Care Package Special Feature Part 3: Creative Treats

This final part of my care package feature is all about sending creative treats. Keep reading for a cookie that doubles as a letter and instructions for the best birthday-in-a-box your loved one will ever get.
 
Cookie Letters
This is a really easy way to put a smile on somebody's face. Bake up a shortbread or sugar cookie. Roll out the dough and cut out a large rectangle. Bake it as per recipe's instructions. If you notice it's getting a little too brown before it's fully baked, cover it with foil.
Once the cookie is cooled, use food colouring markers to write a letter on it. If you seal the cookie with a vacuum sealer and wrap it in lots of bubble wrap, this special cookie will survive a trip anywhere in the world.

Birthday-In-A-Box
Not being able to see your loved one on their birthday sucks, but you can still help them celebrate! Put together a care package with the following items:

Balloon Messages
Blow up 6-12 balloons. Carefully write a heartfelt message to your loved one on each balloon. Deflate the balloons and tie them together with pretty ribbon. Attach a note with instructions to blow up the balloons for some birthday love.

Lemon Birthday Cake
Using a 9x13 inch pan and a round cookie cutter, you can make a pretty cake in a jar to send your loved one.
First, grease and line your pan with parchment then preheat your oven to 325F.
Next, mix 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons of flour, 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/3 cup of granulated sugar in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine 3 tablespoons of milk, 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and the juice and zest from one lemon.
Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Pour into your prepared pan and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
Let it cool completely then use a round cookie cutter (about the size of the jar you're going to assemble the cake in) to cut 4-6 circles out of the cake.
Layer cake circles with lemon icing and top with sprinkles.

Brownie Cake
If your loved one is far away and you don't think the cake in a jar above will last, bake up a brownie (like Nestle's desert safe brownie from Part 1) in a cake pan. Cool it completely, seal it using the tips from Part 2, and send it with some canned icing (this is absolutely the only time canned icing will ever be okay to use. Ever.). It's a good idea to put the icing in a separate freezer bag just in case it pops open in the mail.

Decorations
Add a final touch to your package with some decorations like a personalized birthday banner, some streamers, and coloured paper plates and plastic cutlery (especially if you're sending a big birthday brownie overseas).

Top the package off with a birthday card, and it's ready to go!

Now that the Care Package Special Feature is over, what would you send to loved ones? What tips do you have for mailing homemade goodies?

The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book: Strawberries and Cream Cake

Job Applications: 46

Interviews: 0

Recipes:3

It's been awhile since I made a cake, so I decided to try out the Strawberries and Cream Cake recipe from The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. The cake only uses five ingredients - sugar, flour, melted butter, vanilla and eggs (separated). How easy!

The first step of any cake is to grease and line your cake pan. A quick trick to make a circle of parchment perfect for your pan is to fold a piece of parchment paper in half twice. Put the fold in the centre of your pan and trim the excess away from the edge. Tada! A perfect parchment circle!

Now, back to the ingredients. First, mix the egg yolks, vanilla and butter in a small bowl and set it aside for later.

 Next, whip the egg whites until foamy.

 Then add sugar while still whipping.

 The egg whites are done when they're stiff.

Once the egg whites are whipped, add the butter mixture and half the flour. Fold it together.

 Then fold in the remaining flour.

The recipe suggests baking all the batter in one pan then cutting it into three layers. Instead, I baked it in three pans (I really don't trust myself to cut three equal and level layers!)

The next part of the cake is the whipped cream. The recipe in the book calls for whipping cream, confectioners sugar and vanilla. I also added a bit of meringue powder to help stabilize it.

The last task before assembling the cake is to slice some strawberries.

To assemble, place one layer of cake on a cake plate and cover with some whipped cream. Top that with strawberries.

Repeat with the next layer of cake. Top with the final cake layer then cover with the remaining whipped cream.

Decorate with six to eight whole strawberries (the recipe calls for eight, but the strawberries I had were huge).

This recipe was very easy to put together and hardly took any time at all. The resulting cake was simple but elegant, tender, moist, satisfying to the sweet tooth without being too sugary, and deliciously summery. What an impressive dessert to bring out at the end of a meal or take along to a friend's house when you're asked to bring a little treat.

I will definitely make this cake again!

Baking for...International Beer Day: Vanilla Beer Cake with Beer Caramel Sauce

Sunday is International Beer Day. When you love beer like I do, you just can't pass up the opportunity to make something special to mark the occasion. Awhile ago a friend gave me a vanilla cake mix in a jar.

I decided to finally crack it open and use it as the base for my Vanilla Beer Cake with Beer Caramel Sauce. The cake was really easy to make - just dump the dry ingredients from the jar into a bowl and stir in some eggs, oil, water and vanilla then bake.

Since the star of this recipe has to be beer, I substituted beer for some of the water. There are lots of really great craft beers out there that have hints of vanilla, which would go really nicely with the cake. Of course, I didn't have any, and today being one of the hottest days of the summer, I decided to use what I have, which happened to be Moosehead. One of my favourite beers to drink and pretty good in the beer bread I plan to bake tomorrow morning.

To give the cake a little something extra I decided to make some caramel sauce to serve with it. With beer of course. Now, here's the thing about caramel. I burn it. Always. This time was no exception (although at least it's still slightly edible, which doesn't often happen). But, for those of you who have better luck with things made on the stove top rather than in the oven, here's the recipe.
(Note: The ratio for caramel is 2 parts sugar to 1 part cream to 1 part butter, plus flavourings like the beer if desired. To make a wet caramel, just add 1 part water to the caramel. Knowing this, you can play with this caramel recipe to get a flavour that makes you happy. Just be sure not to add too much of the beer or your sauce won't set well.)

Beer Caramel Sauce

1/3  c  water

2/3  c  granulated sugar

1/3      T  heavy cream

3      T  beer

1       t   vanilla

1/3  c   butter

In a pot over medium-high heat, mix water and sugar. While this begins to heat up, measure out your other ingredients and set aside.
When the sugar and water mixture turns a nice shade of amber, add all of the other ingredients all at once.

Stir to combine then leave the mixture over the heat for a couple minutes until the colour and bubbling appear uniform.

Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Store in a jar until you're ready to serve your cake.

Just before serving, drizzle the caramel sauce either over the entire cake or over each individual piece if you'd like to make a plated dessert.

Happy International Beer Day!