Christmas Cupcakes

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!

Hope everyone had a nice holiday season.  Here are some cupcakes I made for the holidays.  I used my coconut cupcake recipe for the polar bears and the snowmen.  The smaller ones that have holly on them are chocolate cupcakes (the recipe that has a cup of coffee in them!).

The real fun was in the decorating!  To make the polar bears I used a large marshmallow for the head.  I dipped it in frosting (my homemade buttercream icing) and then rolled them in coconut.  The paws are made from white spice drops.  I colored some frosting black (just a mix of red, blue and green) and piped on paw marks and the faces - eyes, nose and mouth.  The snout and ears are just blobs of frosting covered in more coconut.  They were a hit!  Don't forget to sprinkle coconut on the actual cupcake which ends up being the body of the polar bear:

Next were the snowmen - at first I tried making a tall snowman:

He ended up being too tall and way too much time to make.  I ended up with more of a 'melting' snowman.  I put a large marshmallow in the microwave for 10 secs or so.  You want to make sure it blows up a little bit and then when you take it out of the microwave it starts to settle back into shape - but much more soft.  I frosted the cupcake with my white buttercream and then pushed the microwaved marshmallow into the frosting.  I made some green icing and piped that around the neck for a scarf (I used a leaf tip).  The buttons, eyes and mouth are using the same black icing I colored for the polar bear.  The nose is a small piece of an orange spice drop, the arms are pretzel sticks and the hat is a oreo cookie!  It ended up looking like a french snowman with the oreo hat - but still very cute.  So cute in fact that no one wanted to eat them!!

The other ones you see in the picture above are using a red spice drop and just green leaves making it look like holly.  Then I used two mini candy canes for the others and just piped on a frosting bow. 

Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday season!  More to come in 2012!

Bruins Cupcakes

OK....I'm back!

I took the summer off since it was just too darn hot to put the oven on and I just didn't feel inspired!  Time to bake again!  I made these cupcakes for the first Bruins game this season and since they're playing tonight I'm hoping to give them some inspiration to pull out another win

These cupcakes were delicious!  AND the best part is they were only 140 calories and 4 grams of fat EACH!  I used a low cal recipe and to be honest, was afraid that they might taste like it too....but boy were they good.  I didn't tell anyone they were low fat and no one noticed - that's when you know you made a good/healthy treat!  Here's the recipe:
http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/09/20/cream-filled-chocolate-cupcakes/

So that was my most recent creation.  There was one occasion this summer that inspired me to make some delicious treats!  We did a potluck at work this summer and I attempted to try cupcakes in an ice cream cone.  I stuck with the staple of vanilla and they were good - but got extra points for presentation!  And I put chocolate chips at the bottom of cone so it ended up being a little surprise at the end.

Ok so I promise to bake more!  Will see you soon :)

The Almond Joy Cupcake

I know, its been too long!  We've had a few busy weeks and a round of dud cupcakes.  I attempted the coconut cupcake a few weeks ago and it was just not good.  It was dry and it tasted nothing like coconut SO I didn't think it was worth talking about :)

This week was a different story - I made the most delicious coconut cupcakes ever!  Topped with chocolate frosting and a milk chocolate covered almond.....I've named it the Almond Joy cupcake.

Here's my recipe for the cupcakes - there's a lot of different coconut substitutions but its worth it - you get the best coconut flavor:

Ingredients

• 1 cup white sugar
• 6 tbl spns butter
• ½ cup coconut cream
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons coconut extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup coconut milk
• ½ cup coconut flakes

Directions

1.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners.

2.     In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar, butter and coconut cream. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the coconut extract. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the coconut milk until batter is smooth. Hand mix in the coconut flakes, don't over mix. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.

3.     For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

To top them off I wanted to create a chocolate frosting.  I made my usual buttercream and then made a chocolate ganache and mixed it in to the frosting.  Very good flavor but it was too melty for me.  I need a frosting that can be out of the fridge without looking droopy!  I'll need to perfect this my next go around - more confectioner's sugar is usually the answer for a droopy frosting so I'll try that first.  Any suggestion's on making a good chocolate frosting that is easy to decorate with would be great!

I also wanted to mention a class I took recently with a friend of mine.  It was called specialty cake decorating.  Basically it was how to make and use fondant, how to ice a cake and then how to build a tiered cake and decorate it.  It was really fun. I wish I had known we needed to have a design ready when we took the class - I didn't like how mine came out but it was really fun and I learned a lot.  Fondant is never something I ever want to make....there's way too much work involved!!  I did enjoy creating with it though...its just like play dough!  It doesn't taste very good though....

Here's my creation:

Thanks for reading!  I'll be making some cupcakes for a work party this week so stay tuned....

Memorial Day Cupcakes

Happy Memorial Day!  Well, Happy Belated Memorial Day!

I was busy over Memoriald Day weekend making some fun cupcakes for our Memorial Day BBQ.  I started out by making my french vanilla cupcake receipe, except this time I added 1/2 cup of applesauce to try and get a more moist cake.  It was definitely much better this time but still needs more vanilla and maybe a tad more moistness still. 

So my goal was to make hamburger cupcakes!  I started out by cutting my vanilla cupcakes in half.  I mixed up some green frosting and put it into my icing bag with the leaf tip and off I went decorating the bottom half of the vanilla cupcake with what I was hoping would look like lettuce.  Next was the burger...I had frozen some of my chocolate cupcakes from the last batch, so out of the freezer those came to defrost and then I cut those in half too. I then took a half of a chocolate cupcake and put it on top of the 'lettuce'.  Next I mixed up some red frosting and drizzled that over the top to look like ketchup - here I am at this point:

Next came yellow icing for mustard and then put the top half of the vanilla cupcake back on and sprinkled some sesame seeds on the top so it looked like a bun!  What do you think?

With the rest of the vanilla cupcakes I decided to go patriotic.  I took the rest of the red frosting from the "ketchup" I made and put that into my icing bag and then put some white icing in on top of that.  That gave it the 'tie dyed' look you see below:

The blue I did after the red ran out of the bag - just added blue frosting to the white that was already in my bag and then started icing.  You'll notice that some of them have a darker color than others - that just means it was closer to the end of the white at the time.

All in all it was a really fun project!  Next up I think I might try a friend of mine's recipe for coconut cupcakes!  MMM but what kind of frosting? Any suggestions?

Awesome Chocolate Cupcakes

This post is going to be shorter than normal - its Memorial Day weekend and I have some fun cupcake ideas brewing that I'll want to write about later.  So I made the most delicious chocolate cupcakes this week! 

Its the same recipe I used for my chocolate cake from my decorating class.  Turns out that recipe makes great cupcakes!  I decorated them with a vanilla buttercream icing - this time when I made the icing I only used butter, confectioners sugar, milk and vanilla...no crisco.  It was really good.  I think I could make it either way which is nice since the thought of crisco still creeps me out.

I decorated some of them with a crushed thin mints and those were a hit.  This will definitely be a recipe for the books - number 1 of the receipes I've made....for now....

Perfecting the Vanilla Cupcake

Hello readers!
So my job now is to perfect some of my receipes.  Chocolate and vanilla are the basics and I want to get those right so here I go.  This week I made the french vanilla cupcake receipe again and created my own buttercream frosting.    The french vanilla recipe was in a previous post if you'd like to see.  This time I added a little bit extra of cream and milk but still it wasn't moist enough for me.  I did get much better reviews this time.  I think next time I make it I'll try some applesauce to moist it up more!

The buttercream I made though came out awesome.  I couldn't find a recipe I loved so I made one up and darn it I think I just about nailed it.  Its the perfect mix of sweet and whipped but not too much of each.  Plus it was a good consistency to bag and pipe on the cupcakes. 
Here it is:
1 cup of shortening
1 stick of softened butter
3 cups of confectioner's sugar
1 tablespoon of vanilla

I think the only think I'd do differently next time is increase the amount of flavoring I put in.

Oh and I put sprinkles in the cake too so it looked like funfetti!  I need to come up with another name for funfetti - any thoughts?

Cake Decorating Lesson 4

My last class masterpiece!

We had our last class this week - learned roses and writing.  Boy are roses HARD!!! 

Anyways back to the beginning of the week.....
The Cake
We had to bring an iced cake to class this week.  So my plan was to make a chocolate cake with a mint filling/icing.  I found a great chocolate cake recipe online!  The cake was delicious....yum yum yum....even 4 days later it was good!  The cool thing about it is that it had 1 cup of freshly brewed coffee as one of the ingredients!  Great part about that is it didn't taste one bit like coffee.  I would know too because I'm very sensitive to the flavor of coffee....not a fan :)

Chocolate Cake Recipe

The Filling
So as I said I wanted to do a mint filling.  I decided to get creative and not look up a recipe.  I had some heavy cream in the fridge so I poured the whole thing (almost full one of those small cartons) in my mixer and set it on a medium speed.  I let that run for a while....I would say maybe 10 mins.  It started getting stiffer, like whipped cream.  That's when I started adding in my confectioner's sugar - I started with about 4 cups or so but I ended up putting in a total of about 6 cups.  Then I took about 6 or 7 Thin Mint cookies and crushed them up really fine in a ziploc bag and threw those into the mix.  Put in a little bit of green food coloring and BAM the yummiest filling EVER in my book :)  I got rave reviews on the filling!

The Icing
So, to go along with the mint theme I decided to also throw some mint extract into the icing I was making for the outside. I really don't love the taste of the 'crisco' frosting....aka grocery store cake frosting.....so I wanted to make a buttercream instead.  It certainly looked pretty in the bowl...and tasted delicious!  The only problem is that it doesn't do well in warm temps apparently.  When I started to ice my cake it got very runny and then during class it 'melted' alot.  You can see it in this picture of my final cake - those flowers along the outside were originally on the side of the cake and then slid down.  Still looks kind of cool though - almost like I meant to do this....um ya I meant to do this :)

Class time
So we learned writing and roses during our last class this week.  I loved learning the writing and my teacher said I did a great job.  I think my first attempt at writing came out pretty darn good?  Roses on the other hand....holy crap thats hard.  Plus it was really warm in the room so my icing was mushy....that made for tippy flowers.  I'm going to need to perfect my roses before I post pictures of any of them - they were sad looking haha! 

Have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's reading this!!!

Cake Decorating Lesson 3

Had lots of fun baking this weekend!  I came up with an idea to try and make a cupcake that looked like an ice cream sundae....and I think I did OK for the first try. I made french vanilla cupcakes (more on that below) and then put a layer of melted chocolate in between the cupcake and the frosting.  Then sprinkles and a frosting cherry and there you go!

French Vanilla cupcake time!  The recipe called for the basics with just an extra couple of egg yolks and lots of extra vanilla.  I found 'french vanilla' extract in the grocery store - which I used instead of regular vanilla extract and vanilla bean since I couldn't find that in the grocery store.  I tried the batter before cooking it and boy did it taste delicious!  It gave funfetti batter a run for its money.  And if anyone knows how important funfetti is to this family they know how bold of a statement that is!

I cooked the cupcakes for about 10 mins and then took them out and tested them and they weren't done yet so I put them back in for another 5 mins.  The 15 mins was perfect cooking time but I shouldn't have taken them out and poked them so early....it made some of them sink in the middle.  Oh well they still smelled delish!  As soon as they came out of the oven we tried one and boy was it good!  Just like funfetti but a 'homemade' version. 

Will absolutely keep this recipe on hand:
French Vanilla Cake

So as you can see from my first picture I did my best to test my frosting piping skills.  The problem is that our class this week was dedicated to decorating cupcakes so it was premature of me to try it before class.  Clearly I needed a class on this since they didn't come out very professional looking :)

Class time!
Time for class number 3 - decorating cupcakes and flowers.  We learned a few different types of flowers and also how to do leaves.  Flowers are hard to do!  You certainly have to have the right technique for flowers so practice will absolutely make perfect.  We had to bring naked cupcakes and a few different icing colors.  First we began by practicing - we learned flowers that looked like stars and ones called button flowers...those were wierd.  Below are a few examples of my creations from the night. I need practice!  Next week we have to bring a cake all iced and ready to go - we're learning writing and roses!

Cake Decorating Lesson 2

I have a few recent projects to share with this post....lots of calories and fat here this week!

The first is my baking experience in preparation for decorating class number 2. We were posed with the challenge of bringing a cake, white icing and colored icing to our class. I made the decision to make the “Gold Cake” recipe from my great grandmother’s recipe book (talked about the cookbook in an earlier post).

Great recipe and lots of fun to make: it called for triple sifting of the flour plus it called for 8 egg yolks beaten separately and then added into the batter slowly.  Overall not bad – just took me a while to get it in the oven. One thing I need to do a better job of is letting my butter soften before I start mixing it with the sugar – if its right out of the fridge it doesn’t work so well.

Since we needed an 8” cake for our class I just made one of those and then the rest as cupcakes.

The directions in the recipe called for 2 - 9” cakes though so I had to do some guessing on the time to cook. Seems as though I left them in a little too long – both the cupcakes and the cake were a little on the dry side. The cupcakes I cooked for 15mins and I think I would do 12 or 13 next time and the cake was in for 25 but should have probably come out in 22 or 23 mins. Does anyone have any tips to make a ‘scratch’ cake more moist? All three cakes I’ve made so far have been a little drier than I’d like and I’d appreciate some tips there!

Since I had the cupcakes I figured I should throw some icing on them. I had some leftover chocolate frosting that I put into my decorating bag and piped it on.  Looks pretty good for my first solo shot at piping!

Next is the icing – I waited until the next day to make my icing because I was tired of washing bowls and spatulas and mixing cups :).
The frosting recipe was really easy:
1lb of shortening, 2lbs of confectioner’s sugar, ½ cup of milk and 1 ½ tsp of flavoring (I used vanilla with a dash of almond and lemon).

I realized as I was starting the recipe that it was hard just mixing the shortening and sugar so I threw the milk in sooner rather than later and that made it easier to mix up. The icing came out great – tasted just like frosting off a cake in the grocery store!

Since we were decorating with the icing we had to bring in some colors too so I took about three cups of icing out and separated it into little Ziploc containers. Next came the colors! We decided to decorate a fish onto our cake so I chose more tropical colors – orange/salmon for the mouth, teal for the body and yellow for the fins. It was really fun to mix the colors in but didn’t realize that my hands would come out a bit colored. Our teacher gave us a tip on this: rub some Crisco on your hands before you color your icing and any color that gets on your hands will wipe right off!

So its CLASS TIME! My mom and I brought our cake and all of our tools into class and we were ready to decorate. We started by practicing with some new tips – the #12 tip and the #21 tip. The #12 tip would make stars, shells along the bottom etc. The #21 tip is great for tear drop shapes, hearts, and any shape that looks like a blob. Practice makes perfect so we worked on that for a little bit and then it was time to prep our cake.

We cut our cakes in half and ran a thick line of frosting around the edge to act as a dam for the filling. My mom made a delicious coconut frosting for the middle and then we plopped the top of the cake back on. I cut off some of the top so that it would be flat and then it was time to put on our ‘crumb coat.’ I mentioned the crumb coat in my last post but its just a thin layer of frosting you put all over the cake so that it holds the crumbs in when you put the real layer of frosting on. After we let that sit for 10mins or so we put on the real layer of frosting and smoothed it out the best we could. Now its time to get out the colors and decorate! Check out my work of art!

I was very proud to bring it home and show the hubby!  We quickly cut into it to see if it tasted as good as it looked....and it did :)

Cake Decorating Lesson 1

So we had our first cake decorating class this week.  It was a really fun introduction to the weeks ahead.  The instructor is really nice and sweet - she's very 'grandma' like!  She said she worked for a Boston hotel for most of her life decorating wedding cakes!  What a job!

So we jumped in by learning the proper way to bake, ice and store a cake. Surprisingly the best way to store a cake before you ice it is on the counter on a paper towel.  I've always thought you should cover it up but no - if there isn't any air getting to it then it gets sticky on the top.  Also - there are some oils in the cake so if you let it sit, some of those drop to the bottom and therefore on the paper towel.  Also, she said that its not good to ice it right away because you want to let it settle for the reason mentioned above - letting some oils come out of it and just letting it be.  Next she showed us how make icing for the cake and she gave us a copy of her own icing recipe!  We got to taste test it too and it was delicious.

Then she went on to put the cake on a decorative cardboard and then on a cake turner.  She showed us how she turns the cake and ice's it as she goes.  Its important to put a 'crumb coat' on it first - just a light layer of icing.  You actually let the 'crumb coat' sit for 10 mins before you put on the second coat.  I thought to myself as she was saying this - what are we doing, painting?! Haha!

Anyways after waiting a few minutes for the 'crumb coat' to set, she started in on the main icing coat.  She put a ton on and said thats the best way not to pull any cake up while you are icing.....equals no crumbs in your icing.  She finished it off by smoothing it out - looked great - and I can only hope I can get the same perfection when I try it this week. 

Next she showed us how to put the icing in the bag with our first decorator tip and coupling. The star tip is the first one we tried - this is when we brought the cookies out to decorate.  It was fun finally getting to use the bag, icing and tips!  I felt like a pro but my stars didn't look like pro stars...I need practice!  And BOY does that hurt your hand after a little while.  You are definitely using muscles that you wouldn't normally be using.  Anyways my stars got better with practice and we ended the night by decorating the last few cookies.  The night went by so fast!

Can't wait for next class - we'll be icing our first cake and learning how to put a design on it!

I'm inspired

I’ve been inspired.  My mom recently found her grandmother’s cook book.  It’s from the 1930’s – its one of those books that you feel like you should be wearing gloves to hold.  It’s awesome. 

There are so many wonderful old-fashioned recipe’s in there – things I’ve never even heard of like “Date Surprises” and “Lady Baltimore Cake” – there’s even a recipe in there for Johnny Cakes….which I always thought was just a funny expression not an actual cake! 

Starting this blog was all worth it even if it was just so that I could acquire this treasure.  I’m so honored to bake from this book….I hope I make Mimi McGee proud!

So, as I said in my last post, my mom and I signed up for cake decorating classes.  They started last night! 

Michael's Cake Decorating 

We went this past weekend and got all the supplies we needed – Student decorator’s kit, icing, colors – plus we have to bring basics like paper, pen, plastic bag and even an apron.  And for our first class we were tasked with bringing 6 plain flat cookies….which I’m assumed would be for practice in decorating.

This is where Mimi’s first recipe came into play!  Page 60 – “Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies.”  A perfect place to start!  Easy to follow recipe and I recognized all the ingredients – you never know with an old recipe what might be in there!  It did have some interesting ingredients though like lemon zest, nutmeg and cream?!

They came out pretty darn good…for sugar cookies.  I don’t know about you but I find sugar cookies so boring! The only part I skipped was coating with sugar before baking.  Since we were decorating them I thought that having extra sugar on top would make it difficult to ice.  They had a very nice nutmeg flavor from what would normally be an ordinary boring cookie. 

Note on my cookie cutters: So I realized that I have a horrible selection of cookie cutters!  Apparently I only think that it’s important to have cutters that represent Christmas!  Thankfully I was able to find two bunny ones and then I just used a piece of Tupperware to make basic circles.  Another item for the check list – more cookie cutter variety!

Next post will be about our class! Stay tuned….I need to take some pictures of my new tools first!

Strawberry Orange Cake

Strawberry Cake recipe
So my husband spent all day Friday taking a really really really hard engineering exam.  Its all day long!  So I thought it would be nice to bake him something for when he got home.  I didn't have time to go to the grocery store so I needed to make this cake with what I had at home.  Come to find out I ran out of butter last time I baked so I needed to find an alternative.  Thats how the Strawberry Orange Cake was born. 

I cut the recipe in half and instead of butter I used Orange flavored olive oil that I had on hand.  Other than that the recipe was pretty easy and definitely not as many pans as the Banana Cake so that was a plus.  The only other issue was that I didn't have any strawberries on hand so I couldn't make the puree.  I think this was the downfall of my creation - it was a little on the dry side.  Still a very nice flavor but could have used one more wet ingredient for sure.  I topped them off with chocolate frosting I had on hand - yes I'm sorry bakers out there, I didn't have any ingredients to make my own frosting for this one!

Lessons learned - need to have better stock of main ingredients on hand.  The grocery list for the week has grown but I will be prepared next time!

Next post will be soon so keep checking back.  My mom and I signed up for cake decorating classes at Michael's Craft store and we start this week!!  Have a wonderful day!

Mr. Banana Cake

Banana Cake Recipe
This is monumental!

My first cake - Banana Cake.  I can say that this is officially the first cake I've ever made from scratch.  Initial thought is - boy thats a lot of mixing bowls!  So there's one bowl for the banana's to be mashed in, one bowl for the dry ingredients, one bowl for the wet ingredients, another bowl for the buttermilk and the last bowl is for the frosting.  Oh and by the way yes I made the frosting from scratch too which is also a first!

So I put my apron on and off I went.  So glad I have my Kitchen Aid blender - not sure how much fun this would have been without it. Man that thing is awesome!  Fun fact about the recipe I used - it cooks on a lower temperature for a longer time and then when its done you put it in the freezer for a rapid cool down.  Neat idea but I'll have to make some more cakes before I can determine if its really worth a different cooking method than normal.

Overall the experience was really fun.  Anything with banana's is delicious in my book so it was a win from the start.  I followed the recipe exactly and it wasn't hard, just a bit time consuming.  I can only imagine how much more time it would have taken if you were actually decorating the cake too for a birthday or something.   Great recipe to have on hand though as a flip from the traditional yellow or chocolate cake. 

As far as the taste - awesome!  I did great and even my husband and mom agreed that it was yummy.  They've even volunteered to be taste testers for future creations - isn't that so gracious of them?!  Also - I didn't end up having much time to decorate, so I didn't get to use my frosting tools, oh well....next time.

So a success I would say on the first go around.  Lets see how round 2 does....stay tuned!

Cake Decorating Classes

Stopped by Michael's Craft store this weekend and bought myself my first frosting tips, coupler and box of disposable bags.  I'm going to attempt to make a banana cake and use my new tools for frosting.  Should be fun - I'm only baking for my mom and some friends so its a good time to test my skills.

I've been searching for some cake decorating classes.  Looks like Michael's actually has some that I might try.  They are hard to find though - maybe not a popular class that people like?  Or maybe not enough classes for the demand?  Who knows.

This seems like such a happy hobby to take up.  Who wouldn't want to create something thats not only delicious and beautiful but also brings people joy on special occasions and such.  Dessert is one of my favorite food groups - it always has been.  There's really nothing like a delicious cake, cookies, pie, ice cream, or even brownies....

I keep a candy bowl at my desk at work and put all kinds of lollipops and chocolates in it.  Its funny because everyone thinks that I've got this killer sweet tooth for candy but in reality I don't even really like candy!  Put a bowl of cookies at my desk though and WATCH OUT....don't even know if I would consider sharing at that point.  Just kidding I would totally share.....that is, after I took one for myself first :)

Starting out

So I've been thinking lately about owning my own business.  Its a lot to think about - what are you passionate about, what would you enjoy, what would give you the least amount of stress to own?  I thought to myself - a bakery would be fun?  Well, I don't own a bakery right now but I might as well see if I like baking enough to start one someday. 

I've never baked a cake from scratch.  I'm one of those Betty Crocker - Duncan Hines boxed cake girls....and darn it I'm proud of it!  They do make delicious cakes - especially funfetti.  My husband and I actually had funfetti for our wedding cake, thats how much we like it!  Or should I say LOVE it!

Its time to put my creative skills to the test - so I'd like to make this a record of my baking projects and how I'm learning along the way.  Hopefully I will go from an OK baker to an awesome one!  My goal is to bake something new, that I've never made before, once a week.  I'll post some pictures and comments on how the process went.  It should be fun!

Thanks for caring!