Merry Christmas 12/24/10

I just want to thank everyone for following my blog and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. My 1 year anniversary for this blog is exactly a month from now and I'm excited.




I might start doing more (food - food) dishes next year. My baking has slowed down a bit with my carpal tunnel. I won't be doing fondant for cakes anymore, well maybe ones or twice, definitely not a lot. I will focus more on cupcakes and cookies next year.

Again, thank you for all the comments and feedback.





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Jingle BALLS, I meant the cake balls silly! 12/21/10

I just want to share the cake bites ( I prefer to call them cake bites instead of balls, LOL). I made these for the kids teachers, along with the tote bags.


I made a cherry chip cake with crushed peppermint candy cane and red velvet. I dipped them in red and green Wilton candy melts. I sprinkled some with colored sugars and sprinkles. The boxes I got from the Dollar General and some at Big lots. The tote bags are made by me. I know you see a lot of bags, but I had the kids picked the bags they want to give to their teacher. My daughter wanted to give to three teachers so I had her picked 3 and my son has 2 teachers.



The totes I gave away.



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Cupcake Wreaths 12/13/10

My last post was a Cake Wreath, so I figured I would make cupcakes as well. They are much cuter and so much easier to make. They are small enough to lug around it's bite size. No cutting involve :-) and the kids loves it.

I used a Wilton leaf tip for the wreath and I'm not sure what those sprinkles are called. LOL! SO use any red round sprinkles you can find.

"Merry Christmas"

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Cake Wreath 12/7/10

I love wreaths, specially CAKE Wreaths. This cake was super yummy. I made this a year ago for Christmas. So sorry for the photo, this was before Santa brought me my good camera.

"Happy Holidays"

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Fudgy Brownie Pecan Pie... RECIPE! 12/1/10

The title got me too. Sounds yummy doesn't it? I've never had pecan pie, EVER. I've been wanting to make it for a long time but never had the urge to really make it. So when I saw this from Bakerella's site, I knew I had to try it. I know hubby, likes pecan pie, but this one has brownies on them.

So here's the recipe that I got my Bakerella's page. She has 2 versions on her site. The Fudgy and regular. I picked the fudgy one of course. LOL!

SUPER-FUDGY VERSION
3/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 Tablespoon self-rising flour
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups pecans

1 package brownie mix and ingredients listed on the box

2 frozen deep dish pie shells or 2 frozen pastry roll

DIRECTION:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Place brown sugar in a large bowl and work out lumps. Add flour and stir together until the flour disappears.
• Add corn syrup and vanilla. Stir until thoroughly until combined.
• Add melted butter. Fold into mixture until it disappears.
• Loosely beat two eggs in a separate bowl and fold into mixture until the eggs disappear.
• Stir in pecans and set aside.
• Prepare brownie batter as instructed on package.
• Remove two frozen pies shells from freezer and divide brownie batter evenly between the two. (Deep dish for fudgy version and regular-size for the brownie version.)
• Spoon pecan pie mixture evenly between the two pie shells.
• Bake fudgy deep dish version for about 40-45 minutes. Place a large sheet of foil across the top of the two pies for the last 10-15 minutes to avoid pie crust from browning too much.
• Bake brownie regular pie shell version for about 35 minutes.
• Remove from oven and cool.

Soooo, fudgy or not they will be good. I baked this for Thanksgiving and I gave one of the pie to the in-laws and they loved it.

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Mini Cone Cake Bites 11/24/10

Who doesn't love ice cream? ME! Yup ME, I'm not a fan of ice cream. So when I saw THIS and it's not ice cream, YES, it looks like it but trust me it's not. I knew I had to make it.

This would be the perfect time to make it, since there will be a lot of kids at our Thanksgiving dinner.

You start with this little itty bitty cones.

See.... I told you they're itty bitty and super cute!

The best part of this, is the cake bite on top...
Then, you dip it in the melted chocolate and sprinkle. All I have left if chocolate and a little bit of red colored wafer chips. So, I made mine chocolate mini cone bites. I think it looks just as good as the other ones. LOL!
You can't just make one, so I made an army. LOL!



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Choco Choco Bundt Cake - Recipe 11/20/10

Craving for chocolate? Then this would be the cake for you. It's delicious and it's moist. I love the texture and it's just the perfect chocolate taste to it.

This chocolate bundt cake calls for ganache glaze, but I didn't have the stuff to make the glaze so I used powdered sugar instead. I was going to sift chocolate and powdered sugar together but I completely forgot. I remembered right after I took the picture, so I just left it alone.

Here's the recipe for the cake and the ganache.

• Flour spray (Baker's Joy)
  
• 5 oz. Baker's bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 3/4 cup canola oil
  
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup strong-brewed coffee
• 1 cup buttermilk

Direction:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F degrees. Spray a 12-cup Bundt pan with flour spray. In a small saucepan, melt 2 ounces of the chopped chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly. Scrape the chocolate into a medium bowl and let cool slightly. Whisk in the oil and sugar until smooth, then whisk in the egg.
2. In a small bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Add half of the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture along with 1/2 cup of the coffee and 1/2 cup of the buttermilk; whisk until smooth. Add the remaining dry ingredients, coffee and buttermilk and whisk until smooth.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the lower third of the oven for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. Let the cake cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then turn it out and let cool completely.

Ganache:

• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tablespoon corn syrup
• 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter

Direction:

1. In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a boil. In a heatproof bowl, combine the remaining 3 ounces of chopped chocolate with the corn syrup and butter. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let stand until melted, about 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Let the ganache glaze cool until thick but still pourable, about 5 minutes.
2. Pour the ganache over the cooled cake or sprinkle with powdered sugar instead of the Ganache. Let the cake stand until the glaze is set, at least 30 minutes, before serving.

ENJOY!!!

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Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies RECIPE 11/12/10

Just thinking about pumpkin makes me drool. Even though I'm not much into sweets I love the smell of pumpkin (baked that is). So when I stumbled into this recipe the other day I knew I had to make it. With the kids being off for Veterans Day (Thanks to all the Veterans and everyone that served our Country) I figured we would do something fun, and they love pumpkin as well.

So, a lot of my friends wants to know the recipe and I'm sharing it with you. I know a few people that are allergic to EGGS and CHOCOLATE, so this recipe would be perfect for you guys. It doesn't have EGGS and the CHOCOLATE can be substituted with the WHITE CHOCOLATE.

I used white chocolate on this batch with CRISCO

All done and ready to eat :-) Yummy when it's warm.

COOKIES
½ cup shortening (CRISCO, I'm sure if you use the BUTTER Flavored Crisco it would be fine)
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree (Libby's 100% pumpkin)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups flour
¼ tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 ½ cups chocolate chips (or white chocolate chips)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease *** cookie sheets.
2. In medium bowl, cream the shortening and sugar. Stir in 3. In separate bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking soda, 4. Then stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Drop dough onto cookie sheets.
6. Bake for 10 minutes in preheated oven.
7. Allow cookies to cool for a minute on cookie sheets before transferring to wire cooling racks.

*** I don't like greasing my cookie sheets. I use a parchment paper and re-use them until they turn brown. Most of the time I get to use the parchment paper until I'm done with one whole batch. It's a lifesaver and it prevents your cookies from burning on the bottom. It's a cheap investment and you will be happy that you did. INSTEAD OF THE *EXTRA* GREASE.

CREAM CHEESE ICING
1 8oz. package cream cheese
½ cup butter
1 lb. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
dash of salt

Mix it all together.... and FROST.

I opted out the Cream Cheese. The cookies are pretty good the way they are.

ENJOY!!!


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HALLOWEEN Rewind 11/7/10

First I want to apologize for disappearing and not posting in a while. I went into my "NO BAKING" spell. I do that a lot. So, again, I'm sorry for not posting.

I will move on now, to this post. This is a late Halloween post on what I made and what we did for Halloween night.


Since I wasn't baking much lately and that day I had to bake for the Halloween, I had a massive headache. I was supposed to make scary cupcakes and cake balls. That didn't happen :-(

I did bake some cupcakes and decorated it with Halloween stuff, and I also baked some chocolate bottom coconut macaroons. The party was a success, everyone had fun and we ate too much food. LOL!




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