Katie-Kelsey-Kupcake-Katastrophe

photo: World's Largest Cupcake by none-other than Duff Goldman, the owner of Charm City Cakes and featured on Ace of Cakes, the Food Network show. (photo courtesy of delish.com)
This past Saturday, my roommate Katie and I ventured into the world of cupcakes sans papers for a friend's birthday party. Greased tins? yes. Successful? Not so much. After peeling away 18 cupcakes by hand to find a soft and extremely messy outer layer, we realized these could not be served. Not as cupcakes, anyway.

So, we smushed them into a casserole dish and iced the top. Oh, and distracted from the gaps by adding heart-shaped strawberries, cookie crumbles and chocolate covered coffee beans. And we called it a cake.

Lesson learned: do NOT use Crisco. For anything (at least, that's my theory.).

The chocolate icing was what was truly to-die for; recipe to be posted soon.

best wishes in your baking endeavors!

I've been busy?

Long time, no update! Ah well, it's been pretty crazy with graduation, the holidays and a niece's birthday. I almost lost my baking touch (gasp!) but I think it may have been salvaged in the last week. My most recent baking exploits:

- Thanksgiving: a chocolate meringue pie. It was my first time baking a pie (though not a first for the pie crust), and my first time making meringue. The recipe looked easy enough, but I think it should have been more specific as far as how long to let the chocolate mixture go on the stove. My chocolate never thickened, even after freezing. The meringue, while delicious, also didn't spread well, so it looked like little icebergs of meringue floating on a chocolate ocean. Delicious according to all and completely devoured by the end of the night, but a bit of a failure in my opinion.

- Pre-Christmas: sugar cookies. The dough was made by my sister and I did the rolling and cutting (very soothing). The cookies themselves weren't sweet enough, but her icing compensated. The only problem was that the icing wouldn't harden, allowing you to stack the cookies. So when I decorated cookies with friends, I made a new icing that advertised itself as perfect for cookies because it hardens quickly. One problem: way too much crisco! It was all you could taste and the tupperware containers were impossible to clean with all that grease! It was good fun though (see picture), as was making creative and hip ornaments for my friends' tree.

- Christmas: Snowball cake. Another fantastic success thanks to Kraft Foods! The recipe was about as simple as it gets, but super delicious with the cream cheese surprise and crunchy coconut. The cake also comes out super moist.

- Soup night: rosemary bread. My first-ever bread and it got rave reviews. A great accompaniment to any soup, this bread is supposed to be an imitation of Macaroni Grill's bread, though most people said its better. I would recommend this recipe to anyone, first-time bread makers or seasoned bakers!

Will do my best to keep up with the blog. Now that I'm done with school (!!!), I'll have a lot more time to try new recipes. A delicious basket of cookies could be just the trick to getting that new job....

Great video for holiday baking

Beginning Bakers slide show!

Easy-peezy Biscuits

Energized from my run this morning, I whipped up some love-ly biscuits (pun intended). They were so easy (box mix and milk) that I don't think this can really be considered baking. The mixing was easy enough, but the trouble came when I had to roll them out. The batter was way to sticky, so I added loads of flour----- and ended up with flour-covered biscuits. They were still tasty, though, especially with some butter or jam. Enjoy the photos!

CARROT CAKE!

Today I had the honor of baking what could be the best-ever carrot cake recipe. It was the perfect ending to a surprise Grandma's-birthday dinner. Here's the recipe; I recommend it to all! Oh, and pictures should be coming soon...

Homemade thin mints... always a good idea

Roomies and I embarked on a mission to outwit those money-swindling Girl Scouts (no hard feelings, I was one of them for a time) and make our OWN thin mints. First a side note: let me establish that thin mints are the best Girl Scout cookie. I too like Samoas and Tag-a-longs (though there are way too few in a box), but all that chocolate chip and Do-Si-Do business is a waste of time; if you are buying Girl Scout cookies, you are buying thin mints.
Moving on.... So, the recipe seemed surprisingly easy. The only additional ingredients we needed were peppermint extract (of which I'm sure I will never be able to use up, as this recipe only called for 3/4 of a teaspoon) and dark chocolate. We just mixed the dough, rolled it into logs and popped them into the freezer for an hour. Then we sliced, baked and dipped them into the dark chocolate.
They came out delicious and a little richer than regular thin mints, which has made them last a little longer in a four-girl household. Our only mistake was cutting the cookies a little too thick, which left them with less crunch than the green-boxed variety. Oh, and the recipe can be found here (along with other Girl Scout cookie recipes). Good luck with yours!