About 6 weeks ago I got this lovely e-mail from Nessie who reads my blog. Nessie, coincidentally, is just finishing her law degree and next year will be working at a firm that I used to work at. Nessie had this wonderful idea to do a regular baking run for hospice. Apparently a local bakery used to give their leftover baking to the North Shore Hospice, but now because of health and safety regulations, they are not able to. Of course I was keen – it is a fabulous cause!
I was going to make something Christmassy, using the rest of my stained glass window cookie dough to make star shaped stained glass window cookies. However, there wasn’t enough difference in size between my two star shaped cutters, and so the cookie dough didn’t hold its shape when I went to put the cookies on the tray. So, I simply rolled the dough into balls, poked a hole in each cookie with the end of my wooden spoon and filled the centres with plum jam. Cute and tasty little cookies.
The other thing I made was these chocolate and strawberry cupcakes. I used a recipe from Taste magazine which you can find here. The actual recipe is for a large cake, so I got 30 cupcakes from the recipe. The cake is a really yummy, moist one, filled with chunks of strawberries. One wee tip, if you are making this cake into cupcakes, rather than stir the strawberries through the mixture, fill the cupcake cases and then pop the strawberry chunks into the cakes.
The cakes are topped with chocolate ganache and I topped the ones for Hospice with little flowers. I took the rest of the cupcakes to a picnic we has with friends yesterday and topped them with strawberries. They were really delicious and so easy!
Thanks Nessie for such a great initiative! I look forward to baking for Hospice again in 2009!
6 comments:
Hi Tammy, I love reading your blog, its very inspiring and I love the generous things you do with your time and gorgeoua baked goods.. But I am asking..now, do you either have one large wooden spoon or are those jam drop cookies small? I have never seen anything like this is person so I have no idea, they look lovely and im guessing easy to make too.
HI Zeetra
The cookies are smallish (about the size of when you put your index finger and thumb together) but I so have one wooden spoon with quite a fat round handle whcih makes the perfect indent. They are a little like the 180degrees chocolate dipped jam drops if you have seen those in your supermarket
Tammy
Tammy
Oh Tammy - what a thoughtful thing for the 2 of you to do. Lucky North Shore Hospice - wish you lived closer to mine. Next time I see my colleagues from North Shore at the Hospice Conference I will know exactly what baking they are raving about. Raewyn
These cupcakes look fabolous :) strawberries and chocolate are so decadent. The thumbprint cookies are nice too :)
What a wonderful thing you are doing! I'm sure everyone appreciates your thoughtful and delicious gift.
Lovely job Tammy. The chocolate cupcakes are beautiful.
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