Fall is the season for baking...

Fall baking usually starts with Halloween.  This year I didn't bake any Halloween cupcakes, but I did make some apple strudel cheesecake bars.  Apples are big during the fall season, usually in apple pies.  I happened to be in the cake store buying more boxes for cakes and saw a sign that they were selling caramel apple cheesecake. It sounded soo good, so I wanted to make it. Only, instead of caramel apple cheesecake, I ended up making a strudel cheesecake recipe that I found online.  I think it turned out okay.  I do want to make the caramel apple cheesecake though. 

I was too lazy to take it out of the pan, cut it up and take pics of it

I was hoping to make sugar cookies in the shape of star wars characters, yoda, darth vader... I bought the cookie cutters from William Sonoma, but something went wrong when I baked it.  It spread out losing its shape.  I was reading something about how using butter doesn't really work since in the heat the butter melts and so you'll get cookies that spread, but the recipe called for butter.  =\  It could be that for the flavoring I used oils instead of real fruits.  I made a key lime sugar cookie, a lemon cookie, a regular sugar cookie and a chocolate sugar cookie.  The chocolate one didn't make it though, it was too hard that I couldn't roll it out after keeping it in the fridge overnight.  The key lime tasted really good, and the lemon, well, I needed more lemon flavor.  The sugar cookie I didn't bake.  FAIL!  

The next holiday is Thanksgiving.  I don't know that I want to make anything for the in-laws.  No one seems to want to eat desserts, so I think I will pass.  I might make something for my family's thanksgiving... we'll see. I need to do some recipe searching.  I was watching Giada make turtle candies, which look easy.  Maybe I will make a turtle cupcake or something.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching cupcake wars and thought what inventive cupcake would I make. I'm sure this is out there somewhere, but I came up with a Sundae Cupcake.  I wanted it to taste like a banana split sundae.  So I thought of the different components, banana, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, whip cream and a cherry.  I don't remember the last time I had a sundae, so I wasn't too sure what goes in it.  Anyway, I made a banana cupcake, put a vanilla pudding in the middle, made whip cream, drizzled chocolate sauce and I tried to drizzle strawberry sauce but it wasn't really saucy, and added a maraschino cherry on top.  I heard it was pretty good, but I don't know.  The next time I wanted to add nuts, but got lazy and just basically made a chunky monkey type cupcake - banana cupcake with walnuts, vanilla pudding, whip cream and chocolate drizzle.

 

Orange Cranberry Cupcakes w/ Cream Cheese Icing

I made these cupcakes for my co-worker who's leaving.  I was sure that he'd choose some chocolate cupcakes, but he was debating between orange cranberry muffins, orange cranberry cupcakes with cream cheese icing or strawberry cupcakes.  I personally like the strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream icing, but that actually takes awhile.  So I'm kinda glad he chose these cupcakes.  

I've made this cupcake before - the funny thing is I don't know where the recipe is.  So I found a recipe in my notebook for cranberry cupcakes and orange cranberry muffins.  I decided that I'd make the muffins but smaller - so they're "cupcakes". Sucks, I can't remember what I did before.  I really need to write on the recipes if I substitute or whatever. This time I decided to try my decorating skills again. I had bought some tips for the piping bag.  I went nuts.  I had bought a 100 pack of tips, and then 2 huge tips from Cakes Plus.  I love the huge tips.  It's less time having to squeeze the piping bag. I am not good at squeezing the right amount. I still have trouble piping (writing).

It's been awhile since I've baked. I hope they came out well.

I don't know if you can see it, but I think the tip I used is a huge flower tip and I topped it with orange zest and a cranberry in the middle.


So the other day I went to Montgomery Mall and had a yocake - it's a yogurt cupcake combo and it was pretty good.  I had a pecan hazelnut cupcake with cream cheese icing, with acai berry frozen yogurt topped with granola.  Minus the granola, it was pretty good.  I think it would've been better with fruit or graham crackers.  Now I just need to learn how to make frozen yogurt...

Chocolate with Banana, should've added nuts

When I got pregnant I was too tired to bake during the first trimester.  I did nothing but sleep.  I did some baking during the second trimester, but hubby got lazy and didn't take pictures of them.  Since giving birth I don't have much time to bake when hubby's not home to watch the baby for a good 3-4 hours straight (gives me time to prep, bake, cleanup).  I always want to bake but haven't, until now.  I was going to bake for hubby #2's bday, but he didn't show up to work that week, so he missed out.  I ended up baking for my bro's friend.  I didn't know what to make for her, but I was told she loves chocolate.  Who doesn't.  Then again she also likes my mango tart that I attempted, but that would be too much since I'd have to go out and buy mangoes and puree them, etc.  I had all the stuff for a chocolate cake in the house so I just went with that.  I ended up making a chocolate cake with banana butter cream icing. Maybe I should've added some nuts...

I made a small cake b/c I didn't anticipate a big crowd; so I had leftover batter.  I just made cupcakes for her - I should've made a big cake. My decision making is all off...

Now my decorating sucks, but I tried.  At first I didn't decorate the cake b/c I ran out of time making the cake.  I usually do all my baking at night, so it was getting late and I just said forget it.  I intended to decorate the next morning, but I ran out of time (dr appt).  I thought the cake would've been picked up before I got home, but not the case.  I had some extra time so I tried it - I can't write in cursive, so block letters it is.  I then thought it looked plain, so I added some dots to the side.  The original thought was a group of three dots, but it ended up being like 3 rows of dots "evenly" spaced.  The top of the cake still looked like it needed something, so since I bought the 100 tip decorating set, I decided to use a tip and make flowers or whatever.  Like I said, I'm not a good decorator, but it's good training.

The other suckie thing is, I ran out of cake boxes and my ink pad dried out  - so it was more homemade than professional looking. I want to make more cakes, but no one is asking for any.  The next time I look forward to baking is for my baby's baptism. I intended the giveaways for my baby shower to be cupcakes, so maybe at the baptism that's what my giveaways will be....

Gingerbread House Challenge 2009

this is our version of the Victorian Farmhouse

My brother had a contest at work to make a gingerbread house. He had asked me for help and I of course said yes. The criteria was that it had to be made from edible parts, it could be made from a kit but not a pre-made house, or you can make it yourself. So we decided to make it ourselves. We don't do things out of a box anymore (unless we are short on time and HAVE to get something together) - everything's made from scratch. So we started one weekend prior to the weekend it was due. Buying all the ingredients - I made the gingerbread dough, while he cut out the template.

Then later in the week to the nights prior to judging, it was crunch time to put everything together. Making the shingles from mint chocolate (melted then cooled), the snow was white fondant (my first time playing with fondant - I was not good at it), the windows were not coming out well - making them out of sugar, and to bind it we used chocolate. We got that trick from watching Food Network's Gingerbread Challenge. It's a good tip. Martha Stewart's tip is to use melted sugar but I don't know how long that would take to cool; where the chocolate, you can cool it faster.

taken from the cover of the book we got - the actual Victorian Farmhouse plan

We didn't get everything we wanted to in our plan - a snowman, trees made of rice krispies, or even snow on the ground, but it was a good effort. Next year, we might go smaller with the size. I want to make this gingerbread house that's made with cake.. we'll see.

It's all about the icing/frosting

I seriously need to practice more on my cake decorating, and attend some cake decorating classes (well I can watch the Wilton online videos and practice at home). I've been watching Ace of Cakes, and I soo wish I could decorate like them. Granted, they usually use fondant and just pipe stuff, but still.. I wish I could pipe. I can't even fill the piping bag correctly and use those tips (that goes on the piping bags). I did some research about icing, and there are different types for different things. So I need to learn how to make a thin (yet dense) icing so that I can practice piping "happy birthday" and any other words. I need to learn the art of applying the correct amount of pressure (squeezing) and writing at the same time. There's angles we're supposed to hold our hand/tip at, and too much squeezing can be bad...

I am good at baking the cakes, but I have no creative/artsy talent - this is why if I ever really opened up a bakery, I would need to hire people who can decorate the cakes. I've tried to use the store bought icings to practice my writing - I should've taken a picture of it before I threw it away, but I threw it away for a reason - it sucked. I have bought fondant icing, which Sam has been using to write on the cakes. Sam usually does my piping, but occasionally I see his words start out a nice size and then the letters start to become smaller towards the end. The downfall is that the tube is difficult to squeeze and sometimes you get fondant buildup and that messes up your letters. This is why I need to figure out how to use the piping bag.

I did google and find some tips on how to ice and smooth out cakes (well if you use buttercream icing). I think my best work is Sam's bday cake... it looks smooth and the writing isn't bad. Yes, that is a cookie monster blue. I bought color paste for the icing. I cheat tho - I use store bought white icing as a base to mix colors and to pipe since I have fallen lazy and don't want to try to make the right type of icing. One day, I will learn. Everything has to be made from scratch! (syke)

Yes, I piped these cakes; all the previous ones, Sam did.

Death by Chocolate

As most of you know, I've been allergic to chocolate, yet I still like to eat it occasionally. I do shy away from chocolate when it comes to chocolate cakes, though they look tempting. People ask me, what is it that I am allergic to? The cocao? the caffeine? I think it's more the cacao than the caffeine because I drink soda and used to drink coffee like no other. I first realized I was allergic to chocolate when I was a kid - going through the lunch line and hearing "you're not cool unless you drink chocolate milk". So I did, and every day I did, I went home with a terrible headache. One day, there wasn't any chocolate milk in the cafeteria, so I had to drink plain white milk - and no headache. So I stuck with white milk and realized I don't do well with chocolate, who cared what the other kids thought. Dark chocolate hits me real hard, the migraine comes fast. Milk chocolate, I can take little bites of because it's diluted or whatever. So if you offer me a snickers bar, I can eat the fun size and be alright. So - it's not that I don't like it, I'm just not supposd to eat it.

Now, that doesn't mean I rule out baking with chocolate. If someone requests a chocolate cake, I will make it. The first chocolate cake I've made was a chocolate cake, with chocolate/strawberry mousse and a chocolate ganache. It was for my friend Mandi, before she left for Europe. The next few chocolate cakes I made wasn't bad, but there was one cake, I think it was the red velvet cake (b/c of the dutch cocoa - or was it the german chocolate cake??) I inhaled the cocoa dust and the next day had a migraine. Yeah, I know.. what?!? I need to invest in gloves and a mask when dealing with chocolate.

I'm sure my chocolate cake days are not over, since everyone but me can eat chocolate. My toughest challenge was a half and half cake. My aim was to make them side by side (vanilla or almond cake on one side and chocolate cake on the other). Sam suggested I have them put in the same pan, meet in the middle and swirl the middle to be a marble cake. It's an interesting idea, so I tried it. I think it worked out, though I had to quickly make another batch of the almond cake to match the chocolate cake. So far, no complaints.

My only complaint, most of my cakes have icing or frosting - no one can see the inside. I need remind Sam to take pics of when they cut the cakes at his work. I need to see how the inside looks.

Strawberries, Bananas and caramel

First strawberry short cake I made

I'm having a tough time figuring out what I want to post and how I want to post it.

The other day I made caramel cupcakes with banana buttercream icing. The cupcake was a bit dense, maybe because of the caramel. Sam said it was on his top 5 list of the things I've made. Too bad there's no actual banana in the banana buttercream icing. The actual fruit or syrups aren't working too well with me when I put it all together, so I opted to buy flavoring from my local cake store. Expensive, yes; worth it - well so far yes. The other day I made a hazelnut buttercream icing and several ppl didn't like it. I, myself did not like the way it looked and I used a hazelnut syrup that you get for like coffees or something. I think that didn't work well. Though, about two people said it was "buttery", which I'm not entirely sure what that means, but okay. I do think the combination I used was a bit too sweet - almond cupcake with hazelnut buttercream icing. I had it for my wedding and it was good, but I am no pastry chef.

I don't have a picture of the caramel cupcakes, because well they all look like any other cupcake. hmm what I should probably do is add a little yellow food coloring to the buttercream to look different. I would add a piece of banana but it will turn brown when exposed to air. hmmm

What is it about strawberries? In my cake gallery I have a lot of strawberry desserts, particularly strawberry short cakes. it's difficult trying to find different ways to make a strawberry short cake. Luckily I found 3 different ones. They came out pretty well... I think as long as you have some type of cream filling, and some whipped cream, you're good to go. Before I used to go out and buy whipped cream (Cool whip) but now, I just make my own. I'm debating if I should start using pre-made stuff, it'll save me time and I would be less fatigued, but it's just not the same. Btw, the strawberry flower is not my doing. Sam has talent... so I put him to work. =)