Cupcake Wars- Truce

As we made plans for our vacation out west, it was a no-brainer that I'd sneak in some time to make cupcakes with Reagan. I really wanted to try out this sunflower version which also happen to be Reagan's favorite flower. So happy, so fun, such a good use of an Oreo!

The only problem is that I chose buttermilk frosting which sounds delicious, but lacks the stiffness necessary to make a good petal. When we refrigerated it, the petals separated into a stringy mess. Reagan discovered that by just using the Oreo top rather than the entire double-stuffed Oreo the petals didn't have quite as far to wilt. She also insisted on adding the ladybugs which I initially didn't think were all that big of a deal. In the end, they were the perfect touch.

As you can see, our eldest daughters were more than happy with the results. While we're happy with the results, Reagan and I would both like to try this one again using regular frosting.

I mentioned this latest cupcake project to my sister Katrina who expressed an interest in joining the fray. When I asked why she didn't jump in from the start, she reminded me the summer is a bit crazy with her tinies running around. Now that school is in session, I'm looking forward to seeing her cupcake masterpieces! I think Lisa should join as well... that way she can stop helping Reagan with hers and mine just might have a chance of winning :)

Stay tuned for the next challenge...

Cupcake Wars- Red, White & Blue Challenge

Reagan suggested for our next round of cupcake wars that we select a theme: red, white and blue. I thought that was particularly apropos with the 4th of July right around the corner. However, I had to temporarily abandon my Hello Cupcake book to do it. After a fairly extensive search, I finally settled on these cupcakes which are originally found here.

The Uncle Sam cupcakes are actually frosted upside down with a decorated ice cream cone on top for the hat. Brent particularly likes the strawberry Fruit by the Foot that makes up the red band. I found mini cones and knew I had to make some little ones too. Liesel always loves the mini cupcakes because they're just her size. So we have some Uncle Sam cupcakes and Nephew ???. I still haven't thought of a good name for the minis. Any suggestions are welcome!

We experimented with a few other sizes and designs (including a small cake) and added fruit to some of them. It is summer after all! The below photo shows all our creations (minus more Uncle Sam cupcakes we gave away to friends). I like how the strawberries look like a heart because I do indeed love the USA!!!

I can't wait to see what Reagan comes up with! Rumor has it she's trying to avoid the 4th of July theme so they should be interesting. In the meantime, feel free to wander over to her blog and vote for one of the past cupcake wars (on the right hand side). I think for total votes we're neck and neck!

On Like Donkey Kong

After I made the vegetable garden cupcakes for Memorial Day, my sister did this blog post about her own "duck-cakes". In doing so, she has thrown down the gauntlet and proclaimed a cupcake war between us. Normally I'm against violence but when my creativity is thrown into question, I have no choice but to defend myself. So for Father's Day, I made Brent a special dinner of spaghetti and homemade meatballs.

For dessert, I also made spaghetti and meatballs. The noodles are pretty self explanatory, but you may be wondering about the meatballs. They're actually Ferrero Roche tossed in strawberry flavored pie filling. Grated white chocolate on top adds a nice touch.

I was really excited with how they looked; I almost didn't care how they tasted! Turns out hazelnut balls with strawberry flavor is a revelation. And the recipe called for plain vanilla frosting but I opted for butter cream to get more of a noodle color. Oh my deliciousness! They taste just as fabulous as they look. Brent loved them too.

So if you'd like to silently wage your support for me in this cupcake war, feel free to skip on over to Reagan's blog and vote for one of my cupcakes while the poll is still open! And Reagan? Te toca a ti!!!

Cuppy Cake

Long ago I bought the book Hello, Cupcake! and ever since then have been dying to try out one of the adorable creations on the glossy, color pages. All I needed was an occasion and a little help. Our ward had a Memorial Day picnic so I signed up to bring a dessert. It just so happens my in-laws were visiting for the weekend as well. I knew I could enlist my sweet so sweet MIL for some slave labor. Of course, Liesel wanted to join the melee so I was all set. Memo to me, memo to me: I really need to get her a little apron of her own!

This was the easiest part of the entire process; frosting the cupcakes.

Liesel's no brown-noser... that's frosting that somehow missed her mouth!

The cupcake design I picked was far and away the most difficult. It required the most candy, different colored frosting and intricate piping. But it was SO cute, I just couldn't resist! My MIL was a doll and patiently worked, chatted and entertained Liesel. All of us were sneaking bits of candy. Even so, the sugar high had run out by the time we finished several hours later.

Jeanne diligently working on the signs. She did ALL of them!

Liesel proudly displaying the finished product. I'm glad we snapped a photo; they didn't last long!

I love the idea of eating veggies for dessert! These are vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting, dipped in crushed Oreos which makes up the dirt. The radishes are red Starbursts dipped in white chocolate with leaves made of cornflakes covered in green frosting. The peas are green M&M's wrapped in watermelon Airheads with Twizzlers curled around them. The carrots are orange Starbursts covered with a little cinnamon (to make them look like they've just been pulled out of the dirt) with green piping. The lettuce has a green M&M center with the cornflakes arranged around them. The signs are graham crackers covered in white chocolate and then piped with different colored icing. A pretzel on the back holds them into the cupcakes. Oh, and pretzel and gum shovels with bits of different colored Twizzlers cut to look like seeds.

Yeah, I picked the most difficult one in the whole book. But don't they look adorable? And it was a lot of fun putting them together. Thanks Jeanne!

Fail

My mother tells me my grandmother made homemade bread often. She would have it hot and ready when they came home from school for lunch. Mom made it less often and tripled the recipe so it was a big deal when she did. We often had it with soup and whole milk. It was a true comfort food and looking back I don't know I appropriately appreciated it.

A couple of years ago I made a plea to get all of Mom's classic recipes. Grandma Grace's homemade bread was among them. During the last April General Conference I thought I'd give it a try since I'd be home all day anyway. I knew my Grandma was tough, but I had no idea how tough until I did some true kneading. Not only did I break a sweat, but I keenly felt the old injuries from my broken arms. All that work was more than worth it though as it started to rise and then bake. Really, the smell that filled the house was just heavenly. The physical food seemed to fit quite well with the spiritual feast we were getting. Mom also passed along a recipe for honey butter which complimented the warm loaves nicely. YUM!

Of course I was looking forward to repeating it with October Conference. We'd bought our own bread pans just for the occasion (I LOVE Crate and Barrel!!!). We talked about who we'd give the extra loaves to: home teaching families, some new people in the ward, and a coworker who recently had a baby. Brent commented the kitchen seemed cleaner as I breezed through the recipe (I was now a bit more familiar). I just forgot one tiny detail: tinfoil over the tops so the crust wouldn't burn. Brent noticed the smoke just before the alarm went off. I ran into the kitchen in time to see all four big loaves and four mini loaves completely burnt. Well, not completely, but let's just say the tinfoil is not a whimsical suggestion.

My heart dropped as I thought about the wasted ingredients, the families we'd been looking forward to surprising, and worst of all, my grandmother who would undoubtedly be so ashamed of her clumsy progeny. She'd never make a mistake like this! Liesel stood in the doorway with a look of alarm on her face as Brent and I tried to figure out what to do. They might be salvageable, they just wouldn't be pretty. I figured the small loaves were cooked through but the big needed more time. We cut open a loaf of each just to be sure. Really it was just the top crust that was ruined but it was REALLY ruined. I sat down, defeated, with two halves of the small loaf in my hands and called my mother to confess.

While I lamented my incompetency to my mother, Liesel moved from the doorway over to me and slowly picked a piece of the warm, soft interior. She popped out her binkie and tried it. Then she took another, then another. She started eating voraciously and I kid you not she gave me a look that said, "See Mom, I like it!" When I mentioned to my mother that at least Liesel seemed to like it she added, "That's amazing! She's a picky eater!" I looked down at my little strawberry blonde who just grinned at me through mouthfuls. My heart melted.

We finished cooking the large loaves, cut one in half to make sure it was finished and then Brent cut off all the tops. I couldn't watch him decapitate the bread I'd worked so hard on. They just look so sad... like a squirrel with no tail or a bird missing a leg. What is bread without the lovely golden brown top? Sure it will taste the same, but you can bet I will never, EVER make this mistake again!!!

Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends

Liesel turned 1 on Thursday! Hooray!!! We celebrated with much fanfare which included: a trip to the Dr. for immunizations, turning the car seat around, photos at JC Penney's and the traditional birthday cake.

Having been inspired by the show Ace of Cakes I decided to try my hand at making a cake in the shape of Liesel's favorite toy; a duck. We're on a budget so I didn't shell out the money for a cake mold but I tried to improvise. We already own an oval glass dish which served as the body. I got a Styrofoam ball from JoAnn's which made the head and cut arcs into it for the bill. The bill was made out of (what else?) Pringles and I cannot begin to tell you how HARD that part was. I didn't need a whole Pringle, just half a Pringle and as it turns out, they're pretty fragile. I nibbled on about a third of a can (they can't be cut with a knife!) before I had two halves that would work. Jr Mint eyes with pink jimmies for eyelashes worked well. The turned up duck tail was a tough one until Brent brought in half of a plastic Easter egg we had just used for Liesel's one year photos. Perfecto!

The only problem was when I ran out of time. Brent needed to head out for the Elder's Quorum dinner before Priesthood session and we were quickly losing daylight for decent photos. The cake wasn't entirely cooled and you can see the frosting started to slide off. Still, I'm glad we were able to get it done and very happy with the results. Liesel was surprisingly persnickety with the idea of digging in, much to Brent's delight. Before I even placed it in front of her, he kept telling me if she didn't destroy it too much we'd be able to have some later. All in all, I'm very happy with it, especially considering I'm a complete amateur with this stuff.

We love our beautiful girl so very much and are so thankful we get to be her parents. To many more!!!

Alton Brown Would Be Proud

I'm no chef. Cooking to me is actually a bit of a mystery. Why anyone would want to dedicate any amount of time to a product that is eaten and quickly forgotten is beyond me. I prefer to do things like quilt, where at the end of it all there's an heirloom that can outlive you and be passed on from generation to generation. However, my outlook on cooking has changed a bit since I've been married.

Brent enjoys all kinds of foods, but when he really likes something, he's particularly verbose. It's rather gratifying and when it happens on occasion, I suddenly don't mind the time I spent in the kitchen. Brent's also good about cooking with me, so I'm not all alone. I love trying out new recipes with him. He's really changed the cooking world for me.

Yesterday I knew Brent would be working late. I had visited a client in the morning and then worked from home for the rest of the day. Even by the time I'd picked up Liesel and walked through the door it was much earlier than usual. With a chunk of lonely time ahead of me, I decided to make good use of the last of the buttermilk. Hmmmm, what can you make with buttermilk? Well, biscuits came to mind so I checked out my New Best Recipe Cookbook (thanks for the tip on this one Katrina!).

The recipe wasn't all that difficult, it was just strange. Put the butter in the freezer, shred it with a cheese shredder and add yogurt? Oooohkay. Mix it with two knives moving in opposite directions? Riiiiight. When I'd finished combining all the incredients I was just sure I'd made a drastic mistake and wasted a lot of ingredients because the dough was a lumpy mess. Hoping against hope, I threw them in the oven and the oh so lovely smell began to waft through the apartment. When they came out, they were browned and fluffy lumps of mess. Then I tasted one. Oh how it melted! They weren't actually lumpy messes at all! They were small mounds of buttery tastiness. I grabbed a jar of jam and a tall glass of cold milk. They were soooooo GOOD! I quickly made the next biscuits larger and cooked them a bit longer.

Brent walked in the door just as I pulled the second batch out of the oven. He smiled at me as his glasses fogged up. He quickly pulled off his coat, gloves, hat and gave me a cold kiss on my cheek. I led him to the kitchen where the hot little mounds of baked deliciousness lay waiting. At my behest, Brent immediately grabbed one, tossing the hot biscuit between his hands as he went for the butter. "Oh, you won't need any butter... trust me. These are buttermilk biscuits." He took his first bite and moaned in appreciation. Then I had him try it with jam. He went into raptures as he ate and I eagerly took in all the praise. He had one, two, three before he admitted he needed to stop. That was dinner. Cooking is worth it with those kinds of accolades. It really is.