Now, today we've got a real treat on our hands. This is courtesy of two people... Danish food blogger Mat over at Kvalifood for giving me the inspiration, and my old roommate Shirley for giving me the necessary equipment.
I call it the Firework Tower, as I feel that it accurately captures all of the fun and festivities of watching fireworks. However, this is technically a take on a Danish dessert (not to be confused with a Danish pastry, although you know you're doing something right when your country has an entire food named after it) called "kransekake." There's about as many spellings of that word are there are letters in it, so I'm going with the one listed on the product name for the specialty pans needed to make this. Traditionally, kransekake is made with marzipan-type-stuff, but this one is made with cookies, as almond paste is expensive. And that's putting it lightly.
Equipment:
- 1 Set Kransekake Pans
- I used the Fox Run Non-Stick Kransekake Pans
- Mixer
- Piping Bags & Tips
- I used a smaller star tip for this... but feel free to use whatever. As long as you've got the GOOD plastic baggies and not the cheap ones, you can usually get away with one of those instead of a piping bag
- Cake-a-Whirl
- I broke out my trusty ol' Wilton Trim & Turn
- 12in Cake Circle
- Cooling Racks
- Spray Grease
Ingredients:
- Cookie Dough, Half Red, Half White
- I actually used 2 boxes of Betty Crocker candy cane cookie mix, left over from Christmas. It has a slight peppermint flavor, but I found that it works well for this. You'll want the dough to be slightly stiff, though, so I made it with slightly less butter and water than called for.
- 12oz (Block & 1/2) Cream Cheese, Softened
- Don't get the reduced fat stuff... it doesn't work quite right
- 1/2c Butter Or Substitute, Softened
- As usual, I used my cheap old store brand vegetable oil spread. What? Real butter is EXPENSIVE.
- Blue Food Coloring
- Lots of Powdered Sugar
- 1tbsp Vanilla Extract
- I used imitation extract... you may need less if you're using the real stuff. Taste testing is a thing here... be sure to use it.
- Flour
The first thing that you'll want to do is preheat your oven to 350F, and spray down the insides of the kransekake ring molds with grease. Grease is your friend here. While that's warming up, start rolling out the dough into snakes, trying to get each one about half the width of one of the kransekake rings. Twist the two colors against each other into a rope, and load it into the ring molds, starting with the inner rings. Work in parts about 1/3 the length of the ring, and follow it around, gently squishing the ends together.
You'll want to squish the dough down so that the top of it is pretty much even with the "high part" on the ring mold, as cookie dough likes to spread out when cooked, and you don't want your rings fusing. You can usually work the "extra" dough further down the ring, filling in any cracks. Repeat for all rings.
You'll want the cookies to be fairly stiff by the time that they come out of the oven, so no soft-baked ones here. For me, that was about 15 minutes on convection bake. Times may vary. While the cookies are baking, you can start in on the icing.
Much like the cookies, you'll want a fairly stiff icing, as this is what holds the whole operation together. Mix the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla together until well blended, then slowly add the powdered sugar, mixing on medium. Alternate adding food coloring and powdered sugar, until desired consistency and color are achieved. Now, the type of butter that you're using and the ambient humidity can greatly affect the amount of powdered sugar that you have to use in order to get a stiff icing. You'll want it soft enough to put through a piping bag without bursting said bag, but hard enough that it doesn't run when at an angle. This took me about 6 cups of powdered sugar, but it had also been raining all day.
Once the cookie rings are done, take them out of the oven and let them cool completely, in a dry location. The cooling is important, as it allows them to finish stiffening up. Once they're cooled, free the rings from the molds. I found this was fairly easy to do by running a fingernail round the entire outside of the outermost cookie ring, removing that ring, and then repeating for inner rings. DO NOT mix up the order of the rings. Seriously. Don't.
Find the largest outermost cookie ring and adhere it, as centered as possible, to the cake circle with the icing. Then, go with a zig zag pattern around the ring, making sure that the icing comes down over the edge of the ring.
Find the next ring in the size series and gently press it into the icing on the just-decorated ring. For what it's worth, the ring molds are made to where the size progression involves the outermost ring from each set, then, starting back with the original mold, the middle ring, etc.
From there, it's pretty much repeat, repeat, repeat (but no lathering or rinsing, please) until all the rings are finished. In the event that you're wondering which ring really comes next, "float" it above the assembled bits in order to find out... don't let it touch the frosting until you're sure. Otherwise you're looking at a mess.
For what it's worth, this piece makes an amazing center piece. Feel free to decorate it with little flags or whatnot. Also -- it's worth noting that there are tons of other countries out there whose colors of representation are red, white, and blue, so, my international readers, feel free to commandeer this as needed for your own respective patriotic celebrations.
