NECAPcakes

Last June, I went into my new school to meet my new set of kids.  Smartly or stupidly, I told them that I liked baking cupcakes and that I would probably bake them some if they were good.  Things I learned/were reinforced from that visit: 

a) middle schooler's remember everything you tell them unless it's related to something upon which they will be assessed, 

2) especially if it's about food, and 

iii) it's silly to make promises like that before you find out whether you're going to be on the 40-student team or the 60-student team.

Not even a month in, they wore me down.  "Remember you told us you would bake us cupcakes?"  "When are you going to bring us cupcakes?"  "How 'bout them cupcakes?"  So, I promised them all NECAPcakes, to be given at the end of NECAP-testing week.  Which, oh right, was also the week progress reports were due and we had 50 parent conferences.  5 dozen cupcakes?  No problem.

I had it all planned out.  Bake the cupcakes Wednesday night after the first set of conferences and frost them after Conference: Part Deux.  You know what happens when you get home after meeting with 25 parents and it's 8:30 pm and you don't have a microwave so you turn the oven on low in order to thaw out your frozen butter so that it's softened but not melted because you can't use melted butter to make swiss buttercream frosting because it just won't whip up like it's supposed to and then you get on your computer and have three e-mails from parents and teammates regarding tomorrow and you decide it's important to answer them and by the time you remember the butter you have a plate of melted butter in your oven?  You throw in the limited amount of powdered sugar and cocoa powder you have, whip it into submission, and hope for the best.  Turns out, it tastes a lot like the frosting version of a Wendy's Frosty!

Whew!  Interesting part: the next day I had a couple of kids walk up and say, "Huh, peanut butter.  Not what I expected."  To which I replied, "Huh, peanut butter.  Not what I put in."  That one still perplexes me.

St. Patty's Day Cupcakes

Last New Year's, I found a recipe for Irish Car Bomb cupcakes and thought it would be only appropriate to make some for St. Patrick's Day!  These are supposed to have a whiskey ganache in the center, but I didn't have the ingredients, so I just left that out... but you wouldn't know that from the pictures, would you??  They are Guinness chocolate cupcakes and Bailey's Irish Creme frosting.  Little bit of Irish heaven right here.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Brie!

My adorable niece turned 2 on March 10.  To quote the little love, "March 10's my birthday. I be 2!"  Her Mom and Dad asked me if I could make an owl cake, or cupcakes, for her party, and I was so excited!  I had so many ideas, it was hard to pinpoint just one! 

The cupcakes were vanilla cake, recipe from the back of the King Arthur Cake Flour box, which might be my new favorite vanilla cake.  And the frosting was the swiss buttercream with which I have fallen completely in love!

I still don't love the idea of using fondant, since I don't care for its taste, but have tried my hand at melting chocolate.  It's not a universal switch, but it can be pretty useful!  For the idea of the owl cupcake display, I wanted the owls to be elevated above the letters.  I had seen a post on a blog seen on tastespotting.com a while back about making cupcake stands from chocolate, so I thought I would try to make "tree" stands to hold the owls.

 And it worked!  I fell in love with the goofy little free-form owls.

So when the big birthday party came, I set up the display.  I was pretty happy with the fact that the thought I dreamed up actually came together!

Happy Valentine's Day 2010!

So I decided to try my hand at sugar flowers this Valentine's Day.  Here's what I came up with:

April Fools!  Oh wait... it's a little early for that (but it sure felt like April today)!  No, these are just the beautiful flowers Joe had delivered to my work.  Aww.


For real, though, nobody's gonna lay a finger on Joe's Butterfinger-themed Valentine!  So, one of Joe's favorite candies is Butterfinger, so I thought I would make him some Butterfinger cupcakes for Valentine's Day!  My concern was how to keep that characteristic Butterfinger "crunch" in a baked dessert.  So, I decided to make some Butterfinger cookie dough balls and put them in the center of chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting.  By freezing the dough balls before hand, I hoped that they wouldn't soften up the Butterfinger pieces on the inside.  Fortunately, I was right!  I made far too many Butterfinger-cookie dough balls, though, so Joe got a few cupcakes and a bunch more Butterfinger truffle balls.

I know you can't see the "truffle" filling, but it's in there.  My peanut butter frosting didn't work out the way I intended it to, but I think it turned out pretty well!  Those are also little Butterfinger hearts on the top.  Aww.

Happy Valentine's Day Eve!

I've been wanting to try lava cakes for a while now.  Warm, gooey chocolate oozing out of a soft cakey shell...it would rouse even the most lackluster of a person, inciting pure bliss with every fork-full.

So, what better time to try it out than tonight, making a Valentine's Eve treat for my fabulous roommates to show just how fabulous they are?!  Topped with some freshly made vanilla bean whipped cream and fresh (ish) strawberries, I must say, this one turned out pretty well.  

  

 It was gooey, and oozy, and cakey.

Happy Valentine's Day, indeed!

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!

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!