Cookies and Cakes and a Baking Tip

Hi all!

Well, it's been a busy week so far. I spent the past couple of days baking 3 types of cookies and one cake due on Friday. The cookies are Chocolate Crinkle cookies, Rolled Sugar cookies with a dash of sprinkles on top and my already famous Mint Chocolate Chip cookies. I brought some to work as a "promotion", Dale bought some for a meeting he has tomorrow, and the reason I made all of these cookies is because a lady Dale works with ordered an "assortment" of cookies for a party this weekend. I'm not sure I will be doing many assortments in the future because of the massive amount of time involved. Maybe WAY later in the future when I will be able to sell larger quantities of cookies.

I also baked a deep dark chocolate cake last night for a friend's son's 6th birthday party on Friday. Keep watch for photos! And also keep watch for a menu. With all of the baking I've been doing lately I haven't had time to do any work on a menu or put my NEW logo up anywhere. My best bud Sven helped me come up with a logo that should do quite nicely. I can't wait to re-design my business cards with my new logo!

BAKING TIP

In the past, I've always greased and floured my pans for baking cakes, and used ungreased or greased cookie sheets for cookies as the recipe asked. Maybe a lot of people are aware of this baking tip, but it took 15 years of baking for me to ever come across it, so I thought I'd pass it on to anyone reading who might be in the dark like I was.

Instead of greasing and flouring your pan, grease it lightly with whatever you usually use and line it with parchment paper (you may have to grease the paper a little as well for it to stay in place). When you flour a pan, I find it is still VERY difficult to get the cake out without a lot of banging and digging and cursing. Since I've started lining my pans in parchment paper, the cakes just slide right out ever so nicely. No banging. No cursing. No ruining the cake's shape. Minimal cleanup. Fantastic!

This works for cookie sheets too. Just put a sheet of parchment down on the pan and bake away! No greasing required. Then you're not left with burnt up chocolate bits or pieces of cookie stuck to the pans. And the cookies lift up SO nice from the paper that they don't even leave any of the stuff they tend to leave on the pans. Once again, minimal cleanup. Amazing!

Watch for photos of this week's completed projects coming soon!