Week Five

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana.

Oh man that was cheesy. There aren't many songs that have to do with oranges. I was thinking Orange County Girl by Gwen Stefani but that's just plain obvious when it comes to me and my love of No Doubt. Anyways.... these are Orange cupcakes the recipe / idea came from the website www.mybakingaddiction.com/orange-cupcakes-2/ . Yeah I still not too sure how to post a link on this blog but hopefully I will learn soon. Anywhoo. I love this recipe i love the consistency of the batter not too thick not too thin. The batter itself make exactly 12 regular size cupcakes so that's the only downside. Today I went on a nice shopping trip to find some shiny new cupcake liners and I ended up finding some plain brown ones (which i must say look pretty classy) from Tapps a baking shop and some spring time liners with eggs on them from Target.

On Mybakingaddiction.com she used a cream cheese frosting. I wasn't too sure about it even though I bought all the ingredients for it. After trying the cupcakes it seemed to need more of an orange flavor to it. So instead of the cream cheese frosting i made a butter cream frosting with orange extract instead of vanilla. I think they turned out pretty. I had a few panic moments because I seem to have misplaced my giant star tip. I hope it shows up. I just used a smaller star tip and decorated it with a fruit slice candy.

Week Four Part Duex

Shortbread Buttons

So this is where this one started.... Bakeitpretty (Bakeitpretty.com) tweeted a link to these cookies a few weeks ago from Forty-six at Grace. (fourtysixthatgrace.blogspot.com/2010/01/tutorial-shortbread-buttons_8809.html)

They looked so cute that I wanted to try them out. There is a recipe on her blog but it is in grams and I tried to convert it to cups but I was having troubles with the exact measurements. So I found a similar recipe on Joyofbaking.com/shortbreads/shortbreadcookies.html

Today was the day that I attempted them. I liked making 3 different colored cookies then I decided with the scraps to make a tie died cookie with all three doughs. I can't remember if I've ever had a shortbread cookie besides the girl scout version. I'm sure they would be great with tea but by themselves they seem a bit dry. But they look cute so that's all that matters right?

Week Four

Irish Cream Cheesecakes

Well I haven't posted for over a week due to lots of work and making cupcakes for people for Valentines day. This week I have three days off from work soooo i decided to do a few things. This recipe I found on the Internet in 2004 and haven't made it since so I've been seeing a whole lotta bakeries and blogs talking about St. Pats day so remembered this recipe that I made for a class in college. Yes it does have Bailey's in it and it gives it a nice flavor...and I'm sure that the alcohol burns off in the baking process. I made some slight modifications by making them into cupcake sizes. The only problem I run into when making cheesecakes is that the centers always fall. I know I should leave them in the oven to cool blah blah blah but I get anxious and probably mess it up in that way. I would love help on this issue. =) I'm sure my work mates are going to like trying them.

Irish Cram Cheesecake

Crust

2 cups finely crushed vanilla wafers (I used Graham crackers)

5 tablespoons butter melted

Filling

3 (8oz) packages of cream cheese softened

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

4 large eggs at room temperature

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup Irish cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit

2. Combine the vanilla wafers & butter in a small mixing bowl

3. Press crumb mixture into the bottom & 1 1/2 inches up the sides of a 9 inch spring form pan.

4. Hold this pan in the freezer until ready to fill

5. In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth.

6. Add the sugar 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition.

7. Add the gelatin; mix well at low speed

8. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

9. Stir in the sour cream , Irish cream & vanilla

10. Spoon the mixture over the crust

11. Bake at 300 for one hour & 15 minutes

12. Do not open the oven door!

13. Turn off the oven, keep the oven door closed

14. Allow the cheesecake to remain in the oven for an additional one hour & 15 minutes.

15. Do not open the door during this time!

16. Remove the cheesecake from the oven and carefully remove the spring form pan

17. place on a decorative plate & serve at room temperature or chilled

Okay so that's the recipe... but I put the Gram crackers in cupcake liners then baked them for 5 mins at 325 degrees so it set then cooled them then poured the cheese filling on top then baked for 30 mins at 325. I didn't leave them in there because i had another batch to do and that's just a long time to leave things in the oven taunting you with yummy smells. haha. I wish I could tell you where I acquired the recipe from but it was back in 2004.

Week Three

Chocolate Raspberry Beret

It was time for chocolate cupcakes! Oh how I love chocolate! I can never seem to have enough of it at any given time. So what goes well with chocolate? I thought that raspberry is nice. This is a devils food recipe with a good amount of chocolate & sour cream instead of milk. Its not as dense of a cake that I thought it would be. And this was my first attempt with mini cupcakes. I will say that the batter goes a long way. I stopped myself at 48 mini cupcakes and decided to make some regular sized ones.

I am in love with the Meranguie Buttercream. It is such a lite buttery frosting that you can add some kind of fruit to flavor & tint the frosting. Pureeing raspberries is a fun adventure. If you never have done it you will realise that raspberries have a lot of seeds & they need to be seperated from the juice. Lets say it took me a good 20 mins just to seperate them using a sifter. The end product is so worth it because the frosting is not only sweet but has a twinge of the bitterness for the raspberries. The cupcakes came out nicely.

Week Two

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Meringue Butter cream aka Strawberry Fields Forever.
These are pretty delicious. A white cake with chunks of strawberries on the inside. Yum!

I added a twist to some of them by adding a chocolate ganache on top of the cakes hoping when people took a bite that it might taste like a chocolate covered strawberry.


Top them off with meringue butter cream that has a strawberry puree mixed in with it. I've never made a meringue where I had to mix egg whites and sugar over a simmering pot of water. Needless to say I had a nice arm work out while whisking for 10 minutes. I used a closed star tip to pipe out the frosting.

These were a hit at my mom's office. Someone suggested to me to make mini cupcakes when bringing them to the office so more people can try them. Thank you for that suggestion and its something new to try.

Week One

My first recipe attempt was a S'more cupcake which consists of a Graham cracker cake bottom. This was my first time ever using anything but enriched flour and i found it to be quite exciting. This is what they looked like when they were taken out of the oven.

The next part of it was having to make a chocolate ganache. I am familiar with this because I used it on top of the wedding cake I made for my brother's wedding. I really didn't mind getting chocolate on my hands. =)

To top it off with a marshmallow frosting. Yum! I've never used gelatin before and never tried to make candy. So i bought a candy thermometer and away i went. My first attempt ended up being a big ball of hard sugar. Success the second time around to make these cute marshmallow tops.




The fun thing is that if you bit into this and got each layer this cupcake tasted like a S'more minus the campfire.

Hi there

Welcome to my new blog! Over the past year I have been asked by family members to bake them cupcakes and cakes for special events. I provided four different types of cupcakes for my brother's wedding shower :chocolate, vanilla, red velvet & lemon. They went over pretty well so my brother and his future wife asked me to make some cupcakes for their wedding. I made two types of cupcakes for the 60 chocolate and 60 lemon and on top of that I made their wedding cake. It was a busy summer and I got pretty burned out of baking until recently. The past 3 weeks I've been baking 1 recipe per week and sharing them with willing friends & workmates. I post them on my twitter account but I thought this would be a better way to display my pictures and get to describe them in more detail than just 140 characters. =)