Overwhelmed by Bunnies and Chicks

I could not believe what I had gotten myself into! These sweet, adorable little confections. Who could resist? Who knew~..........? What a pain in the ass they were. I got the idea from Bakerella's book "Cake Pops". Instead of serving them on a stick I decided to put them in mini cupcake papers. I also decided to use brownies so I could skip the butter cream step. They mush up very nicely and become almost truffle like. I proceed to dip them, messy and time consuming. Then I have to quickly stick in the bunny ears before the candy coating gets hard otherwise it cracks. I learned that the hard way. Then to my horror, the oil used in the brownie recipe starts to seep out from around the ears. Not on all of them though. It seemed to be the ones who's ears got stuck in last. I was dipping five, then putting in ears, dipping five, then putting in ears etc...
The chick were just as much a p.i.t.a.. I had to use tweezers to put on all the feet, beaks and wings. I kept thinking "I am out of my mind".

I never want to do this again, ...until next Easter, hahahahah!

Happy Birthday to my husband

I think this is the best cake I ever made! It is a recipe from the King Arthur Flour website. It was easy and delicious. My husband requested a vanilla cake with vanilla butter cream and strawberry filling. This recipe made two very tall 8" layers so I sliced them in half to make four layers. I thought I had more strawberries but I guess we ate more that I realized. It would have been nice to have more for the filling, oh well, it was still great.
Here's the hard part; I have always wanted to make a french meringue butter cream. I had a Martha Stewart recipe filed away for future use and this was the moment. Martha said to beat the egg whites and sugar in a double boiler until they reached 160 degrees. I fould it very difficult to beat this and take its temp at the same time. While beating, the pot kept moving off the burner and I was afraid it would fall off the stove causing serious injury to the beater, namely, me. I also got a blister on my hand which is a sign I need a new whisk.The mixture kept getting stiffer and stiffer but the temp was rising soooo slowly. At 140 degrees I gave up and removed the bowl from the double boiler and place it under the kitchen aid whisk. The whole thing had to get thrown out, it was so thick and chunky. I definitely have to find another recipe which doesn't require 160 degrees. Could that have been a misprint? I made regular butter cream instead which was, as always, wonderful!
Everyone loved the cake and I could not have been prouder. Even the birthday boy, who typically does not eat cake, ate some!

Baileys Irish Cream Cake

It's time again for the "Wearin' of the Green". It's time to celebrate all things Irish. What could be better than Baileys Irish Cream Cake. I found this recipe on the "Too Many Chefs" website. It sounded delicious and it is delicious!
I made these mini filled cupcakes for my husband to bring to work. They were gone in the blink of the eye. It is a good thing he got them out of the house because I would have been snacking on them all day today. Even now I wish I had stashed a few of them for my own personal enjoyment.

The luck of the Irish

Once again, my favorite cookies dressed up for St. Patrick's Day. Hence the title.

As you may have noticed in my pictures, my icing has been discoloring. Patches of a lighter shade appear after the icing sets. Perplexing to say the least, ugly to say the most. I called my sister-in-law Joanne, whose recipe, I use and asked her about it's cause. She suggested that perhaps I am getting water in the icing. Ahh Haaa! That is a possibility because I started painting the icing on the cookie and my brush may not have been entirely dry before I used a new color. Also, I have taken to sprinkling a little water in the icing while trying to get the right consistency. And maybe when I pipe on,the icing the tips are not completely dry. I have to exercise diligence to make sure that no water gets in the mix. We'll see how it comes out.

The Promise of Spring

The winter has been harsh but the promise of spring is here. Some of the trees have buds, crocuses have bloomed, lawns are appearing from under the layers of snow and my heart turns to.....COOKIES.
I made this sunny batch of cookies for a friend who is recovering from surgery. Do you know the healing power of cookies??? Especially when they look like spring.

Just for Fun

Do you know how you save things, sometimes for years, just knowing you will need it some day? Well, I finally got to use one of those things. For my daughter's 13th birthday we did a tropical theme and bought little paper umbrellas to put in the drinks. All of them did not get used so I put them away knowing that someday I would need one. That was 8 years ago.
Fast forward to 2011. A friend of my husbands wanted a vanilla cake with pineapple filling. Pineapple made me think of the little umbrellas I had stashed away. This was also an opportunity for me to decorate a cake with something other than flowers.
This is the result. I think one umbrella is just enough. Great restraint was exercised not to use more because I wanted it to be about the pineapple

Wear Red (Velvet)

I love Red Velvet cake. I use the McCormick's recipe and it is delicious every time. This time I made cupcakes for someone who wanted a dozen for Valentines Day. I made a 6" cake with the rest of the batter. Damn, I burned the cupcakes! :-(
I have a cupcake pan that I have long suspected of burning cupcakes. I have two pans of different makes. Whenever I make two dozen they turn out different from each other but I could never remember which ones came out of which pan. Now I know for certain who the offending pan is and vow never to use that pan again! (oh, how I hate to throw stuff out that will end up in a landfill)
Anyway, the new batch came out perfect and was scrumptious. (I always sample)

More Cookies for Mom

My mothers birthday is very close to Valentines Day. My grandmothers birthday is on Valentines Day. I thought some Valentine Hearts were in order for the occasion.

Tea Time

I made these cookies for my mother's birthday.
My sister decided that she wanted to make the birthday cake so, I graciously allowed her to. She made a German Chocolate Cake which was out of this world!
Back to the cookies. The recipe was my great, great grandmother's which she baked in a wood burning oven. My mother remembers eating these cookies when she was a little girl and she remembers that they were good. Back then I guess they would have been pretty tasty seeing how sweets were a rare treat. I found them to be bland and dry therefore decided they needed some icing. This addition greatly improved the taste and the looks. I had to guess at the time and temp., which I got right on the second try. Why, you may wonder, did I make teapots? Two reasons; #1. I found teapot cookies cutters at N.Y Cake & Baking Distributors and could not resist buying them.
#2. My great, great grandmother called theses cookies "Tea Cakes", so I thought it would be appropriate to use these cookie cutters. My mother was surprised and pleased which made me very happy.

LongTime No See

It has been a while since I have visited my own blog. It's not that I haven't been baking, I just haven't been writing. I feel like I am just baking the same things over and over and over, and who wants to look at the same thing over and over.... So, although I have been busy, I have been bored. I did make a new cookie which everyone loves. It is the shortbread that I made in the fall but without the icing. So Delicious, so simple, but, nothing beautiful to behold. I did make beautiful snowflake cookies for Christmas with my go to recipe from my sister-in-law.
I do have a new cookie recipe and a coconut cake recipe which were my great grandmothers that my mom gave me. She said she tried to make them but did not have success. I am going to try it and if I am successful there will be pictures.

A Plate Full of Fall

Cinnamon and brown sugar definitely make me think of fall! So,I tried a new cookie recipe, Brown Sugar Shortbread. I guess it is called shortbread because there are no eggs in it. This is a very dry crumbly dough so I was very unsure about it. No need to fear, they are a very crisp and light cookie. Cut into fun shapes and covered with a cinnamon icing, they are a perfect cookie for the thanksgiving dessert table.

Grandmother Fowlers Pecan Pie

I grew up on pecan pie. My mother is from Georgia where it is pronounced "pe-caahn". So of course, that is how I have always said it. My niece knew a man from South Africa and he said "pe-kin". He and my mother had a few debates over the proper way to say it. Nevertheless, it is still the most wonderful creation and an annual holiday tradition. I don't know why I never make it in the summer. I guess it is one of those things that is just not done (at least not in my family).
The ingredients must be not be beat with an electric beater (except for creaming butter and sugar). I learned that the hard way. Doing it electrically adds too much air so that when it bakes, the bubbles rise to the top and brown which makes your pie ugly.It is not a pretty pie to begin with, unless you are my friend Margie who painstakingly places each pecan into perfect circle formations on top of the crust before adding the filling. That pie was a thing of beauty! But my pie, with the pecans just tossed into the filling tastes like heaven!

Halloween

I can hear the rustling of the leaves and the excited laughter as the girls ran across the neighborhood lawns, the candy bags filling up. It was such a social activity, all the kids getting together, all the moms waiting on the sidewalks. I loved Halloween when my daughters were little! Making costumes, decorating the house and carving pumpkins, my favorite fall activities. Oh yes, and The Otisville Elementary School Halloween parade, so much fun marching around the block, everyone in costume, anticipating the classroom party afterward. What a time it was!
Now Halloween is the "kick off" to the baking frenzy season. I have started with cupcakes, because who does not love cupcakes for a Halloween party. I have added "eyeballs" to my menu, a little creepy but oh so good! And of course, iced sugar cookies because they are always delicious!

Anniversary Cake

Last summer I made a cake for a bridal shower. It was a lemon cake with lemon butter cream topped with hand painted royal icing flowers. It was my 3rd cake order so I remember it well. A few weeks ago, I received a call from the bride. She was celebrating her 1st anniversary and wanted me to make her cake because she loved her bridal shower cake so much. I was extremely flattered!
This is a 3 layer, 6" chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream frosting. I get great pleasure making beautiful cakes and I put love into all of them. This one was special since I also made the shower cake. The flowers are made out of royal icing and painted with food coloring mixed with clear vanilla extract. I am so pleased with the way they looked and really, I just love this cake. I do hope the anniversary couple love it as much as I do.

A Banana, are you sure?

I made this first birthday smash cake for a sweet, really sweet baby boy named Desmond. (he is the Tutu from the last cake) Desmond loves bananas so his parents thought it would be so fun to give him a cake that looked like a banana. I'll try anything so of course I said "I would love to do it".
I made a pound cake and froze it. After a few days, I took it out of the freezer and started carving. Using a real banana as a model, I colored vanilla butter cream and covered the cake. I added cocoa powder to the ends and along some edges to give the appearance of brown spots. This was intended to be a practice cake, but I was really pleased with the result so, it became the cake I presented.
I went to the birthday party and got to witness the fun. Regrettably, I forgot my camera. Hopefully I can get some action pictures from the parents to share with you.

Happy 1st Birthday Cousins

My neighbor's sons are now grown men with children of their own. Beautiful children that look so much like them. The sons of two of the sons were born twelve hours apart. A joint celebration was planned for their 1st birthday and I was asked to make the cake. Yay! It was a "Winnie the Pooh" themed party. I took a napkin and made butter cream to match the colors in it. I also brought in some of the design, by making honey pots and bees out of fondant which were painted with vanilla and food coloring. The lettering is also fondant. I have little alphabet cookie cutters that I just love. This has become my preferred method of writing on cake, so neat and consistent. I still have trouble piping letters so i try to avoid it. I am looking for script alphabet cutters. How great would that be!
Tutu and The General?? One of the babies is named Desmond and the other is Lucas, who they say looks like Dwight Eisenhower, hence the nicknames lovingly bestowed on them by their uncles, the brothers, my neighbors sons, awesome dads!
It was a really lovely cake it and I got so much pleasure from making it.

flip flops

There is something to be learned from every project. These flip flops were a challenge! They were made for a little girl named Riley who was celebrating her 8th birthday. Riley had seen a cake in the form of flips flops featured on the cover of a magazine and just knew she had to have this for her birthday party. When her mom contacted me to see if I could make this for her I said "yes, I can" without hesitation. We talked about the details and I developed a plan on how to accomplish this. It was to be a vanilla cake, but not a full size cake, with vanilla butter cream. Riley's mom wanted individual cakes, with polka dots, a little chocolate, a little sparkle. So I decided to make the polka dots out of milk chocolate and white chocolate which would be dyed pink and green. Oh, if only I knew...
I thought that if I warmed milk chocolate chips, they would melt enough so they would flatten into perfectly round discs. But, NO, they would not change their shape at all. Sooo, I thought, I know, I'll melt them all together and pipe the dots, didn't work! I ended up using chocolate candy melts that I piped into the dots, not very ideal either, but I made it work. Why, oh why, oh why did I not just use chocolate butter cream??? I thought of this when it was too late
The sandal straps: I initially planned on using rainbow licorice. Since the flip flops were only 2 1/2" long, I knew I would have to cut the licorice in half lengthwise and trim them. I played with this and played with this. I could not get the licorice to hold a shape and I was not going to put them on the cakes if they wouldn't stand up. Plan B; fondant dyed to match the white chocolate chips, which had been dyed to match the rainbow licorice (which I did not use). The fondant held up, although a few pieces broke and I freaked out a bit, but I got it to work. (big sigh of relief)
Theses little cakes ended up looking really awesome and Riley loved them, which was the most important thing!

Rainbow Cake for Samantha

I have wanted to make this cake ever since I saw it on the Martha Stewart Show. I filed it away for a special occasion. My daughter, Samantha saw this same cake on a cake blog and indicated that she wanted one. Ah, the perfect occasion presented itself in the form of Samantha's 21st birthday.
The original recipe called for swiss meringue butter cream. Since I have never made that(I vow to try it soon), I decided to make seven minute frosting. I also used slightly different colors in the cake. In addition, I wanted to try using fondant circle cutouts to decorate the cake with. Surely you have seen many cakes done in this fashion. The first one I saw like this was on Ace of Cakes, but that cake was completely covered in fondant.
So, I made the cake, filled the layers with a good amount of frosting and covered thoroughly with frosting. It looked beautiful in it's shiny white simplicity! I added the fondant circles and the "Happy Birthday Samantha", also made of fondant. After covering the cake, I went to bed. The next morning I noticed the circles were losing their shape a little, the fondant was going soft! was it the humidity? Had I not let them dry long enough? what was happening? I am so glad i didn't make this for a customer. There was another surprise when we cut the cake. I expected that the white frosting would stand out against the different colored layers, making them really pop. Where was the frosting??? It disappeared!! It still looked pretty but I was disappointed. It tasted great, nice and moist, so I think the cake absorbed the frosting. Now that I think of it, I did make another cake with seven minute frosting and when cut, it too had vanished. Any ideas as to why this happens?

pastels

I like simplicity and I love these cookies! I truly enjoy piping the icing onto them in spirals, I love the rhythm of it. To me, they look like pastel colored pearls, and they just melt in your mouth. It is hard to eat just one!