Lion Cupcakes

I'm so sad I've been MIA for a while. I have to say I've kind of put baking on the back burner since I started school and also since my nail polish obsession has taken over my life! But now that the holiday season is starting and I'm almost done with school [5 more weeks!] I'm definitely going to get back to it.

I made these cuppies for my brother's girlfriend's mom who was throwing a baby shower. He told her about me and showed her pictures of what I've done and she asked me if I could make her two dozen but I ended up making three. I'm also making cupcakes for my brother's girlfriend for her birthday this weekend so I'll post them once they're done :D




Here they are in all of their glory! The brown ones are vanilla with chocolate buttercream, the lion cupcakes are chocolate with chocolate, and the white ones are red velvet with cream cheese frosting. The faces and blue dots were made with Wilton fondant.



These little faces were so freakin easy I just had to look around for the right sized circles. Here is what I used:
•for the mane I used Wilton's 3" flower cookie cutter
•the face is a 2.25" circle
•the ears are about .5" circle from Wilton's 3 pack circle cutters for fondant
•for the eyes and nose I used Wilton's piping tip #12 as a cutter [roughly 1/4"]
•the mouth circles I used the other end of the tip which is about 3/4"



For these I made the swirl using Wilton's tip #12 and used 1/2" dots to decorate them.



This is my failed attempt at the 1M swirl :P I swear I'm never going to get it right! Actually I used the 1B tip for these which is the drop flower one but still. So everyone loved them and I felt pretty proud but when I saw them posted on Cupcakes Take the Cake I almost fell back on my chair! I love that website and to see my cupcakes posted on there totally made my life! If anyone is interested in the recipes I'll post them for you guys :D

It's the simple things...

One of my uncles works at a restaurant at a golf club and sometimes he brings us desserts from there. Usually chocolate chip cookies or cheesecake squares, and on special occasions he brings the most delicious biscuits I've ever tasted. They are so flaky and buttery it's ridiculous. Warmed and drowned in honey is how I like devouring! Ever since the last time he brought them, I decided I needed to find the perfect biscuit recipe for when I need my fix. These are the first biscuits I've made and I think it's safe to say I don't have to search further. I love this recipe for three reasons: it's insanely easy, delicious, and did I say EASY? It literally took me half an hour to make these from start to finish. I can't rant and rave about this enough, just see for yourself!




Besides cold ingredients, I read that the trick to flaky biscuits is folding the dough a couple of times to create layers.


Tri-fold 2-3 times to creat those layers




Halfway through baking



Perfect Biscuits - yields about a dozen 2.5" biscuits
[This recipe is basically a compilation of a couple dozen recipes I read online but tweaked to my likings]

•3 cups flour
•1/2 tsp baking soda
•4 tsp baking powder
•1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
•1/4 cup granulated sugar [you can add as little as a Tbsp, just sweeten to taste]
•1 cup butter [very cold and cut into small cubes]
•1 1/2 cups buttermilk [cold]*

Preheat oven to 450º
1. Add dry ingredients to a bowl and mix together with hands, a fork, whisk, etc
2. Cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry cutter or forks until the chunks of butter are the size of peas
3. Mix in the milk and lightly knead it into the dough with your hands. At this point, the dough should be fluffy, wet, and sticky.
4. Dust your work surface very generously with flour so that the dough doesn't stick. Flour the top and roll it out to about a half inch thickness. Fold the flour into thirds and roll the dough out again. Repeat this up to two more times.
5. Cut your dough into biscuits [I used a 2.5" circle cutter] and place biscuits on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet halfway through. I have a pretty accurate oven and it took me about 15 minutes but they could've definitely stayed in there longer and browned a little bit.
6. Take leftover dough and re-roll it, working it as little as possible

*I NEVER have buttermilk on hand so I always end up making my own. To make your own buttermilk just add two tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar to a little less than a cup of milk and let it sit at least five minutes. I always do this and my recipes turn out fine and you can adjust the measurements to make more/less.

More Mexican Goodies!

So in addition to the cupcakes, I also made these shortbread cookies and chocolate covered strawberries :D







I got the idea from a Woman's World magazine although their original theme was 4th of July. Here are some highlights of what I did.

Cupcakes:
•The cupcakes were a boxed white mix with home made buttercream icing
•I made the flags out of fondant and the "eagle" out of chocolate bark. I printed out a sheet with a bunch of little flags and put a piece of parchment over it and with a toothpick I gave it the rough shape. As you can see it's really just a blob of chocolate :P
•to give the buttercream that color swirl, I took a little brush and did strokes of red and green color on the inside of the bag before adding the white frosting, this way when I piped it, it came out in a colorful swirl.

Cookie:
•I used the shortbread cookie recipe from Joy of Baking
•I made sure the dough was as cold as possible to make it easy to cut into rectangles
•When rolling out the dough, make it a little thicker than usual so you can put the stick in and make sure they're secure
•Put the stick in before baking

Strawberries:
•I bought some oil based food coloring so I can dye chocolate any color I want without it breaking, this is how I got the green color. The food coloring also comes in handy when you can't find a specific color that you're looking for

VIVA MEXICO!!!

. . .more tomorrow :D

I graduated!

No, sadly not from college [I WISH!]. I'm talking about the Wilton cake decorating class! I signed up some time in July and today was the last session of course 1. Funny story, I signed up probably two or three weeks in advance and as the date was drawing near I kept getting more and more excited. Well, it's the day of the first class and I'm so giddy all day because of how much I'm looking forward to it. It was also my brother's first year anniversary with his girlfriend and he wanted to make her a special dinner and I helped out a little bit. He was making french bread from scratch but it didn't turn out the way it was supposed to. I started teasing him saying, "Didn't you take a culinary class in high school?"
Then, I was like hmm culinary class rings a bell... and my eyes open wide and I realize it rang a bell because I was supposed to be at my DECORATING class!!! So I turn to the clock and it's 7:58. In the wise words of Dane Cook: "Just enough to time to do NOTING!"
I panicked and then I realized all was not lost. I called up Michael's and got to talk to the teacher and she told me she'd leave the Course 1 book there for me and I would have to have all the necessary materials by next class. Luckily there was no hands on action otherwise I would've been very jealous, it was all demonstrations. ANYWHO! I did make it to the next class and every one after that haha. So here are the creations that I made while taking the course.



The first cake was vanilla cake with blueberry and strawberry filling with vanilla buttercream. We had an option to bring a round cake to make a rainbow design or make a bear and I passed on the bear because honestly I think those are so tacky!



This day was so hectic [I haychu]. I didn't even go to school but I still woke up at around 1:30pm which is about the time I'd be home by anyway. I hadn't prepared anytning the night before and figured that 4 hours would be plenty enough time to do everything I needed to do. Well I was completely wrong. It was all my fault because I hadn't even LOOKED at the book where it said all the stuff I had to bring in. I actually sent my mom in an hour before class so she could buy piping bags and some other tips for me. I eventually made it and my cake looked pretty decent. I didn't bring additional bowls to mix in the color [I was planning on doing it there instead of at home so I could get there on time] that's why they're all wonky. It should've been red, yellow, green, and purple but that ended up not working out. Regardless I still learned the star technique pretty well although what I really cared about was how to do the roses, mwahaha!



My second cake was my favorite, presentation wise. These were the first roses I'd ever done, EVER! The consistency of my frosting wasn't the greatest that's why the edges of the flowers are rough looking but I thought that gave them a cool look.



The actual cake was chocolate with orange flavored buttercream.



I really loved the drop flowers but they turned out weird when I did them on the sides because I was basically at a 0º angle so it was kind of awkward.



My cousins came in this week to visit form Mexico and they got a taste. Man, I've never seen children look so apathetic about eating cake! Creeps...



The third one was the best one flavor wise. It was a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I rebelled and didn't use buttercream because to me red velvet HAS to be frosted with cream cheese otherwise it's just WEIRD! One time I made red velvet cupcakes with an almond buttercream frosting and it was so gross.




Anyway, because of this my frosting was very soft and hard to completely smooth out. Also the cream cheese makes the frosting a little translucent and then with the darkness of the actual cake, it's hard to cover the red completely unless you use have a mile high pile of frosting on the outside.




Despite these minor things, I think the cake turned out pretty ok. I was set out on doing the grapevine cake but in class we started practicing roses again and some turned out really well and I didn't want to get rid of them so I put some on the cake anyway. I literally could not wait to get home and eat it! Red velvet is my absolute favorite cake ever. I have tried like three different recipes and they've never turned out the way I imagine red velvet should taste. But this one was right on the money. It tasted just like these cupcakes I get in a little shop in the Gaslamp. It wasn't that big of a hit with everyone at home though because it was a little on the sweet side, mostly because of the frosting.



So if you're considering taking this cake decorating class, I'd like to point out a few pros/cons/tips that I wish I had known before making my decision:

Pros:
•The class is relatively inexpensive especially if you get it with some promotion like I did. It was 50% off the regular price PLUS you could use a $10 off coupon that they had at the front so I only ended up paying $12ish dollars instead of $45
•You can learn a lot just by reading through the course book alone and then practice in class which is better than going solo at home


Cons:
•This is seriously BASIC stuff. I guess I knew that going in to the class but I didn't realize just how basic it was. Like leveling and torting a cake, crumb coating it, frosting it. Not to toot my own horn but all of this stuff I've learned fairly easily on my own so it gets kind of slow having to go over easy stuff like writing or making shells and things like that.
•Although the price of the class may be cheap, materials are NOT. I spent a good amount of money on ingredients and additional things that didn't come with the course one kit, even with the 10% student discount and the 40% coupons.

Tips:
•Speaking of things to bring to class, don't freak out like me and literally bring every single thing. Some of the stuff they ask for is ridiculous [for example a full sized bath towel. I'm guessing this is so you can make a mess on your own space but our tables were covered in paper anyway so this wasn't necessary AT ALL] and other small stuff. I don't know how much parchment paper I wasted by bringing in these parchment triangles they asked for and then once I got home they were all crumpled at the bottom of my bag because I didn't even use them.
•Back to the course kit, if you do any baking at all, check what comes in the kit and see if you have any of it. It was only $16ish with the 40% off coupon but I honestly only needed the practice board and a few piping tips. It has really stupid stuff like a stand to put your book on and brushes to clean the tips and things like that.
•If you are serious about your baking, invest in a turn table and a cake carrier not just for the class but for future cakes.
•Buy extra couplers and bring in water and powdered sugar just in case you don't have the frosting consistencies right.
•Also about the frosting, to make life easier, I bought the Wilton buttercream mixes for decorating in class. For the actual cake I made sure it was made from scratch and tasted good but since class was just going to be practice, it's much easier and cheaper to buy the mix. You'll also most likely have a ton of frosting left so just save it for the following week and that saves even more time, money, and effort.

I know it seems like I'm ragging on the class but it really wasn't bad. I think it was mostly because I knew a lot of the stuff we went over and I feel like they try to scam you by making you get unnecessary things. Regardless of how much I learned, I would have to take this no matter what if I want to do future Wilton courses [which I do] so I'm glad I got it out of the way. Overall, I'm glad I took it. If you want to take this class strictly for leisure then go ahead! It's definitely worth it to have fun and learn something new.



PS - Here are the links to the cake recipes:
Butter vanilla, from Joy of Baking
Chocolate cake, from Hershey's
Red velvet, from Food Network/Sara Moulton/Cakeman Raven/take your pick

♫ Under the sea, under the sea ♪

Here are some cupcakes I made for my cousin's Little Mermaid themed birthday. Half of them were fondant decorations and the other half were candy mold figurines [this was the first time I had made candy]. My fondant cupcakes were heavily influenced [and by influenced I mean copied ;)] by ConsumedbyCake's Under the Sea Cupcakes. The octopus was just too cute and from that I got the idea for the little crabs and sea shells. Since I'm a total noob I didn't even think about making any of the Disney characters because I didn't want to be the butt of all jokes at the party so I just went for a sea motif.


These are the candy topped cupcakes. I was really bummed because I thought the candies were going to be the size they were on the packaging but really they were like three times bigger and kind of took up the entire cupcake. But I spent a pretty penny on the molds, melts, and special food colorings so I figured I might as well use them.



I loved how they looked mixed in the with the fondant ones though!




Here is the little octopus topping which I am in love with! I'm no fondant expert [this is only my third-ish time working with it] but both times I've done figurines I've found that sticking pieces together is really hard! I thought you could just do it with water but that makes it slippery and not sticky at all. Anyway for the eyes I came up with this solution:


Roll up a piece of black fondant into a ball then gently roll one side into a point like so. Kind of looks like a miniature avocado :P


Then poke a deep and wide hole wherever you want the eye to go and just push the pointy end in. This way I didn't have to use any sort of "glue".


For the tentacles I used the same approach, I made the bottom sort of hollow and just pushed in the eight pieces and used my nails poke the pieces and secure them. It sounds really convoluted but it's super simple.


The crab was the easiest and almost everyone's favorite!


The seashells where my favorite for sure because they were the most fun to make. Like I said I don't have much experience with fondant so I had to get creative since I don't have any tools to work with it other than the little rolling pin with the rings.


Roll out the fondant to 1/8" [this is where the rings come in handy] and cut a symmetric flower. [I used the Wilton mini cutters]


Then with a toothpick, make little dents in three of the petals and smooth them out so it looks like six scallops instead of three.


With a knife, score all six petals.


Then cut the bottom petals and the sides that haven't been scored. For the little fishies I used the tulip and scalloped heart cutter from the same Wilton set but I didn't get pictures of the process.

Who would've thought that a dozen cupcakes weren't going to be enough for a party of 20 people??? We ended up having to get a storebought cake last minute so that everyone could have a little bit of dessert. I'm kind of glad since I was nervous about my cupcakes being the center of attention.

3 in 1 Cupcakes

I have been using the Joy of Baking recipe for vanilla cupcakes/frosting for a while now and I've always wanted to try making new flavors with the same recipe. All I can say is, SUCCESS!!! It was so easy and simple and the best part is that I got three completely different flavors, and I am SO EXCITED to share!



First off is the classic vanilla on vanilla which is my all time favorite cupcake combo. Although I always enjoy trying new flavors, I'm kind of a purist when it comes to cupcakes. A good ol' white cupcake is simply the best! I made the entire recipe for the buttercream and put little dollops of frosting. For the topping I tinted sugar with food coloring. I got this tip from a Youtube video and it worked better than I expected. I used the neon colors and did one drop of green and two drops of blue with a half cup of regular granulated sugar.



Once I filled the cupcake pan with a dozen vanilla cupcakes, I split the remaining batter between two bowls and that's when the fun started! In one bowl, I stirred in half of a mashed banana. With the remaining buttercream, I added cream cheese to my liking, about 3 oz.



With the last of the batter, I added the zest of half of a lemon and about 3 Tbs of lemon juice. For the frosting, I mashed 10 raspberries through a strain so that I only got the pulp and no seeds. I added this to the remaining cream cheese frosting and that's what gave it the cute pink hue.





Now I'm dying to try other ideas, like adding a little bit of cocoa powder to the batter and orange zest to the frosting. So there you have it, three different cupcakes from one easy recipe!




love life.