Halloween is scarily cute

I have a Halloween experience at least once a week at home.... "I see dead people"... NAH! Only kidding :OP

But if I did, I'd ask them for some winning lottery numbers, like the dutiful daughter I am as my Chinese mother would expect nothing less from me in a situation like that.

Once a week (maybe twice, I know... I know.... I have issues) I'd do a total scrub down of my bathroom. Well, what would you expect, I'm already in the shower, so I might as well clean it while I'm in there right?

Get ready for my weekly freaky experience as I know... some of you can relate to this :O)

Ever reached into the shower drainage hole and .... pull out...

HAIR?!!!!!

And I have long long long dark hair. I'd reach in and yank out this lump of hair that is long , slimy, yucky and gross that goes on and on.... and worse... it looks like I am pulling out a severed head ! Every time I half expect a real head attached to that lump of hair, turn around and gorily evilly smile at me, dripping with blood and slime, GROSS RIGHT???!!!

Did I succeed in making you gag? Squeal? ... a little maybe? ehheheheh... Well....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

xoxoxo

The new addition to the Cookievonster baked goods family

Introducing....

the MINI DONUT MUFFINS

I haven't been blogging for a while now.

I won't lie.

I was just plain lazy and I can't sit still long enough to complete an entire blog, even a short one. Something flickers at the corner of my eye,

I get distracted and I vanish into another world.

Lately, it has been the Sun. It was this little thing called 'Summer'.

Every morning when I get up, its shimmer sparkles on my young garden and make the fresh blooms glow and gloat with the widest joyful smiles.

It was impossible for me to stay indoors on the computer, so... I built a deck this summer to sit out at the back with my lap top. Unfortunately, sitting out in the sun got me even more distracted :OP

So.... I'll just have a to back track Cookievonster events now that the raining season has begun and I am stuck indoors.

Here goes...

I have a thing for cute little things. As long as they are teeny weeny and adorable. I love 'em!

I started Cookievonster with average to giant sized cookies, but as I ate, I felt awfully guilty after devouring just one cookie, and felt even worse when I follow it up with another cookie (..and another... and....). So most of my cookies were turned into mouth-popping mini cookies.

Some of you might know that I also offer mini bundt cakes topped with some pretty ooey gooey decadent toppings.... Mmmmmmm. But they were a bit messy to eat, and they were a two bite cake. I wanted to create a 'ONE BITE' treat.

I thought about all the one bite desserts out there and remembered that I love jam filled donut holes. Mmmmmmmm... Donuts! In the end, this is what I came up with. A healthier version of a donut, not fried but baked - I made Mini Jam filled Donut Muffins!

My first recipe was a fresh raspberry jam filled donut muffin with cinnamon and vanilla sugar. Oh my! I popped 8 in a row! Delish! Mind you I'm greedy and I have a big mouth to fit all the food that I eat all day long, but for the less greedy, the mini donut muffins are more like one and a half bites, but they are still cute n tiny!

After that initial jam donut, there is now a series of Cookievonster mini donut muffins.

1. Mini Jam donut muffins with Cinnamon sugar.
2. Fresh Lemon curd filled donut muffins with toasted Coconut.
3. Date and Fig mini donut muffins with butterscotch glaze.
4. Fresh Apple mini donut muffins with butterscotch glaze.

YUM!

Afternoon Tea at Van Dusen Gardens

61st Annual Rose Show and Craft Sale

at the gorgeous Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, BC

Sunday 20th June, Father's Day, 12:30pm-4:30pm

Father's Day cookie Set

Flower Cookie Pop - 3 cookies

Waffle Ice creams to welcome summer

I'd like to invite you along with the rest of your family to the

Vancouver Rose Society 61st Annual Rose Show and Craft Sale this Sunday,

at the beautiful Van Dusen Botanical Gardens.

Come celebrate Father's Day at Van Dusen Gardens, especially if your dad is an avid gardener, come for a stroll and have afternoon tea or coffee in the perfect setting for a special day.


This year they have taken a “sweet” turn and welcomed some Bakery Market vendors,

and Cookievonster, that'll be ME incase you're wondering who :OP

will be serving up some yummilicious baked goodies for the day,

such as mini donut-muffins, mini cakes and an assortment of fantabulous cookies,

including some Father's Day, Canada Day and Garden themed decorated shortbread cookies.
There will be tables to sit and enjoy a tea party with yummy treats, and still take some home.

We are also looking forward to seeing an array of tables with Garden related products.

The Rose show will also feature a judged Rose show in over 150 classes, 25 awards, expert demonstrations, throughout the show by leading rose experts and judged photography exhibit,
Of course, there will be Roses of every possible kind and size,
Hand tied bouquets and blooms at the end of the show for sale

as well as other perennial plant material.

Vancouver Rose Society Annual Rose Show, in Floral Hall, Cedar Room & Covered Walkway.
12:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Hope to see you this Sunday :O)

Cookievonster's new 'LOADED' cookie

Green Tea Shortbread cookie

Bacon heaven, in a cookie...

Who loves Bacon? Hands up!

ME! ME! ME!

I LOVE BACON!

Last Christmas a friend gave me a bar of chocolate. Not just any chocolate bar. It was a fancy gourmet BACON chocolate bar. A Vosges Mo's Chocolate Bacon Bar to be exact. I had seen a bunch of desserts made with bacon on TV lately. Its the "IN" thing, that and Matcha. Green tea is vastly promoted as a healthy ingredient, a healthy habit, and Bacon... well, I'd promote it simply as AWESOME! Bacon makes me happy. I have bacon and eggs as often as I can, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Saturdays, Thursdays, Wednesdays, Sundays and Fridays.

After I had a piece of the bacon chocolate, I definitely had to make something chocolate and bacon. How can I not? Two of my absolute favourite foods in the whole world!

I did my research as usual, and went and tested all sorts of bacon from the deli. Picked up some sausages and cold cuts at the same time too, just to keep the bacon company :OP

In the end, I settled on the aromatic Applewood Bacon.

I started making various versions of bacon brownies, because I loved the chocolate bar so much. MMmmmmmmm... they were GOOD.... and rich.... and very very good. I topped my brownies with some home made smoked coffee infused sea salt to intensify the flavours of the bacon and chocolate. Everyone raved about how wickedly good they were. Addictive, sinful and fantabulous! I was very happy with them, bacon makes me happy, bacon and chocolate makes me even happier.

I had planned to add the Bacon brownie to my list of goodies for sale at the market, but I am Cookievonster after all, and at the Baker's Market, I am situated next to Lily (Yaletown Brownies) who specialized in some pretty decadent brownies.

So I decided to switch and make some bacon cookies. It was an easy task, all I really did was mix the applewood bacon into my Chunky Chewy Brown butter Chocolate Chip cookie and sprinkled it with some coffee sea salt.

Why change a good thing? I still loved my chocolate chip cookie, and it made perfect sense to combine the two. Heavenly. So happy!

Well, now my Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookie has taken over the sales of the Chocolate Chip cookie, so I only make the Bacon one these days for the markets.

So calling all bacon lovers out there, drop by the BLIM Market this Sunday 23 May, 2010 @ the Heritage Hall (Main & 15th) and pick up some delicious mouth watering Bacon Chocolate Chip cookies.

'TEA PARTY' with Cookievonster

HAVE A COOKIEVONSTER "TEA PARTY"

Box of assorted freshly baked Mini goodies ONLY $10

A different TEA PARTY surprise every week

ONLY at the Baker's Market,

every Saturday 11am-3pm.

I've always dreamed of having my own little English Cottage, or an old Tudor mansion or castle wouldn't hurt, with an English Garden filled with roses, peonies and every other plant imaginable surrounding the house. All snuggled up in a cozy leather arm chair with a woolly blanket and a cup of tea... OK, so I lie, only Coffee for me, but cookies and cakes for sure! and looking out into my garden with one or two faithful companions by my side. How perfect would life be. Of course in my dreams... it never rains in England. And that's because I've been there twice and it never rained! How lucky!

I had mentioned that the 1st thing I ever baked was a fruit flan, the second thing were scones, some 4 years later. When I moved into my first house with my buddy Bruce way back then, we were so excited.

It was the oldest town house on the block, next to a train track, the whole house would rattle when the train passed by. It was cold and dark, the walls peeled, and as for fun, we used to throw things at the wall to watch the brick wall crumble into tiny bits. He took the room on the 2nd floor, I took the top floor. This house was so old it had a manual 'maid's bell' from the top floor.

We were sure it was haunted too. We used to wait for each other to finish school or after work late at night so we could meet and come home together, simply because it was a little scary at the beginning. I also remember the old wood fire place we'd use to hover over in winter to keep warm. There was a fire place in every room, not that it ever warmed up the bedrooms at all, smoked us out though, but it was nice!

The whole house squeaked, windows jammed, lights were too dim, BUT it had a working oven. It was the best fun Bruce and I ever had when we first moved in. He made chicken rice soup, and I made scones. I can't remember much about my scones, but I sure do remember his chicken soup, yum!

Where am I going with all this? Ever notice how certain food brings back memories of good times? Food and good times always seem to go together.

Oh yes, TEA PARTY! I love tea parties! I started organizing Tea parties when I was about 2, with all my toys, my plastic tea set, and some of mum's cookies. LOVED TEA PARTIES!

I still love a good Tea Party.

But I'd like to have it in England somewhere if I can :O)

For now, I'll have to settle for my own little tea parties in my back yard which I had spent the last 2 years turning into a proper garden from scratch.

'Always do what you love and you'll love what you do' people say all the time. Since I love tea parties, I had decided to make a box of TEA PARTY mini cookies and mini cakes. A perfect tea party should have a good assortment of baked goods, so I have planned to put together a variety of mini goodies every week till Mother's day week just for the TEA PARTY box.

I hope you'll drop by and grab yourself a box of my Tea Party goodies, and start your own precious memories of good times.

Give me Lemons... and I'll make some mini Lemon Cakes

Baby Lemon Poppy Seed cakes with tangy Lemon Curd

Someone gave me a huge bag of gorgeous juicy shiny lemons one day and what do I make, lemonade of course, what else? *wink*

Freshly juiced lemonade is awesome. But drinking lemonade everyday and all day long, a little less awesome.

What the next best thing? I cooked my dinners with lemon. I made lemon pasta, baked lemon chicken and a whole bunch of salad dressing.

Still I had some lemon left! I did say I had a HUGE bag of lemons.

I have never baked with lemon before but I do remember a pastry I once had which had some really yummy lemon curd in it.

I'm no fancy pastry chef, so I had to think of something else to have the lemon curd with.

So lemon cake it was! I looked through all my recipe books and surfed the net for some lemon cake recipes.

I selected a few that sounded great in my mind and made my first lemon cake. It was a loaf cake, kinda like a pound cake.

It wasn't too bad at all, especially when eaten with the fresh lemon curd I made to go along with it.

My lemon cake has come a long long way since that first trial. I had changed and tested more recipes than I remember, not all were successful, some, well... weren't that great.

I tried the creaming method, the folding method, the loaf shape, the bundt shape, the round shape, the layered cake and so on.

In the end, I found the recipe that was finally happy with. Its moist, its not too light nor too heavy, mixed with lemon zest and poppy seed and drenched with fresh lemon juice once its out of the oven. More importantly, it has great lemon flavour. Top it off with the creamy buttery lemon curd, awesomeness!

I usually make mine now as one big bundt cake, or as mini baby bundt cakes so that I can fill up each individual cake with just the right amount of lemon curd to satisfy each mouthful, YUMS!

Since then, when I do get some fresh lemons, I make... Lemonade? What lemonade?

Going to the BLIM Holiday Crafts market...

I am finally done with the Vancouver Baker's Market. What an experience it was. Deprived of sleep baking into the wee hours to make sure everythig was fresh, learned lots, met lots of great people and had a fab time... when I wasn't half asleep that was :O)
I'm still baking like a mad woman at the moment to fulfill all my custom cookie orders, I think my right arm is much bigger than my left now from all that icing.
I'm a bit sad, and a bit relieved at the same time that the Baker's Market is over... I really enjoyed it, but I am also swamped with custom orders which I need to put all my love into for now.

However, I have a one-day Crafts Market to attend this Sunday. I got invited in at the last minute and since its a craft market, it'll be a little different from the Baker's Market I presume, and I am quite excited!!!!

http://blim.ca/2009/11/30/sun-dec-20-blim-monthly-community-market/

I'm planning to make mini version of my specialty cookies, plus some decorated gingerbread and shortbreads for the holiday season. So if you are free.... do come by and check the market out... I'm sure I'll be buying lots of my Christmas presents from the market as well because I just love all things handmade.

:O)

Development of my Gingerbread cookie...

Last winter was unbelievable. How beautiful can a white winter be? Very! It was peaceful, silent, and everything seemed to glow.
We had a record breaking snow fall and it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen from my bedroom window.
There are several large pine trees outside my house and they were covered in snow, gorgeous!
That gave me an idea to make my Gingerbread cookie gifts a little different that year.

I ruffled through my box of cookie cutters and found a few varied sizes of Star shaped cutters. I was going to assemble a forest of little Gingerbread Trees. In my happy holiday mood, I baked the star shaped gingerbread cookies in all sizes, gathered them into sets and started to ice and assemble them one by one.
By the end of the night, I had a forest of Gingerbread Trees in my living room that filled the air with spice and everything nice. Nothing better to set the holiday spirit at home.

A new discovery....

Did I mention I love Art too? Yep... love to draw and paint just as much as I love baking.
So, two Christmases ago, along with my brand new oven, I made my first Gingerbread-man cookies. It was my first attempt at icing a cookie and it was just like art on a cookie. Can't remember ever having so much fun!

I was never a real fan of the gingerbread cookie. Most of the ginger bread cookies that I have tasted were dry, and over spiced. But I had just bought some really cute cookie cutters that I wanted to try out. What else was one to do? Do some research, test some recipes, and put together the parts that I liked and tweeked it 'til I was happy.
The result: a ginger bread cookie that was moist, yet held its shape well, smelled like heaven, and tasted fabulous. Since then, I've made gingerbread cookies all year round, drizzled with white chocolate and topped with candied ginger. Delish!
Icing the cookies was tricky, as I had never tried it before. All I had was a plastic icing syringe from the dollar store :O)
The icing on the cookies turned out pretty good for a 1st timer I guess. I even made some ornaments for my Christmas tree and gave some as gifts to my friends. All in all, I was pretty happy with them.

The Experiment begins.....

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie.

There is an endless stream of variations on the Chocolate Chip Cookie: large, small, crunchy, chewy. You name it. Everybody has their own twist on this timeless classic, and I've just about tried them all.

I even had a go-to recipe that I baked with for many years, but since I am starting my own cookie business, I had to refine it and try to find the perfect balance in order to achieve perfection!

How do I define a perfect chocolate chip cookie?

Simple:

1. It needs to be chunky, chewy, and chocolatey.

2. The flavour of the cookie component must stand on it's own.

3. The overall product must smell and taste fantabulous!

So after experimenting with batch after batch of Chocolate chip cookies, I finally uncovered my Ultimate Chocolate Chip cookie.

Tha Da!

Here it is,

the Chunky Chewy Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookie.