Daring Bakers' challenge: Candy!

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!


I have to admit, this is my most favorite challenge in the last few months. There are so many options with candy, and yet I don't make it often because it's pretty challenging with temperatures and stuff. This is citrus paté de fruit...you know how I love my citrus! Basically it's homemade gummy candy. I don't like picking just one citrus, so this is lemon-lime-orange. Basically, this uses pectin to set, which I've never used before. It also has applesauce, which naturally has pectin. When we were cooking it (which took forever), I was worried the apple flavor wouldn't cook out, but it did! I want to try this again, for sure. Maybe in winter, when I'm dreaming of warm weather.

And these are chocolate hazelnut truffles. No fresh hazelnuts that we could find at this time of year, but we followed a recipe Daring Bakers provided and made hazelnut praline, kind of like peanut brittle with hazelnuts. You crunch that up in the food processor, mix it with the ganache for the center. After that chills, roll it up and coat it with crushed hazelnut, and we have truffles. They were a-maz-ing. My only problem with the challenge was I didn't have time to try making everything I wanted to! There was a recipe for honeycomb candy and filled bon-bons. I want to do filled chocolates for sure, but need to come up with a good filling that's not caramel. Ideas?

C is for...Canada? Cherry limeade cupcakes, citrus cake pops and cookies

My stepsister Katie visited last weekend. Well, technically she visited all last week, but she stopped in KC on Sunday. It was fun to introduce her to my new city, and just see her in general. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, which is pretty darn far away (and plane tickets are expensive!). Technically, I'm an only child. But when my dad remarried almost a decade ago, I inherited a step-sister and step-brother, Katie and Justin. Even though I hadn't seen Katie in more than a year, we had a great time that day, going to City Market and shopping for as long as we could stand what my phone told me felt like 111 degrees that day. Stupid Kansas. We also lounged around and watched wedding reality TV shoes. So even though she came into my life around my teenage years, it's pretty darn cool to have an older sister!

Katie requested a baked good for her visit, and Dad chimed in that he thought I should make cake pops (I think he just wanted me to make those so she could take some home to him!). With these, I tried something new: citrus flavors. I've only made basic flavors so far for cake pops, like yellow cake, chocolate and red velvet. For these, I did lemon cake with a frosting to which I added lemon and lime juices. Being a citrus fanatic myself, I loved them. Katie liked them too, and I heard reports from out West that Dad and Cathie enjoyed them. Mission accomplished!


So this picture kind of cheats. I actually made cookies twice, and this is a combo of both recipes. First (the smaller cookies) were my favorite all-brown sugar chocolate chip cookies. I actually found these really great semi-sweet and white chocolate swirl chips, which made for a great twist on the cookies. The other cookies were my favorite peanut butter cookies from Smitten Kitchen. Always a winner and always nice, soft cookies.

I've been making fewer cupcakes than normal. It may not seem that way on here, but Kelly's cupcakes I made weeks ago and hadn't gotten around to posting them. We've had crazy hot temperatures in Kansas lately, but it finally started cooling off lately. Cherry limeades are one of my favorite summer drinks...or anytime drinks. I made these last summer, but lemme tell you, this year's cherry limeade cupcakes were WAY better. If I remember correctly, I used grenadine in the frosting last year. This year, it was maraschino cherry-flavored. With the lime syrup brushed over the already lime-flavored cupcakes, they're flavor-packed. Someone at work even said they were the best treat yet. Success!

(Posted on Hoosier Homemade's Cupcake Tuesday.)

To either end of the spectrum: Fruity Pebbles cupcakes and vegan cupcakes, plus cheesecake and bars

It's been a busy week baking-wise for me, and I did something I've absolutely never done before: baked something vegan! On request, of course. I like cooking with eggs and dairy most of the time.

I've pretty much just been working recently, with a couple days off thrown in there. I'm counteracting all my baking by ramping up my gym attendance. I just joined a new one and have started going after work at like 6:30 a.m. It's the perfect time to go, because hardly anyone is there and if I just went home, I'd still be awake anyway. Might as well tire myself out so I can go home and fall asleep right away, right?


This week only half of my baking has been cupcakes...which is a step down from last week. I started by making triple citrus bars, something that had been on my dessert list to try for a while. Plus, I got a new zester, so I had to put it to good use! The bars had an animal cracker crust, something I'd never made before. Definitely didn't follow directions the first time and it was waaaay too butter. Try two, though, was fine. I had a lot of try two's this week. Anyway, these had orange, lemon and lime zest in them, plus orange, lemon and lime juice. Not my favorite bar dessert ever, but still not bad.


Before I took the bars into work, I stopped by a friend's house. He has cancer, and he's younger than me. I went to kindergarten with him, and school through eighth grade. He was my first crush ever. He was a runner. He's since gotten married and has an adorable boy. He has always been one of the healthiest people I know. He's not someone I keep in touch with regularly, but a mutual friend said people were coming over to see him before he finished his chemo, and I wanted to show I was thinking of him. I guess this is all part of growing up though; dealing with these horrible things.


My friend Sarah from work had a birthday this week, and I told her I would make her cupcakes for the event. She requested vegan, which is a pretty foreign concept to me. But I'm an avid watcher of Cupcake Wars on Food Network (big surprise, right?) and the most recent winner when she asked had been a vegan baker. I remembered I'd seen one of her recipes while going through my baking blogs, so I decided to try it: creme-filled chocolate orange cupcakes. With no dairy. Eek! Ultimately, the recipe wasn't that different from a normal cupcake, baking the cake with oil instead of eggs. It did introduce me to an unfamiliar oil, though. Coconut. It is not my friend. The consistency is strange to me and it took a take two to get it right. But a nice chocolate cake baked up, so whatever. Then I made orange butter-less buttercream to fill it, dairy-less ganache to top it and candied orange peel for a garnish. It might have been the biggest mess I've ever made in the kitchen, but ultimately worth it. They turned out tasty! I think I'll use this girl's recipes if I ever get a vegan request again.


On one of my days off, Drew and I had some good friends from school come over and eat dinner. For that, I made pink lemonade cheesecake, another sweet that had been tempting me from my bookmarks. Drew helped, and he actually candied the lemon peel all by himself. I can officially add that to his list of kitchen skills. I thought it was pretty tasty, too. Good summer dessert.


Then today, I was watching the newer episode of Cupcake Wars and got inspired to bake again. I was planning to make belated birthday cupcakes for my friend Nick at work, and I thought it would be a perfect time to use my Flintstones cupcake toppers from Bake It Pretty. So I decided to make Fruity Pebbles cupcakes...ya know, because it's the Flintstones cereal? So I made my favorite yellow cake recipe, mixed in some Fruity Pebbles, frosted them and dipped them in more Fruity Pebbles. I thought they were so cute! And not as ridiculously sweet as you'd think, either. Not bad for no recipe!

So now I will need to branch out. I'm thinking Cap'n Crunch cupcakes maybe? More vegan? Or cake pops... I will have to work up more courage to try those!