Friday, June 20, 2008

Cupcakes!!!





One of my favorite things to make and experiment with is cupcakes! I love how you can make all different kinds very easily with just one batter variation and one frosting variation. They keep forever and are easier to serve and eat as individual treats than cutting a cake. These were for Sammy's Spring Fair at New Eagle Elementary School. Chocolate cake (as always!) and then 3 types of icing. The flower ones are a dark chocolate thick ganache that is FANTASTIC, by far the best topping I have used. Then the ones with green swirls are a peanut butter buttercream. Each of those cupcakes has a cake tube cut out of it, then the filling piped into the channel, and the cake replaced and pressed down into them again. This way the frosting goes all the way through and you're not stuck with the good stuff on top and the boring cake at the bottom! The white topped ones are good old plain vanilla buttercream with red sprinkles. Some of these white ones got a little fondant flower and piped green leaf just for a change in pace. Very cute! I'll have to make a confession here... these were so good that they never actually made it to the Fair! My family wanted to keep them too badly and eat them all up! (which is exactly what we did in about 1 day).

One of the Family Traditional Favorites



This dessert is always the first request from my brother's and I for special occasions. This is one dessert I'll have to give alot of credit to my mom on. I have never tried to make it by myself, but I am going to try it as individual puffs next time. It's alot of work to make, but it is so delicious and the leftovers (when there are any) get even better in the refrigerator overnight! The shell is a light pastry dough arranged in a ring before it bakes. This way, it bakes up into a ring of connected big round puffs that are really attractive on a nice round tray. We pull out the extra inside dough so there is plenty of room for the custard that goes inside. Then we drizzle the top liberally with a thick chocolate sauce. It's so good! I'm all excited thinking about it now haha.

Welcome home/ late birthday cake for Lj



I made this little double layer cake for Lauren. It's chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and MMF on top (of course). That's pretty standard by now. I had fun playing with the piping decoration on this one. It was very simple but possibly the tastiest actual cake I have made.

Food For Thought...

Always approach love and cooking with reckless abandon. -Dalai Lama