours until the dough has doubled it's size.

About 20 minutes or so before your bread is ready, find a good heavy 4-6 quart pot that has a lid. I used my Le Creuset enamel coated cast iron dutch oven. Say that three times fast.


Pre-heat your oven to between 450 & 500. I set mine for 450.  When the oven is ready, stick your pan inside and warm it until your dough is ready.

Remove the top teatowel and slide your hand under the bottom teatowel. Hold it over your warmed pan and flip your dough inside.