End Of Term Baking

It's the start of the summer holidays - hooray! I'm as much in need of a rest as my children, I think. The past seven days have been pretty busy, but in a good way. It was child number two's tenth birthday on Monday, and he had requested a Minecraft grass block cake. I always make the kids' cakes myself, not because I'm aspiring to be some kind of Nigella-type mummy, but because I really like mucking about with sugarpaste and edible glitter. I first caught the cake decorating bug in the Girls' Brigade when I was about 12 or 13, and I've managed quite a few cakes that I've been pretty pleased with over the years. I've amassed a fair amount of equipment and at least a little bit of skill, I like to think. Looking at examples of Minecraft cakes on Pinterest, I thought it seemed easy enough: bake a square chocolate cake, cover with chocolate frosting and use a mosaic technique to cover the frosting with various shades of green and brown fondant. Hmmm. Now maybe it's just me and my shaky hands, or maybe I was in a bit of a rush, but it was one of the trickiest cakes I've attempted in a looooong time. I admit that I'm a bit (OK, a lot) of a perfectionist, but I was less than happy with the result. Fortunately, my ten year old thought it was great. Phew.

One less than perfect cake.

I was somewhat happier with the second major baking project of the week: cookie pops for teacher thank you gifts. I started making end of term thank you presents when I realised how much it was going to cost me to buy for the teachers, TAs and various assorted other staff my three kids wanted to give things to. One year, I made fudge and by my rough calculations, it would have cost me around £40 to buy what cost me £7 to produce myself.

These cookie pops were originally going to be cake pops. I bought a cake pop mould set a few weeks ago, having wanted to try making them for ages. As I searched for cake pop baking tips online and attempted a few experimental batches,  it became clear that they're a lot harder than Hobbycraft/Lakeland/Everyone Else make out. Anyhoo, to cut a long and tedious story short, I need lots more practice making them if they're not to look deeply unappetising. The family enjoyed the failed attempts, though.

Cookie pops are far easier. They're quick to make, and you can decorate them without lots of mess - unlike the cake pops, which dripped all over the place, no matter what I did. There are loads of different sugar cookie recipes you could use, but I adapted one from Christmas Cookies (from Parragon's Love Food series, and a brilliant book to have on your shelf):

350g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g butter, softened (you can use a vegetable/olive oil spread instead but I find that you need a little more flour if you do, as the mixture's a little wetter. But let's face it, butter tastes far better.)
175g sugar (soft brown, or caster, or a mixture of both, depending on what you've forgotten to stock up with.)
1 egg, beaten
4tbsp golden syrup

Sift the flour and bicarb together and rub the butter into the mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and the golden syrup, and stir into the flour mixture. Knead into a dough with your hands.

From here, it's up to you whether or not you choose to chill it. Lots of people insist that chilled dough stops the cookies from spreading too much, but I've tried baking lots of different types of dough from chilled and room temperature with varied results. It seems to be the more to do with the proportions of the ingredients, if you ask me. If you do go for the chill, give it about 20-30 mins.

On a floured surface, roll out your dough to a minimum thickness of about 5mm and transfer to a sheet of baking parchment on a baking sheet or stone, depending on what you prefer to use. I don't grease the baking parchment. Carefully push a lolly stick (available from most cake decorating/craft shops) into the side of each cookie: twisting it slightly helps keep the cookie keep its shape. If it breaks through the surface, use a bit of dough to repair the hole.

Bake at 180 degrees for around 10-15 minutes. You want them light brown, but still soft so that they're nice and chewy. Allow to cool a bit before carefully removing them from the baking parchment, and let them cool completely on a wire rack. The amount of cookies you'll get from this recipe varies according to the size of cookie pop you're making, but it's generally around a couple of dozen.

When the cookies are completely cold, you can decorate them using whatever you fancy. I used melted white chocolate and mini chocolate beans in the ones below:

I bagged each cookie pop up and tied a few into 'bouquets' to give to the teachers.

Give me a couple of months to crack cake pops, and when I've got something I'm not ashamed to photograph I'll post them here. :-)