Category: Snacks

“Artist’s Valentine” rose-cardamom iced cookies — decorated with a paintbrush! Two paintbrushes, actually, one for brushing on the pink, and a much smaller one for flicking in gold luster dust (with some gold sprinkles added after).

I’m not sure that I love this combo of techniques, actually — if I could go back in time, I think I’d do some of the cookies with just the pink brushwork, some with just the gold splatter, and maybe a few with both? But oh well, they’re still cute, and will be delicious regardless.

And one big plus for this decorating technique — it’s fast! I iced the cookies with white last night, which took about 20 minutes of dipping. Let them dry overnight, and then another 15-20 minutes of decorating this morning to finish them off.

If you’re doing the more elaborating outline + flooding technique for icing sugar cookies, it can take much, much longer. I’ve done it, but am not likely to do it again unless it’s for a very special occasion; I just don’t have the patience!

Double batch of passionfruit marshmallows. I needed some for an order, and then I thought I’d do some dipped in chocolate for the Valentine’s party next week, and the Patreon winter boxes. They are so yummy — I get to eat the trimmings when I make these…

Snowstorm predicted for tomorrow, quiet evening here. Father Brown murder mysteries on the TV, and cardamom-rose heart sugar cookies in the oven. Cool today, ice tomorrow. Now, how shall I ice these? So many options…

These are either for the Valentine’s party / sale coming up on the 12th (link in comments), or for the Patreon winter treat boxes (also link in comments), or possibly both…although the kids will undoubtedly get a few too.

I was a little rushed getting lots of dishes cooked to freeze and take to Santa Fe for the Feast party I promised to throw for George. Well, it was more that I promised to provide a Sri Lankan feast (in thanks for giving me a place to run away from my life and write for a week), and told him he could invite people, and then he threw the actual party, but you know what I mean.

So over the next day or two, I’ll post some photos from party prep. If for some strange reason you’re planning on throwing a party for up-to-40 people in another state, it might help to know what freezes well, so I’ll start with this one — pol (coconut) sambol freezes beautifully.

Tip for freezing:

– try to squeeze as much air as possible out of the Ziploc bags when sealing
– try to freeze dishes hard (so at least the night before travel, earlier if possible)
– freeze in flat layers for ease of getting them out of the freezer (you don’t want them to have molded themselves around your bag of frozen peas), and for ease of packing
– don’t try to freeze potatoes if you can avoid it, especially bigger pieces! they go all mealy and weird.

Anand taste-tested and approved. We decorated some with extra pecans, and some with sea salt.

Kevin’s mom put turtles (the candy) on her wishlist. We could’ve bought some, of course, but it seemed like a fun opportunity to make some with the kids. Super-easy, esp. if you buy caramels and melt them (with a little milk) to make the melted caramel, and melt the chocolate at half-power in the microwave. Thanks to Jed for letting us make a bit of a mess in his kitchen.

I spent about half of yesterday making passionfruit marshmallows and cranberry-cashew milk toffee and dragonfruit chocolates for a gift order — I think someone was giving them to clients or staff? Hope they love them.

I’m going to add cayenne-chocolate gilded roses to the Serendib store as a confection option — I thought people might like them for Valentine’s Day, if their love is spicy — any other requests? Let me know!

It’s too late at this point to order custom confections from me for this Christmas, sorry! If you want them for next year, think early December — and if it’s a big order, even earlier would be appreciated. You could set a calendar reminder now…