Your Holiday Baking Goals

Now that it's December , it's time to start thinking about goals - namely your holiday baking ones. What do you want to achieve. The perfect array of cookies? Delicious pies and cakes? Traditional fruitcakes or airy mousses? It's all up to you.

First of all, any goal requires a plan. With baking it's simple. Make sure you have enough flour and sugar along with mixes, milk , eggs and butter. Also make sure your cookie cutters  and cake pans are up to par. If not go out and get yourself some new ones. Make sure you have extras such as a sieve or strainer for sifting confectioners sugar as well as for dusting onto baked goods. A pastry brush comes in handy , especially for brushing breads and rolls with melted butter or beaten egg.Also  have or get a ruler. This is important when you're making the pieces for gingerbread houses and you have to have exact measurements. I can't stress how crucial it is to have a roll or two of parchment paper. This is  a must if you/re baking certain cookies and definitely meringues. Holiday cupcake papers should also be part of your holiday baking plan. You know you're going to bake at least two dozen whether for a family or school party. Now is also the perfect time to test out your cookie press, making sure that one, the barrel isn't cracked and two, that the press still works. Make sure you have the holiday imprint discs too for those candy canes, angels, wreaths and trees. This is the time to assess baking extras and frills. Do you have to go out and get candy decorations? White and dark chocolate for dipping cookies into and for drizzling onto  surfaces? Do you have any sanding sugar left over from last year - and it's good to use for three to five years.

Now that you have your arsenal loaded, the next question is what to bake. I've been asked to bake  whole gingerbread families  including their dogs. Of course these families require housing. I know from my Mom baking  them, gingerbread houses require a certain level of skill, to bake, assemble and decorate. I know I can't handle the first. It would just be non-stop baking, while putting everything else on hold. I plan on just buying the kits (I have about three to four houses to "build" and frost). Luckily Target has Wilton's Ready To Decorate gingerbread houses that are not also already baked but assembled. All you have to do is just put a few icing swirls here and there, outline the windows and doors, and ice the roof. The kit also has extra silver and gold candy discs to create a front path.My one goal is a simple and elegant one : a two layer chocolate cake with a peppermint buttercream icing, dusted with silver sanding sugar. The only fanciness will be how the icing will be piped. I'll be looking through Carey Madden's great book Buttercream Basics : Learn The Art of Buttercream Decorating for inspiration for the cake's sides. I've also been asked to make scratch cookies and I'm thinking peanut butter blossoms and cookie press cookies in pink and green.

This is the time to think about your holiday baking goals. What do you want to achieve this season? Some elaborate masterpiece or a family classic? It's all up to you and what you can handle.

Buttercream Basics A Baker's Dream Book

One of the most fun things about home baking is decorating one's cakes and cupcakes. There's nothing prettier than a shower cake  festooned with roses or  cupcakes livened up with squiggles and swirls. However, this art does have to be learned and luckily there is a brand new book to show us how.

Buttercream Basics: Learn The Art Of Buttercream Decorating (Robert Rose Publishers 2017) , a phenomenal how to was written by Carey Madden and shows how to create amazing decorations for cakes and cupcakes.Ms. Madden is known for her cake decorating books, She has previously written one just for cupcakes and small cakes. I love this book. One of the best things about it is that she  eases novice decorators like myself from the very simple to the very elaborate. The book doesn't start off with elaborate roses and curlicues. That's for later. Another big plus is the pictorial on the different decorating tools and their use. The book also shows the difference between the tips' openings and how to employ them to create lines, leaves, and petals. Another aspect I 'm impressed with is her advice to left handers like myself. So often we just can't decorate properly because the decorations are for righties. Ms. Madden tells us to go counterclockwise when the directions say clockwise. There is also a chapter on how to mix colors and pair them up for the best color schemes along with chapters on not only icing the cake but also filling it too.Home bakers will likely follow her how to have a smooth surface as well as how to clean tips.

Of course, there is the buttercream recipe but it's the Swiss kind made with egg whites and cooked.She does offer the American kind, but it's sweeter , denser and stiffer than the other. The Swiss meringue is not sugary sweet and it's the perfect foil for the triple chocolate  and yellow butter cake recipes that she also includes. All the cakes featured look amazing.  Beginner icers will love recreating the vintage look of coiled rustic or the swoopy homestyle iced cakes. My favorites are the simple swirl and twine decorated ones where only a spatula is needed to create circles on the top and sides.Ms. Madden also has a chapter on adding sashes to cakes, making them look like elegant hats . There's an interesting one on decorating with crystallized fruits such as figs, blueberries, and blackberries. This would be not only perfect for a birthday but also for a wedding too. The more adventurous will undoubtedly like to attempt the dusting technique which involves stenciling. The cupcake section is adorably cute, especially with the caterpillar birthday cake, made with a line of  cupcakes.I love the rosette swirls and definitely will be trying that one soon enough. There's also the bunch of balloons cupcakes that 's just so sweet  and just the right thing for a kid's birthday cake.

Buttercream Basics :Learn The Art of Buttercream Decorating is the best book for home bakers wanting to create professional looking cakes and cupcakes. It's informative and fun. Learning all the techniques and tips is even better than having your cake and eating it too.