04 12 / 2012
I participated in a multi-vendor Holiday Bazaar this past weekend. The host is a friend of mine and she remembered I hand poured scented soy candles. She asked me to bring some holiday scents to sell and anything else I may want to bring. Hmmmm…I wonder what else to bring. CUPCAKES!! Keeping with the holiday theme, I decided to make Candy Cane Cupcakes. I used my “makes ‘em weak in the knees” chocolate cupcake recipe and added some peppermint to the frosting. Trying to drum up business for my baking company, I offered the cupcakes as samples. They were a big hit. One lady even thought they were candles in the shape of cupcakes. She said “they are too perfect to be food!” Umm….Ok. I’ll take that.
16 7 / 2012
Chocolate and Peanut Butter cake
sooo…I had a family reunion to attend yesterday. I know you all know how much fun they are right? I decided to make something that would ease the pain. Going back to my love affair with peanut butter, I knew exactly what I had to do. Since I am trying to hone my baking skills in the hopes of someday adding some extra income with them, I decided I was going to make a zebra cake. I had limited time and a box of each of the white and chocolate cake in the cupboard. I saw on Pinterest how to spruce up a box cake and I decided to try it. I used milk instead of water and then added another egg white to the eggs called for by the instructions. Off I go.
The cake is baking, and I decide to make my peanut butter frosting. YUM!! I have to make more than I origianally intend because I have to taste so much to be sure it’s right. HAHAHA…believe that and there is some land I want to sell you!! I just love that frosting. Back to the cake…I made two 8-inch round cakes. I did the typical layer cake thing. Got it all frosted and then used some chocolate frosting from a tub to make what ended up looking like Hershey kisses around the top of the cake and around the base. Now, for the final touch….I cut up mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and spread them on the top of the cake. OMG!!! I couldn’t wait to get there and have everyone marvel over it. Here’s where I went wrong……
I forgot to take a picture of my masterpiece at this point, and now I regret that. I forgot to mention at the beginning of my story that the family reunion is a 2-hour drive north…and it’s July. You do the math. I failed miserably in the task of cake transportation. By the time I got to the reunion, the peanut butter cups had melted into some kind of chocolate peanut butter mosaic on the top of my cake and some of my chocolate kisses on the top of the cake slid down the side of the cake. I was so embarrassed I thought I would die.
However, let me tell you how wonderfully delicious that cake turned out to be. The gooey mess on the top of the cake ended up just enhancing the flavor of the frosting and the cake. Everyone loved it (or they were just being nice, as the Pennsylvania German folk often are).
This is what was left of my cake after the reunion. It was an adventure…
17 6 / 2012
Happy Father’s Day…hope you don’t mind pink!!
So I decided I was going to make this elaborate cake for my hubby for Father’s Day. Yellow cake with chocolate icing plus strawberries. The man loves strawberries…like eats 2-3 pints a night kind of love. Anyway, I make my cake and start stacking, alternating the chocolate mousse icing with strawberry. Hubby, bless his little pea-pickin heart, comes in and announces that he doesn’t really like chocolate and fruit together. TOUGH!! MAKE YOUR OWN CAKE!! Oh well, sorry…you are just a wee bit too late. You’ll just have to eat the layers separately, I said as sweetly as I could muster.
So after that little interruption, I continued on with my masterpiece. It was my maiden voyage covering a cake with fondant. Perhaps I should have started with a round cake, but I muddled through. The corners are not perfect, but other than that, it’s OK.
Now, if all of this weren’t ambitious enough, I decided I needed to cover up my mistakes, so I decided to tint some fondant and make some ribbons for the job. Silly me used the liquid food coloring instead of my gel food coloring. Ugh…my arms are exhausted and the fondant only got to a lovely shade of fuschia…marbled fuschia at that. Oh well, I say. It’ll get better!!
At the end of my journey, I am somewhat proud of myself. I know what I did wrong, and I can’t wait to try again. I think the colored fondant is kind of cool, except for the whole supposed to be for Father’s Day thing.
Oh…I forgot the most important part…it tasted delicious!! Even if I do say so myself.
08 6 / 2012
What happens when you combine chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter and chocolate brownies? YUM!!
I saw something similar to this on Pinterest. My curiosity was piqued because of my love affair with all things peanut butter.
Today, I decided to make an attempt at these little pieces of scrumptiousness.
First step: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
OK, I cheated. I had some Pillsbury ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookes (in the tube) in my fridge. Take an amount equal to or just less than the amount you would use to make a cookie and smoosh that into the bottom of your cupcake paper.
Second step: Take about 1-1/2 cups of peanut butter and about 1/4 cup of olive oil (that makes it healthy right?) and mix into a bowl. This will thin the peanut butter and make a “meltaway” consistency. Making you hungry yet?
Put the peanut butter meltaway on top of the chocolate chip batter.
Third step: OK…I cheated again. I used a box mix of brownies, the family sized box. Mix that up according to the directions on the box and place on top of the other mixtures in the cupcake paper.
Yippee!! It’s all put together and you are closer to the finished product!!
I put my oven rack on the highest setting because the cookie has a shorter baking time than the brownie. I didn’t want to have raw brownie with burned cookie. SO—put the trays in the oven and bake for 20 minutes give or take.
When the brownie is not still wet on the top, they are done. Allow them to cool completely before coming out of the cupcake pans so they do not fall apart.
This is the finished product.
02 6 / 2012
BUTTERFLY CUPCAKES
My daughter recently had her second child. I decided that instead of having the traditional girls-only baby shower, I would do a big family party. As it turns out, she delivered the baby 3 weeks early, so it turned into a “meet the new baby” party. We also did not want to leave our granddaughter out of the celebration, so we combined “meet Baby Chase” with “Maddie’s a big sister.”
Since there would be several small children at the party, I decided against a cake. Instead, I thought about making cupcakes, of course. I made a chocolate box mix cake (since I had so much else to do to prepare) and then made a basic buttercream frosting. I used Wilton green gel food coloring to ting the buttercream. I then used Wilton Candy Melts in light cocoa to trace the outline of the butterflies. Once these were set, I used more of the candy melts and tinted them with Wilton gel food coloring in pink and blue. I filled in the outlines with the pink or blue and then tapped the counter to smooth out the tinted chocolate and get out any bubbles. I then detailed the wings with more melted light cocoa. The final step was to make the butterfly bodies by making a small line on wax paper with the light cocoa melt and adding the wings. I used a pie
02 6 / 2012
EASTER NEST CUPCAKES
I decided to something a little different this year for Easter. Instead of making the usual white cake with coconut, I decided to make these Easter Nest cupcakes. My granddaughter really loved them.
I started off with a chocolate box cake mix and made the cupcakes. For the frosting, I used a basic buttercream and tinted it green with Wilton gel food coloring. I used the grass/hair tip and made the nest. I then took Peanut Butter M&M Eggs and put them in the nests.
