Christmas is here, bringing good cheer...

It's Christmas Cookie Season again.  Last year due to some crazy studying, I didn't have time to bake cookies for anyone and I was very sad.  This year I had huge plans to make 5 types of cookies on Saturday and I came close, but didn't quite succeed.  Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing, White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Macadamia Nut, Chocolate Chocolate Chunk with Peanut Butter Chips.  

This year in an effort to reduce hand cramping, I made the Royal Icing thinner than usual.  This had both some positive and negative effects to the decorating process.  Much easier outlining and filling.  Some bleeding of the colors while drying (this was not photographed) and very sad trees (photographed below).  

I had to fight Sean off of the Chocolate cookies and there was a very sad Snowman fatality while I was bagging up the cookies on Sunday.  It happens every year, and often makes me want to cry.  Without further delay, here they are.  

Hello Crate and Barrel nesting bowls, I love you.

Chocolate Chocolate Chunk and Peanut Butter Chip

White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Macadamia Nut

These sad looking creatures are supposed to be trees. Unfortunately, the royal icing was too thin and this is what I was left with.  Feel free to revisit Christmas 2010 to see what the trees should look like.  

Love him!

I made two of these for my Dad and my Sister. I am sad to report that my husband was shocked to learn this is what Maine looks like.  He had some other strange image in his head about the state outline.  

Here comes the bride...

I know in my last post I said I was going to try new things, but at the request of my brother-in-law and now sister-in-law, I made repeat cupcakes for their rehearsal dinner.  The rehearsal was held at the location of the wedding at beautiful Ft. Desoto beach.  The location was ideal with gorgeous views of the Sunshine Skyway bridge.  I was quite surprised since I literally went to Ft. Desoto every week during my freshman year of college and quite regularly during the remainder of my tenure at Eckerd and never once turned left at the stop sign.  I had no idea what i was missing.  Now, back to the goodies.  

At the request of the bride I made Red Velvet Cupcakes with that delicious Marscapone Cream Cheese Frosting (which I have had dreams about). For the groom I made Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting.  Funny, that's Sean's favorite too.  I had grand dreams of making these really adorable cupcake picks and toppers that were wedding themed.  Alas, I couldn't find my glue gun.  I am not sure I would have had time in the end anyway, but it was no where to be found.  Next time I'll plan a little better in advance, I suppose.  

Congrats to Scott and Jennifer on your beautiful wedding!  

To Bake List:

So, I am a pretty big fan of makings lists when there are things to do.  Baking isn't really a To Do list for me, but lately, I have about a million recipes I'd like to try to make and find myself reading other blogs and Epicurious for inspiration so here, sort of in order, also sort of by season, is my current To Bake List:

Rainbow Sprinkle Cake!
French Macarons (seriously, the cutest little things I have ever seen)
Mint Whipped Cream
Black-Bottom Peanut Butter Mousse Pie
Smores Cupcakes
Chocolate Stout Cake
Banana-Chocolate Chip Cakes with Peanut Butter Frosting
Peanut Butter Cheesecake with Caramelized Banana Topping
Peppermint Meringues
Pink Lemonade Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting (meant to make these this summer)
Pomegranate Sheet Cake with Lime Glaze
Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Cupcakes
Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cupcakes
An Ombre Cake (except I am awful at making cakes)
Vanilla-Bean Coconut Cupcakes with Fluffy Coconut Frosting

Some of these items I haven't made because I am afraid to try them (Peppermint Meringues and French Macarons) and some of them I haven't made because I don't know if anyone else would like them (Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Frosting) and I don't want to be left to eat and entire cake/batch of cupcakes alone. And some items I want to make for others because I don't like the flavors (Banana-Chocolate Chip Cakes with Peanut Butter Frosting, Peanut Butter Cheesecake with Caramelized Banana Topping, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cupcakes).  My husband has a love of flavor combinations that I do not really enjoy (i.e. banana and pumpkin).

Cake Pops Take Two and the Best Cream Cheese Frosting Ever...

I should have written this post right after I made these Cake Pops and Cupcakes for a friend's Baby Shower, but it's been about a month and a half now, so this will be mostly photos. The Cake Pops were much easier the second time.  Tip: Make sure to pre-dip the pop sticks in the melted candy coating before putting them in the pops. Then put them in the freezer for a few minutes. Also DO NOT push the stick all the way to the bottom/top of the Cake Pop.  The candy coating will not be able to support the weight of the cake ball.  There were definitely some collapsed Cake Pops, but you live you learn.  This time I made the frosting from scratch, store bought frosting has a weird after taste for me.

The Mom to Be requested Red Velvet Cupcakes and I changed from the normal Cream Cheese frosting to the most amazing Marscapone Cream Cheese Frosting. Seriously, so delicious. I will never make regular cream cheese frosting again.  Anyway, everything was pretty tasty.

Candy Coating Chips 

Cake Pops! 

Red Velvet Cupcake with Marscapone Cream Cheese Frosting

Those should be Green Polka Dot Cupcake Liners, but the red bled through pretty badly!

That's right, I designed and made the flags by hand!

Cake Pops...

In preparation for a friend's baby shower, I have spent the last week or so reading dozens of blogs on Cake Pops and how to make them.  I didn't pick any recipe, just kind of went with what looked right based on what I was reading.  These are just a test run for next weekend. 

I've never made them before and have been feeling rather intimidated by them, but so far, it has been pretty easy.  Step 1. Bake a cake and then mash it up. Step 2. Mix ready made frosting into said cake. Step 3. Put the cake/frosting mixture in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Step 4. Roll it into balls on a cookie shoot. I'm currently at Step 5.  Put them in the fridge for 2 hours.  

I am nervous about the melting of chocolate and dipping the cake balls into the melted chocolate.  I try to avoid anything involving the stove top when baking, as that is how I most frequently burn myself. Also, I do not have a double boiler and I keep meaning to include it on a Christmas/Birthday Wish List but forget every year and here I am again wondering which bowl/sauce pan I will precariously hold over a put of boiling water wishing and hoping I do not permanently disfigure myself with melted chocolate/sugar.  I have a possibly abnormal fear of melted sugar.

Well...that didn't go as easily as I thought. No severe burns. Yay. Ugly lopsided cake pops on kabob skewers. Boo.  Maybe it was the melted chocolate instead of candy melts. Maybe it was the skewers instead of lollipop sticks.  Maybe it was because I forgot to dip some of the skewers in chocolate first. I'm not really sure but it didn't really go smoothly.  Sean is pretty excited to eat them...hopefully they taste better than they look.  

4th of July

Happy 4th of July!  My husband and I went to a bbq/pool party with friends and I volunteered to bring the cupcakes.  I made chocolate cupcakes and "yellow" cupcakes with butter cream frosting. I know, I know. I went with the box mixes because they are easy.  The frosting was from scratch of course.  I put the extra time towards making the cutest cupcake flags, instead. They are courtesy of Ellinee.  

Bells will be ringing...

At the end of June, I made some cupcakes for my sister-in-law's Bridal Shower. After digging through lots of cupcake books and my insisting on something light and summery since it is nearly 100 degrees here everyday we settled on the ever popular Blueberry-Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting.  This is the third time I have made them.   

I experimented with ready-made fondant by Duff.  In the past, I have made my own a few times, but it always stresses me out so much.  It was pretty easy to work with.  Just pull it out of the bag, roll it out and go.  I didn't actually taste it though, so I can't comment on that. I should have tried a nibble.  I used it to make monograms for the cupcakes for the Bride to Be.  I must say, I wish I had ordered a stamp or something on line, because Michael's had such a limited selection of fondant cutters/stamps. I was hoping for a more modern or elegant "K" and would up with something much more child like.  

Instead of buying a hard cupcake holder, I purchased a small Wilton build-your own type cupcake holder and at first I was very concerned that I would be digging for my glass cake domes to serve cupcakes in, but once it was together, the bottom two shelves were pretty sturdy.  I added my own ribbon to the edges to spruce it up a bit and it turned out ok.  I am not sure I would buy another one, but for $10.00 and some ribbon, it wasn't a bad deal.  I should have planned ahead and shopped on line a bit.  

Here they are. 

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...

For a friend's son's birthday party I made Harry Potter Hogwarts ties.  In the end, they turned our pretty cute but the road to cuteness was a bumpy one.  Griffendor red is a much harder color to make than one would think.  I started making it with Burgundy food coloring but what I ended up with was HOT PINK! Eek! Panic ensued and then I made an impromptu run to Michael's for red food coloring, because, of course I was out.  After getting some new red and black food coloring, it was back to color mixing.  I was successful in the end by using red, black and brown which looked mauve at first but dried red.  The black edges started out purple and went on the cookies purple but it turned black by the time it dried.  There was some serious Harry Potter magic involved in these cookies looking like the right color.  If I were to make them again, I would use a thinner outside border.  Here they are in all there glory.

Photo Courtesy of Kim L. 

I love the bubbly...

I've wanted to make Champagne Cupcakes for awhile now and finally mustered up the courage to do it.  Pink Champagne Cupcakes with Pink Buttercream Frosting. Mmmm.  I was nervous about the recipe, it required whipping egg whites to stiff peaks...a task i am truly afraid of...anything involving extra care with egg whites always makes me nervous. The recipe is borrowed from The Baking Robot.  

So Pretty.

Mood lighting.

Done and ready to be brought to work tomorrow...Everyone loves Cupcake Mondays!

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I have been anxiously awaiting St. Patrick's Day so that I use some tiny shamrock sprinkles...for our office St. Patrick's Day Lunch I made Chocolate Cupcakes with MINT Buttercream Frosting.  As a lover of all things peppermint, I was pretty excited.  Thankfully I used all but a tiny teaspoon of the frosting on the cupcakes because if there was anymore left over, I surely would have found myself on the couch eating a bowl of frosting.  I used Wilton grass cupcake liners and made the cutest cupcake picks courtesy of The Tomkat Studio blog.  

Seriously, how cute are these Shamrocks?

Tada! Done and ready to eat at work.

Wedding Bells and Flower Cupcakes...

Well I successfully made it through my first ever wedding and wow was it crazy.  A total of 120 cupcakes and 1 "small" carrot cake for the bride and groom Megan and Jesse.  Half chocolate cupcakes and half yellow buttermilk with buttercream frosting.  i am literally sore today from what i assume is a combination of decorating 120 cupcakes as flowers and shredding 1 lb of carrots.  Really, i stapled something at work this morning and wanted to cry...i might have even yelped a little.  On that note, i shredded them by hand because i FORGOT that i have a very lovely KitchenAid Food Processor that would have done the trick in a matter of seconds.  Who forgets that? I guess since it's not on the counter i don't think about it. Speaking of KitchenAid appliances, what did people do before the KitchenAid stand up mixer? Really.  Anyway, I'm pretty exhausted so here are the photos.  There aren't many because Saturday was a mad dash to get everything done in time and get to the wedding not covered in sugar and food coloring.  

Flowers!

There they are in all their glory.

Congratulations Megan and Jesse! I am so glad I was able to be a part of your day!