Just a little reminiscing...

Enter: Smore's Cupcake.

It's totally a cupcake with graham on the bottom, filled with chocolate batter.  Then it's hollowed out and filled with marshmallowy goodness in the center.  Topped with ganache and rolled in more graham.

This is where the danger begins.  Flash freeze said cupcakes.

Enter: Flaming Hot Oven Broiler.  Totally don't set the house on fire--just a little warning.

Place some gooey marshmallow on the tops of the frozen cupcakes and pop em in the broiler.  

Keep a close eye on those little devils and grab em out right before the mallow catches fire.  Yummy goodness.  Enjoi!

Thinking outside the Suga' Shaka'

Thinking outside the egg carton, outside the butter bell.

These are all things that could describe the recent baking shenanigans that occurred with my fabulous baking partner in crime, Kim.

It all started with an idea.  And then cupcake wrappers.

I'm tired of the world telling me that I can't do things.  Apparently, so is Kim.  Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean it has to be that way always, does it?  

Take our idea, for example.  Pineapple upside down cupcakes.  Only, clearly you wouldn't be able to turn the cupcake upside down after baking.   So a new term was needed...and coined.

BOTTOMS UP Pineapple cupcakes

Pineapple is a must.  Drain and Strain.

Kitchen Aid.  A friend to help.

Start by taking your yolks and firming them up a bit...you are going for a lemon yellow color here.

While those yolks are spinning in the pool, start up a pan of brown sugar and butter.  Melty goodness.  You will probably want to employ an extra set of arms here.  While you have the sugars out, throw some at those yolks.

Add flour, baking powder and a touch of salt to the yolky mixture. 

POP QUIZ/SURVEY:

When the recipe calls for you to mix the dry ingredients to the wet, do you actually mix the dry in a separate bowl first, or just add it all in as it comes?  

Does it make me a bad baker to admit that I sometimes don't premix, and I'll just add in the dry together. Does it really make a difference for them to mix together first?

Kim thinks it proves we have time management skills.  

You be the judge.  Comment below.

Anyhow, back to the bowl.  While your drys and wets are mixing, you need to form some stiff peaks with the egg whites you didn't use earlier.  This is where you might have read ahead and noticed that you needed to preform this step, and if you were a smarty-pants, you might have done this very first and then set the whites apart.  

Or you could have been super slacker this morning like me, and decided on purpose not to stiffen the whites first, and save that step for your afternoon arm workout.  Either way, you are going for stiff peaks here!  Keep mixing!

Fold the two together.  Gently.  Folding is a delicate process, incase you didn't learn that from your childhood laundry lessons.

Scoop into waiting cupcake liners and pop into a hot box, aka. Oven.

Meanwhile, your extra set of hands should be stirring your butter and brown sugar.  Add pineapple and cook away.  You are aiming for a thick mixture, careful not to turn your back on the process, so it doesn't burn!  Add pecans just as it starts to thicken.

Once your mixture is able to be separated without the liquid running, you can stick a fork in it.

Done.

So instead of turning the cake upside down, you cook the bottom's separately and add them to the top.  

Scrumptious.

Chicken Pot Pie with Cream Cheese and Chive Biscuits

So I found this recipe on my favorite blog a few years back, and finally decided I'd make it.

I'll admit upon first look, it was a little daunting, as I've never made my own biscuits, or cream sauce for that matter.  But, Joy makes it all seem so do-able!  So, in an act of bravery I attempted the recipe.  Only, I omitted the peas, because who I made it for doesn't like peas.  Not sure I blame him, peas are kinda disgusting.  Here's my proof:

I recommend that you cook this longer than the 23 minutes suggested in the recipe...because my biscuits didn't quite make it to done.  But it was still super yummy!

Buttermilk pie.

It's delicious I hear.  I wouldn't know, because I never have actually eaten it.  But I'm trusting people I know that have dignified classy taste buds.

Anyhow...I was planning a little visit to my good friends at camp, and to encourage them a little, I thought I would bring them a little treat.  I happen to know that my friend Jilly likes buttermilk pie.  Heck--I think she  just likes food in general!

So I set out to make a buttermilk pie.  After perusing my favorite site, I found a recipe for Buttermilk Pie with Blackberry Sauce with I thought would do the trick.

Definitely read the recipe and follow it...I just thought I'd throw visual steps in the process at you.  And provide some tips from the non-pro baker!

When cutting your butter, it's best to make sure its really cold.  This way it doesn't incorporate into the flour mixture fully--makes for a better crust, flaky.  Goodness.

Mix up all the dry crust ingredients first.  When it comes to crust making...order is important!

Marriage.  It's a good thing.

Mix (or mex...if you are some people I know)...until it looks like the beach in a bowl.  I'd kill for a sandcastle right about now.  :)

Some people like to be all classy and measure out the dough, then roll it out and place it in the pie dish.  Me...I went with the press and go method.  Whatever crusts your pie, no matter.

Eggs.  Yumm...I know I've been promising info on eggs, it'll happen!  Patience, grasshopper!

Sugar mixture.  Mexture.  :)

Add sugar to eggs.  Marry.

Slowly add in buttermilk.  Cutardy goodness.

Pour into shell.  Bake...sing it with me now:  "It's getting hot in here, lets bake up nice and firm!  I am getting so hot, I wanna take my crust off!"

And melt the jam down.  Add the liquor.  I would have had a pic of this process, but seeing as how I was trying to prevent a 5 alarm fire at the same time, it didn't happen.  Tip--REMOVE jam from heat, then add alcohol.  Turns out, Alcohol is HIGHLY flammable.  who knew?

And the pie.  It looked much more appetizing before I drove for an hour with it bouncing around the front seat of my car.  But I forgot to snap that pic as well.  Hence...I'm the non-pro baker. :)

Check out Joy's pie.....it looks much yummier...but I'm sure they tasted the same.

So much backlog...so Little time.

So I have found that I have so many pics of baking projects that I have yet to blog about.  I promise to try and find my notes from these projects and post pictures soon.

For now, here are two pictures from an all out bake-a-thon weekend I had over winter break.  Yes, I do realize that it is April and I made these cakes the weekend of Jan. 1st.  Get over it.  I'm a little less timely than most! :)

First up, a spontaneous cake for a good friend who had a baby shower!  I wanted to make a ducky cake for her cute little boy who is due next month!  So, I decided to make it easy on myself, I would purchase the 3-D duck shaped pan and just cover it with icing stars.

For this cake, I made a simple round cake, covered it with blue frosting (to represent water, I waved the top) and then stacked the duck on top.  Then I went to town making stars all over the duck until it was covered.  I recommend investing in a wrist guard, or you may wind up with carpal tunnel syndrome!  I added white icing dots at the bottom to represent soap and to make them shinny, I took airbrush paint in a pearl color and a regular paintbrush and went to town.  Not too hard! 

Now, what was hard was these little devils:

Miniature Wedding Cakes made for a dear friends Bridal Shower held just a day or two after the Baby Shower--yes I know I am crazy!

I should mention that I ordered mini 2-tier cake pans to bake these things in that I thought would make this so much easier!  And maybe it did, who am I to judge?  I will say that icing these cakes was SOOOOOOOO hard.  :(  I truly almost gave up, if the wedding shower hadn't been for a dear friend who I love, I might have gone into hiding and quit.  But, with help from my mom, I managed to semi-smoothly ice these cakes, added ribbon and icing roses and a light dusting of edible glitter to make it sparkle.  (And--hopefully to distract from the crummy icing!)

If we are lucky, and I get bored this week, there may be more late posts added!  Stay tuned...

My first Wedding Cake

So, you want to know how this happened?  Yeah, me too. 

Ok, ok.  I'll fill you in on the parts I remember.  Luckily I took pictures of most of it to help me remember to just say NO! the next time someone asks me to make an all buttercream cake for a wedding again.  j.k.  Kind of.  If it pays enough, I'll do it. :)

Up first: mixing the batter:

I used this chocolate cake recipe.  

It was pretty good, and it held up well with just a few crumbs.  Another plus is that it baked up pretty flat and even, Good news for any baker!  And the wedding guests seemed to like it. :)

After the mixing came the pouring and baking:

We used three sizes for the cake: these two are 10' and 6'.  You should use a heating core (the silver thing in the middle) for any cake 10' or larger.  It will bake more evenly and be friendly. :)

This is the bottom layer, at 14'.  Not to shabby. 

P.S.  I used Wilton's Cake Release and the cakes came out fabulously with no sticking!

A quick long trip into the oven and the cakes were done.

You know it's done when your toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs attached.

This is how I looked/felt after 3 hours of baking, with more to come.  Literally we mixed, baked and cleaned from 5:30pm-1am.  Not fun!  What was fun was wearing my new chef's coat and apron!

For the night, to aid in icing, we wrapped all layers with Saran Wrap and had them chill out.  This helped with the stacking/icing crumb issue I was anticipating.

Making the icing was the easy part.  I used this icing.

I started with the middle 10' layer, but followed the same steps for all of them.  First, I unwrapped the layers and decided which would be the bottom.  Then I put some buttercream on top.

And stacked the next layer on top, bottom side up.  I find that usually the bottom side is the easiest to ice, but any side up is generally ok.

At this point, I measured all layers to be between 4 and 5 inches tall.

And I might have been a little obsessive about making sure they were all level.  I used the extra cake pieces I shaved off the tops to splint up layers that were not level.

Start by icing the sides with the icing tip to make sure your crumbs don't show.  Looking back, I probably would have done two coats of icing just to make sure it was completely crumb free, but one coat held up just fine.  :)  Then we used the icing tip to ice the top and were very meticulous in making sure the icing was as smooth as we could make it. 

Now, I would generally use a crusting buttercream so that I could use the famous paper towel "iron" method to ensure proper smoothness, but this buttercream did not crust.  It says it was supposed to, so I was super bummed.  I guess this is why you are supposed to test out the recipes before hand.  Oh well.

After all of the layers were iced, we transported them to the church and assembled.

Sorry there are no pics of the process, It took all I had to make sure that I didn't mess up the cake at this point.  We did have one stacking error and the middle tier fell mid-stack and we had to fix the icing on the bottom tier, but all in all the stacking was fairly easy.  (again, we used the bubble tea straws to aid)

Simple Ribbon was placed around the bottom of each tier to hide the board and flowers were arranged and placed inside.  (using cake picks, of course).

birds eye view

And, viola.  Done.