Twinkies on a sleigh

A couple weeks ago, Hostess announced it would close down operations and stop production of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and the plethora of subversive-sounding, “tee hee hee”-inducing, apocalypse-proof overly processed sweets.  ”Zombieland” memes and jokes ensued.  Supermarkets stocks were wiped out.  Ridiculous eBay listings were posted.  Freezers were packed (though… I thought there were so many preservatives and chemicals in these things they’d last for ten years anyway).  A ton of recipes for homemade Twinkies popped up.  I was never a huge Twinkie lover, but I figured I’d give it a shot =)

Homemade Twinkie ingredients

Originally, I wanted to make these for Thanksgiving but I just didn’t have enough time.  I don’t have cake pan molds that are Twinkie-sized nor do I have the time or interest or zen-like calmness right now to make a couple dozen of these things out of foil.  I DO, however, have these mini loaf pans that are bigger than regulation Twinkies (about 1.5 to 2 times the size), so I planned on making extra large sweets from scratch for a dinner party with some close friends.

Huge Twinkie trays

I plugged in to listen to Mariah + Jimmy Fallon + The Roots + cute kids sing “All I Want for Christmas” while I Frankenstein’d a few recipes together and changed and added things here and there, then filled two trays with this lightened cake batter.  The first batch came out a LITTLE over than I intended, but still tasted fine.  The consistency of the second batch resembled the light sponginess of a Twinkie.  Both batches basically looked like mini loaves of pound cake  haha

I let those cool and whipped up frosting.  One recipe suggested a mix of shortening and margarine.  *Insert dry heaving and gagging sounds here*  I used real butter, coconut oil, coconut powder, powdered sugar, vanilla and milk and whipped the filling until it was super airy.  Vin said it was like a really good whipped cream.

Using a chopstick, I poked 3 holes in the bottom of one test loaf from the first batch and piped in the filling.  I was worried it was a little dry, but my lovely taste tester really liked the cake, and he suggested I put MORE filling in the cakes.  Always a brilliant idea… my husband is a genius!  I squeezed extra piping into the rest of the cakes until they were about to burst.  I packed 10 of these for the potluck and emailed everyone that I finally decided what to bring and just made super fat, huge “Twinkies.”  The response: “Kat, I love you even more than I did before!!!! –M”

Let’s hope my friends like them!

Twinkie

P.S. Stay tuned next weekend and the weekend after for more Christmas themed sugary sweets!  Just an FYI: my idea for Christmas is going to be SICK.

P.P.S.  The verdict is in!  The reaction from dinner was super positive!  I was worried they were a little dry and that ppl might not like the plain cream flavor, but I was told these were better than real Twinkies and everyone loved them  =) Yayyyy!!!

A repeat of pumpkin cream cheese whoopie pies with caramel cream cheese and pecan filling

I spent the 2 days leading up to Party Time Wednesday (apparently Thanksgiving eve is one of the biggest nights out of the year and clubs and bars are ridiculously stuffed *ba DUM tsssss* with people gearing up for that mega dose of family time), flipping through food magazines and clicking on a bunch of sites to try to spark any ideas.  Bread?  Cakes?  Cupcakes?  Tarts?  Maple syrup?  Pear?  Cranberry?  Apple?  Bacon?  Pumpkin? Chocolate?  ALL OF THE ABOVE???  It just fizzled.  I didn’t want to make any pies because Vin’s other relatives always bring them, and his sister makes one of THE best cheesecakes, so I steered clear of those desserts.  I scribbled all my potential pastry prospects in my cake notebook and it looked like the musings of a madman, an Einstein that inhaled too much sugar, perhaps, but definitely not the plans of a sane, organized chef.  AND I still had to work on Wednesday, so I wouldn’t have time or energy to do anything elaborate, like a cake that looked like a turkey.  (Maybe next year, if I had a day off before Thanksgiving.)  My indecisiveness had bested me yet again!

Vin had taken the day off on Wednesday and already prepared delicious tomato, olive and cheese bites for the next day, and being that he and I are pretty much the best @ everything =D  whatever I brought to the table (*zing!*) had better be excellent, too.  On the lovely train ride home in the suburban sardine can known as the LIRR, I looked through my recipe idea scribblings again and pretty much decided I’d combine as many flavors as possible and make two things.  I didn’t want to bring just cupcakes to Thanksgiving, even though they’re my specialty, but since I wasn’t making a cake and there were birthdays to celebrate, I decided to kind of make some anyway.  Muffins… cupcakes… close enough.  I thought I’d be pumpkin’d out from the pre-Sandy weekend, but I was kind of indifferent.  Plus, I knew the pumpkin-cream cheese combo was a winner with the pumpkin-cream cheese-caramel frosting, so eh, I might as well make more.  It just really really irks me to repeat something again so soon.  Bah!

So I made 18 whoopie pies for the T house dinner and the rest of the batter was scooped into cupcake wrappers for my family.  After gorging on the delicious buffet Vin’s mom prepared (turkey, pasta, salads, artichokes, chicken, mashed potatoes with mozzarella, stuffed mushrooms, omg I can keep going…), the long-awaited dessert table was set up.  My scribble of cream cheese topping looked like “M”s and little birthday boy Matthew got excited and thought they were all for him (ahhhhh he’s so cute, I love him!).  I got nods and thumbs up for it  =)  After everything was cleaned up, there were 4 whoopie pies left… which is not a bad showing considering there was a TON of dessert spread out on the table, and each “pie” is the equivalent of 2 cupcakes.  That’s a LOT of dessert.

Thanksgiving at my parents’ house was more low key and less hectic since there were only 2 little tikes, as opposed to the 293509 babies at Vin’s parents’ house.  haha  My mom had turkey, but also egg rolls and sticky rice and random dishes and sides my family was comfortably used to.  The cupcakes were brought out after dinner, and I made JUST enough for everyone.  (Unfortunately, no pics were snapped before consumption.)  Everyone watched “The Avengers” in a comatose state after eating, and then Vin and I embarked on the 4+ hour drive home.  It was a nice way to end the holiday weekend, and I didn’t feel so “bah humbug”-y after all…

A beautiful pumpkin and cream cheese whoopie pie with caramel-pumpkin-cream cheese filling and chopped pecans

And that settled the decision.

Vin and I went to the supermarket so I could buy baking ingredients (eggs, milk, cream cheese, whipping cream… perishable things like that) and the rest of the town was there stocking up on batteries and water and bread and snacks for their storm sustenance.  We had heard that this hurricane was coming but figured it would just be this blue balling storm like Irene was for us.  Plus, we already have a stockpile of non-perishable/no heat required food items and tons of beverages in our basement that I accumulate anyway for non-storm use, so we figured we’d be fine, expecting we’d lose power for a day or two, tops.  (dun dun DUNNNN…)

Barenaked cakes; Left: pumpkin cinnamon vanilla cakes, Right: pumpkin and cream cheese mini cupcakes

So we went on our way as people were freaking out and driving like maniacs (all caution goes out the door @ the sign of a storm and riot mode takes over… geesh!) and I finally decided to make 2 pumpkin items: the equivalent of a Boston cream pie but with PUMPKIN… and pumpkin and cream cheese whoopie pies.

Halloween plates. The spider and the bat look so sad… they’re the cutest ones!

I made a vanilla cake batter with pumpkin puree and cinnamon and baked a couple small fillable cakes.  There was extra batter so I baked a tray of mini cupcake wrappers.  While these cakes cooled, I stood over the stove to make pumpkin spiced pudding (to substitute as the vanilla cream filling) and a brown sugar and cinnamon caramel glaze (instead of the chocolate ganache topping).  I had these Halloween themed plates (I won a pumpkin carving contest a couple years ago after spending almost 5 hours making the Death Star and these were my prize) and little mummy and witch figures and thought, “Hey, why not make this Halloween-y?”  Uhh, the assembly wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped, but it tasted delicious.  I whipped up some orange frosting for the mini cupcakes and sprinkled some crunchy toffee pieces on them.

My pumpkin-y take on a Boston cream pie. It ain’t that pretty, but it sure is tasty! Cake: pumpkin + cinnamon + vanilla; Filling: pumpkin spice pudding; Frosting: caramel-pumpkin-cream cheese; Glaze: cinnamon brown sugar caramel

For the whoopie pies, I added pumpkin puree to a light angel food cake batter and scooped it out onto this whoopie pie pan Vin got me last Christmas.   I added a sweetened cream cheese zigzag topping and popped the tray in the oven and then piped the extra batter and extra cream cheese into mini cupcake wrappers.  For the filling, I whipped up a pumpkin-cream cheese-caramel frosting and it went perfectly with the cake.  I was worried it would be too sweet, but the cake part balanced it out, and I smashed up pecans to add to the pies.  They looked pretty awesome, in my humble opinion  =)  I topped the minis with the extra frosting and crushed pecans.  This experimental combination tasted REALLY good.

Step-by-step pumpkin-cream cheese whoopie pies

So I finished my baking and decorating on Saturday, and then spent all day Sunday making a vat of pho in preparation of the hurricane.  We didn’t expect much to happen… maybe power would be out for a day, but we were without power for more than 5 days and the wind was super strong.  Luckily, Vin’s parents had a generator and his mom had prepared a TON of food, so we spent some time there eating properly cold food and having microwave-heated meals.  I also brought some of the beef pho and extra cupcakes and cakes to share, and we pretty much just ate and slept and ate all week until the lights came back on.  We bought some Twix and Almond Snickers for trick-or-treaters, but we didn’t get that many kids stop by.  Halloween was just a bummer this year…  We were cleaning up our busted fence and watching for costumed kids coming for candy @ the same time.  =/

A variety of pumpkin flavored mini cupcakes! Left: light pumpkin cream cheese cupcakes with caramel-pumpkin-cream cheese frosting and pecans, Middle: minus the pecans, Right: pumpkin cinnamon vanilla minis with vanilla frosting and toffee sprinkles

When I came into work the following Tuesday, people shared their war stories and some of the tales were heart wrenching.  I mean, we didn’t have electricity for a week and our fence was destroyed and there was some damage to the roof, but that was nothing in comparison to what so many other people lost.  And it was one of those situations where I just listened and all I could do was say, “Oh my God… I’m so sorry…  Oh my God…” over and over.  As soon as we got power, Vin and I turned on the lights in the basement and sorted out warm clothes and coats and extra non-perishables we could donate.  As soon as the supermarkets were restocked with fresh food, I wanted to restock our fridge with the basics and bake something for coworkers that lost so much more.  I quickly made some mini blueberry muffins for a couple coworkers and packaged them properly in pink boxes with signature ribbon and Cake Dealer labels.  Admittedly, they weren’t my best offering, but I just wanted to give something to try to cheer them up.  When I gave the care packages to a friend that had to flee from her apartment in Coney Island and another coworker that lost her house and car in Long Beach, I got appreciative smiles and huge hugs… the best thank yous ever.

These are my “I’m glad you’re safe” blueberry mini muffins

**This post was delayed because I just had to add one more pic of apple turnovers I made for another coworker that has been displaced due to Sandy.  The first day I came back to work, I emailed him and asked how he and his family fared because of the storm and if he could give me an update on his part of a project we were working on.  He didn’t answer all day, and finally I get a response saying he didn’t forget about it and would get back on the work ASAP but he was tied up with a few things since his entire ground floor apartment was destroyed.  Guess who immediately felt like an @sshole for nagging about the progress of this not-so-dire quarterly project?  So this guy has been in and out of the office for the past week and every time I had a chance to bake something, he was out.  I asked if the dude would be in tomorrow and he said yes, so I scrambled to Stop n Shop after dinner and got some ingredients together and basically made apple turnovers in speed mode.  I peeled, cored, and cubed 4 Granny Smiths in record time, and cooked them in Jack Daniels (come on now… booze makes things better!), sugar, butter, and spices (Vin’s apple turnover moment of the day: while the cooked apples were cooling, I took a break to watch Top Chef with him and he goes, “Why does the house smell so good?”  This, after he had seen me cutting up and cooking the apples =) , and rolled out some puff pastry.  After a sloppy wash of egg and sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon, I popped the filled turnovers in the oven for 15 minutes.  In my haste, I forgot to put slashes on top so some of the pastries started splitting on the sides (… oooops) but they still came out well.  I boxed them up and will bring them into work… hopefully my coworker and his wife will like the apple-y efforts to cheer them up a bit =)

Granny Smith apple turnovers on speed

To donate hurricane relief funds to the Red Cross, click here.

My carefully packaged care… packages =)

Vin’s pic of my apple turnovers

It’s starting to feel a little crisp in the mornings, which means fall is here!  This season makes me think of apples and cinnamon, and I had a hankering for baking something with apples.  Not only do I love anything with apple pie filling, baking apples makes the house smell so good!  And it totally reminds me of my dad; I remember going grocery shopping with my mom and picking up packages of Entenmann’s fruit danishes and turnovers for my dad to bring to work for his lunches.  He ate these things for years… every time I see the triangular puffs I think of my dad  =)  I never was a huge fan of store-bought apple turnovers b/c the ratio of the filling to puff pastry was always like… 1:4 and there was too much sugar in the filling and on the top.  I decided to give these chaussons aux pommes (“apple slippers”) a shot for a quick Sunday morning baking session, making sure the filling to pastry ratio was closer to 1:2  haha

Prepping some of the ingredients

I bought a bushel of Macintosh apples… too bad we didn’t have time to go apple picking!  Sorting through the produce selection @ Stop ‘n Shop doesn’t count =(   I honestly don’t know what kind of apples are recommended for these fruit pastries and just kind of winged it.  I liked the tartness of the Macintosh apples and figured it would balance out the sugar, so why the hell not?  After peeling and chopping the apples, I cooked them in butter and added sugar (both brown and white), cinnamon, vanilla, and a splash of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey b/c the bottle has been sitting around for a while and it’s not like I’m going to pound shots of it, so I reasoned that the alcohol would burn off and I could still use the booze AND eat this.  This smelled SOOOO good, and it tasted a bit tangy and just sweet enough and I could have easily eaten this plain without the pastry shell  =P

Filling the turnovers with apples

While the filling cooled a bit I cut up the rolled out pastry dough I had chilling in the fridge.  I love that this stuff can be made well in advance and frozen for later spontaneous baking use.  I scooped out the filling onto six pastry rectangles, then cut quick slashes on the other halves of the pastry for the top pieces of the turnovers so the pastry could expand in the oven without breaking or splitting the egg-sealed seams. I whipped a quick egg wash to hold the pocket o’ pommes together, sprinkled some sugar and cinnamon on top, and popped them in the oven.

My awesome whipped cream machine (ignore the shopping list temporarily penned on my wrist)

I bought this Tovolo Easy Prep Quick Hand Mixer and had been meaning to use it.  It’s this awesome little mechanical contraption that whips fresh cream or egg whites or aioli by hand; no need to take out the hand mixer and bowls… this thing will whip perfect light, airy fluffy deliciousness in less than a minute.  AND it’s dishwasher safe!  If you can’t tell, I absolutely love this thing.  If I had my own TV show I’d totally endorse it.  An entire episode could be about meringue or macarons and I’d do both the mind-blowing yolk separating trick and crank out perfectly whipped egg whites in no time.  In this case, I whipped fresh whipped cream.  It was perfect: not too much powdered sugar, a splash of vanilla, 30 seconds of hand cranking, and done!

Apple turnovers fresh from the oven

The smell of baked apples and cinnamon was starting to get pretty powerful so I checked the oven.  The pastries looked just the right shade of golden brown so I took them out and arranged them on a bamboo cutting board to cool a bit.   And then Vin came into the kitchen…

Vin: Wow, those look good!  Did you just heat them or did you make them?

Me [slightly furrowing my brows and blinking]: …What?

Vin: Were these ready made and you just put them in the oven or did you–

Me: I MADE them.

Really???  I wanted to say, “Impostor!  Vin would never ask me such a rhetorical and silly question!  Who are you and what have you done to my husband?”  But then Vin says, “Baby, they look PERFECT!”  =)

A plated turnover with whipped cream canelles

I was really pleased with myself.  I plated one of the turnovers and put two canelles of whipped cream on top, then sprinkled a dusting of cinnamon and ground sugar over the dish.   The outside puffed to just the right height, and it was flaky, crisp and featherlight, and there was a distinct faint “crunch” noise each time the side of my fork pushed through the delicate layers.  The apple filling did not overflow and spill out and burn onto the pastry, indicating that I did a good job of sealing the turnovers, and I personally think the amount of filling was just right.  It wasn’t a thin layer, but each forkful came with a bit of baked apple pieces, instead of biting into a mouthful of just pastry (I’m talking to you, Entenmann’s!).  The still chilled fresh whipped cream had a hint of sweetness that just melded with the tartness of the apples.  I was worried that everything would be  a little too sweet since there was sugar in the filling, on top of the pastry, and in the cream, but it was just right.  (By the way, how’s THAT for a food review?  We just caught up on Top Chef: Masters and the final episode was all about how food writers/critics were trying to one up each other in creatively describing how “sensual” and “unctuous” the dishes were.  God. It was like, give me a break… who did you **** to get such an awesome job at such a young age and you’re clearly a pretentious, self-entitled d*ck?  Sometimes I wish a lifetime of SPAM on some people.  hahaha)

Spectacularly amazing apple turnovers

Update: I’m questioning Vin’s sanity again.  This is what happened when he ate a turnover later…

Vin: These are really good! Did you buy apples to make this?

Me: … What?

Vin: Did you buy apples and make the filling or is this like… from a can?

Me [incredulously blinking]: Baby!  I made it!  Everything! That’s why I was looking for the peeler, to peel the apples and then chop them up and I cooked them… hahaha

Vin: Oh!  It’s REALLY good!  I figured you made it… I don’t know why I even thought you used canned filling…  I just didn’t know we had apples.

Me [still blinking and trying to hide a smile]: … You’re silly.

Maybe Vin’s overtired or just not thinking correctly; he’s been holed up @ the computer editing photos for days and went drinking with friends last night.  Maybe that attributed to his temporary memory loss and why he just happened to forget what I’ve been doing in my spare time for the past 2.5 years.  But I appreciate the compliment on my baking, baby <3

Vin is a big PB guy so I just decided to make PB print cookies:  PB cookie dough with either a pointer finger or thumb print, and then filled the impression with either grape jelly or this dangerously amazing Jif Mocha Cappuccino Hazelnut spread.  I’m not supposed to be eating any of the above, but I really wanted a little, itsy, bitsy bit…  and my reasoning was that Vin would like it, too, and I could bring them into work to share with friends.  =P

They came out so cute and tasty looking that I ended up eating 2 of each (oops).  Hey man, they were fresh from the oven and perfectly soft and chewy.  I gave Vin a few and packaged the rest in the fridge, estimating that I made about 36+ cookies.

I brought a small container of cookies to work to give my friend Diane.  It just so happened that on that day, I had just picked up molds of my teeth.  I had impressions taken a week before to get custom trays of my chompers for nighttime teeth grinding and gnashing purposes; the dentist was going to toss the molds so I asked if I could take them  =D  I displayed the molds on my desk and told D to come up and check them out, and she and I happened to have this silly idea to make a little movie of my “teeth” terrorizing and chomping down on a cookie.  D had fortuitously saved one last cookie, so our little project was definitely meant to be.

Given where we work we had access to a lot of video cameras and editing equipment, but given my position, using them for our goofy project would be a terrible idea.  haha  We decided that we would just take photos with my smartphone and use my little desk lamp to provide staged lighting (gotta love fluorescent office lights).  This was done during our lunch break and took all of 10 minutes; we both staged the props, I took the photos and D did the lighting.  She also strategically ate the cookie so the bite marks and crumbs were perfect.  ’Twas was hilarious genius, it was.

Me: We’re like weird 5-year-olds with this idea.

D: No, we’re like normal 5-year-olds!

Me: This is true.

=)

That night I went home and put it together in MS Paint.  (This may come as a surprise to you, but I’ve been using MS Paint for ALL the beautiful baking related collages on this site.  *gasp*)  Et voila… our perfectly shot, beautifully edited, thoroughly developed, emotionally driven story with high tech special effects entitled “The Plight of the Cookie”:

The teeth and the cookie

A bouquet of purple cupcake roses

Our family friends J & D are getting hitched and Vin and I have the honor of being in their wedding next month (so soon!).  J’s bridal shower was hosted @ our house, so I took a day off to bake cupcakes for the bride and the guests, make the shower favors, and CLEAN.

Step-by-step “egg magic”

Friday morning started off nice and easy and I loved the natural light that came in through the kitchen window.  I prepped for vanilla cupcakes, EXCEPT I used the water bottle method to separate my eggs.  The ol’ yolk extraction and drop off trick.  This is totally my new favorite thing.  I want to make custards and ice cream and macarons or meringue just to have an excuse to play with my food like this!  It was so easy and squeals of excitement ensued, and Vin watched me demonstrate the technique on my last yolk.  I just wanted to point out that the bottle loses some of its vacuum suction power after a dozen or so squeezes.  After I was done getting a kick out of sucking up and squeezing out egg yolks, I baked a few dozen vanilla cupcakes and a bunch of minis to bring to Vin’s family and give my co-workers.

The sunlight makes my crappy phone pics of cake flour and a tray of cake batter look SO artsy

While these were cooling, I mixed the violet-ish vanilla frosting.  Their wedding color was purple… or eggplant or plum or violet or whatever shade you want to call it, so I coordinated the frosting to try to match the cake ball favors as much as possible.  Which is tough as you don’t really want to f*ck with the consistency of candy melts or frosting by adding too much gel coloring.  I got pretty close mixing an entire container of violet gel and and slowly adding rose, but those food colors taste pretty bitter so I ended up adding extra sugar.  And since I was going to pipe giant roses, I needed to add shortening to stiffen up the consistency.  I added even MORE confectioner’s sugar to try to mask the blandness of the shortening.  Between the color of the frosting, the melted candy coating, and the tissue paper and labels for the favor boxes, I had all varying degrees of purple.

Matching the purple frosting with the purple candy melts

I selected the best looking 30 cupcakes for the shower (honestly, they were ALL good =) and went on a rose piping binge.  I timed myself and on a good turn, I can pipe out a decent giant flower in just over a minute… 90 seconds if I was REALLY careful.  haha  I mixed a bit of green frosting and to pipe out little leaves as a pop of color for the cupcakes.  I WAS going to pipe leaves on all the cupcakes, but my arm was giving out after churning out all those purple roses.

A tasty tray of lovely lavender flowers: vanilla cupcakes and vanilla purple frosting

Setting my blooming garden aside, I ground up some frozen cinnamon-spiced chocolate cake in my beloved NINJA and mixed in a little light rum frosting for the cake balls.  I figured it’s September, let’s get ready for fall… so why not the spiced flavor?  Based on previous experience with the favor boxes (the same sized boxes were used for Em’s wedding) and being an all around expert on balls, I rolled out tablespoon-sized spheres in my hands and laid them out on a cookie sheet to harden in the fridge.  I dipped the naked balls in the purple candy melts and let them dry. I had planned on punching out white fondant flowers with edible beads (as if I needed an excuse to use sugar beads or sprinkles!), but I was running out of time and needed to catch SOME sleep, so I melted some white chocolate and zigzagged some white stripes over the balls.  After the white chocolate designs set, I packaged the favors in the boxes with purple tissue paper and custom labels for the event.

1) Naked purple balls; 2) White striped cake balls; 3) Packaged favors

My tower of flowers

I bought this MDF tray to display my bouquet of roses.  But it came in this cardboard color so I spray painted it white.   Unfortunately, it was a b!tch to assemble since the paint made the interlocking parts stick together.  I had put it together before after painting one layer and it was fine, but some of the pieces stuck together (after a DAY of drying??? geesh!) so I sprayed another layer and that was the end of it.  Vin was my big, strong muscle and hammered the pieces into place for me.  The stand looked great and that’s good, b/c I ain’t taking it apart again!

I set up my lovely little garden of sweet treats and had tons of help setting everything else up.  It was a busy and action-packed day with lots of toilet paper games and chitchatting and snacking and garbage disposal and cleaning and setting up and cleaning again with the awesome aid of the other b-maids, the groom, and Vin, and the bride cried tears of joy b/c she and her fiance were so happy.  I was glad that J and her guests had a great time.  I felt bad that some guests left early and didn’t get to try a cupcake and didn’t get to pick up their favor  =(  But all in all, a good day.  And Vin is THE best for helping so much.  There was a delay in publishing this post b/c I had to give Vin a massage as a thank you <3

I am a rose-piping machine.

I had a whole bunch of extra cupcakes and minis, so I brought them into work and piped out roses and swirls at my desk during my lunch break and doled them out to some co-workers.  It’s nice to hear that everyone appreciated the 3 pm sugar snack.  =)

An array of mini chocolate cupcakes with blue rum and yellow vanilla frosting

Where has this summer gone???  I feel like I haven’t done that much baking (it’s just too humid and gross) and I have no idea where the time went.  It’s August and we hadn’t gone to the beach yet…

…Until my family came to visit this past weekend.  Originally, just my parents and little bro were coming over and my sister and her boyfriend were joining and we were all going to the beach and to get seafood and maybe go to the outlets and just hang out.  But my mom’s family didn’t have our usual summer get-together this year, so a last minute family BBQ was planned @ our house and my grandma, a couple of my aunts, and 2 of my little cousins joined in.  Vin and I went on a shopping spree @ the supermarket for meats to grill and bought packs of hot dogs and buns, salad, corn, ice, soda, beer, water… and we sweeped and vacuumed and cleaned and did yardwork… and then, on Saturday morning, I decided to bake.  I rarely get to give baked goods to my own family, let alone see them, so I wanted to make something special.  I bought these baking cups that looked like large disposable mouthwash cups, which would have been perfect for sno cone cupcakes.  Long story short, I wasn’t used to these baking cups @ all since they took twice as long to bake cupcakes (20 minutes for cupcakes? With THIS oven? Unheard of in this house!) and I was really rushing it with the frosting.  I used leftover frosting from C+H’s wedding and it wasn’t thick enough to hold the scooped ball shape, and it just looked sloppy.  I’m determined to try this again and put in more effort next time.

“Sno cone” orange and vanilla cupcakes with lime and vanilla frosting… and SPRINKLES!

But, as pathetic as they looked–sadly, I consider these the sorriest-looking batch of cupcakes I’ve ever made =( they still tasted good.  The cake batter was vanilla + orange and smelled like a creamsicle, and I did half lime frosting and half vanilla frosting up top.  Since I totally am a sprinkle hoarder, I had these emerald and clear sugar crystals sitting around that would work as the sno cone “ice crystals”.  They weren’t as coarse as they could be and I now see that crushed up rock candy bits would have been perfect… but they made do.  My family enjoyed them, especially my little cousin; he really liked the frosting, so much so that he just licked it all and put the cake down and went after another frosted cupcake.  (I totally am a terrible influence giving him sugar and junk food; the last time I hung out with him I gave him Starbursts, a lollipop, and bacon. =)  Even though it was kinda rushed, I was just glad I was able to whip up something for my family and I was happy they liked it, too <3

And to really share the love, I donated 70+ mini cupcakes to this charity my close friend D works with called the Dynasty Project.  D asked a couple weeks before their summer cocktail event and said it was on a Tuesday evening (tough school night), that if I didn’t have time to not worry about it, though I’d be able to drink for free (I’m not a lush these days haha), it was going to benefit a great cause, and there were raffle prizes to be won (what would I do with Jeremy Lin’s first jersey? =P   She was just throwing the idea out there…  but I had stored a crapload of extra chocolate mini cupcakes and leftover frosting in my freezer for special emergencies such as this one.  Of COURSE I’d help!  Plus, I made cupcakes for her fiance’s fundraising event so I couldn’t say no to D  =)

The night before the charity cocktail party I took out the Ziploc bags of cupcakes and swirled some blue and yellow frosting on the minis.  Transporting them into the city was a breeze and I was careful to hide them in the corner of my cube lest office passersby caught the beckoning aroma of chocolate cake and were tempted to steal one.  I mean, the scent is pretty intoxicating.  I opened one container to fix a tipped over treat and this intense scent of sugar sweet chocolate surrounded my cube.  I immediately closed it and put the clamshell container back in the bag.  That was a close one.  It could have been dangerous as people are starting to learn I deal from my desk  ;oP

Me + my meticulously laid out minis

After work, I brought the cupcakes to the lounge and D and her friends helped me set them up on the bar and we spread out a bunch of my biz cards.  Once all the minis were laid out, 72 cupcakes didn’t look like much.  haha   People came in and saw the cupcakes, but seemed to think they weren’t real or too nicely displayed to eat.  I mean, it DID look pretty awesome.  The lighting was really neat; the light blue and yellow frosting appeared dark blue and pink as the colored lights flashed by.  Once we messed up the arrangement and scattered the minis, people started digging in.  I couldn’t stay long and had to catch the train, but I heard that soon after I left, the cupcakes went quickly… one guy apparently nabbed 3 @ once!

Photo by Kyu Lee for the Dynasty Project

Seriously, between bringing cupcakes for D and her fiance’s charity group events and donating my wedding gown, I think I’ve done enough good deeds to last the next 5 years.  haha  It was a really nice event and I was glad I could be of service.  Plus, D and I bought a few raffle tickets and we actually won this awesome organic perfume set.  Good deeds really do pay off <3

Tune in next time for a bouquet of baked goods and bonbons for a beautiful bridal shower!

A tower of wedding cupcakes (ML’s pic)

I ordered and bought all my supplies and containers a few weeks before the wedding and got the eggs and milk the day before.  Luckily, I am too lazy to put away the extra mixer prepared and still had the twins out to do double duty.  I mean, a 6 quart mixer can only hold so much cake batter, and it will definitely not hold enough for 6 batches of mini cupcakes.  I had the oven going for a couple hours and had 3 trays going in perfect rotation: one would be baking in the oven, one would be cooling from just being in the oven and replenished with cupcake wrappers, and the other one would be getting refilled with cake batter.  I was just churning them out like a mini cupcake factory; once I got through with the 6 quarts of batter from one mixer, I moved on to the next machine.  I didn’t have enough cooling racks and just crammed all the baked cupcakes on the dining table. I lost count after making 274, but I definitely made @ least 400 minis.  Maybe 450.  Or more.  I don’t know but it was getting a little claustrophobic in the dining room and I’m really surprised I didn’t have dreams about a menacing towers of cupcakes falling on me and crushing me.  haha

Billions and billions of chocolate cupcakes… OK, maybe a few hundred

While those all cooled, I cleaned out the mixing bowls to use for the frosting.  I whipped @ least 6 pounds of butter and about 5 pounds of powdered sugar for the fresh frosting, and there was another 2 pounds or so of butter in the cake batter.  And I STILL have about 8 more chunks of creamy fat in the freezer.  Let’s just say I can’t look @ butter for a while.  haha  I added sugar till the consistency hit that sweet spot, where I got that ideal balance between non-melty consistency and taste (not too buttery, not too sweet!). When I finally turned the 2 mixers off, I ended up with about 3 gallons of white and yellow frosting and just hoped it was enough.

Tubs of yellow and white vanilla frosting

I needed to make room to frost and decorate  so I packaged as many as I could in huge plastic takeout containers.  I ran out of containers so I stuffed the extra cupcakes I wasn’t using for the wedding order (they were either too puffy or slightly underfilled in the baking cups) into huge Ziploc bags to freeze for another occasion.  I counted out 30 clamshell containers and got ready to ice, ice baby!  Surprisingly, I only used 3 disposable icing bags to decorate 380+ cupcakes.  I expected to go through more and bought another box of 100 b/c I was running low, but that was pretty eco-friendly and efficient of me to use so few bags.  Then again, I went through almost an entire roll of paper towels to wipe up the batter and frosting that was flying all over the place and constantly wiping my hands and cleaning the icing bags.  haha  It was a little more time consuming filling the bag just so to make the twists and my right hand started to cramp up a bit (my mom is always telling me to keep playing piano to keep my fingers flexible), but I kept icing and packaging the minis in batches till all the clamshells were full.  I positioned the stacks right in front of the AC blast to keep them chilled.

Mini chocolate cupcakes frosted with yellow and white twists

Transporting these wasn’t too bad b/c I had a good helper.  I knew I could carry 240 mini cupcakes by myself into the city (the tote bags I have fit the cupcake clamshells like a glove), but 360?  I needed a third arm, and what better manly assistant to be my third arm than Vin?  Plus,  I was able to convince Vin to come with b/c I said I’d treat him to dinner for being a huge help and letting me drag him into the city to just be arm candy and hired muscle <3

Before and after… (thanks ML!)

We met up with M @ the venue (she looked beautiful!) and I thought I’d be helping with the set up, but the caterer suggested to set everything up later after the ceremony so they’d do it themselves.  I got to say hi to the happy couple (they were just beaming =) and wish them congratulations on their special day, and then whisked my assistant away to dinner to say thank you for helping me out.  M sent me a few shots of the set up and everything looked fantastic.  I was just thrilled when she said that the newlyweds loved the cupcakes and that they were delicious!  Phew!  That’s all I needed to hear =)

Congrats to C & H!!!  I had me a blast baking for them.

(I’m taking a break this coming weekend, but I’ll be posting the week of August 12!)

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Black and yellow themed cakes – cheerleader pompoms and city skylines

The first cake was for a coworker’s bf’s birthday.  She wanted something symbolic and since they have a long distance thing (she’s in Manhattan, he’s in Chi-town), she was thinking of incorporating things from both cities for the cake.  Her first idea was for me to make a 3-D airplane to signify the mode of transportation to see each other. Instead, I suggested that since this was going to be a small cake, why don’t I just do a silhouette of both city skylines around the base of a small cake and have the buildings morph into each other.  This would totally fit a 6″ round and it was basic yet meaningful enough.   She picked chocolate cake with vanilla icing for the cake flavors and wanted the background in yellow with a black skyline.

While the cakes were baking, I mixed the frosting and kneaded a crapload of yellow fondant, knowing I’d be using some for the next day’s cake. After the cake layers cooled and were dirty iced, I rolled out a big blobular sheet of yellow fondant to cover the cake round. @ the time, it looked like the cake was covered perfectly with no rips or bubbles or wrinkles anywhere.  I thought to myself, “Hah!  I’m getting good @ this fondant thing.”  (Clearly my hubris meant some bad foreshadowing ahead…)

I googled images of Chicago and New York skyline silhouettes and printed them as large as possible.  However, stock images are always so tiny and crappy in quality unless you bother paying for them (which was unnecessary), so they were pretty blurry.  I started cutting out a section of the Manhattan skyline but it was kinda tedious.  I would have hired my patient and perfectionist first grade self to cut out the paper silhouettes.  haha  After mixing in black gel coloring to the marshmallow fondant (and staining my hands purple), I rolled out a thin layer and lay the cut out on top of the fondant.  With my handy dandy chef’s knife, I started cutting the building outlines.  The fondant was still sticky and the edges weren’t as clean as I liked.  I took a toothpick to sharpen the lines and lined up the Empire State building to cover a spot in the fondant where a chunk of powdered sugar was embedded in the yellow (shhhh….)  I felt like the paper cutting/fondant tracing/edge sharpening process was taking too long, so for the Chicago buildings I freehanded it.  I rolled out another thin sheet of black fondant, marked guidelines for approximate building sizes so these would be relatively in proportion to the NYC skyline, and just cut away @ the fondant.  The Sears Tower was a b!tch because of the super thin spikes so I just cut out a flat top and added thin strips afterwards.

My hand cut fondant Statue of Liberty

There was a gap inbetween the Chicago and New York skylines, so I found an image of the Statue of Liberty to fill in the blank.  I can’t say if the angle was correct, but it DID kind of go from north to south (Chrysler building – Empire State building – Statue of Liberty).  I took a toothpick and scraped in some vertical lines to give the buildings more texture, and it looked pretty good =)

The last step was piping “Happy Birthday” on top.  My coworker requested black lettering, so black lettering she got.  I was a bit disappointed with the “H” since it didn’t have the same super slight slant as the rest of the lettering, but it looked OK.  Vin and I ran out to get a fancy, healthy and nutritious dinner from McDonald’s (I know, I know… I shouldn’t be eating this crap) and when I came back home, a thin crack was forming near the edge of the cake AND this obnoxious little bubble came out of nowhere right @ the top of the cake.  They weren’t that noticeable, but still, I was like…  what the hell?  Everything was great until I stepped away for 20 minutes.  *sigh*  I did my best to straighten and sharpen the edges and just waited for my coworker to come pick it up.

I posted a preliminary shot of this on facebook and this caption just popped into my head: Gotham in fondant. How fitting since part of Manhattan is called Gotham AND (duh) Batman is now in theatres. Unfortunately I didn’t mean for this to coincide with the tragic movie theatre shooting in Colorado =/

She said she loved it (maybe she was being nice b/c I was a bit bummed with the small crack and the small bubble) and I boxed it up and tied my signature white/black/hot pink ribbon and slapped a sticker on the box.  Haven’t heard back yet with their feedback….

The next morning I rolled out of bed to bake for a friend’s surprise birthday party.  Her bf wanted something cheerleading related since C is a top rated HS cheer coach. I suggested doing pompoms in her school colors (ALSO yellow and black) and he was down for that.  His only request was that the cake have red velvet and cream cheese.  (Damn you, red velvet!  I can’t get away from you, can I…  haha)  So I bought this ball cake pan mold and it came with 2 hemisphere pans.  These would be perfect for the shape of the pompoms, and I decided to bake a big one layer 14” round sheet cake for the base.

Mini chocolate cupcakes with pig sprinkles

I was worried that the red velvet half-balls would be dry since I had never used the pans before.  I kept checking the oven and one minute they were still wet and the next minute the toothpick came out dry.  Yikes.  I made extra chocolate cake batter the day before so I baked chocolate cake for the edible base.  I had some extra chocolate and red velvet cake batter, so I tested out some new baking pans and just churned out a bunch of mini cupcakes, squeezed leftover icing on the tops and threw pink and white piggy sprinkles and neon-toned dinosaur sprinkles on them. (I’m a sprinkle hoarder.  I bought a whole bunch and had to use these sooner or later  haha)  I packed some up to bring to a friend as part of her belated birthday present (Happy Birthday, Bubblegrrrrrrrrrl) and the rest will be for coworkers that “voluntarily” help me out with audits  =D

Mini red velvet cupcakes with dinosaur sprinkles

While the cakes cooled, I whipped up cream cheese frosting and purposely did not add a sh!tload of sugar.  The cakes were dirty iced and stored in the fridge while I rolled out the black and yellow fondant.  Using my trusty chef’s knife, I hand cut long ¼“ strips of gold and midnight-hued “ribbon”.  It looked like squid ink pasta and fettuccine.  And I was so stupid and thought about this AFTER I had cut everything, but I think we have a pasta attachment for the KitchenAid mixers that may or may not have made this easier.  Oh well.  I did a nice and quick job cutting the fondant strips anyway.

Hand cut squid ink and semolina pasta fettuccine fondant (the shot looks “faded” because I took this pic with my cell phone… which had powdered sugar all over the lens =)

I put another layer of frosting on the base cake and plopped the half ball cakes on it.  Yes, to answer what you’re all thinking, they did look like boobs.  I took my time and strategically placed the thin ribbon pieces on the cake, having them fall “just so” off the edges and trying to make them look as close to real pompoms as possible.  I made sure all the frosting on the balls were covered and then took chunks of white fondant and stuck them onto skewers for the handles.  I purposely put them in @ angles so it would look less symmetrical and hopefully less booblike, but one of the handles just didn’t sit right and I kept trying to shape it to make it less globby, but it kept sinking.  Meh.  You could still tell these were long-nipped booby tassels thin ribboned pompoms.  I think it came out nicer with the thin cut fondant since the wide ribbons would have looked more cheap (a.k.a. fake).

Back and side view of the yellow and black pompom cake

I rushed to shower and get ready for the party so I didn’t have time to hand pipe “Happy Birthday” before we got there.  Transporting this was another memorable adventure; I think my subconscious blocks out the times I had to bring elaborate cakes b/c each time I say, “I’m never doing this again!” and then lo and behold, a month or so later, I am freaking out over driving with a cake.  Hahaha  Vin helped me carry my shoes (high heels + Katherine + heavy cake + walking = terrible, terrible idea), purse, black frosting and a piping bag, and C’s gift to the car while I carried the huge cake atop a stand (I didn’t want my perfectly placed ribbons that were cascading off the edge to be ruined) and we drove to the train station to pick up his friend and his friend’s wife to go to the surprise party.  That five minute ride was pretty harrowing enough; the cake was starting to slide off the cardboard cake base b/c the weight distribution was SO not even.  After Vin’s friends got in the car I readjusted the way I was holding the cake so that I held the cake by just the cardboard base, not by the cake stand and base.  The ride felt like an eternity and my biceps and forearms were so tired holding that heavy ass cake.

When we got to the party house, I carried the cake barefoot up the stairs into the kitchen and filled the piping bag with black icing to hand pipe “Happy Birthday Crystal”.  I should have taken more time to steady myself b/c my arms were still strained and shaking from holding the cake up for so long so the “Ha” were a little bit messy, but the rest of it came out nicely.  I purposely put the big “B” over an area in the frosting I accidentally hit with my hand putting the handles in to hide my f*ck up haha

Unfortunately, while the cake was sitting in the kitchen and before the birthday girl got to see it in perfect form, some @sswipe swiped some of the frosting off.  It wasn’t by accident b/c it looks like they took a knife to it to cut out the frosting so the cake looked like sh!t.  First of all, who the f*ck does that to a cake that’s not yours???  What a f*cking d!ckhole.  Secondly, if you’re that much of an impatient @sshole who really just HAD to friggin’ try the frosting, why did you take it from front and center of the cake?  Why not try a little from the back?  It now looked like it said “Happy Birthday Cry”.  What a complete f*cktard for ruining my hard work and messing up a great surprise.  Seriously.  I’m also pissed I didn’t get a good shot of the cake before the mystery douchebag destroyed my handiwork, too.   Whatever.  Crystal was super happy about it and said she absolutely loved it and that it tasted delicious.  I’m just glad she liked it and was properly surprised =)

Almost perfect pompom cake

It was a long and busy weekend, but it was fun.  I will just say that 1) I am super tired (my eyes have been red for the past 2 days; I think too much powdered sugar got in my face); 2) I am worried my vacation tan is fading (I think El Dorado Royale/Casitas is our new favorite resort); and 3) my arms are totally JACKED, bro  =D

Stay tuned for next week: it’s summer wedding time!

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A beautiful bevy of boozed up baked goods.

I wanted to make these for a while and had to wait for a legitimately nice summer day.  The weather this year has been a roller coaster ride: a couple extremely warm days in February and March and a crapload of chilly, rainy days in May.  So this weekend was perfect.  Originally, I had planned to make them for the T-house mega party on Saturday to celebrate Vin’s mom’s retirement, his sister’s birthday, and Father’s Day, but since we were out late on Friday night Johnny Prime style, I didn’t have any time to bake and make fresh frosting.  But after getting a good night’s sleep after Saturday’s festivities, I woke up and started getting my things together to bake and make citrusy icing.

Bucket o’ margarita mix… with spigot.

The twins were still out on the counter from my Memorial Day weekend masterpieces, which was very helpful since I used one for the cake batter and the other for the frosting.  A month ago, I bought a quart of milk and put it in the freezer (helpful hint: it’s totally safe to freeze milk for up to 3 months).  Since I only use about a cup and a half for a batch of cupcakes, I usually end up with extra milk and it goes bad within a week, so after letting it thaw in the fridge overnight, I measured out what I needed and put the container back in the freezer for the next baking project.  I poured half a container of lime extract AND half a cup of the margarita mix into the cake batter but it didn’t have enough of a citrus scent.  I didn’t want to add more of the liquid mix to make the batter soupy, so I decided to overload the frosting with the flavor.

The good stuff: tequila + margarita mix

While the cupcakes were baking, I took out the butter and sugar for the frosting.  I dumped @ LEAST 2 cups of the margarita mix into the frosting and Vin said it tasted really good.  I set that aside and let the cupcakes cool, and I mixed a little of the margarita mix and some tequila (now a real margarita) into a dropper bottle and injected some of that tasty goodness in half the cupcakes so the kids could have some, too.  Since it’s probably not a good idea for my little nieces and nephews to have tequila just yet…

After I put in extra ruffly swirls of tangy frosting on the cupcakes (stupid icing tip was clogged), I had this silly idea to make limes.  I was too lazy to go to the supermarket, which is not more than 50 yards from my house, and pick up real limes to zest or cut up to decorate the cupcakes.  So I took out some leftover fondant and food coloring and mixed up some pale yellowish-green fondant, a ball of darker lime green, and left a small ball of white fondant for that fuzzy bitter part of the rind.  I made 4 pale green balls in my hands, rolled out thin layers of white fondant to wrap around them, and then rolled out the darker green fondant to wrap around that.  And there you have it… sweet, chewy limes.  When I cut the fondant ball in half, I squealed out loud with delight @ the sight of my own handiwork: “AhhhhHHH!!!  I’m a f*ckin’ GENIUS!!!” (Vin was in the other room and he completely ignored me; he’s used to my excited outbursts by now. haha)  My little experiment turned out GREAT!  Each fondant lime was cut into 8 wedges and I stuck a slice into each of the cupcakes.  They looked  awesome.  I love my wedges.  =)

Fresh, hand made fondant limes. Ceci n’est pas un citron vert.

I had leftover batter so I made whoopie pies with the pan Vin bought me for Christmas, and they came out really well.  I didn’t want to jump on the whole trendy whoopie pie bandwagon, but I admit they were super easy and successful and I will be making some more whoopie pies in the future.   The margarita icing was a great filling and Vin said it was like eating key lime pie.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pics of these; I only made 6 of them and they were scooped up pretty quickly.

To booze (margarita) or not to booze (key lime)…

I brought them over to the T house to share with Vin’s family and they were a hit.  As feedback, I got “delicious!” “yummy!” and “this was the best cupcake I’ve ever had in my life.”  Well, what about my other cupcakes?  =)  I have a big bucket of leftover margarita mix, so I may have to make another batch of these before the summer is over… or just give it to some party animal that wants to actually make margaritas.  haha