Baby Shower Cupcakes…

I got home from the Y this morning at about 6:20 and realized shortly after that that I was supposed to make cupcakes for a baby shower at Josh’s work today.  Sure I had cupcakes, but at 6:20 this morning they were still in the form of butter, flour, eggs and powdered sugar.  All in their original form.

So I decided that I could get myself ready for work and bake a couple dozen cupcakes so Josh wouldn’t look like he dropped the ball.  Lucky for me it doesn’t take that long to throw together a batch of vanilla cupcakes, and once they go in the oven I had 22 minutes to hop in the shower and get myself dressed.  While the cupcakes cooled off I made the orange butter cream and dried my hair and did my makeup.

All that was left was to frost them and box them up and head to work.  Josh came by my office to pick them up and he said everyone enjoyed them.  It’s always a good day when only one cupcake was left.

He even snapped a picture for me, since I forgot to.

 I’m not gonna lie to you, this really is a horrible picture.  Can you tell that these cupcakes tasted like a dreamcicle?  Yum.

Soccer Sugar Cookies…

Technorati Tags: sugar cookies,soccer,Ateco

I haven’t baked any sugar cookies since I baked dozens of holiday sugar cookies for a couple of our sales reps to give to their customers before Christmas.  I had been suffering a little burnout.

I also had some technical difficulties with my royal icing with the Christmas cookies.  I had run out of my Williams Sonoma meringue powder and it appears to be unavailable now.  In a pinch I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up the Wilton version.

Worst baking purchase ever.  I had all kinds of trouble with this.  While the icing still tasted good on the cookies, getting it on the cookies was a nightmare.  I had trouble with it piping, and even when I thinned it out for flooding the consistency was just strange.

I immediately ordered my second favorite brand Ateco from Amazon.com.

So much better!

I had a friend ask me about soccer sugar cookies.  I did a little research for pictures of soccer designs and thought “No problem!”.  After I committed to making two dozen I did a little more research and discovered that all the feedback on making soccer sugar cookies was negative. 

While they were a tad tedious, I was very happy that I decided to purchase some non-toxic pens to draw the pentagon on the cookies to begin the pattern.  If I hadn’t done this I would have been in big trouble.

Pentagons are not easy.

The birthday girl is number eight on her soccer team.  I just love what the black icing does to kids when they eat it.  Overall I think they turned out very cute.  It was good to make sugar cookies again.

Up this week?  Cupcakes for a wedding shower on Friday and a baby shower on Saturday.

My New Toy…

It’s funny how excited a new cookbook can make me.  I happened to run across some information about a new Cupcake cookbook that one of my favorite bakers contributed to.

It was a bonus when I ordered this from Amazon and I had a free trial subscription for Amazon Prime because of the girls’ new Kindles they got for Christmas.  Free 2-day shipping was icing on the (cup)cake.

I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes and tips that are contained in this big awesome book.

My New Favorite Cupcake Flavor…

I found some inspiration on a blog that I follow.  I thought I’d do a little experimenting with my regular chocolate cupcake and came up with my own chocolate peppermint chunk cupcake with peppermint buttercream.  What I came up with is my new favorite holiday cupcake.

Chocolate and peppermint, what a fabulous combination.

Camy and Carson’s 11th Birthday

I did a little experimental baking for the girls’ birthday this year.  We had dinner at my parents’ house and I made an Amaretto chocolate chip cake with a caramel filling and a rolled buttercream fondant icing.

I think that in all it turned out pretty good.  I am so used to making cupcakes and a cake seemed like a lot more work.  It was pretty sweet, although I think that is the point, and the caramel filling was a lot harder to keep inside the cake than I had planned, but it was pretty good.

 

 

 

For their slumber party there was a lot of baking going on.  First we had iced sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

Then I did a little simpler cake, the chocolate chip cake but just buttercream icing for the filling.  My second attempt at the buttercream rolled fondant was a little better, and I am looking forward to some more practice.

The slumber party guests seemed to enjoy all the baked goods.

Frosting for the Cause…

On June 10th I guest posted on the Frosting for the Cause website.  I cannot say enough about how wonderful I think this project is.  It is a little late coming, but you can see my guest post here.
Go by and check out the wonderful baking that has been going on all year and the wonderful difference the women of this site have been making.

Summer Baking…

It has been pretty slow on the baking front around here.  I did whip up some cinnamon rolls while we were at the beach earlier this month for the family, but other than the usual chocolate chip cookies it’s been too hot to be in the kitchen.  I do have some cinnamon bread rising in the kitchen as I type, and I am looking forward to that.
In June, I made some cupcakes for the sweetest birthday boy.  My friend Angie’s son, Cooper, celebrated his 5th birthday and I got to make the cupcakes.  Kids and cupcakes just go together.  Chocolate with chocolate butter cream, and vanilla with vanilla butter cream.

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Also in June I got to make cupcakes for a birthday girl.  More friends from high school, Ben and Suzan’s daughter, Hannah, celebrated her 6th birthday.  The birthday girl wanted chocolate chip with chocolate butter cream, and confetti cupcakes with green butter cream.