Saturday, May 24, 2008

Mint Cupcakes

I woke up this morning craving some mint cupcakes... and I remember seeing some on a blog last week, and I added my own twist. These are chocolate cakes with mint flavored buttercream icing (tinted green). Then, I added grasshopper cookies to top it all off. Mmmm...

Make some yourself (or order them from me... hehe) and enjoy with a big 'ol scoop of mint ice cream :)

Yellow Doll Cake

Last weekend I bought the Wilton Doll Mold set and couldn't wait to use it, so I busted it out of the package and this yellow doll was the finished product. Not bad, considering this was the first time using fondant on an different surface than a standard cake.I didn't end up making the ribbons on the back of the cake, but I will do it if I actually had to give this to someone. I would also have put more detail on the front, and would have definitely used royal icing with those drop flowers - they were just too hard to move using buttercream icing. All in all, it was good!

Friday, May 16, 2008

A taste of what's to come


If we ever get around to selling our cakes/cupcakes/cookies. I have bought the domain www.sweetsnsuch.com, and I was bored the other night, so I started playing with the design - here's what i've got so far on the home page:

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

My new weakness


I do love cookies... and these are hands down my new favorite! They aren't too sweet, they're crunchy, and you really can't eat just three. :)

One cup of everything cookies (thanks to my grandma for the recipe :))

1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup crisco (BUT it's better with 1/2c crisco and 1/2c butter)
1 cup vegetable oil or canola oil
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
3 1/2 cups flour
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup coconut (optional)
1 cup crispy rice cereal
walnuts (optional)
chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugar and crisco/butter, add in oil, add in egg. Mix in dry ingredients. Fold in rice cereal, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Place by spoonful on an ungreased cookie sheet for 13-15 minutes. NOTE: dark pans tend to burn more easily.... Use lighter pans. Bottoms will brown easily; place higher in the oven than normal. These also don't spread out as much, so you can place more than normal on a pan. Makes about 2-3 dozen cookies

Keep in an airtight container - but they'll get eaten fast!

Totally not cake related...


But David Cook is in the top two on American Idol! YAY!!!! He's gonna go all the way... but get those votes in!!! :)

Monday, May 12, 2008

Oh how I love (and hate) fondant

We're now in week 2 of our Wilton Course 3: Fondant and tiered cakes. Tonight was very busy, but we made a great looking cake. I really do hate fondant, I don't like rolling it out and coloring it, and I HATE that taste of it, but it is sooo easy to work with! It makes the cakes look so neat. We made a package cake tonight, it's below! I made the colors of the cake to kind of go with the flavors: A lemonade cake with strawberry filling! Yep, I replaced the water in the white cake mix with frozen lemonade concentrate, and I added in pureed frozen strawberries to the buttercream icing. We'll see how it tastes tomorrow when I take it to work. :)



Oh, and we learned fondant roses - I loved how they turned out! They look so much better than my icing roses :)

I'll post my mom's cake when she sends it to me..

Late post: Everything's coming up roses!

2 weeks ago, my mom and I finished our last of Wilton course 2, flowers and borders, and for the last class we made an oval cake with a basketweave border, and filled with tons of flowers from the past 3 weeks that we learned to make

On the left is mine, the right is my mom's. I didn't want to put on the birds, it was either lack of time or the ugliness of the birds... you decide.

Let's see... if I can remember off the top of my head we made:
Roses, apple blossoms, violets, primrose, daffodils, pansies, and mums....