While I did have a bit of a break from baking recently, I didn't have a break from cake. Some friends of mine came to visit and we had a bit of a cake tour in London, hitting the Cake and Bake Show, back for its second year, and the popular chocolaterie Choccywoccydoodah. I'd been to Choccywoccydoodah, a bright shop whose wares are not for the faint of stomach (I love chocolate, but even I struggled to finish my hot cocoa) before, but this was my first visit to the Cake and Bake Show. Sprawled across the venue in Earl's Court was an array of food stalls, some run by larger bakeries, others by small businesses, and virtually all of them tempting.
If you wanted to try it all, you would have to have prep snacked for weeks.
There were also plenty of cake decorating tools on offer, and inspiration all around! There were silicone lace molds that allow you to do things like this:
I think I may need to make an investment.
There were adorable hedgehogs*, to which I will return shortly...:
And there was creativity in ample quantities, some of it with touch of humour/creepiness:
There were also free samples (yay free!), and charity goody bags with cake mix and sprinkles. Because everyone knows that edible souvenirs are the best souvenirs.
Getting back to inspiration and hedgehogs, I
I wasn't sure what type of cookie they were made out of, but I thought pfeffernusse would be close enough. Plus I really like pfeffernusse, but haven't actually made it before. I used yet another of Martha's recipes.
The cookies were not difficult at all to make; the biggest problem I had came when I realized that the allspice in my cabinet was really mixed spice. Oops. So I substituted equal parts cinnamon and cloves and a pinch of nutmeg.
After mixing the dry ingredients together, I played with molasses. Can't say that I ever have before; that's some slow sticky stuff. Contrary to the idiom, however, I think it would have been faster (and less messy) to pour it directly into the measuring cup, rather than spooning it.
After beating the butter, sugar and molasses, and then mixing in everything else (eggs, vanilla, dry ingredients), you just spoon out dough, roll them into balls (or in my case, egg-shaped hedgehogs-to-be), and put them on parchment-covered trays.
And bake. The recipe says 15 minutes in the oven until golden and firm to the touch. I didn't read carefully enough to touch the first batch, and consequently I think that I left them in a bit too long waiting for golden brown; that was about a 15 minute bake time. The second batch went for about 13 minutes and they were firm to the touch when I took them out.
Halfway to hedgehogs!
When the cookies had cooled, I melted some dark chocolate (two bars, which may have been excessive) and dipped the cookies.
At first I dipped the cookies about halfway up with chocolate, but after testing putting faces on them they looked a bit too much like disembodied heads for my liking. The hedgehogs needed less of a receding hairline, so I dipped them deeper into the chocolate (ah, such hardships). When dipping, the wider end of the cookie goes into the chocolate, the thinner end is the head. Shake the excess chocolate off, and then dip the top part of the cookie into chocolate sprinkles.
If the chocolate is very hot the sprinkles might fall off the cookie in chunks when you pull in out of the dish, so you could let the chocolate cool a bit after dipping to prevent this. Otherwise try to pull the chocolate sprinkle chunks out of the dish so you don't get lumpy hedgehogs. After they've been sprinkled, lay them out on parchment to set; I reused the parchment I baked on. Finally, rather than messing with a piping bag to add the faces, I just dipped a toothpick into the chocolate and dripped tiny blobs onto the front of the cookies for eyes and nose.
It is both a blessing and a curse that the cute factor makes them more difficult to eat... but not that much more difficult.
*A side note: who knew that the collective noun for hedgehogs is an array?
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