New Moon Night

New Moon Release Party

For those who are not aware of Twilight its about tween vampire who sparkle... I know there is more to it but that's what I take it as. =) I made sugar cookies and mini cupcakes for this years New Moon dvd release party for work. Sugar cookies were made in the shapes of Lions, Lambs, Apples, and Moons. The apples & moons were covered in red & yellow sprinkles. Mini cupcakes were pretty basic vanilla & chocolate chip cupcakes with colored buttercream frosting. I did put out a tent card and business cards hoping people would comment, no luck. Oh well better luck next time. All I do know is that there were no more cookies and or cupcakes left at the end of the night.

Week Six part deux

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

I've been feeling quite ambitious lately with attempting a few new recipes this week. So when you say to some people "oh i made some snickerdoodles" you either get the look of what the heck are those or OoooOo do those have snickers in them? Snickerdoodle cookies are basically a sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon and sugar. These cupcakes seem to be a vanilla cupcake with cinnamon and sugar. I find it amazing that they do taste extremely similar to the cookies.

The frosting was a seven minute frosting from the Martha Stewart cupcakes cookbook. Yeah it took longer than seven minutes to make, but it does have the consistency of a marshmallow on a cupcake minus the chewiness. Good news I got to use my candy thermometer again to heat up sugar to 230 degrees. Molten sugar is a scary thing! So anyway the closed star tip was used to pipe on the frosting sprinkled with cinnamon & sugar. Some googly eyes were placed for comic relief. My friend Connie helped with piping and eye placement. (CiaoBellaRosa.blogspot.com)

Week Six

Shipping Off to Boston

Chocolate Chip and Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

with Baileys Buttercream

It seems when it comes to baking and bakeries that everyone does holiday themed goodies. So I decided to join in this week and make come St. Patty's day cupcakes. I will just say that I am in LOVE with cake flour at the moment. It seems to make the cake lighter. With that thought I've been using the same chocolate cupcake recipe for the chocolate cupcakes but this time around I altered a few things like substituting some cake flour for the all purpose flour and I also added some mini Chocolate chips for an extra punch of chocolate.
Vanilla bean cupcakes instead of regular vanilla extract I used French Vanilla extract. It is quite strong and I'm not sure that I would use as much but it has an amazing aroma to it.
The Buttercream.... oh my i didn't really have a recipe for this so instead of adding milk to the buttercream I added Baileys. I like the combination of flavors with the chocolate, vanilla, and the baileys. Not too Shabby!