Out of the Box - Part 2

Thanks to my wonderful, tech savvy husband Jeff, I am once again able to upload pictures. So yesterday I tried to convince everyone that using mixes are not the kiss of death to your dessert. If you use it as a base, and add other component that are made from scratch, you can come up with some incredible looking and tasting treats.




So here is my Caramel Apple Brownies. I simply used a box of Duncan Hines Brownie mix and then before baking, topped it with chopped Granny Apples and some caramel chips. Yummy!

Here are the Pumpkin Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies. The recipe for the pumpkin cream cheese is as follows:

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 Tbsp butter, softened

5 ounces pumpkin puree

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

Whip the cream cheese and butter together until light and fluffy. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until combined.

For the swirl brownies, put some of the pumpkin mix in lines across the top of the brownie layer and then, with a toothpick or knife, swirl the mix into the brownie. Make sure not to over swirl, or you will lose the effect that you are creating.

Mini Pink Lemonade Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream and topped with lemon zest,

Mini Pumpkin Brownie Cupcakes topped with Chocolate Ganache,

Mini Cinnamon Rolls with a Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting and topped with a Toffee Crunch.

For the cinnamon rolls, take a sheet of crescent dough, spread a mixture of butter, brown sugar and cinnamon (I'm afraid I have no recipe here for you because I just eyed the measurements on this one) over the top, and then roll to desired size. Cut and bake, let cool and then top with the frosting. To make the frosting, I used about 2 ounces of cream cheese and 2 packets of McDonald's Caramel sauce.

Instead of swirling the pumpkin with the brownie, I just made layers with the two flavors. For the ganache (which is one of the easiest icings to make and probably also one of the tastiest), I heated 8 ounces of heavy cream and then added 12 ounces of semi sweet chocolate chips. Stir until the chocolate is melted and then let cool to a consistency where you can pipe out the ganache to make the dollop.

And there you have it, fancy dessert without speeding hours in making it. With mixes, the possibilities are endless once you get creative with your recipe.

Out of the Box

Once again I am having trouble uploading pictures onto our computer so that I can post them on here. And while I didn't have a ton of pictures for you all today, I did have some, and they would have helped to demonstrate my point of the blog. Anyway, I figured I would still post, sans pictures, and hope to get them posted later this week.



With the holiday season upon us, I have lots of baking to do, and last week was no exception. My husband need a Thanksgiving themed dessert for a pig out at his work. I also had some friends over for a jewelry party, and had promised everyone goodies. So to make life easier, I turn to my good friends Duncan Hines and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Now don't be so surprised and please pick your jaw up off the floor. Yes, there are times I use mixes. Duncan Hines makes a kick ass brownie, and it's a lot easier then chopping all the chocolate. I know people see using mixes as cheating or just buying store bought bake goods, but if you really think about it, even if you use a mix, it's still home made, it's just not from scratch. Now, don't get be wrong, I just didn't open a box, bake it off and then tried to pass it off as some wonderful creation. I doctored everything, adding components that were made from scratch to my mixes. For The pig out party at Jeff's work, I made brownies two ways. The first was a caramel apple brownie, were I topped the brownie mix with chopped apples and caramel chips. The second was a pumpkin cream cheese swirl brownie. Here I made the pumpkin cream cheese mix and then added it to the brownie mix. (when I get my pictures on here, I will include the recipe for the pumpkin cream cheese filling along with another recipe).



My next fancying up of mixes came when I made mini brownies for the jewelry party. I had some leftover pumpkin mix, so I made some mini brownie cupcakes, topped them with the pumpkin mix and baked. After they were cool, I topped them with a dollop of yummy ganache. They were the hit of the night. Also for that night, I took a roll of Pillsbury Crescent dough (the sheet, not the rolls), made up a filling of butter, cinnamon and brown sugar, and made some mini cinnamon rolls. Once they were cooled, I took some cream cheese and some caramel sauce to make a nice icing for the rolls. And here's a little tip about caramel sauce. Caramel sauce is not something I usually keep in house, and I wasn't going to make a batch of it just for a little icing. So what I did was use the caramel sauce that comes with McDonald's Apple Dippers. You might find this crazy, but our kids don't eat the apples with the sauce (keeping part of the Happy Meal healthy), so we save a few for occasions just like this. Then you have caramel sauce and not the messy jar that always seals itself shut.



So after confessing to using mixes sometimes, I hope you all don't think any less of my baking skills, and see this post as a new way to make something spectacular, yet easy on you. You really can do a lot with mixes, heck there are books out there on this whole subject. And when you need something fast, mixes can be a great help, and still be home made.

Birthday Goodies for a Halloween Pumpkin

Pam, one of the Moms from my playgroup, has an adorable little girl, Hayden, who was having her first birthday on, you guessed it (or maybe you didn't if you don't pay attention to the titles) Halloween. So Pam contacted me to see if I could make some cupcakes and a smash cake for the party. Her request was for a pumpkin smash cake and cupcakes with a girly Halloween theme. I read this and thought, what fun! So after thinking and making up some sample cupcakes, I came up with a mummy with a pink bow, a black cat, and a pink witch's hat with a little black flower. To make these creations, I need to make up some marshmallow fondant (my recipe for the day...see I told you I would include one again soon). This recipe is very easy, not too messy and gives you a nice product to work with. So without further ado...here we go!









8 ounces marshmallows

2 Tbsp water

1 to 2 pounds powdered sugar

Crisco (or any type of vegetable shortening)



Put the marshmallows in a heatproof bowl and add the water. Put the bowl in the microwave and heat it for about 2 minutes until the marshmallows puff up. Stir the marshmallows until they get smooth. If you want to, you can add food color or give it flavor. Adding the color now does help reduce any mess of coloring the fondant by hand (learned that from personal experience and very colorful hands).

Now add the powdered sugar and stir the mixture with a well greased spoon. Keep adding powdered sugar until it looks like a dough. Turn out the dough on a greased work surface and with your hands, greased with Crisco, start kneading the fondant. Keep adding a little powdered sugar at a time until it is not sticky anymore.

Be careful not to use to much powdered sugar because it could make it too dry. When it feels pliable and ready to roll, you have your fondant. If you are not using the marshmallow fondant right away then rub a bit of Crisco on it, wrap it in plastic wrap and seal it in a airtight bag or container. But if you do want to get started on your creation, you are now are ready to roll out the fondant, or shape it anyway you like.

Pink Lemonade cupcake with vanilla buttercream and pink witches hat.

Chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream and black cat .

Vanilla cupcake with vanilla buttercream. The eyes and bow are made out of the marshmallow fondant.

Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and marshmallow fondant stem.

Happy First Birthday Hayden. Hope you had a spooktacular time! (sorry couldn't resist)

We Now Return You to Our Regularly Schedule Blog

Alright, we are back in business here on my blog. In fact I have many pictures, although no recipes, for you today. Last week, my friend Heather asked if I could make some construction themed cupcakes for her son Kogan's 3rd birthday. I quickly made up a construction guy's face ala Bob the Builder. Heather thought it was cute, but Kogan, a boy who know what he wants and isn't afraid to ask for it, wanted a dump truck or digger on his cupcakes. So, this got me working on making something I had never done before. I saw a technique on a blog, Cake Journal, about making fondant plaques with a 2D image. So before I showed Heather what I would do, I did a test run, to make sure I could do it, and we had a winner. Below is the procedure to make the plaques. I used a marshmallow fondant, which I was going to include the recipe for, but I already had so many pictures to share with you, that I hope to share that with you next week, when I use it again for another cupcake order.



I should also mention that you will see more then just Dump Truck Cupcakes below. You see, Heather and Kogan share more then just the Mother/Son bond, they also share a birthday. So I made up some cupcakes, just for Heather, with pink and yellow fondant hearts. You can't forget Mom on her birthday.



Then along with these cupcakes, I included the cupcakes I made for the Halloween party Jeff and I went to this past weekend. Gotta say, the cupcakes costumes were better then ours. I'm really pleased with the way they turned out, and planned to do them for years to come.



Ok, enough of me blabbing on, here are this week's cupcakes.







After you have rolled out and cut the fondant into circles, place the image you want on the plaque. Then using a pin, pinprick the outline of the image into the fondant.

Here is a close-up of the outline that you have created.

Using a very stiff royal icing, a pastry bag and a small round tip, trace the outline to make your design.

Now, with a thinner royal icing, fill in, or flood, your outlined image to make your design come alive.

A whole fleet of dump trucks ready to roll onto the cupcakes. Let the plaques dry over night so that when you place them on the cupcakes, they hold their shape.

Then with a swirl of buttercream on your cupcake, your edible art work is ready for the party.

Here are the cupcakes I made up for Heather's birthday.

Fondant hearts with some royal icing.

These are the mini cupcakes I made for the Halloween party. If you have some frosting, some candy corns, a little fondant and time, these are easy and a big hit.

Monster, Dracula and the Mummy.

Technical Difficulties

I seem to be having some trouble getting the camera to download the pictures that I need for today's post. Which really sucks, because I am very excited about the cupcakes I was going to share today. I even had three different designs (well really five since the Halloween cupcakes I made for a party were three different ones) to show off, I mean share with you all today. My wonderful computer savvy husband is going to try and work on the problem in about an hour (he's in some meeting and won't drop everything right now - go figure lol). So hopefully later today I will be able to post my blog. If not today, then tomorrow.

In Honor and in Memory

Today is my Dad's birthday, so in honor of him I made my Mom-Mom's Jewish Apple Cake. You see Thursday is my Mom-Mom's birthday, and I wanted to make one of her recipes in memory of Mom-Mom. Dad sent me this one for Jewish Apple Cake, and I thought it was only fitting to make it for this week. My Mom-Mom was an amazing woman. She was loyal, hard working, honest and one heck of a baker. Mom-Mom had a legendary sweet tooth, and I believe she passed that on to everyone in the family. There were always something yummy to eat whenever we went to visit her. She is just one of the reasons I like to bake so much. So Mom-Mom, I hope I did you proud this week in making your recipe. They turned out quite good, if I do say so myself, and made a delicious breakfast for me this morning. (I'm planning on having some on Thursday too for her.)



Preheat oven to 350. Now you are suppose to use a (greased) tube pan for this recipe, but believe it or not, I don't have one. So I made them as muffins. They came out very nice this way and took half as long to bake.



3 c flour
2 c sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. Baking powder



1 cup oil
4 eggs
¼ cup orange juice
2 ½ tsp. vanilla



4 chopped apples
2 tsp Cinnamon
5 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. nutmeg

This is a pretty simple recipe. Put all your dry ingredients together, mix all you wet ingredients together, and combine the chopped (and peeled) apple together with the sugar and spices.

Mix the wet ingredients with your dry ingredients. You will get a very thick and very sticky batter.

Pour half the batter into your pan. Add a layer of apples and then cover with more batter. Top with the remaining apples.

Bake for 1 1/2 hour. Yes believe me it will take that long to bake, and it will be so worth the wait. If you do make these as muffins (like I did), bake for about 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean (the good old reliable toothpick test).

You can serve this warm or cold, with powdered sugar sprinkled on top, or not. Just make sure you enjoy them.

Pretty in Pink

As you may or may not know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is a disease that hits close to home for my family. Right before her 31st birthday, my sister was told she had breast cancer. So when I saw a post on Beantown Baker with a challenge, I had to do this in honor of Jodi. The challenge was simple, just make something pink. So I went a little crazy and made Pink Lemonade Cake (and cupcakes). I had never tried this recipe before, but after doing a little Internet surfing, and tweaking the recipe just a little, I had my pink cake (and cupcakes). You will see two different decorations in the post today. The first is the cake for the challenge which I decorated in different shades of pink fondant. And then the cupcakes that I decorated to look like mummies for a playdate that I am hosting today.




http://www.beantownbaker.com/2009/10/power-of-pink.html



This is the logo and link from The Beantown Baker's blog.

2 c flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 c sugar

1/2 c oil

4 egg whites

2/3 c frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed

1/4 c buttermilk

1/4 c heavy cream

zest from 1 lemon

Preheat your oven to 350. In a bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and baking soda, set aside. Also, combine the buttermilk and heavy cream to use later. In another mixing bowl, combine sugar, oil, whites, lemonade and zest. Alternatively add flour mix and buttermilk/heavy cream to sugar mixture. You may or may not want to add some pink food coloring, I did.

Pour into greased pans or cupcake papers and bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Decorating the cake with different stripes of pink fondant.

Some fondant pearls just to dress it up a bit (and hide the seam).

The Breast Cancer ribbon. (sorry for the blurry picture)

Little mummies ready for the kiddos.

To make these I just frosted the cupcakes with some white frosting and then used the backside of a basket weave tip to create the bandages. Leave a open space for the eyes and then place 2 chocolate chips (upside down) so your mummy has a face. So cute and so easy.