Old Jack Frost

So it was suggested by Swestie at http://www.swestie.com/thingsthatinspire/ that should take holiday cooking questions and answer them. I thought it was a great idea, so send me your questions and I will see what I can do to get them answered for you. I am going to start with the question she had for me.

Swestie asked:

“I'm going to try individual pound cakes. What would you do to dress them up? I was thinking something like a raspberry or orange glaze. And how would you adjust cooking times ?”

Here was my answer:
“ A glaze would be nice. Doing a frosted raspberry or two with a sprig of rosemary (for looks not flavor) on top would be really pretty too.  Or you could do some frosted cranberries (less expensive just as pretty).  There are a couple ways you can do it.  You can rinse the berries and then toss to  coat the berry in super fine sugar, then freeze or you can coat them in egg white or pasteurized egg product and do the same. “

However, with Sallies application I wasn’t sure the frozen berry would stand up as long as she needed it to, so I came up with this alternative and tested it to see if it worked. I used a cherry (all I had that was red and berry like) I made a simple sugar glaze of powdered sugar and water (you can use juice or milk as well.) I used a two sugar to one water ratio (in this case 2 tablespoons sugar to 1 tablespoon water). I coated the cherry in the glaze and let the excess drip off, and then rolled in the sugar. It looked great and two hours later is still good. The sugar glaze will dry hard and should eliminate needing to freeze.

So there is the question for the day, send me some more and I will see what I can come up with.