Red Velvet Cakelets and Cookie Experiments

So after the huge delicious success of my peanut butter cakelets, my dad wanted some red velvet cake.  What did I do? You got it I made some red velvet cakelets!  I experimented a little bit with the actual making of the cakelets but still ended up great! I used the same recipe book that I used for the peanut butter ones and you know what that means! It was finger-licking good!

I took the remaining cake left over after cutting the circles and put it in the confection oven to dry, I then crumbled it up and on some just sprinkled it on the top and on the rest rolled the cake in it.


I also a little while back did a little experimenting with cookies.  I found this one blogger Sweet Sugar Belle, you can check her out here http://sweetsugarbelle.com/ .

She is awesome!! And does some great cookie decorating.

Here is my attempt at it.

 By getting the icing to a thin consistent you can use it to "flood" the cookie and fill it in.  Once you let it dry a bit you can layer it with other designs and colors.

These (Below) are the same cookies as above just the next day.  After the icing completely dries it gives it a textured look and looks 3d!  I quite proud of these actually.  Hopefully soon I will be experimenting more with cookies and their decor!

Peanut Butter Cakelets

This past weekend I went on another dessert excursion, except this time something a little closer to home.  My Uncle's birthday is coming up in the next week or so and my Dad wanted me to make him his favorite cake, peanut butter.  He told me to find a recipe with a lot of layers (aka the likes of Dean's Cakes some of the best cakes in the south in my opinion).

Well at first I avoided it, actually I just plum forgot about it.  Then I went to looking up recipes but every single one no where close to what I remember from days of old.  It gave me chocolate peanut butter cakes and just about every other kind except for what I wanted.  So I finally find one but accidentally leave the recipe at home when we go to my grandparents for Fathers Day.  Then I figured it was too late, because I was leaving the next day and probably wouldn't be back in town until after his birthday.

Late the night before I leave I was watching The Next Food Network Star and it was their dessert episode.  Now it seems to me that on every single cooking competition no one is able to make desserts, they always whine and complain and mess everything up.  Sure enough there were probably more misses than hits on this episode.  I get a little mad and decide that I am just going to go make something to prove to them that it wasnt that hard.

 So I go into the kitchen (and listen here for this tip) and started looking through the recipe books my grandma has.  I looked for the oldest, most worn looking books and also for some old church recipe books.  If a book is worn that means its been used alot and stuff is bound to good in there because why would they use it? Looking for the old church books is a good tip as well, especially if you are in the south.  Them church ladies knew how to cook!  People don't really cook like they used to so it is important to get an older book and its bound to have better recipes.

Sure enough I find 3 Peanut Butter cake recipes in the first book I look at.  My grandma tells me that one of them was from my one of my aunts mother and that she was a really good cook so the recipe was sure to be good.  I get to working right then and there.

Watching NFNS I got the idea about layered cupcakes and how I had not ever seen it done and wondered if it was possible.  I get to brainstorming as to how I could make thin layers and then cut them into cupcake size.  I have a sheet pan that would work but then my grandma pulls out this diamond of an idea.  Cast iron skillets, these shallow pans (little did I know were exactly the pans used to make the 7-layer cakes from my childhood) were perfect for making consistent layers of the same size and thickness.

I bake them and cut them into circles with a biscuit cutter  then get to making the peanut butter icing.  I layer 4 layers tall with icing in between the layers and then ice it all around.  Some of the them turned out to be a little bit difficult when the icing would start to harden as they cooled off, but after heating it back up it was ready to go again.

Overall I was extremely satisfied with how it turned out, the cake was delicious and some of the best I have had, and who knows maybe there will be more mini-layered cakes in my future :)

Also if anyone has any ideas for a better name for it let me know, cakelet describes it well but not sure if it is what it should be.

Happy Graduation!

So of course when I set aside the time to make a new post, blogger is down so I can"t do anything :(

But alas it is back up again so I can get to my post.

Tis the season for graduation.  Here at FSU people graduated 2 weeks ago, across the country college students are taking, preparing for or have already taken finals.  Which for the lucky seniors means that they are one step closer to graduating or have already done so.  Soon to come will be the lucky high schoolers who are ready for the freedom that college represents.


With that being said, apparently FSU thinks that I have graduated because I keep getting congratulation emails from the school and requests to order graduation announcement.  Unfortunately you are stuck with me for one more year.  Depressing I know.

However many of my good friends did graduate this year and to y'all I say Congrats!

Need I another excuse to bake?

For one of my friend's graduation lunch I was asked to make some cupcakes for the lunch.

Want to see what I came up with?  Well wait no longer.

Its a graduation cap and diploma!

And for the girl who loves music...

My friend Jessica came over around midnight (because of my crazy busy schedule) and helped me make them.  We had been wanting to bake/decorate together and found this to be the perfect time.  Kristin and David gave great moral support as they watched Steve Carell's last episode of the office and stuff about the royal wedding on my computer.

Easter!

Hey there! So as always I'm running a little behind in posting a new post, in fact you will be getting 3 new ones shortly.

And of course while I was in the midst of writing this post I had to stop and run and do something so everything just gets ever more delayed. I also realize that this post is rather jumbled and not the best English but I want to at least give you something

Anyways, Easter.

For Easter I decided to make a cake. It ended up tasting good although I wasn't too sure about how it ended up.

I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache and strawberry filling, topped with white chocolate ganache , "shredded" chocolate and chocolate truffle eggs dipped in white chocolate.

The original recipe had regular chocolate vs. white chocolate, so I didnt take that into consideration when I was covering the chocolate cake because you could see part of it through the white chocolate.  But hey it got ate anyways.

Well to keep it short and sweet I'll just let you take a look and then be done with it.

April Fools!

April 1st, also known as April Fools Day is yet another holiday in which I find an excuse to bake something.  This time I have a mini-bakesale to help raise money for my mission trip to Wales this summer.

Since April Fools is the holiday of trickery I decide to do a bit of "trickin" myself with a flair that would pretty much be expected. With that I give you these :

Spaghetti and Meatballs!

Mashed potatoes!

They are cupcakes!!!

They are so cute and end even tricked me for a second! Several people were afraid to buy them because they thought that it was real spaghetti on them. Silly kids.

I did have a slight mishap when the makeshift pastry bag I was using slightly exploded.  My first reaction was not "oh look what a mess I made"  but more like "oh no the cupcakes! "

Fat Tuesday

Another Holiday gives me yet another excuse to bake and with it being Mardi Gras week and all I thought I would tackle the king of all Mardi Gras desserts, the King Cake!

Who would have known that a "simple" cake would take about 5hrs to make?!

I guess I should start from the beginning.  This week I am on spring break from college and naturally I came home for the week.  My mom asked me if I could make a dessert for her work because they were having like a
"party" of some sorts (really just having dessert).  Originally I wanted to make some sort of cupcake or something not Mardi Gras related but I decided I only have this chance once a year so I quickly nixed that idea.

A regular cake was out of the question because I accidentally left my decorating tips at my apartment back at school, so I kept coming back to the idea of a King Cake.

One of my friends had called me the day before asking me about how to make the oreo truffles because the chocolate they were using wasn't melting for some reason ( sometimes chocolate is tempramental, see my valentines cake for example).  So my mom asked if I could make the truffles and then just dye the chocolate purple, green, and yellow.

Yet I kept coming back to the King Cake.

So I found a recipe and we got the stuff and I began.  First of all you should know that yeast scares me.  I'm always afraid that I'm not going to let it "bloom" enough so the dough doesn't rise right or I'm going to over mix it so that it falls.

Thankfully I avoided that and when the dough was made I had to let it rise for 2 hrs!  Well while it was doing that I made dinner which consisted of homemade pizza (of course more yeast!) which turned out delicious (and unfortunately no pictures because now its all gone and eaten!).

After it rose I had to make the filling, I omitted the raisins and nuts because
     1. I don't like raisins
     2. I like nuts but not in things, I would rather eat them by themselves
This led the filling to be like a cinnamon roll filling.

Before the oven

Then you roll it out, put the filling in it, roll it back up form it in an oval then cut holes in the dough and let it rise for 45 more minutes

After the oven

The recipe made two cakes one turned out really well and the other "exploded" at the seams, well not really but it didn't look too terribly pretty.


Then came icing the cake, a simple icing is just confectioners sugar and water and then the sprinkles on top.  The store was out of like all Mardi Gras decorations so we had to use pink instead of purple sprinkles but it still looks really festive.

A thing to note though is that the icing hardens rather quickly (especially over a hot cake) so you have to either do a bit then sprinkle or sprinkle fast!

Sprinkling it up makes quite a mess but the finished result is divine!

Valentines (Delayed)

So here is the cake Olivia and I made for Valentine's Day.  I would have posted it earlier but I figured that I didn't want to innundate you with post after post and then leave you with a massive dry spell.

So I once again took this cake idea from bakerella.  We were actually going to do something else but I kept looking at things and we decided on this one.

Now as a disclaimer this is purposefully not my best effort on purpose.  We had a joint bilbe study with the mens ministry for valentines day and everytime I make some sort of dessert for the BCM no one eats any of it because they say it is "too pretty".  I then end up with far more leftovers than needed.  So my theory was that if I didnt try my best making this then more people would be willing to eat it and I would not end up with any leftovers.

Needless to say my plan failed but more of it was eaten.

So without further ado, we made a "box of chocolates" where the box was a cake as well

Then on top there are bits of "truffle " cake balls.

I had the roughest time making this cake.  First the fondant was tempermental and sticking furiously to our hands when we made it because I couldn't find the crisco, which I found plain as day today as a matter of fact.

Something else happened but I cant remember.

Then the cake was being stupid when I was trying to level it.

Then the chocolate was being tempremental as I tried to melt it and then dip the cake balls in it.  It wasnt melted all the way and then it was melted too much and was hard again.

Other than all my problems it ended up tasting really good and decent after all.

Alethia

So a coupla weekends ago the women's group I am in had our weekend retreat called Alethia (it means truth), so naturally a weekend retreat with a bunch of college girls means desserts!



Olivia and I (if you remember we did the desserts for Bella Notte) made all the desserts for the retreat.  Take a gander.

Oreo Cookies

Ok so yesterday was my roommate's boyfriend fiancee birthday, so my other roommates and I thought that we would do something to celebrate this, at 1o'clock in the morning...

The natural instinct? Why to bake something of course!

Long story short,  one of my friends posted this on my wall
OREO COOKIES!
and he saw it and said it looked good like 2 weeks prior, so we at least had an idea of what to make.

Luckily we had everything we needed except for oreo's so Lauren and I make a trip to Publix @ approximately 11:20, being in a college town everything is open later (Well at least the places closest to campus where Publix is known as "Club Pub"), so we go to try our hand at Win-Dixie because it was closer to our apt.  Unfortunately they are closed so we keep driving to another Publix down the road (one that people don't normally go to) and find it closed!!!! Luckily right in front of that Publix was  a CVS were we thought to ourselves "Oreos are a pretty universal thing so they should have it".

We get into CVS and search for our needed oreos and couldn't find them!!! Right when we about to give up we spot another isle to search and low and behold there they were!  We almost splurged for the heads and tails ones (you know the ones that are golden on one side and regular on the other) but we decided to go for the tried and true double stuffed oreos.

So we get back to the apt and begin our baking.  Originally my camera had died and I couldn't find the charger for it, but as the dough was chilling before we made the cookies I found it!

I had a picture of the massive amount of mini chocolate chips that we put in the dough but its on my iPod and I'm just a little to lazy to hook it up and get them for you.  (Sorry, but hey at least you get a story with this one!).

Anyways I digress...



So after you make the dough, you basically have this

Dough, oreo, dough

You then completely envelop the oreo in the dough.  Like this:

Wanna see what they look like when you cut them in half after they are out of the oven?

The creme melts  and are delicious when fresh!

We then decided to have a bit of fun and put them all on one plate

Now thats a plate of cookies!

We then made a sign (Lauren mostly, because she has much better handwriting)

Yes the JWOWW is from Jersey Shore, our apartment is hooked

The post-it note says : 

        "We were going to buy candles but they only came in packs of 24, and we didnt want to buy two 

          packs just for one candle.  (therefore your OLD)"

So at this point in time it is probably 1:30 -1:40 in the morning.  Lauren and I decide that the best thing to do would to deliver them right then and there.  With a rush of adrenaline, we felt like we were on some sort of secret mission.  On the drive over we strategized as to how to drop off the cookies and hide as he opened the door.

We arrive and the moment of truth arrives, as we walk up to the door we whisper our planes in aggreeance, we slip off our shoes so as to make minimal noise for when we run, set the cookies in front of the door and bang on it then run to an alcove where we wait... and wait... and wait. No answer.  We get the courage to knock loudly again and also ring the doorbell and then hide and wait... and wait.  Still no answer.  Sadly we give up thinking that we have misjudged the nocturnal nature of the receipient.  We get back to the car and Lauren texts him to tell him to check his door and "happy birthday" and drive off back to our apartment with our spirits crushed (ok not really crushed perse but give me the joy of literary liberties).   

On the drive back we receive a text of "thanks" and "i didnt hear it over the a/c" and "they look delicious" thus operation cookie maker was a success.

Whose ready for some football?

Being from the South one long time celebrated tradition is the BCS college championship football game. Even though I do not go to an SEC (south eastern conference for my international readers) school , I am an SEC girl born and raised. My favorite Team? Auburn, which so happened to win the game over Oregon Monday night.

I went to a tailgate and naturally I brought desserts. This time I decided to have some fun and made cupcakes that looked like football players! I decorated them in royal icing tinted to match each teams colors. Take a look!

Unfortunately though they did not make it to the tailgate in this condition. Overnight the icing decided to melt and their faces got spread out. From this I have vowed never to use royal icing again, but instead stick to buttercream which I know and love. Oh well they still tasted good!

Christmas Part 3!

Another post from my Christmas baking! I'll just leave you with the pictures this go around!

 This my dear friends is an Italian Christmas cookie.  While some of them are not the prettiest they are absolutely delicious!  There is ricotta cheese in the batter so it makes them nice and moist.