C is for Cookie

When my brother temporarily changed his Facebook profile picture to a shot of him and cookie monster a few months before his birthday, an idea was born! I scoured the internet for ideas and knew I HAD to make him cookie monster cupcakes.

My sister-in-law's birthday is just over a week before my brother's, and I knew there was no way we could eat 4 dozen cupcakes in a 2 week time period. So I decided to make one batch of chocolate cupcakes, bake half, and save the rest for the next weekend. We were preparing for a big Memorial Day cookout in the mountains the same weekend as my brother's birthday, so I was hoping this would be a time saver as well. I froze half the batter and kept the icing in the fridge for a week. The batter did take a while to thaw, submerging the container in bowls of hot water and switching out the water when it got cold, but after it thawed, it baked up just like always. I might have left them in the oven a couple of minutes longer, because the batter was still pretty cold. The refrigerated icing seemed to be just like normal as well.

I couldn't find any solid blue cupcake liners at the grocery store, so I went with some blue and white polka-dotted ones that I already had on hand. With the chocolate batter, the liners weren't too noticable anyway.

While the cupcakes cooled, I mixed up the icing. It took a lot of royal blue food coloring to get that perfect Cookie Monster blue! I used Wilton tip 233 to make the fur. It wasn't difficult at all, but it took a lot longer than the big icing swirls I usually do on my cupcakes. I hadn't planned to put that much time into it!!

For the mouths, I bought some Chips Ahoy cookies and cut them in half. (I found that a sawing motion worked best and broke the least amount of cookies.) I tried to stick the cookies in at an angle, to make it look like Cookie Monster was actively chowing down on them. By the next day, most of them were still in place, but there were a couple that were lying flat.

I knew we would be rushing out the door to try to get to the mountains (and were a lot later than planned, because of the thawing and "fur" icing) so I bought store made icing for the eyes. In order to save myself an extra trip to Michael's, I bought a tube of  Betty Crocker white icing and a small tube of black decorating gel. The Betty Crocker icing is convenient because I can buy it at Publix along with the rest of my supplies, but it doesn't fit any of my Wilton tips. I had been planning to use a large round tip, like the Wilton 10, for the whites of the eyes, but I didn't have a Betty Crocker tip that size. I had to use a large star tip to pipe the eyes and then flatten them out with a wet decorator brush. This worked pretty well, but again, more time!! The black decorator gell worked really well for the pupils of the eyes, giving them a nice shiny effect.

We surprised my brother with the cupcakes, and his face lit up when he saw them. I think I even got a "That's awesome!"

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There's No Wrong Way to Eat a Cupcake

I saw this recipe for peanut butter icing on Wilton's website some time ago, and have been wanting to try it ever since. With my mom's birthday approaching, I decided it was the perfect opportunity.

I made my go-to chocolate cupcakes, Pilsbury devils food, with my standard extra egg. The icing recipe wasn't difficult to follow. The only hitch was that I thought I had some creamy peanut butter on hand from another recipe, but after I started mixing the icing, I discovered I only had Jiff extra crunchy in the pantry - typically the only kind of peanut butter I buy. Next time, I would try the recipe with the creamy peanut butter instead.

With this recipe, I was very thankful for my KitchenAid mixer. Before adding the milk, the icing was very thick, like a dry cookie dough. My mixer made quick work of the icing, but I wouldn't want to attempt it with a hand mixer.

For decorating, I tried to pick decorations that would match the brown and tan colors of chocolate and peanut butter, but still be fitting for my mom. I found some brown and blue toile cupcake wrappers and Michael's and some fun blue pearl-like sprinkles (that just so happened to be the same color as March's birthstone).

When it came time to pipe, the crunchy peanut butter came back to haunt me. I knew from past experience that icing containing nuts wouldn't be the easiest to pipe. (Tip - ever wonder why all the piping on German chocolate cakes is done with plain chocolate icing??) I used my Wilton 1M tip because it had the largest tip for nuts to pass through. I still had to use a toothpick several times to dislodge a nut that had gotten stuck.

Usually when I make icing for cupcakes, I make a batch and a half. This recipe had lots of ingredients in 1/3 quantities, and my measuring cups don't have any 1/6 marks. So in the interest of saving brainpower and not having to do any complicated math, I only made a single batch. I tried to pipe conservatively and not use too much icing, but I still ran out of icing on the last 2 cupcakes. I spread a thin layer on with a spatula and used those as taste testers. I wasn't going to stack these in my cupcake tree, so having a full batch to display wasn't an issue.

I have to say that I was very pleased with the results. The peanut butter icing was so creamy and tasty, it was kind of like the inside of a candy bar. Of all the cupcakes I have made, these are definitely near the top!

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Peppermint Twist

I have abandoned my blog over the past year - half by accident and half on purpose. I wasn't very good at posting in a timely manner, so I decided not to bother. However, after reading through some other baking blogs for ideas, and showing off my own accomplishments, I have decided that I like the idea of having one place to keep all the tasty treats I've made. (Whether anyone reads or comments or not.) So the next couple of posts will be about catching up on some baking I've done in the past year.

This Christmas, I wasn't sure what I was going to make. I thought about stepping out on a limb and trying something new - not just the cupcakes that everyone has come to expect. Plus, I wanted something that wouldn't be quite as time consuming. Then I had a pre-Christmas lunch with Ginger. And after lunch, I helped her make the cutest peppermint cupcakes for her church Christmas party. I knew I had to make them too.

After stealing the idea, I went shopping. Mine turned out a little different, due to the colors of candy canes and sprinkles that I had available.

I debated whether to make chocolate cupcakes or yellow. I should have gone with chocolate... At the last minute, I decided to try to turn a box of yellow cake mix into chocolate cake - because chocolate and peppermint just sounds good together! I googled different solutions for adding cocoa powder to the yellow cake mix and decided to give it a try. It didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. I ended up with a slightly brown, less moist cake that didn't really taste like any particular flavor. It was about the same color as a spice cake, and I wasn't able to taste any of the cocoa. I was short on time, and they weren't terrible, so I had to go with it. Next time, I will just get the box of devils food mix.

The icing, however, did not disappoint me. I made my regular Wilton recipe and substituted peppermint extract for the butter flavor. The mint was tasty and not overpowering. In the interest of saving time, I decided that white icing would work just fine and didn't add any coloring.

All in all, they were cute cupcakes for minimal time spent. I might have to try this recipe again with chocolate cake though.

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Busy Birthday Baking

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything, and except for a delicious batch of brownies I made from scratch, I went quite a while without baking. But with my dad's surprise 60th birthday party in the works, I knew my no-baking streak would come to an end. And I did enough baking in two days to make up for the couple of months I spent out of the kitchen!

I knew I had to make my dad a great cake, and I don't feel that I let myself down with this one. In fact, I think it's my best effort to date. I was a bit afraid of trying to make a stacked cake large enough to feed all the guests, so I decided to stick with a comfortable sized cake and add a batch of cupcakes to make sure there was enough to go around.

The cupcakes were pretty standard, except I cooked them on a rack that was too low down in my oven, and the bottoms got a little too done. Luckily, I didn't have that same problem with the cake.

Since my dad is a huge UK fan (and that was the theme of the party) I decided to make him a UK-themed basketball cake. I had never done a shaped pan before, and it scared me at first because the cake took way longer to bake than the instructions said. I used my bake even strips around the outside of the pan to make sure the edges didn't get too done, and after a little online reassurance, I baked the cake for around and hour, and it turned out fantastic. Thanks to the cake release, it came right out of the pan with no problems.

I decided to do the main body of the cake in buttercream stars, like the illustration on the pan shows. I couldn't find the terra-cotta icing color that it suggests, so I went with just plain orange and used the color sparingly. I liked the way it turned out. Piping all the stars wasn't too bad, but the icing does tend to get soft holding it in my hand for so long. I bought a large tip with 3 stars in it to make filling in the icing go faster. It worked well, except for trying to do detail work around the edges, so I ended up having to use a single star tip as well.

After piping the body of the cake, I cut the UK logo out of blue and white fondant. This was a little harder than I imagined, because the fondant wanted to move with the knife instead of holding its shape. But after a couple of tries, I got a result that I was pretty pleased with. I used my new alphabet cutter set to make matching UK's for the cupcakes. And my 8-9 hour baking spree was complete.

The birthday boy seemed to enjoy the cake, and it apparently it tasted so good that there was none left at the end of the party! I was nervous about taking all this on but very pleased with the results.

(PS: Stay tuned - my next post is in my kitchen drying right now!)

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Wilton Class 3 - Cupcakes (And More Cupcakes!)

This Tuesday, I had my third session in the Wilton Decorating Basics class. We were concentrating on cupcakes, so I felt much more in my comfort zone this time. I had baked and frozen a dozen cupcakes the week before out of the same Duncan Hines cake mix that I wasn't so crazy about. Freezing made them a little on the dry side, but the class was mostly about decorating, so they were fine for the purpose they were serving.

We packed a lot of techniques into this one class! We learned drop flowers, which I really like, swirl flowers, which I wasn't as good at, shells, which I need some practice in, leaves, which are super easy, and a few other flowers. The new Wilton class supplies include a cupcake nail, which is supposed to make it easier to swirl icing on top of the cupcake, but I didn't like it! I think it's quicker and easier to freehand the swirl, maybe because that's how I've been doing it for a while now - not sure, but the cupcake nail wasn't my favorite. I do see how it could come in handy for making flowers directly onto the cupcake, though.

cupcake decorated with drop flowers and leaves

The two other flowers we learned were the shaggy mum and the pom-pom flower. I really like the shaggy mum! It looks kind of like Cookie Monster from the back. I need to think of a fun way to use it. I had a little more trouble with the pom-pom flower, but I think I could get it with more practice. I'm not sure what I would use it for though.

cupcake with shaggy mum on top

(I kind of went crazy with the leaves.)

pom-pom flowers

(my instructor's on the left and my more crooked version on the right)

As if I hadn't had enough cupcakes already, Ginger's birthday was on Thursday, and I'd promised that I'd bake her something. She requested strawberry cupcakes with buttercream icing, so I whipped up yet another batch of icing. (This week, I did NOT use the awful butter, and the results were SO much better!) I'd never tasted, much less made strawberry cake before, so I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Ginger had said the strawberry boxed cake mixes were good, but I really didn't want to overwhelm her with 2 dozen cupcakes, so I found a homemade recipe for 12 in my cupcake cookbook. It used fresh strawberries and buttermilk, so it sounded like it would be good. I decided to color the icing in a light, pretty pink in honor of the name of the recipe (Pretty in Pink Cupcakes) and picked up some white sprinkles and store-bought daisies to complete the look. (I haven't learned how to make daisies yet, so I figured I deserved a break!)

I was definitely pleased with the look of the cupcakes! But I was a little unsure how they would taste. It's always nerve wracking to try a new recipe, and this one didn't yield any extra to taste ahead of time! Everyone said the cupcakes were good. My only complaint was that the cake seemed a little dense - since I only used egg whites instead of the whole egg, I thought they'd be a little fluffier.

Ginger's birthday cupcakes

While I do enjoy baking, I'm glad this marathon week is over. It was a success, but 3 nights of baking in 1 week is something I won't try again for a LOOONG time! :)

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Stars and Stripes

I know it's been a while since I've posted. Minus a batch of cookies I made for some very over-stressed co-workers of mine, it's been equally long since I've baked. But a holiday weekend with a cookout extravaganza was enough to bring me out of culinary hiding!

For the second year in a row, my brother and Bryan planned a colossal Memorial Day cookout at my parents' cabin in the mountains. The final guest count numbered somewhere in the low to mid 40's, and the smoker was fired up 24 hours in advance. We certainly take our BBQ seriously! With Kevin and Bryan outdoing themselves on an 18 lb. brisket, 2 turkeys, and 9 racks of ribs, I couldn't sit by and not make a contribution. So, naturally, I decided to make Memorial Day cupcakes.

I pondered several more complicated designs, including a flag and a watermelon, but the traveling and the amount of preparation involved in the event pursuaded me to do something a little faster and simpler. I made the icing at home Thursday night so I wouldn't have to travel with my mixer but decided to bake the cupcakes Saturday morning so they would be fresh for the cookout that evening. The cake was my standard box mix with an extra egg taken from the oven and put immediately in the freezer for a few minutes to stop the cooking process. It didn't let me down - the cake was moist and tasty. I piped the buttercream with the 1M tip, my favorite for cupcakes. I used the Wilton color mist and sprayed half of the cupcakes blue and the other half red. My initial plan was to sprinkle blue sprinkles on the red-sprayed cupcakes and red sprinkles on the blue-sprayed cupcakes. However, when I'd done that, they still looked like something was missing, so all the cupcakes got both red and blue sprinkles. Stars and stripes cupcake wrappers and flag toppers from Wilton completed the look.

Even though decorating couldn't have taken me more than 15 minutes total, I would deem the cupcakes a success! Guests were afraid to grab them at first because they didn't want to mess up the display. (Of course, once the first one was gone, the other cupcakes followed very quickly.) I got a lot of compliments and even a few comments that people thought they were professional. I thank the 1M tip for that! :) 

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My Goodness, My Guinness

A few days before St. Patty's Day, I saw this recipe on the food network website. I knew I would be out of town the weekend after St. Patty's so I probably wouldn't have a chance to bake. We were planning to celebrate Bryan's brother-in-law Robbie's birthday the following weekend (this weekend!), and Bryan thought this would be the perfect recipe to try. Besides an X Box cake (which sounds far beyond my experience level) I didn't have any other ideas for Robbie, and this one sounded easy enough, so I decided to go with it.

The recipe was fairly easy to make, and Bryan enjoyed the fact that it contains a bottle of Guinness. (Although, once baked, I really couldn't taste the Guinness and wouldn't have known it was in there if I hadn't made them.) I'd never made chocolate cake from scratch, but this turned out well. And I got to use cocoa powder for the first time! :)

The cream cheese icing was very creamy, so it was a little messy spreading it on the cupcakes. There's no way it could have been piped! I only used 3/4 cup of cream - the minimum called for by the recipe - and I definitely wouldn't have used any more than that. The dusting of cocoa powder on top of the icing gave it another hint of chocolate flavor - and gave me and Bryan a good excuse to make a mess of my kitchen - we were flinging cocoa powder everywhere!

Overall, I was very pleased with the result and would make these again. They were chocolatey but not too sweet, and the cream cheese icing (which is supposed to resemble the head on a pint of Guinness) was  unexpected but very tasty.

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When everything sucks except the vacuum cleaner...

Okay, so it's really my washing machine that I was having problems with, not the vacuum. Even so, Thursday night was just one of those nights - the kind of evening when nothing goes as planned.

My washing machine had been broken for over a week, and I desperately needed to do laundry before going out of town for the weekend. Bryan had met the appliance repair guy earlier in the day, so I thought I was all set to go. After I got home from work, I threw a load of laundry in the washer and turned it on. Later, I noticed that it was being awfully quiet - in fact it wasn't spinning at all! Not only that, but it wouldn't drain either! I tried every combination of settings and cycles that I could, and nothing would get rid of the water in my washing machine. I was left with a load of wet, soggy clothes and nothing to wear for my weekend in the mountains.

In the midst of all this frustration, I was also attempting to make cupcakes for my mom's birthday. I now realize that baking while frustrated and in a bad mood is not such a good idea, but I really didn't have any other time to make the cupcakes. There were only going to be 6 of us there over the weekend, so I didn't want to use a boxed mix and end up with 2 dozen cupcakes - we'd never be able to eat them all. So I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks to make 12 white cupcakes from scratch.

I mixed the batter and filled the cups 2/3 full, as always. I noticed that I had a good bit of batter left over, but I didn't want to take my chances on overflowing cupcakes, so I made a few extras to taste and rinsed the remaining batter down the drain. Big mistake!! About 20 minutes later, I noticed that my cupcakes hadn't risen, like at all! (It was about this moment that I tried yet one more setting on the washer, it also didn't work, and I broke down in tears...)

One thing that did work well - I used my silicone cupcake liners. One, because I have 12 liners and was making 12 cupcakes and two, because they were the only pastel liners I had on hand.

Because there was a good bit of space between the cupcakes and the tops of the liners, I ended up needing a lot more icing than normal to fill them up. This led me to run out of icing when piping the designs on top, and the last 2 didn't get flowers, just some improvised polka-dots.

My mood had rapidly deteriorated by the time I got to piping, and I think it showed. I thought the flowers were just so-so, and overall I was just okay with how the project turned out. I even procrastinated posting the picture here because I wasn't thrilled with them. They did taste good though! The homemade cake batter did seem to dry out quicker than the mix, so they didn't keep quite as well, but I was very pleased with the taste when they were freshly baked.

Overall, I'd say that I learned my lesson. My treats look happier and more cheerful when I am as well. I'll try to avoid baking when I'm frustrated and crabby, if I can.

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A Baking Weekend!

I knew this weekend would be busy - a long-awaited BFF baking day plus a birthday. But baking is fun, right? And I'm all about the fun!

Bryan's mom's birthday is tomorrow, but we decided to celebrate a little early and get together on Sunday. I knew I needed to bake something fun for her birthday, and when I saw this design on Betty Crocker's website, I was hooked. I was really scared, though, because I've never made a cake before. I have assisted and/or observed cake-making a handful of times, but I've never been in charge completing a cake from start to finish. (That's why I usually stick to cupcakes - cakes scare me!) Bryan and I both knew what a perfect design this would be for his mom, and he talked me into tackling the project with his help.

Baking the cake was pretty easy - no surprises there. I used the Wilton cake release on the pan, and I have to say, I was pretty impressed with how cleanly it came out of the pan. (I listened to Ginger and shook well before I squirted it in.) The cake release is so much less messier than flouring that I think I'll use it from now on. All you have to do is squirt a little bit in the middle of the pan and use a basting brush to spread it around evenly - no mess whatsoever!

Next, I printed a template from the internet and cut the flip flop shapes from the cooled cake. That part wasn't too difficult either. I put the cake in the freezer to let it firm up before icing. We were a little rushed for time, and I probably should have left it in the freezer longer than I did. It did firm up some, but it still was a little crumbly on the sides. We did get some crumbs in the icing, but luckily the icing color and the decorations helped to hide that.

If anyone has any good tips for icing a cake, I'm all ears! I didn't have too much trouble with the top, but getting the sides neat and making a clean line between the sides and the top were hard! I don't know if it's because the sides were only a little over an inch tall or what, but I had a lot of trouble getting the icing to stick to the side of the cake and to look neat. Even though I followed the recipe for thin icing, it was a bit thinner than I would have preferred - I won't add quite as much milk next time. I don't think it made too much of a difference on the cake itself, but the lines I piped (which I thought were supposed to be done with thin) didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.

I wish I would have had the time (and courage!) to make the flip flop straps out of fondant. I used fruit roll-ups, like the directions said, but expected from experience that they wouldn't hold up too well. They lived up to their reputation - by the time we delivered the cake, the straps had fallen flat, but you could still tell what they were supposed to be.

Overall, the cake was cute but definitely had a homemade look to it. I definitely have some room to improve, but I'm pretty happy with my first attempt. The birthday girl seemed to enjoy it, so that made me happy!

In other news, I got to use a culinary torch for the first time! I mentioned that Ginger and I got together for a BFF baking day also. It was long overdue - I think our last one might have been right before Christmas, 2008! Ginger found a rocky road brownie cupcake recipe on the Paula Deen website, and it was super delicious. She covered most of the details on her facebook page, but they were fun, tasty, and something I'd definitely try again. Even better, we got to play with fire!

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Better Late than Never

This weekend, I baked Valentine's cupcakes. I know Valentine's was last week, but these weren't baked for Valentine's; they were received for Valentine's. As one of my Valentine's Day presents, Bryan got me a Pillsbury funfetti cake mix and icing set. And since my family was coming over this weekend to celebrate Bryan's birthday a little late, I figured it was the best occasion to bake I was going to get. We ended up with a mixture of celebrations that was quite tasty!

I was very pleased with how the cupcakes turned out. That's because this time I took Ginger's advice and bought the Wilton cupcake decorating kit and...

... I piped for the first time! Up until now, I've been so afraid of pastry bags, I've been using my Pampered Chef dessert decorator (Wilton also makes one that is very similar) to pipe the icing. After having trouble on Bryan's Sponge Bob cupcakes, I was resolved to try it the "real" way. And Ginger was right - it was easier! Yes, I should have listened to her sooner. (I also took her advice and added an extra tablespoon of milk to the icing.) I absolutely LOVE the way the Wilton 1M tip looks when it's piped on a cupcake - very professional. And now I finally have a 1M tip of my own! Katy was right - it did use a lot of icing. One other thing I learned the hard way - the 1M will only fit on the really large coupler. At this point, I don't really see the point in buying the large coupler though, because I don't have any other tips that will fit on it - so what's the point in making it easier to switch out!?

As I mentioned, Bryan had bought me a Pillsbury funfetti tub of pink icing with white and red Valentine's sprinkles. I had a feeling it wouldn't be enough for 24 cupcakes using the 1M tip. In fact, it iced 9. So I made a batch of homemade buttercream to go with it. I was accidentally too generous with the pink coloring and ended up with a hot pink instead of pastel. But by fate (and certainly not by planning or thought in any way), I had just enough of each color to alternate rows on my cupcake stand. Before my family chowed down on cupcakes, I told them that one of the icings was store-bought and one was homemade, but I wasn't going to tell them which was which until they had tried them both. Bryan said he preferred the store-bought icing because it was sweeter, but everyone else preferred mine. I'll consider that a resounding success. Coupled with the fact that they were way cute, and I'm happy!

(PS - Stay tuned for next week. I've got a pretty ambitious - for me - project planned!)

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A Bikini Bottom Birthday

For Bryan's birthday, I had known for a while that I wanted to make him Sponge Bob cupcakes. The week before, I decided that instead of tinting the icing blue, I would use spray coloring instead to make it look more like water. The cupcakes were just a yellow cake mix. The icing was Wilton buttercream with Wilton blue color spray and blue sugar sprinkles. I also found Wilton icing decorations that look like Sponge Bob and Patrick to use as cupcake toppers.

Overall, I was very pleased with the way they turned out. When I was making the icing, I didn't have quite enough vanilla, so I used a small bit of almond extract as well, and it was very tasty. The spray was easy to use, but it is important to have good ventilation when using the spray color! I do wish the Wilton cupcake liners didn't turn so transparent after they bake. The icing was a little too stiff to pipe well - I should have used one more tablespoon of milk. But I was able to hide most of the piping with the color spray!

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