Pecanbrownies with a twist

Pecanbrownies with a twist

 

 Served with chocolate sauce, strawberries and blueberries, photo thanks to my beautiful daughter

My nifty brownie pan

 see how rich and dark my home made vanilla extract is?

 

Into my pan, which has been brushed with pan release

 

But now for the recipe

 

Ingredients:

 



200 gr dark chocolate

120 gr butter

50 mls red wine

2 large eggs

100 gr brown sugar

60 gr white granulated sugar

2 teaspoons home made vanilla sugar

2 teaspoon natural vanilla extract (I make my own)

80 gr flour

30 gr cocoa powder

200 gr chopped pecans

 

The how to:

 

Melt the chocolate in the butter (microwave) and make sure it’s melted completely, stir smooth and let it cool down.

Mix flour and cocoa powder and set aside

In a clean bowl, whip the eggs with the sugars until thick and creamy, add vanilla extract. When nice and thick, mix in the cooled chocolate/ butter mixture and then the red wine.

Sieve the flour mixture on top and beat in. Add in the pecans at the end and fold in

 

Pour into brownie pan and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for around 15 to 20 minutes. The cake is done, when moist crumbs stick to your toothpick, but the top looks dry, I think 15 minutes is enough

Picture tutorial: Quickly iced green Christmas trees

 

 

Since my family is still sleeping, I decided to quickly upload the Christmas tree cookie tutorial. This is what the cookie will look like

I used the same recipe as in the Linzer cookies, just added some Americolour leaf green to the dough. Add enough though, that the dough is really bright green, as you will lose some colour in the baking process

Get out your tree cutter, I used the smallest one from my Tree cutter set, rolling pin and silpat mat, roll out the dough and start cutting out your trees

When moving the trees to the baking tree, lift them off the mat, by slipping your hand inder the mat to avoid distortion

Chill the dough for at least 15 minutes, while your oven is heating up to 140 degrees Celsius. Bake cookies for around 10-14 minutes, when the edges start to brown, the cookies are ready. Take out of the oven and let them cool down.

 In the meantime, make a small batch of royal icing and colour them green, yellow and red. I fitted my piping bags with Wilton tips # 2,aced them into tall water glasses (makes them easier to fill with icing) and used the Wilton rubber bands to tie the open end shut.

Now start with the green icing and just pipe swags across the tree with the green icing.

Repeat with all trees, as the green icing needs to slightly crust over, before adding the next colours.

Using the yellow icing, pipe small dots along the swags, these are the lights.

Next step is to pipe the red dots, make them a bit larger (use more pressure) than the lights, these are the red Christmas ornaments.

The finished tree, icing is still wet, it will not be as shiny when it dries completely. Leave to dry overnight, before packaging in tins.



Mini Cakes for the German School Basar

After finishing the alien cupcakes, it was time to decorate the mini cakes for the Christmas basar tomorrow. My daughter's class are baking cookies to sell tomorrow, and these small cakes will help decorate the table. Hopefully they will sell well, because the class has decided to again donate the money for children in need in China.

 

 

Last year they made chalkboards by themselves and managed to sell them for over 5000 RMB to benefit Baobei.