Sugar Swings! Serve Some: November 2014

Friday, November 28, 2014

Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Hash Brown Waffles


Are you still in your food coma from Thanksgiving?? Or maybe you've been Black Friday shopping all day?? Well I hope you are able to relax and enjoy a bit this long holiday weekend (in the US anyway, outside the US - Happy Friday!).  


And if you have any leftover sweet potato, pumpkin, and/or cranberries, maybe you can make these fun waffles for a yummy brunch this weekend.


More savory than sweet, they are kinda like Thanksgiving day in waffle form!

Check out the full recipe and more over at SheKnows!

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Candy Turkey Toppers for Thanksgiving


Guys!!! Thanksgiving is this week! How the heck did that happen? I keep thinking I have like 2 more weeks to prep.  More like 3 days, THREE DAYS! 

And for some reason I keep trying to make turkeys for Turkey Day.  I still can't quite get over the cute versus creepy turkey look.  But I think I know what the problemo is - real turkeys are freakin' scary!! 

I mean look at them:


(((Shivers))) It's almost impossible to make THAT look cute! 


But I did attempt turkeys again this year with candy - lots and lots of candy.


I found some fun malt balls at Whole Foods and thought they would make a good turkey body.  They also had solid color candy corn that I used for the tail feathers.  A sixlet and candy coated sunflower seed made the head and beak.  A single red sprinkle made a great turkey gobbler thing.  All candy "glued" together with melted chocolate (or you can use melted candy wafers).  To allow the turkeys to stand with out rolling round, attach to a square pretzel base.  


And you have all the makings for an evil army of turkeys for whatever your purposes are!


If you forgo the evil turkey world takeover plan, you can always just use them as fun toppers.  I added them to cupcakes (duh) and little pumpkin spice pudding cups.

  
Now that I look closely at real turkey photos, these candy ones are like 1000X cuter.  


I have to remember life is all about perspective.  


Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I'm truly so thankful for everything I have.  Life is indeed good.

Eat lots of yummy food and enjoy the good times.  Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Big Hero 6 - Baymax Vanilla Macarons


Did anyone go see the new Disney movie Big Hero 6 this weekend? With 3 kiddos (a 10 year old and 7 year old twins) this one was a no brainer.  Robots AND Heros? Yeah total no brainer.  And Disney definitely has their movie formula pretty down to a science.  Young kids that lose parents/parent figures early on and must persevere through the hardships to realize the true meaning of loving something and the goodness that triumphs over evil.  Yup, it works well so why mess with a good thing?!


The robot in the story is the lovable Baymax.  Baymax is a personal healthcare companion programmed to fix anyone in distress.  He's pretty much the most awesome robot ever and totally inspired me to make some Baymax macarons.  Is that weird that I automatically said, yes I'm going to make him in macaron form? 

Once you have your macaron mixture combined, pipe the characters onto parchment by tracing from a printout underneath the parchment paper
I've only made macarons one other time, and didn't even post about it.  I used the Italian method, and they came out ok.  Definitely far from perfect but at least they were recognizable as macarons!  I used the same method for these Baymax ones.  I'm not even going to try to post directions, but you can see a step by step How To over at Annie's Eats.  She posted a great tutorial here on how to make macarons using this Italian method.   My one suggestion (which everyone seems to agree on) is to measure all your ingredients with a scale.  It's pretty easy to do, so don't get worried that its a lot of extra trouble.

Just to give you and idea of how un-perfect mine were, check out the underside.  They should be flat not like this.  My trouble is knowing when they are done.  You don't want them to brown too much, but you need them done enough to not stick when trying to remove them.  Depending on your oven, you should bake them for about 8 minutes then check them every minute to see if they are done.  


I had some vanilla beans so thought it would be the perfect flavor for Baymax.  Add his accents with black and white melted candy wafers and some large black flat sprinkles for eyes.  


Even though Baymax is a robot, he's got a heart of gold.  He will make you cry.  


Chocolate buttercream seemed to fit well with his center.  


And Disney totally set this up for a sequel, if they want to go this route.  Overall I really enjoyed the movie and the kiddos gave it a big thumbs up.  Right there on par with Guardians of the Galaxy.  


For anyone looking for the recipe, please head over to Annie's Eats for her step by step tutorial.  I followed it pretty much exactly, except adding some vanilla bean seeds (scrapped from one vanilla bean pod) when she points out to add color/flavor.  Once the macaron mixture is ready to be piped, I traced it onto parchment on top of some Baymax templates that I printed out from Google (thanks Google!).  The chocolate buttercream, is store bought, to save some time.  You can use any type of flavoring for the centers since vanilla goes so well with pretty much anything.  

Did you see Big Hero 6 and if so what did you think???

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Minions (and Evil Minions) No Bake Cookies


I needed to take a break from all of the Halloween Right Into Thanksgiving and Christmas Season that we are in. I mean we go Trick or Treating, then bam - Christmas commercials and displays everywhere.  I love the holidays and all, but sometimes you gotta take a vacation from them.  


And we love love (love!) Minions here.  I've been meaning to make these Minions forever, like ever since I saw they made Mint Milano mini cookies.  Mint Milano cookies are so yum on their own, but then the geniuses over at Pepperidge Farms went and shrank 'em.  And of course I was all like "you had me at mini".

And if you're not familiar with Minions, where have you been?? J/K - they are the little yellow henchmen of Gru in the Despicable Me movies.  

For some of their best scenes, check out this YouTube compilation:



And for some reason - I'm not really sure why - I just happen to have yellow and violet Wilton Color Mist hanging around in my sprinkle cabinet.  What is Color Mist? Well it's basically like spray paint for food.  To make the color for these little minions, just spray some cookies yellow and some purple (for the evil minions).


All the rest of the detail is done with melted candy wafers and some royal icing eyes.   


They are fun on their own or super cute added as cupcake toppers too!


And you've got whole lotta' little Minions (and evil Minions) that are pretty quick to put together and so easy - especially since no baking is needed.  A super cute addition to a Minion party table!

Minions crack me and the kiddos up every time we re-watch one of the Despicable Me movies. Make a batch of them while you wait patiently for the Minions movie due out summer of 2015! Can't wait!