What do you do when it doesn't snow?

The forecast predicated snow last week, they were sure we would get "something". But alas, nothing fell in our county. Anna and I did the next best thing: baked! We didn't even have cupcake liners, but since this was for fun and friends, we plowed on. All the while wistful for the snow that wasn't. I'll keep hoping for snow. "Hey, it could happen."

It would be a Blue Christmas

without any Christmas cookies! I thought long and hard about Martha Stewart and her gift box of just 4 perfect gingerbread cookies. (Can't find the link on her page, but saw the gift idea on a show last year.)

Well, I just couldn't do it. 4 cookies, even perfect ones seems so grinchy. Here's what I did do this season, once the serious baking began:




Yum! The Poinsetta cookies are my favorite for this year. I used icing sheets, a rubber stamp, and food colorings to paint in the flowers. Love that! and found really neat sprinkles at Aldi's this year, can you see the teeny-tiny gingerbread people on the hand of the giant gingerbread boys?

Here's to a whole New Year of baking!

5 Days till Cake!

No really, the important part is the dedication of our new church home. But my little part is this cake :-) Glad to celebrate with cake making, then I don't have to be sad about leaving the church where I have celebrated so many major moments of life. Looking forward to new milestones in our new church home.

Here's the cake topper picture so far. Now I just have to let it dry and don't mess with it till Saturday!


The drawing in the background was my paper plan. The container of fondant I bought to make sure the black was juuuust right. This Satin Ice was easy to work with but literally started to dry out before I was even through cutting it. The finish on the black piece isn't quite smooth. But my son assures me no one will notice. (We will after all be celebrating the new church home, not the cake! Good thing I have children to keep me grounded.)

Happy Meal, I mean, Father's Day!

Bakerella posted these adorable desserts on her site, including the paper trays and french fry holders. Cupcakes, cookies AND paper crafts?!? How could I resist?

We followed her directions, with a few exceptions. My baking partner (because I thought something as nifty as this warranted 2 families!) choose to make her brownies from scratch. When she called to ask, cocoa powder or chocolate squares...I replied: box mix. She less than enthused by my suggestion : -)

Second change was in baking the french fry cookies. Bakerella rolled and cut hers, then cut them again after baking. I choose to use the mix, as directed, but scooped the cookies and flattened them with a mallet slightly wet dipped in sugar. Almost like rolling and cutting circles, without the rolling and cutting. Then cut the cookies while still warm into fry strips. I think I could have cut them thinner, if I had taken a little more time, but still looked just like french fries!

Happy Meals are ready to go! We just needed a Dad to sing too. Fortunately, Hugo was game for the "honor". We sang "For he's a jolly good fellow." And repeated the whole thing again once we got home for our own Dear Dad.
Nathaniel's burger, somehow, slipped through our quality control and had no ketchup or mustard. For that he scored a second happy meal! Bill looks ready to dig in!

Thanks Bakerella, for a great idea. And fun afternoon to boot.
Happy Father's Day Dad!

Momma Braggin Monday

Anna made these all by herself! The idea is from the "Hello Cupcake" cookbook. Sooo cute!

Confirmation Cake

Ahhh! I had high hopes for this cake. It tasted good, but I went crazy with the icing and the whole thing collapsed on our way to the celebration :-P

I'm putting this in writing so I'll hope to remember next time what I learned: I still love Wilton's white butter cream recipe. I missed the fine print that said, add 4T each of corn syrup and water to ice cake. When I couldn't spread the icing, I added more icing and more and more....a little obsessively! And crash went the cake.

I also learned, that if you want to make one of those cakes with chocolate on one side and vanilla on the other, don't try to "stick" the halves together with icing. That created a giant crevasse in the cake. Just place them side by side. Not sure I'll try that again though.

Finally, I learned that to create the really thick center layer of icing, you should do what the experts say to do. Pipe a border around the top of the bottom layer and then fill that in. I tried to spread two layers of icing instead, and that make one corner slope. You can see it in the top right of the picture. Down it goes.

One thing that DID work was the air head candy decoration in the middle. Microwave candy for 10 seconds or less. It gets hot fast. Roll it out between plastic layers of Ziploc type bags. Use a sharp dry knife, rinse it often to keep the sugar from sticking to the blade. White airheads are "mystery flavor" and are usually sold in a variety pack with other colors.

There's always next time!

Mini Cakes

SPRING

A very good friend of ours has been sending dinner over quite regularly. As a thankyou, I made this mini cake, just for her. She loves to garden and sew. The tulips were inspired by a pillow that she made for me when we moved into our home. Not exactly the same, but "inspired by"!

As you can see, I am still having difficulty getting the corners on cakes juuuust right. Still in my desire for a simpler life, I am not deterred! Is there anything simple about this project? Maybe it was just simply the fun I had making the four cakes from one. And the joy in seeing my boys excited that I made cakes for them too. And Anna's delight in creating her own design, all by herself.

CHOCOLATE SPRING

WILD SPRING

MILD SPRING

In Asheboro, there is a gourmet kitchen whose motto I have to borrow for the moment:

Don't postpone joy!

Happy Easter.

Hi-ho, Hi-Hats!

Holly's endoscope went well today. She bounced back as curious as ever. And is shaking a baby gate as we speak. The results of the test are: esophagitis or reflux. It's official. We'll try Nexium now and hope for better results than with the Prevacid. The GI doctor could see the inflamed tissue in her esophagus, but thankfully no scar tissue. She took the first capsule, sprinkled over applesauce no problem. Let's hope the rest of the night continues as well.

What else can you do to pass an anxious day? Make a trial run at hi-hat cupcakes. I have been reading about this on other blogs. And had really hoped to make a pistachio/cream cheese frosted hi-hat for St. Patrick's Day. However, this is what I had in the house: Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Icing and White Chocolate hi-hat.

Not too shabby for a first attempt. Here's what I'll improve next time: First, don't OD on chocolate :-) If you are craving chocolate these are for you. Second, make the icing a little stiffer so it will pile a little higher and create an actual HIGH hat. Third, I resolve to stop trying to draw with chocolate. I just can't make this work for me. Royal Icing I can do but not chocolate. These shamrocks are from white chocolate colored green. The chocolate gets too stiff before I can even pipe it out. And finally, I will pay closer attention to the bake time. The could have stayed in the oven a few more minutes.

I do love this recipe for the cupcake. It is from the Our State North Carolina, February 2009 magazine. Chef is Charlotte Fekete

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

1 stick butter
1/2 cup semisweet chips

Melt this together in microwave, 30 sec, stir, 30 sec.

Stir in 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 cup sour cream, 1/3 cup milk, 2 large eggs, 1/2 tsp vanilla.
Whisk in 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt.

Mix until combined. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 mins (I should have gone closer to 25 mins!)

If I had the extra sour cream in the house I would have made this glaze like frosting (and skipped the hi-hat trial, still I have to start somewhere!)

1/2 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1 1/2 T cocoa powder.

Spread on cool cupcakes.

The Buttercream Icing I did use came straight off the back of the cocoa powder container. The hi-hat part was far easier than I expected. The icing did not fall off into the chocolate or melt away either. With a picture like the red velvet hi hats, well I can dream can't I?

The Big Game

I think it was this weekend between UNC and Duke. Did anyone watch it? Who won? Curious, only because I made these cookies for the occasion.

Sweet Nothings

What would you do with extra Pink Lemonade Cream Cheese Icing?

Anna and I made these. The cake recipe is from Bisquick. Some people call it "Sad Cake", but the Bisquick company calls it "Velvet Crumb". Just leave of the broiled topping and bake into cupcakes instead! Best part is that this recipe only makes 10 cupcakes.

The flowers are made from fondant using a drop flower tip. My experiment for the day! The other cupcakes have rolled fondant, embossed with various stamps and
icing tools. I wish I could tell you I made fondant from scratch, but the recipe from Dixie Sugar is pretty darn good. You can even roll it and lay it on a cake. And although I have tried it, with this Spongebob Cake, not something I've longed to try again.

On the other hand, cupcakes with fondant icing are kind of cool looking!

More Cake Pics

I raided my sisters hard drive this past weekend, looking for photos of Holly for her baby book. And, happily, found these too:

Cupcakes from Will's First Holy Communion

The cake for Will too! Anna and I made the sugar coated pansies from our flowers near the door. Not too bad for a first attempt. Although, not sure I'd make them again either!

Cake for Peter's Confirmation celebration.

The dove is made from chocolate. I printed a picture, placed wax paper over it. Then outlined with the dark chocolate, let that dry and finished with the white chocolate. Fun and easier then you'd think!

Iron Cupcake?

After meeting Bakerella on her blog, and following the link to the Iron Cupcake, well..Wow! I'm not quite ready for the Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge but maybe one day. In any case, here's my Christmas Poinsettia Cupcake tower.

I had fun and think the kids enjoyed these too!

Sweet Potato Cakes

Fall isn't going to last long enough for me to get tired of making these Sweet Potato Cakes! The original recipe calls for a can of pumpkin. But canned yams work too!

From the Cupcake doctor cookbook, slightly modified!

1 - white cake mix

1/3 cup oil

1/2 cup milk

3 large eggs

1 - 16 oz can sweet potatoes (drained) or pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutgmeg

Mix ingredients slowly for a minute. Then on medium speed for 2 minutes. The sweet potatoes will blend pretty quickly in the mixer. No need mash before hand.

The original recipe calls for an organge glaze, but I prefer buttercream icing. You can use your favorite recipe and add 1/2 tsp of orange extract to compliment the spices. Or vanilla is just as yummy! This icing style is my second favorite. Just use a rounf tip, the largest you have, make a dot and pull. Looks ready for a party, doesn't it?

More Cookies!

My parents run The Medicine Shoppe here in town. To help promote their business, I made these trays using those frosting sheets. These are mint-iced shortbread and mint striped shortbread. I hope it does build up goodwill!

Simply Sugar Cookies

This has got to be my all time favorite cookie idea EVER! If you are so inclined to use the computer, print a dozen of your favorite fall scenes on plain white paper. Card stock works best. I added "Thank You" to a few pictures. The pictures need to be about 2 inches round. And the pictures need to fit inside an 8x10 square on the page.

A regular sheet of paper is 8 1/2 x 11. Once you print it, you trim it to 8x10. Like a portrait. Take that to your local grocery store. Harris Teeter and Wal-Mart will do this, Food Lion, maybe. Ask them to print the picture on an icing sheet, like the ones they make for cakes.

The sheet is about $6-8 depending on where you go. Bring the sheet home, bake your cookies, have icing ready. Cut each picture into rounds, ice cookie, and apply picture! I added a chocolate circle for the edge, you could make it neater than me, I bet!

Custom, personalized cookies make a great gift. And if you need more than one tray, just include a few printed cookies, along with several plain iced or even chocolate chip. Yum!