Happy Birthday, Jill!

This week, I had the pleasure of making a birthday cake for Gwen's sister, Jill.  She gave me complete creative reign over the cake; all I knew what that she would like a white cake and that she liked the sunflowers I made on cupcakes earlier.  I've struggled to find a white cake recipe that I really enjoy, but I found a Vanilla Buttermilk Cake that is divine and definitely a go-to for white cakes!  

I also discovered swiss buttercream frosting, and let me tell you, THIS is the frosting for which I have been searching for years! (Sounds over-dramatic, but seriously, it has been years).  I had this delicious frosting on my mom's friend's son's wedding cake years ago and I haven't been able to find it since!  Someone suggested buttercream, but the neither the Wilton buttercream recipe nor the store-bought cake buttercreams even come CLOSE to the taste I remembered.  Well, I found it, and swiss buttercream is amazing!

So, here it is!  Jill's birthday cake!

'Tis the season!

...for baking blunders to abound!  After spending a wonderful Thanksgiving at home, I returned to Burlington on Sunday evening with the fervor of a holiday baker buzzing through me.  My executive director's birthday was the following day, and my original plan to make a cake fell apart as my hours dwindled.  No problem, cupcakes would suffice.  Vanilla buttermilk cupcakes with an eggnog filling and some sort of complimentary frosting.  Perfect. I expected them to look a little like this:

Well, after discovering that I did not havethe correct ingredients, I decided against the delicious cupcakes and opted for cookies instead.  My office would understand...it is the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, afterall!  So, still on my eggnog kick (inspired by Dad who bought some over the weekend, thanks Daddy), I went with eggnog thumbprint cookies.  Something like this, or so I hoped:

I found a recipe and went for it.  Let the blunders begin...or continue, really.  First, all my butter was frozen, like usual.  So I took out the stick and a half I needed for the cookie dough and defrosted it.  Kind of.  After repeatedly hitting the defrost button, I apparently hit it one too many times and out came completely melted butter.  Oh well, the dough had to be refrigerated anyway, so I thought it shouldn't mess up the cookies too much. (Famous last words).  I mixed up the batter, it tasted delicious, and I popped it in the fridge.  I then needed to defrost the other half stick of butter used for the filling, so I put it on a plate and popped it in the gas oven as that is many degrees warmer than my apartment.  

After a while, I grew impatient waiting for the dough to be "easy to handle" and figured that I'd go ahead and take it out and form the cookies.  That's when I turned the oven on to preheat and merrily went about my way scooping out what I later realized was completely uneasy to handle cookie dough.  With the cookies finally on their sheets, I opened the oven door only to find (and anyone who is paying attention has probably guessed at this point), half a stick of melted butter all over the plate and its wrapper, bubbling away.  Usk.  I moved that out of the oven, slid the cookies in, and decided to attempt making the filling while the cookies baked.  10 minutes later, I opened my oven to reveal the flattest, thinnest, all cooked-together cookies that I've made in a while.  Voila:

So, I frosted them instead of filled them and sprinkled a little nutmeg on.  Turns out, they tasted great, just absolutely nothing like I expected!  They acted naughty, but turned out nice!

Homemade Oreo Cookies!

Ever since that fateful 2008 Superbowl and the signing of the Manning brothers' contract with Nabisco, this faithful Patriots fan has made it her mission to boycott Oreo's.  But what's a girl to do without "Milk's Favorite Cookie"?  Simple: make it herself.


Thanks to SmittenKitchen for providing me with the ammunition to successfully continue my boycott against Oreo's and forge a path towards homemade simply delicious crisp chocolate cookies and smooth cream filling.


These cookies are so light (in weight, not so much in ingredients) and taste almost exactly the same as the "real thing".  Taste-testers stated these were, in fact, better than the real thing.  Probably because Nabisco doesn't use Ghirardelli chocolate in theirs.

Mmmm, cream-filled goodness.

And voila!  Simple, easy-to make, home-made Oreos.  I even made a couple DoubleStuf! :)

A Grace-ful Birthday

Joe's parents are in town this weekend, and it's his mom's birthday tomorrow!  A woman after my own heart, she's a chocolate fiend, and more importantly, she's a dark chocolate fiend!  So I tried my hand at a La Bete Noir Flourless Chocolate Cake.  Turns out it is more of a chocolate torte, and dense!  My goodness is it dense--think 18 oz. of bittersweet chocolate in the cake itself plus another 8 oz. (give or take) in the ganache on top!  But oh, I can't wait to try it!

I was also pretty excited about how these leaves turned out!  Happy October birthday!

Halloween Season is Here!

There are many things I love about fall, and candy corn definitely tops that list.  Since I have no hope of recreating those delicious little tri-colored triangles, I tried them in shortbread form.  Thanks to my aunt for sending this idea to me, and to my Mom for making them with me!!


First, I dyed the dough and rolled it out in logs, stacking the colors into a semi-triangle shape.

Then, I wrapped it in cellophane and shaped the triangle.  I put it in the fridge overnight. Wicked easy to slice, and look how cute they are already!

Voila!  Or, should I say, BOO!  Delightful little candy corn shortbread cookies!

And in the fall, we eat pie

I love fall.  Crisp apples, crunchy leaves, bright pumpkins... it's wonderful. Plus, it means I can use baking to warm both my soul and my apartment!  And eat PIE!  


This is my first Mom's Apple Pie of the season with a little additional cloves and ginger.  A couple of my friends and I went apple picking a couple of weekends ago specifically with this in mind.

We got pie pumpkins in our CSA last week, and I was thrilled! This is Paula Dean's Pumpkin Pie.  Can you believe It only has 1/4 cup of butter in it?!  But don't worry, it is a Paula Dean recipe, and therefore also involves a whole cup of half and half...but I used light cream...mwahaha.  I wish this had smell-o-vision.

Update: I just ate a piece of this and it is the best pumpkin pie I think I have ever eaten.  Thank you, Paula Dean.

More Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

...except this time, it's an ice cream cake!  We celebrated Joe's 25th birthday with a big ol' Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream Cake!  The bottom layer was a french chocolate cake, then a layer of cookie dough, then a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream topped with whipped cream frosting and sprinkles!

Sunflowers and Monarchs

Summer wasn't over yet! I made these little treats for an office party.  My second attempt at using chocolate to decorate was pretty successful!  The butterflies are made of melted dark chocolate and orange candy melts with some non-pareil decorations.  They were actually easier than the sunflowers!

The cupcakes were a simple chocolate with buttercream frosting.  I tried to make it look like a field of sunflowers and visiting monarchs!

Cookie Dough Lovers, unite!

I thought I was being quite creative coming up with the idea for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cupcakes; turns out tons of people have done it before, but no one I knew had ever tried one.  Thus, these were born.

Devil's food chocolate cake, brown sugar buttercream mousse, and a delightful ball of cookie dough on the inside.  Yah, they were pretty good.

Update: I recently re-made these at my brother's request.  Here's a little sample of what the preparation process looks like.  Just cover those little nuggets with more batter, and you're on your way!

Redneck Party Cake!

My first commissioned cake!  Joe told me it looks like a poker chip, which I'll give that to him, but if you squint your eyes a little or move away from your computer screen, you'll see the intended effect of a buffalo plaid cake.  Think Vermont woods, you get the idea!

Baskets and flowers, oh my!

This is my final cake from cake decorating class number two!  The flowers are all made using royal icing.  Warning: royal icing flowers don't taste that great, especially the purple ones, but they can look pretty!

I felt so inspired by the flowers on the cake above, I tried them again (with buttercream frosting) on an Easter cake!  It sure is a lot simpler to make them out of royal icing and place them where you want to, but this was a good last minute alternative.  Now, if only I can figure out how to make the frosting have that messy but sophisticated effect...

This is a Pink Lady Cake I made for a couple of office birthdays.  I'm still working on the free hand drawing thing... the sugar sprinkes made for a cool effect the next day though.  After they had melted a little, it looked like the center was airbrushed instead of individual sprinkles!

The way to a man's heart...

...is totally through his stomach.  So I said Happy Valentine's Day with Chocolate and Ancho Chili Mini-Cupcakes!

Cupcakes and beer!

My first attempt at creating with chocolate.  It turned out pretty well and stood up like this for a while until my wicked hot apartment had something to say about it.

Family March Birthdays

So I cheaped out and made a single cake for Mom, Nicholas', and my March birthdays (Brie got her own little cupcake because she couldn't have the alcohol in this one).  Black Forest Cakes are kind of a thing in our house, and while Dad knows I should have used more alcohol in the cake, it turned out all right for my first one!

 

White Coat Ceremony!

This was one of the many cakes Gwen received for her UVM Med School White Coat Ceremony!  I learned an important little something with this cake--do not try to write on a cake if you are over-caffeinated and under-fed first thing in the morning.  Hello, shaky hands!

Welcome!

Hi there! My name's Anna, and it's great to meet you.  I'm a pretty big fan of baking--cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pies, the list goes on--and this here is a sampling of what I like to do.  I've got a lot to learn, but the best part about baking is that you get to eat whatever you make, whether it's fantastic or a flop!   

I've recently started to try my hand at decorating, too, as you'll see is the focus here. The following is basically a whole run-down of everything I've done this year.  And in the future, well, I'll try to make this blog thing work!

These are some of my favorite holiday treats: Brownie Bon Bon Cordials

The gooey dark chocolate ganache in the middle almost qualifies as the cherry on top!

This was the first cake I made during my cake decorating classes at Michael's!

...and the second one... for Tess' Very Merry Un-birthday!

...and the third one!

I even learned how to make roses!