Independence Day! (Website Down)

Happy 4th of July everyone!

My website is acting a little funky about showing pictures so I'm going to post my pics on here for now. I know I need to update my blog, I'm such a slacker! Anyways, in the spirit of our Independence Day (and let's be honest, I could use the practice) I made some Blueberry Lemon Zest cupcakes! They are a seasonal favorite, filled with fresh whole blueberries, lemon juice, and lemon lest to make them extremely flavorful. I used gel coloring inside the decorating bag to make the icing look like it does.

I'm also posting pictures of the cupcakes from my giveaway a month or so ago. I think they look too cute to not get any attention! The flower and heart decorations are made with modeling chocolate.

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful 4th of July!

Much Love,
~A

Christmas Cookies & Candies!!!

I am that annoying person that everyone always despises during holiday season because I LOVE CHRISTMAS! Christmas, Halloween, and Spring Break are my three favorite Holidays. I even got the Christmas China out and put in the dish cabinet in the first week of November. Every year for Christmas, I make a but load of cookies & candies to send to my friends. I started doing this about 5 years ago because I was too broke to buy actual gifts, and used the only talent I knew I had back then: baking. I always tried to package them real festive like, so when people received them they'd really look like presents!

Red Velvet White Choc Chip

So far I've got White Chocolate Fruit & Nut Clusters, Red Velvet White Chocolate Chip Cookies, Pretzel Pecan Turtles, Coconut Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Chocolate Truffles, Chocolate Espresso Crinkles, Sugar Cookies, and Chocolate Almond Biscotti with Peppermint White Chocolate. I don't have pictures of everything because I'm always busy with school, so I have to make these things in what little spare time I have! But they've all been taste tested multiple times by lots of different people, so I know they're a hit. I'm extremely picky about the things I make, so if I don't think it's good enough (and I like to think I have high standards) then it doesn't go anywhere. 

Anyways, with all that said, I'd like to introduce my Holiday lineup!

Petit Bites

My eventual sister-in-law has an assignment for her senior packaging class (or something along those lines..). For her project she had to come up with a fake business and present the packaging and items for the fake business. She created Petit Bites, a miniature sweets business. Knowing that I AM THE MASTER OF ALL THINGS CAKE, she asked me to make her some Petit Fours for her assignment. 

*Note to self: I am not the master of all things cake, I am the WIZARD of cake.

The first time I attempted Petit Fours, I was in high school, and even more impatient than I am now. (How is that possible?!) Anyways. The cake recipe I got then was from an old book published in the 70's ish, and the cake was almost tasteless! Problems: I'd never cut a cake in my life, much less cut it into tiny little squares, and the icing was all sugar and no flavor! Honestly, I don't even know how I've gotten as far as I have, remembering how terrible I was at everything back then! 

Practice makes perfect :)

The Petit Fours still look a little terrible. I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to my baking, so naturally the lumps of the cake and inconsistency of the icing really tick me off. But I have to admit, they look A LOT better than they did when I made some 8 years ago. And they taste like a dream! At least, that's what I imagine dreams would taste like if they did in fact, taste. I added some orange extract and grapefruit zest into the batter, along with my vanilla extract, so it's like an orange creamsicle thing! I also added some orange extract and vanilla into my icing. Yummmmm.

Also in recent news, I've had an inquiry about cake pops. I've never made them. I had them at Starbucks once and they were terrible; once I ate them I vouched to never make them! Until this weekend, when I did. I wanted to make cake balls and a 9inch round cake to practice decorating with, so I just made some Red Velvet cake. I bought some canned cream cheese icing (eghh) and used some of my homemade buttercream icing to mix in with the cake crumbs. I definitely like the buttercream better! That canned stuff is nasty! And it's really bad for you too. The first few pops I did were messy looking.. lumpy and uneven. The rest look really great and they taste amazing! Who'dathunk'it? I used some of my seasonal sprinkles for decoration, so everyone can see all the cute sprinkle options they have! And, it lets me show off part of my sprinkle collection, muahahahaha. Now if I can just keep my dad from stealing a cake pop every time he walks by...

Ready for pictures? (As if you're going to answer..)

This is my fave. Mini bats and pumpkins are cute!!

The sprinkles on the left are not bacon pieces, they are peppermint flavored candy canes, lol

The O.G.'s For those of you that aren't up to date on your Gangsterism, that means Original Gangster.

Benefits to being friends/family of the chef? Free goodies.

LUMPS >:(

I added one of my dried buttercream flowers on top. Adorable :)

ERMERGERD SPRINKLES!

Velvet Love Cupcakes

Love is a celebration, and today I got the opportunity to help celebrate a couple's first anniversary! The couple requested Red Velvet cupcakes to celebrate, and in conversation asked if it came with any filling. I told them I could make the red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese filling and vanilla buttercream icing; they liked that idea! So today, I whipped up a lovely batch of Red Velvet cupcakes with Cream Cheese filling and Vanilla Buttercream icing, which I'm calling Velvet Love cupcakes in honor of them. I used a star tip for the icing, and added red lips sprinkles on top.



Velvet Love

Velvet Love



Velvet Love