Sugar Filled Skeleton Cupcakes

You know those annoying people who complain on Facebook about aspects of their life they have some control over, but repeatedly do things to make the situation worse? So yeah, that's me. I am tired pretty much all the time. It's not worse than any other parent. I'm just Mom Tired. Busy Tired. Just plain tired. Buuuuuttttt, I also really miss baking. I complained about that too. Then proceeded to spend the next 5 hours on cupcakes. Totally logical.

Weeks prior, I'd scheduled a competition at work that I called "Spooky Food Day" where the only prize was bragging rights. And I had picked my entry. I knew the moment I saw them that I needed to make them. Skeleton cupcakes from Cookies and Cups. Things had been hectic and by the end of business that day, I knew I didn't have time to do them. Naturally, I went ahead and did them anyway. Here's how the eve of Halloween Eve went down.

7:30pm

I'm alone with a 3.5 year old and 6 month old while my husband is at a conference. This means I am making cupcakes from a box. While the toddler eats dinner (he requested marshmallows and we negotiated and landed on a Lunchable) I put the baby in a wrap and whip up the boxed cake mix. Don't judge. 

8:40

The husband returns home and sees me dipping pretzels in white chocolate. He offers to go to the store for me to buy pre-dipped pretzels. I decide to be lazy on this front too and let him go. I was 11 in and already sick of it.

Plus they were really ugly.

9:00pm

While the husband is at the store, I start putting marshmallow heads on sticks. Since I had the white chocolate out anyway, I dipped the stick tips in it first, as though that's what I actually planned to use it for. It made me feel slightly more organized.

9:22

The husband calls from the store. They don't have white chocolate dipped pretzels but they do have dark chocolate. Or white star shaped pretzels with peppermint flakes. I debate whether I would like to have disgusting cupcakes by mixing peppermint with red velvet or weird looking brown skeletons. I opt for the brown skeletons. 

A little later, I'm making buttercream frosting and run out of powdered sugar. I call the husband but he doesn't answer, so I text him. Around this time, I decide that dipping the cupcakes in sprinkles would be easier than shaking them out of the container, so I try to pop the lid off and end up doing this: 

9:45pm

Husband returns from the store with the brown chocolate pretzels. I get mad and ask why he didn't answer his phone because I still need powdered sugar, but then he hands me a McFlurry, so I shut up and head off to WalMart. I think about how much I hate that place and this is the second time it's saved me in a late night baking emergency. I take a look and find 2 small bags of white chocolate covered pretzels left on the shelf, so the night starts looking up a bit. I have no pictures of the WalMart trip, but you might check out People of WalMart if you're interested.

10:10pm

I return from WalMart, start piecing things together, find it's a huge pain in the ass and curse myself for deciding on this project. Sometime around 11pm I decide that the skeletons don't need arms all that badly.

12:30am

I'm finally done

And here are the "rejects". I had run out of sprinkles (see 9:22pm) and white chocolate pretzels, so I had to finish out with chocolate.

It slipped my mind, so I don't have pictures of the competition, but there were some really creative entries in there. Someone on my team won, so I was pretty happy about that. 

So that's that. I hope you're now inspired to bite off more than you can chew. I'm off to bed :)

Baby Got...Pie

It's been a crazy few weeks around here. We put our house on the market and bought a new one. With all the fixing and cleaning required to put our house for sale, my husband's 34th birthday quietly came and went. No big deal he said, we can celebrate a few days later when the craziness dies down. So a Father's Day/Birthday celebration it would be. I was getting excited because since the baby was born 8 weeks ago, I've completely neglected my other blog, Baby Got Cake. Without being at work and having people to eat it for me, I needed a real reason (other than something like, "It's Tuesday! Yay!") to make a cake.

But my husband decided to break my heart. He's told me this before, but no matter how many times he says it, it just doesn't compute. "I don't really care for cake." Every cake making occasion that rolls around for him, I ask because I really can't comprehend someone NOT liking cake. What's wrong with you? But it's the man's birthday and he's a great father, so I say give him what he wants. French silk pie it is.

Please don't mind the bad pictures. They are (gasp) cell phone pics. The real camera is packed away. Oh, and for that matter, so are my piping bags so excuse my Ziploc decorating. This moving stuff is really cramping my style...

Anyway, it's not quite your typical french silk pie. It's a graham cracker crust (not homemade per my husband's request and I was happy to oblige). Most of the time, these are made with a nice flaky pastry crust. You may also notice that the whipped cream is chocolate. More on that later. 

The base recipe is from the Pioneer Woman. She NEVER lets me down. But in my typical fashion, I managed to screw up a very simple recipe. I used some leftover Ghirardelli baking chocolate I had in the cabinet, but it was missing the wrapper. I figured that each square was an ounce like the other brand I normally use. I figured out later, I was wrong. I gave the beater to Nate to taste and he asked, "What flavor is this?" It's a French silk pie, so it's obviously chocolate flavored. This was his way of telling me he couldn't taste it. I got all offended and stormed off to continue to make my pie. How dare he question my baking ability?!

But then I put it in the crust and noticed it looked a little...light colored? I had thrown out the label on my baking chocolate so I looked it up online and sure enough, each square was only a half ounce. It had half the chocolate flavor it needed. Don't tell my husband he was right, he still doesn't know.

I had to fix it somehow because I didn't have extra ingredients and was already invested time-wise. I thought maybe I'd put chocolate shavings on the top and bottom of the whipped cream and make the whipped cream chocolate instead of white. As usual, I asked my Baby Got Cake blogging partner for advice and she concurred so that's what I did. I swear, if I had my own baking show, it would be called "J Saves the Day".

So there it is with the shavings on top. I meant to do curls, but the bar was too frozen at the time. No matter, this worked out better anyway. I'm learning :) The chocolate whipped cream recipe comes from  The Joy of Baking. This stuff is good enough to eat with a spoon. Not saying I did. But I might have. 

So, I hope my cake hating husband loves it. If I remember later, I'll take another lovely cell phone picture of a piece and update. Happy Father's Day!

Homemade Zebra Cakes

I think Kristan from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen is my hero. I was checking out Pinterest the other day and came across a pin containing a recipe for homemade Zebra Cakes. I'm pretty sure I audibly gasped. The post is a few years old, but it was my first time hearing of such a thing and newborn baby or not, I was going to find time to make it happen.

When I was in high school (and could eat more than I can now with less negative consequence), they used to sell single Zebra Cakes in the cafeteria. Don't be fooled, it wasn't any less calories than the 2 pack, this was a massive single cake. I used to get them more than I'd like to admit. But once I was an adult, it just no longer felt appropriate to be eating Little Debbie's for some reason, so I just didn't buy them. Plus, if you open a package only wanting one, you are forced to eat the other one, right?

I was totally craving them during my pregnancy, but never bought them. I have since had the baby but seeing that post brought back the cravings and I knew it wouldn't go away until I made them. So here it is.

They ended up a little bigger than I expected. I think my jelly roll pan was slightly smaller in dimensions than the recipe calls for so the cake rose more. I didn't figure out until the end that I should have cut each piece in half (from top to bottom) instead of stacking two pieces. No big deal. A giant zebra cake never hurt anyone.

I only made 3 deviations from the recipe. First was the use of white cake instead of yellow. I don't think yellow is a good description of a cake flavor so it weirds me out. I also doubled the recipe for the filling. Because I am a fatty and I like filling. Don't judge. Finally, I didn't cut circles because I didn't want to waste a bit of cake. That's just crazy.

Let me tell ya, these things were every bit as good (down to that weird, slick feeling on your tongue after you eat it), dare I say even better than Zebra Cakes and the effort level to make them is quite minimal. That's a dangerous combo, so I'm going to have to forget I ever found this recipe.

My Last Hurrah - Sewing and Baking for Teachers

Today was teacher appreciation day at my son's daycare. He attends a Montessori daycare that's onsite at work and I love what they do. Every day, they work so hard teaching lessons, manners and caring for him so gently. I love to think of new things to show our appreciation when this day rolls around. I've done the coffee cozy thing before and baked goods in the past. This time, I decided to sew and bake. And why not? At 39 weeks pregnant, the sewing and baking days are numbered, I'm afraid.

I decided on reversible totes using this Made by Rae tutorial. I had three teachers to make one for. Here
is side one.

The prints are for ladies and the Mizzou bag is for a male. He went to Mizzou, don't hate on me KU fans :) Side two is below:

I love how they came together. The only thing I did differently from Rae's tutorial was to buy cotton webbing for the handles instead of making them. Made the process much faster, which I needed. I'm quickly running out of energy over here! I was also excited about how easy they were to make. Unlike the usual way my sewing projects go, I never once screwed up the direction of a print when cutting it nor did I have to get out my seam ripper. I call that a win. Eventually, I want to make one of these for myself. Aren't they adorable?

Finally, I added some quick cupcakes. I found these cute boxes at JoAnn's and not only did they happen to match the colors of the bags I was making, but they made perfect bag fillers. Admittedly, I cheated and used a box mix, but the crazy colored buttercream is all mine. I'm hoping to get back to baking from scratch soon...if the baby lets me get some sleep :)

Planes, Trains and Curious Cake

I don't do parties. Don't get me wrong, I like them a lot as long as other people are doing them. I just stress out too much. They just seem like lots of work and stress for a few short hours in which no one will care if things aren't perfect. Seems very "bad mommy" of me, but I like to call it practical. It's a sanity saver for me :) I talked about how practical I usually am in my last post. I keep it simple. Make a cake, have family over, sing happy birthday and have a good time. I also mentioned in that last post that I have had the tendency lately to go over the top with no idea why. I'm still not sure. All I knew is that my son NEEDED an awesome 3rd birthday cake. Luckily, since I don't have real parties, I'm not stuck with any one theme. So I made him a Curious George cake and threw some airplanes on it. 

I also blog about cake with my friend Jessica on BabyGotCake. I had no idea what to make since my son loves so many things. Elmo, George, Thomas, Mickey, etc. I posted to our Facebook Page that I didn't know which to do and the answer came back loud and clear that Curious George was the way to go. I think deep down, I knew that was it. It's the only television show he watches and I had the perfect inspiration.

Facebook also helped me with this decision. My inspiration photo was a tiered cake. I made my two tiers and quickly realized it was going to be entirely too big. My husband voted to keep it two separate cakes. All the Facebook friends who commented completely outvoted him. Majority rules!

Almost forgot about the train part of this post. I didn't make these, but since we aren't allowed to bring in goods from home due to peanut allergies, I ordered these Thomas cupcakes for daycare and we had some leftovers. So adorable!

Like any other project like this I take on, it wasn't perfect. I'll save that for the BabyGotCake post, but through all the frustration, I didn't cry like usual. Until J saw the cake. He walked up to the counter where it sat and said "It's amazing!" He has never used that word before and it doesn't come out a lot here at home. Tears just welled up in my eyes and I quickly forgot all the pain I'd been in from standing all those hours (hey, it's harder when you are 36 weeks along). He is just amazing. It was completely worth it just for that one moment. Happy 3rd Birthday sweet boy!

Wedding Shower Cake Balls

I tend to come up with big plans, end off biting more than I can chew and end up having to drop some of the ideas I had. I end up really disappointed and thinking I've let everyone down, but most of the time, no one notices or cares. Then I end up wondering why I thought my plans needed to be so complicated in the first place. I should probably stop rambling and back up.

At work, we decided to have a bridal shower for someone who has already been married for a few years. It's a long story, but she hadn't had one and we didn't want to let that happen. I decided I had to make these super cute bride and groom Oreo balls. Then, I remembered her love of red velvet cake and decided to make cake balls instead and decorate them like the oreo balls. I'm not a huge fan of red velvet myself, but I found that if you make a red velvet cake, dump a bunch of frosting in it and coat it in white chocolate, it tastes pretty amazing.

Looks pretty amazing too, right? And I haven't quite made it to the learning to take good pictures part of blogging so please don't mind the flash here. It doesn't help that I'm also super pale.

The recipe for the cake balls was pretty easy and really delicious. Especially the frosting. It was absolute perfection, I mean, look at it!

The only thing I did differently in the assembly, mostly because I'm lazy, is just dump the cake in right on top of the frosting after I mixed it up. I do enjoy a moister (is that a word?) cake ball so I wasn't worried about leaving all that frosting in there. If frosting is not your thing (what is wrong with you?!) you may want to remove some first and gradually add it back in as needed.

See? Beautiful! Rolling these babies up is the worst part because I'm so impatient. The balls I rolled got progressively bigger as I went on. Luckily, no one minds when it comes down to it. 

By the time I got this far, it was 12:20am. As I mentioned, I bite off more than I can chew and was also working on this Valentine's Day cake that same night. I emailed my team and told them I was giving up for the night, certain that they would be disappointed that they would not get to eat the brides and grooms I had promised them. They probably think I'm crazy. But as long as I keep providing the goods, who's going to say anything?

Bake me a Cake...

I don't know if you call it a rule or what, but one of my own baking/birthday rules - Never make your own birthday cake. My husband did offer to buy me one. Psh. I have a huge love of made from scratch cake and that just wouldn't do. I was secretly hoping he would make one for me. But the birthday came and went without cake. We did have dinner out, but I was still feeling the need for cake.
In all honesty, it really had little to do with me getting older. Sometimes, I just feel like having cake and since I don't want to seem like a fatty, I need a "reason" to make one. You think I make all those cakes for people at work because I'm nice? :)

I made a Chocolate Cream cake from this cookbook. A triple layer chocolate cake with a buttercream filling and chocolate cream cheese frosting. It was almost too much, even for me...Almost. 

I had to post the slice picture first because the chocolate frosting hides the yummy cream inside and that's such a shame. Want to know the best part of making your own cake? You don't have to frost it smoothly or evenly. Just slap that stuff on and go, it all tastes the same. When it's just for me, I don't do pretty :)

Even though it's not perfect, the boy appreciates it. He had the biggest smile when I told him there was cake. And it got bigger when I put it in front of him. That's my little guy!

Finally! Baking on this blog!

I'm so glad to finally get some cake on this blog! Baking was really my thing for a few years and in the last few months, I really lost motivation. I was training for a marathon over the summer (which is a huge time suck) so I was too busy. Then, in the middle of training, I found out I was pregnant (energy suck) so I've simply lacked the motivation. Marathon + Pregnancy = no cake. I ran the marathon in October and I'm in the second trimester and feeling slightly more energetic, so here goes.

I got a request from a co-worker and fellow blogger to make a cake for her son's first birthday. I was really nervous. I had never made a cake covered in fondant before, but I was definitely up for the challenge. I'm sort of cheating, I also posted about it here, but I won't be posting as many pictures and I'm not pulling the post word for word :) So here it is:

I'll be the first to admit it's not perfect (that's actually a bad habit of mine), but as far as a first time with fondant goes, I think it's a really solid effort and I'm very proud of myself. I was kind of fueled by the fact that I thought my husband doubted me. Even he knew this would be hard. He bet on how many times I would cry during the process. His guess was twice. He's seen this enough when I sew. In all honesty, if he had never said anything, I might have cried during the process once.

I decided then, to stretch out the process a bit. I have a habit of trying to cram everything into too short a time frame, then getting stressed and I thought giving myself a few days would help. It went a little something like this:

Day One: 

8:00pm Toddler goes to bed. Start making lemon cake

9:00pm Cooling cake

11:00pm Wrap cake and freeze. Easy night!

Day Two:

8:00pm Toddler goes to bed. Make lemon buttercream icing

9:00pm Finish up dirty icing the cake and chill

9:30pm Roll the fondant and place on top of the cake

10:00pm Spend the next 1.5 hours trying to smooth wrinkles out of the cake

11:30pm Wonder why I thought I could do this. Refuse to cry because the husband CANNOT be right.

Day Three:

8:00pm Toddler goes to bed (are you noticing I can't do anything until this happens? ;)) Start making my own fondant

9:00pm Realize that the fondant is a fail. Text Jessica (friend, fellow blogger at BabyGotCake, and cake expert) to ask her if she's ever made buttercream fondant. She's never heard of this.

9:15pm Talk the situation out with my husband. Still refusing to cry out of frustration. Do I risk the unknown and try making buttercream fondant instead or risk waking up the toddler by opening the garage to go make a run to Wal-Mart?

9:30pm Decide on going to Wal-Mart. Text Jess again to tell her that fondant sucks

10:00pm Dye and roll fondant, cut out pieces for 1.5 hours

11:45pm Polka dots are on the cake and actually sticking. Internal celebration because I did it. Without crying! Breathe a sigh of relief.

Day Four:

8:00am Check the cake. Polka dots are still in place. Breathe sigh of relief.

11:00am Drop off cake. Everything still in place. Phew!

Almost forgot to add that the cake is modeled after the topper on this party post. I will update again when the mama does her post. It was SUCH a cute set up!