I love this time of year! It started to get chilly last week, but I have no idea how long that will last... knowing Southern California we could be back in the 90's next week (please no!). I love the first chill in the Autumn air because that means I get to wear fleece! This time of year also means delicious sweets with flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I once had a friend that would describe these sweets as tasting like Christmas, but I disagree, I think it tastes like Autumn, Autumn spices to be exact!
As a tribute to fall, I wanted to make some Oatmeal and pie spice cookies (pie spice = Autumn spice). As I was discussing these cookies with my friend, Nicole aka W, she reminded me of one of our favorite ice cream flavors, Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. If you haven't tried this flavor, drive yourself to your local grocery store and treat yourself to a pint! With ice cream on the brain, I decided to revise my original plan and make ice cream sandwiches. So here are the ice cream sandwiches, two oatmeal and pie spice cookies with vanilla ice cream in the middle. Yum! Yum!
In September, the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club (MSCC) baked Zucchini Spice Cupcakes (or muffins), unfortunately I was unable to participate at the time (our kitchen was non-existent). So, even though our October recipe is due next week, I still wanted to try this recipe. I'm normally not one for vegetable and fruit cakes, but I love zucchini. I was very interested to see if I would like this recipe. I made half the recipe and topped it with my cream cheese frosting recipe (once you find your recipe, you don't deviate) and little flowers I punched out from the leftover zucchini.
All I gotta say is.. you can't even taste the zucchini. It just tastes like a spice cupcake (or muffin). I love spice cupcakes (or muffins), so I definitely like this recipe!
I have noticed on other MSCC member's blogs that there is a small debate as to whether or not we can call this recipe a cupcake recipe and I have to agree. To me, it reminded me of a muffin, right down to the flavor, the density and the texture. Tyler on the other hand says if you close your eyes it tastes like a cupcake. We brought this discussion to dinner with our friends and each person had their different opinions of what defines a cupcake and a muffin. After talking, we decided to make a hybrid name. From now on I am going to call muffin and cupcakes that blur the lines "muffcakes" or "cupkins."
Stayed tuned, a lot of baking is going down in the next week... MSCC October recipe and engagement party desserts. Plus, I'm trying to find the best chocolate cake recipe and may have just found it!
Almost a month ago, Tyler and I had our engagement photo session with Soul Mates Photo, Melissa the photographer does amazing work! I've used her work as my profile pic and header image.
Tyler and I love to cook together, so we thought it was only fitting for us to have some pictures of us working away in the kitchen (see our engagement session here). Because I love to bake and decorate, I wanted to make sure we had cakes in the background... enter my first cake dummy! I loved decorating the cake dummy, why you may ask... because I don't have to worry about puncturing a hole in the cake, I don't have to worry about the cake being lopsided... I just get to decorate! So here it is, my first dummy cake!
I love Japanese patterns. In college, most of my paintings for my advanced painting class were inspired by Japanese patterns. Japanese patterns are geometric and simplistic and I just love it! The pattern you see above is the classic wave pattern. After covering the cake with fondant, I cut out a scalloped shaped fondant piece and wrapped it around the cake. Then I went in and hand-painted the wave pattern in. It didn't come out the way I wanted it, but it kind of has that Japanese wood-block print feel. So I like it now. I want to do this cake again and I may try my hand at pipping royal icing instead of hand-painting.
The remodel of our kitchen has been completed, so look out for yummy treats!!! Until then, happy baking!
Back in May I announced on my facebook page to all my friends that I wanted to pursue cake decorating. At the time I had already done birthday, homecoming and graduation cakes for friends, but I was very nervous when a college friend asked me to do his wedding cake. A wedding is such a momentous event, I didn't want anything to go wrong. My finance reassured me that I was talented and that I could do a wedding cake (he really is a wonderful man!). So, I decided to take on my first wedding cake.
The bride, Sara wanted something very simple and classic. After emailing ideas and images back and forth, we decided on a three-tiered vanilla buttermilk cake with a simple dot pattern. The bride graciously forwarded a few professional images of the cake (hooray, no blurry images!), so here is the cake!
I love the added touches that the florist gave the cake.
The cake toppers are so cute!
And here is a picture of the beautiful bride, Sara and her husband, Tyler.
Back in June, my best friend gave me the Martha Stewart Cupcake book.
175 recipes... how am I going to bake all these recipes. Answer: the Martha Stewart's Cupcake Club! A group of baking bloggers who have come together to bake one recipe at a time! I am so excited that I got membership... there is a waiting list right now...
Check in on the 15th of every month to see what our club is baking up!
When it comes to personal style, I have two sides. I love solids that are clean and sleek (my city girl outfits are modeled after that thought) and I love cartoon shirts (it’s the nerd and dork in me, what can I say). I may be 26, but I still love Hello Kitty, Gummi Bears, Harry Potter, Angry Girls, and anything Disney, so I rock their t-shirts! I also love t-shirts from Threadless and Think Geek.
Which brings me to this week’s cake… If you’ve never visited ThinkGeek.com, you should! It was Tyler’s birthday this past week, and seeing as Tyler is a science nerd (I say that with love) we were inspired by the giant plush microbes found on thinkgeek.com.
They have a beer yeast microbe. So, we thought it was a perfect match to his beer-tasting event.
Tyler has an appreciation for beer, so I thought we might as well continue the beer theme and make a stout cake. The recipe is from the Martha Stewart Cupcake book and it was interesting. It was a spice cake with a lot of molasses and stout. I personally think the recipe calls for too much molasses, and the next time we make the cake it will definitely have less molasses and more brown sugar added to it. I filled the cake with chocolate ganache, which helped cut the earthy taste. I then covered the cake with fondant and created beer yeast fondant figures. I thought it would be funny to have the microbes sit in a Petri dish at 100X magnification… later in the day, I thought it would even more hilarious if we saw the microbes having a little party of their own, so I added red cups.
I, personally, am not a fan of the stout cake (Tyler loved it), so I decided to make vanilla buttermilk cupcakes (my favorite!) with vanilla buttercream frosting as well.
I also made cake lollipops with the leftover stout cake and buttermilk cake. I learned this technique at Sweet and Saucy and people just love cake lollipops.
Hope you enjoyed our nerdiness!
I will be taking a break from my "1 new recipe a week" for the next 3 weeks. I do a have a couple things up my sleeve to show you, make sure to stay tuned. I can give you a small hint... our kitchen is being remodeled! Until next time, happy baking!
As I mentioned last week, I will be trying at least one new recipe a week. This week, we tried a Matcha Green Tea recipe. I love the color green and I loved this recipe!!!The recipe at first made me a little nervous because it called for 2 Tablespoons of Matcha powder. That seemed like a lot to me, so I only added 1 Tablespoon at first. You could barely taste the Matcha, so we added the extra Tablespoon. Check out the green batter...
The cupcakes smelled like shortbread cookies while they were baking and I loveee shortbread cookies. We decided to make the green tea buttercream frosting to go along with the cupcakes. The recipe ended up being very thick so I added a little lemon juice. I think I will add some milk next time because it still ended up being very thick.
The cupcake was delicious!!! The cake itself had a subtle green tea taste. The initial taste was of a regular yellow cake recipe, but after your first bite you will find you can taste green tea and that taste will linger in your mouth. However, when you eat both the cake and the frosting together... it is amazing!!! The sugar in the buttercream brings out the green tea flavor really well in both the frosting and the cake.
I think I found my green tea recipe!
If you live in the area and want to try a cupcake, lemme know!
Coming soon... stout cake recipe and some more science cupcakes!!! :)
