Holiday cake pops, chocolate mint roll cake and madeleines

I pack up and head west today for my holidays with family. This year, both of my step-siblings will be in town from Canada, which makes our holiday feel a little more full. Actually, my family is fairly small on my dad's side. Usually it's just me, Dad, Cathie and Grandma. So it will be nice to have a few more family members around Christmas morning. Naturally, I'll be carting some baked goods home, along with a boatload of presents and a certain black cat. Can't wait to have him in the car...or not.

The last time Aunt Betty and I made madeleines together, it didn't go. As in, they tasted like lotion or something because of how much rose water the recipe called for. Martha, you failed me on that one. But these were ultimately supposed to be decorated as Santas, and we ran out of time and energy, so we ended up with very lightly flavored orange madeleines. And my opinion of that cookie is redeemed!

Chocolate Andes mint roll cake. Enough said? A goofy Christmas tradition I have is that my mom gives me a box of Andes mints ever year for the holidays no matter what. Roll cakes have kind of eluded me thus far (they seem to crack on me all the time) so Aunt Betty and I decided to try this Andes chocolate roll cake. And boy, was it heavenly. The frosting inside had Andes mints in it as well as the cake having them on top, and it was super rich. And super wonderful.

I feel like Christmas cake pops are going to become a tradition for me (last year's were sparkly!). That, and my friends, Nick and Eric, and their roommates adore these things (I made a batch for Nick's brother for his birthday). So for our viewing of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" this year, I made two flavors of cake pops: the green were chocolate and the white were yellow cake. I hear tell they were gone rather quickly!

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?

Happy birthday Julia! Chocolate almond cake, orange cream meringues and Hefeweizen cupcakes

So Tuesday was a big day for me. I'm not one to talk too much about personal stuff online; I like to separate that stuff from the Internet. But I just hit a year of being single, and I have to say, I never thought it would happen. Neither did anyone in my family or friends, you can ask! See, I've been a serial long-term dater, and dated two different guys over a six-year period before this. But this year has been the greatest yet. I've put a lot more into this blog. I've spent more time with family. I've moved. I've started a new job, a wonderful job. I've decorated my apartment. And, as Cathie said, I've spent a lot of time discovering who I am. Cliched, maybe, but true. Here's to seeing what the next year brings!

Speaking of special days, Monday was a special day too. It was Julia Child's birthday! Well, it would have been at least. She would have been 99. Last year I made her chocolate almond cake to celebrate. I haven't made anything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking since then, although I officially have a Dutch oven and can make boeuf bourguignon when it gets cold again. But I figured the perfect way to celebrate her birthday this year was to make the same chocolate almond cake because it was SO good. And the Biz Journal staff thought so too!

I hadn't baked all week, actually, and then in the last few days I went on a binge. Meringues are something I love, for some reason. They're so darn simple and they melt in your mouth. I made this spiral style last year for Christmas because it was in the holiday version edition of Food Network Magazine. Then recently, Aunt Betty and I made flavored meringue kisses, and my favorite was the orange cream ones. So I combined them and made orange cream swirls the other day.

Then I ran across this recipe for Hefeweizen cupcakes. I love wheat and German beers, so it seemed perfect. It's a beer cupcake with a malt and beer glaze. To be honest, I thought they were a little weird, although I'm not sure what I was expecting. I might need to make them again without the glaze and with a real frosting, lemon-y maybe.

Meringues and a birthday: Meringue cookies, meringue candied almonds and tiramisu cupcakes

Last summer I remember how mild severe weather seemed. In Kansas, you can always expect some rockin' thunderstorms and a few tornadoes in the spring. Well, we are definitely getting paid back for it this year. I know everyone's heard about the tornadoes in Joplin, which are just a huge tragedy. We had tornado warnings around here about that time, which freaked me out a little bit, but they went south. The mark of a true Kansan: watching the storm coming (the lightning was cool!).

But the tornado experience I got this year I've never had before was having to go into shelter at work. I was in downtown KC when our publisher made us go down to the parking garage. Later, the whole building was told via loudspeaker to take shelter. There were multiple funnel clouds around and a couple actually touched down in the metro area. We were downstairs for more than an hour, and the long-time employees didn't remember that ever happening before. Naturally, it happens to me in my first week!


In my never-ending quest to find food I can munch on at work (so I don't spend a million dollars at the food quart), one of the options I came up with were these candied almonds. I've made something similar to them before, but this new recipe used meringue, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite things. Too bad it's a pain in the ass to make in rainy weather, which we seem to have an interminable supply of lately. Anyway, these almonds are super tasty and easy to make. Will probably do again.

Meringue No. 2 for this week: meringue kisses. I've also made a variation of these before, a peppermint sandwich version for Christmastime. I really like how cute the little cookies are, and I pipe them, which I like doing too. These are all three different flavors: the orange ones are orange creme, the green are lime and the pink are tutti fruiti. The basking recipe is from Joy of Cooking. To be honest, the only decent ones were the orange creme, which I want to make again. The other two tasted like cough syrup. Lesson learned: stick with sweeter flavors and less citrus with meringues.


Most of my friends know they all get a free pass — for your birthday I will bake you whatever you please (so if you didn't know this, here's your warning!). Last weekend was my friend Brianne's birthday. Back when my friends and I had the time (and the same days off) to do dinner parties, she requested a tiramisu cake. So it was only fitting that for her birthday I make her these tiramisu cupcakes. I've also made these before, but I remember them being significantly more difficult. Guess I wasn't as experienced then. Even Joe, who's anti-coffee flavor, ate at least part of one. Paired with some sake bombs, these were a fun birthday treat! (P.S. - Posting them on Hoosier Homemade's Cupcake Tuesday!)

Soda cupcake trio and some very big news!

I know it's been a little bit of radio silence over here this week, but I promise, I have a darn good reason. I've had a busy couple of weeks...covered a Royal Wedding watch party, went to Salina with our photographer, Richard, to cover a Lawrence student going to military school — actually, that one has turned out to be my favorite story I've written at the LJ. But actually, the biggest news has to deal with the LJ: this Friday is my last day there. I've accepted a position at the Kansas City Business Journal, where I will be a reporter and copy editor, dealing with the web primarily. I'm pretty excited, but it's also my first move between jobs. So hopefully it goes well!


Part of my farewell this week will be a fair amount of baking. I'm actually really sad about about leaving my coworkers; they're great people. I think that's the hardest part of leaving, actually. It'd probably be easier if I hated them, but I don't. So because this is my last week working with them, I want to treat them to some Brenna sweets before I go. For today's cupcakes, I went with a soda theme. Option 1: cherry Coke cupcakes. They have a cola-flavored cake with four maraschino cherries baked in, then a cream cheese cola icing. I don't even really like straight cola flavor, but I liked these.


Option 2: Creamsicle cupcakes. Okay, so that's an ice cream treat sort of, but I've had an orange creme soda before too. I used this orange cake recipe, then sort of made my own frosting up. It's my basic vanilla frosting with marshmallow fluff mixed in. On top I made a candy melt topper that tastes like orange.


My last option is root beer cupcakes, which I've made once before. They're made with root beer extract, which is the weirdest thing. I actually found it at Walmart, of all places. I made my basic vanilla frosting and added some of that.

So, starting late next week, I have a new staff to bake for. I'm excited but nervous as well. Guess we'll see how it goes! P.S.: posted these over at Hoosier Homemade's Cupcake Tuesday!

Lake baking: Scones, chocolate cream pie and rhubarb upside down cake

My first baking sign of spring: rhubarb! Other great things about this season include all the good stories I've got coming up, the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale (May 14, mark your calendars!), a few weddings, some shows at Starlight... I'm not sure there's anything not great about spring/summer. Except maybe allergies. Oh, yeah, and another great thing: the lake.

As you can see, Daisy enjoys a good jaunt on the boat at high speed. Despite some chilly weather, I went to the lake last weekend to spend time with dad, Cathie and grandma. I read a book, went out on the boat, watched some movies, fed my family desserts. Not sure it gets much better than that!

For breakfast, scones. I got this recipe from the public information officer for our local sheriff's, actually. It comes up fairly regularly that I like to bake a lot, and he gave me what he said was a foolproof recipe for scones. Turns out, it is perfect. I sometimes don't like scones, because they can be so heavy with all that butter, but these were made with cream and so much better. He also recommended cinnamon chips, which I'd never used before. One field trip to Checkers took care of that. These were great and easy. Definitely making again.

So, from reading this blog, you've probably gathered I love (most) Martha Stewart recipes. When her new pie cookbook was released, I bought it immediately. Chocolate cream pie was the first recipe in the book, and it looked like a darn good place to start. Lemme tell you, even as someone who's not a huge fan of chocolate, this was divine. I can't wait to make more recipes in there!

And last, but not least, rhubarb upside down cake. You know, that cake I set on fire last year? It was almost exactly a year ago! Well, no fire this time. The rhubarb was very red, so it made a beautiful cake. The cake itself has a hint of orange, and then there's a crumble base. I think rhubarb is kind of nature's sweet tart, and it makes awesome desserts. I've got some left over, so I might make strawberry-rhubarb ice cream, or something. All in all, I'd say my family was fed pretty well this weekend!

Sour Patch Kids cupcakes

First they're sour, then they're sweet! First disclaimer: I know I don't usually write about just one dessert. But this one, I just had to. So Kelly and I have a favorite candy: Sour Patch Kids. Kelly will buy me a box of them any time I'm really down (she's a great best friend!). A bag of Sour Patch Kids has even mysteriously appeared in the background of one of my roommate's videos about Big 12 sports. So needless to say, the candy is a favorite.


So a while ago Kelly and I started talking about making Sour Patch Kids cupcakes. Like, six months ago. But I figured if we were going to make these cupcakes, we'd have to make them right.


So I got cupcake wrappers to match the four flavors.


Coloring to match the colors.


Flavoring to match each flavor (cherry, orange, lemon and lime). And the kicker, which was tart and sour flavor enhancer. (Edit: Looks like my original source for this is out, so here are a couple other places to find it: LorAnn, Baker's Nook, Sears and Amazon.) Add it into a swiss meringue buttercream.


A basic yellow cupcake and a Sour Patch Kid on top.


In the process, obliterate the kitchen. Many times over.


So in the end, you get a complete cupcake with a sour-sweet frosting in a specific flavor. Completely successful. I will make them again...but not for a while.

Edit: Since posting this, I've had requests for amounts and how to make them. I tend to experiment a lot, but here's the amounts. I wanted a massive amount of cupcakes to share with people at work and for Kelly to take home. I made 1 1/2 recipes of the yellow cake. Be careful not to fill the liners very far, because this recipe rises a LOT. 2/3 full will do it, and better to go a bit lower even. This gave me 48 (!) cupcakes. One batch generally makes 30, give or take a few.

Then I made two batches of this swiss meringue buttercream (not at the same time though, just when I was ready for them. I split the recipe in half for each flavor. I put in a bit of color and flavoring, then about a quarter bottle of the tart flavoring. That seems like a lot, but it took that much to really give it the punch of Sour Patch Kids. Then I added coloring and fruit flavoring to taste. So for two batches split in half, you'll get all four frostings. The amounts were almost perfect for 12 cupcakes each. Enjoy!

A successful surprise 90th party, complete with cake and cupcakes

Operation Surprise 90th Birthday Party: complete success!


This Saturday, after working 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. (on four hours of sleep!) I hopped in a car full of cupcakes, a cake, my clothes and my cat and headed to the Brookville Hotel in Abilene for a surprise party for my grandma. She turned 90 last week, and a whole bunch of family gathered at the restaurant, where she and my grandpa celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary when I was 6. This time it was my family, my uncle's family and a multitude of my dad's cousins there to celebrate.


This is easily one of my favorite places in the world to eat, even better when filled with family. Dad had told Grandma that it was just them and my stepmom Cathie going to dinner. She walked into the room and saw a table full of about 2o family members and was shocked, then immediately asked how Dad got us all together. He' just sneaky, I guess :)


After dinner, everyone drove back to Salina to my dad's house. There we ate the treats I'd made in the days before. I made two kinds of cupcakes: red velvet (at Dad's request) and screwdriver cupcakes, which is Grandma's favorite alcoholic drink.


The red velvet was simple, my favorite Martha Stewart recipe. They always end up light and fluffy and wonderful. The cream cheese frosting is excellent as well.


The screwdriver cupcakes weren't too shabby either. I got the recipe from Booze Cakes, which I got a few months ago. It called for coconut in the cupcake, but I'm anti-coconut, so I left it out. The cupcake ended up tasting like Trix to me. The frosting recipe, on the other hand, was a disaster. Just goes to show that I should just follow the recipe I know works and flavor it accordingly. It basically gave me orange-vodka flavored soup. Yech. I also candied orange peels to go on top.


Together, they looked pretty snazzy, I think. :)


Then was the birthday cake. I made a couple layers of square cake from my favorite yellow cake recipe. I froze it overnight and then decorated it super late the night before the party. I frosted it with buttercream and then did my first experiment with fondant, the bow. The night before, I rolled it out and dyed it (and my fingers too!) and then cut it into strips, which I formed into loops and let set. After frosting the cake, I attached the loops to make a bow, then frosted down by the cake board, and voila! My first attempt at a decorated cake! I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. And I'm going to count it as completing one of my baking goals. It's not a cake totally covered in fondant, but it's on there, so I think it works.


Grandma was too. It was incredible to have everyone in town. That picture is four of my dad's cousins with my grandma. They live all over Kansas and Oklahoma and came down for this one day! It's also pretty incredible that Grandma is 90 and still doing well.


So I've spent the weekend being lazy with Grandma, eating my favorite Salina food and watching old movies. Pretty sure none of them we've watched were made after 1954 (The Philadelphia Story, Harvey, White Christmas and Singin' in the Rain). It's been a super relaxing break, and having my kitty cat here with me has been entertaining as well. He's currently complaining that I've shut him in the TV room with us.

Ultimately, the best thing I got from this weekend: I am very lucky to still have my wonderful Grandma around. I was also very lucky to see so many family members this weekend (that's my uncle on the left; he lives in Illinois and I don't see him often). So for my Thanksgiving break, I am thankful for all that.

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!