A Little More Baking...

I have been on quite the baking kick again. It's kinda nice. I made some of my triple chocolate chip cookies to take to Kendra's birthday party Friday night. These are packed with semi-sweet, dark chocolate and milk chocolate M&Ms. I say if one kind of chocolate is good, three is even better.

I baked up these cupcakes Sunday, but I will tell you more about them later. Just know that they were yummy.

I saw the recipe for Peanut Butter-Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips on the Brown Eyed Baker's blog a while ago. I never managed to have ay overly ripe bananas to use in the recipe, but tody I finally did. So I whipped up the batter.

I poured the batter in a lined loaf pan.

And I baked it up until it was golden brown and beautiful.

I have not had a chance to taste it yet, but based on the smells coming out of my kitchen, I think this recipe is going to have to be repeated.

 

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Birthday Cookies...

One of my favorite kiddos celebrated a birthday on Saturday.

I was so excited to make cookies for her to take to her party at school on Friday. What would be better for a four year old's birthday than sparkly sugar cookies shaped like the letter 4?

I started with a batch of my go to sugar cookie dough.

I baked them up on Tuesday night and then got up early on Wednesday morning to decorate them. The beauty of frosted sugar cookies is they can be made a couple days ahead of time. I prefer to give them atleast one day to set up, so there's no worries about messing up the decorations.

If you are going to decorate sugar cookies, this is the meringue powder you should use. I buy it at William's Sonoma, and it makes me very sad when they run out. Don't waste your money on the brand from Hobby Lobby, it doesn't taste as good, and the texture is not always the best.

Start with the outline.

Then flood with thinned out frosting, and then add the rainbow sprinkles.

I love making sugar cookies, it's even better making them for someone that is going to be so excited to get them. I am loving getting back into baking again.

 

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Baby Shower Cupcakes...

I love when I have the opportunity to bake for my friends. My friend Patti was hosting a baby shower and I volunteered to make some mini cupcakes for her.

I woke up early on Friday morning and decided to get to baking. White cupcakes and red velvet cupcakes were on the menu.

I don't know what it is about mini cupcakes, but I just love them. They are so stinking cute. I made half batches of both flavors and it was enough to make three dozen of each.

Saturday, after my run, I made vanilla buttercream frosting for the white cupcakes. They got pink sprinkles on top, because the baby is a girl.

What else can you put on red velvet cupcakes but cream cheese frosting. I just couldn't put pink sprinkles on these very red minis, so they went sprinkle-less.

It feels good to be baking again. I have some more baking to do this week, I'll leave that for later.

 

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More Sugar Cookies...

After baking some Hostess Cupcake cookies on Friday there has been some serious cookie eating going on in the Craig house. It's a good thing I gave almost half of them to my favorite six-year-old gymnast because that meant that no one here ate those cookies. Even so we have gone through quite a few cookies in the last four days.

I decided to whip up a batch of my favorite sugar cookies this afternoon.

I wasn't feeling especially creatie, so I decided to just make circles.

I made the chocolate frosting that I used on the Hostess Cupcake cookies. I mae a little smaler batch.

Just under 2 cups of powdered sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup, and about 5 tablespoons of almond milk, mixed together. I used my stand mixer this time, mixing this by hand is not easy. I love how the frosting sets on the cookies. I tried to put a few sprinkles on them, but I didn't get them on the cookies before it hardened.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but they are very good. Not too chocolatey that they wouldn't go great with a nice glass of dark chocolate almond milk.

You should come by and try one.

 

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The Oven Still Works...

It is no big secret that I have lost my baking mojo this year. Today I actually made steps to get it back. Since I am not running or doing yoga for a few more days, I tried to sleep in this morning. It is harder for me to sleep in than it is for me to run ten miles.

I got up and decided to try out a new recipe that I saw on one of my favorite baking blogs a few weeks ago. Hostess Cupcake Cookies! How awesome does that sound?

You can get the recipe here. The only change I made to the recipe was I used almond milk instead of regular milk in the glaze, and I used royal icing for the squiggles. I also didn't refrigerate the dough before I rolled it out. Mostly because I was being lazy; I did put the cut dough in the freezer prior to putting them in the oven. In my opinion it's easier to roll out dough that isn't really cold.

You might be wondering how they taste. I think they are fabulous.

The best part of baking, for me, is giving them to people I care about. I know a little gymnast that I plan to box some of these chocolaty cookies up for tomorrow.

I can't wait to see what I mix up next.

 

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Chocolate Sugar Cookies…

I saw a recipe for chocolate sugar cookies a while back and decided to give them a try yesterday.  I needed to practice designs for some wedding shower party favors I will be making next week so I thought I’d give this recipe a try.

I think I’m going to mix the chocolate and regular sugar cookies, so this cookie will have a regular sugar cookie heart on it next time.

The cookie isn’t overly sweet so the frosting goes perfectly with it. I always love sprinkles.

This design isn’t what it will look like in the end, but I love how the B turned out this way.

My kiddos love the cookies and my other taste testers have had all positive reviews so far.  I love trying out a new recipe and having it turn out well the first time.  I will have more pictures of the finished packaged product once Kelsey puts that together for me.  It is nice to only worry about the baking and not having to worry about the other details.

Beer Sprocket 2012…

I was asked again this year to have a table for Beer Sprocket.  Last year I made 400 mini cupcakes, this year I only had to make 300.  I’m not sure the exact number, but it was a little over 300.

So on Friday I got to work…

Jen loaned me her mixer this year.  I’ve actually had it for over a month since they moved the date of the event due to possible bad weather in April.

This is what 300+ mini cupcakes looks like when they are all boxed up and ready to go.  I didn’t get a chance to stop by the bakery supply store beforehand and so I had all different sized boxes to use to pack them up in.  Thankfully I had enough room and all of the cupcakes made it out to Choctaw unharmed.

My little table full of goodies.  I was smack in between my brother-in-law’s beer table and the beer table of another distributor.  What fun.

Last year I did four different flavors, this year I went with three.  Shawn asked me to try out some beer flavored cupcakes so I went with:

Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting

Raspberry chocolate chip with chocolate buttercream

Cherry with vanilla buttercream.

The Raspberry and Cherry flavors were from a couple of Fruit Ales that Shawn gave me.  I think they turned out pretty well.

Before I knew it all of the cupcakes were gone and I got to call it a night.

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Up next?

I’ve got two dozen red velvet cupcakes for a woman I meet at Beer Sprocket, and some red velvet whoopie pies for my friend Patti.  It’s going to be a good weekend.