Wilton Royal Icing recipe

Currently in Wilton's course 2! It's been so fun and i've learned to make that royal icing that has been so fun!

You can use royal icing for dried sugar flowers, cookies, gingerbread houses and more. Great recipe and will keep for a very long time.

Recipe:

• 3 tablespoons of meringue powder
• 1lb sifted confectioners’ sugar
• 5-6 tablespoons of lukewarm water (Use less and add if more is needed)
  

Place confectioners’ sugar and meringue powder in stand mixer and combine. Add water and beat for 7-10 minutes on medium speed. Your icing should resemble medium consistency buttercream when finished. Keep covered with a damp cloth while whipping to prevent drying out.

Chocolately Mini Brownies! mm...fudgey or cake-like, u choose! 1 bowl!

Another little thing i tried baking in the mini-cupcake trays... works well and once again, the perfect size for those who "just want a bite"!

INGREDIENTS

* 4 squares unsweetened chocolate (or 12 tbls cocoa power & 3 tbls vegetable oil)
* 3/4 cup butter
* 3/4 cup white sugar
* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 3 eggs
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 cup chopped walnuts

For a more cakey brownie - 1/2 cup flour & 1/2 cup milk

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
2. Microwave chocolate and butter or margarine in large bowl at HIGH for 2 minutes or until butter or margarine is melted.
3. Stir until chocolate is melted. Stir in sugar. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour and nuts.
4. Spread in greased 13 x 9 inch pan. Bake for 30 minutes (do not overbake).

** Make sure sure to grease & flour the pan as these will stick as they are very fudgey and yum!

The best blueberry apple crisp in the world!! Seriously!

I bought 10lbs of blueberries last week and well, i dont know why but i had so much left over that i had to think of what to make with it. Then, while surfing facebook (thanks again facebook) I saw a photo of a blueberry cobbler and then, it was a done deal. Im not big on cobbler as the top is a bit cakey, so i tried a apple blueberry crisp....

The yummy delicious recipe!! Your tummy can thank me later!

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups sliced peeled tart apples
• 2 cups blueberries
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
• 3/4 cup sugar (my mom said it wasn't too sweet, so i guess this is the right amount!)
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 lemon (juice)
  
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup butter, melted

DIRECTIONS

1. Place apples tossed with lemon juice in a greased 11-in. x 7-in. x 2-in. baking dish. Top with blueberries. Mix brown sugar and 2 tablespoons flour; sprinkle over fruit. Combine sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and remaining flour. Stir in egg & half of the butter mixture with a fork until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle over fruit; drizzle with the rest of the butter butter. Bake at 350 degrees F for 55-60 minutes or until apples are tender. Serve warm.

Yes it's that easy! Who would have thought?

Creamy Rose Garden - Buttercream classics

I was one of those beginner decorator who really really wanted to learn to make buttercream roses - and good buttercream roses. It all starts with the bud, and i used a dozen or so hersheys kisses as the center stem to practice with! After a few hours, my rose petals got better and better and the hard buttercream got a bit softer and wow... i was loving it! Definately for a 'girly' event, cupcakes with roses will be sure to please anyone. Love the ones from Cakeboxsoc! Using the chocolate cake i think really adds to the affect of the garden... Rose gardens are my favorite now... i can't wait to make some for you! :)

Tip for coloring icing: Pink icing gets brighter the day after, so be sure to make pink icings the day before to make sure you get the saturation you want!

Pastel Yellow Rosette Lemon Cupcakes

mmm... im a bit fan of lemon in the summer time! These took some time to pipe cause i used a stiff buttercream so next time i will try a medium consistency for the sake of my poor hand, but looks great! can't wait to try with some green petals and different colored roses now that i have been practicing the technique!

Cake Decorating Class is so Fun

Since we only had the last 20 minutes to decorate our cakes, i rushed and well... this is the result! Very fun, if i had more time i would have definately uncrusted the outside rim with M&Ms... will make this again as it is Ari's Favorite Book! Also, ari can say "Cupcakes!" when she sees them...how cute!

Angel Food Cupcakes!

Thank you Allrecipes.com, once again you pulled through! Super simple recipe and is great cause from a box it is just way way too sweet! But it does taste alright... and they make pretty light and fluffy cupcakes and is so fast.

Also, if you need low-fat in your diet, this is the way to go! I topped these off with a whipped lemon icing - mmm...

INGREDIENTS

• 12 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar

DIRECTIONS

1. Separate eggs; discard yolks or refrigerate for another use. Measure egg whites, adding or removing whites as needed to equal 1-1/2 cups. Place in a mixing bowl; let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, sift confectioners' sugar and flour together three times; set aside. Add cream of tartar, extracts and salt to egg whites; beat on high speed. Gradually add sugar, beating until sugar is dissolved and stiff peaks form. Fold in flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time. Gently spoon into an ungreased 10-in. tube pan. Cut through batter with a knife to remove air pockets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Immediately invert pan; cool completely before removing cake from pan.

A very chocolately house-warming!

Our awesome neighbors (and my biggest cupcake fan) just moved away from us this past weekend. We are very sad about this but so happy for them that they found this amazing 3 story blue & brown house in White Rock. For her house warming I decided to do a chocolate - brown and blue mini cupcake theme! There were 4 different design styles which included blue sugar crystals, toasted coconut, chocolate jimmies, slivered almonds and blue & white candies. They were a joy to make and I was so proud upon finishing.

The delivery however was a disaster as I used a metal party tray (you know the regular red rimmed ones you find sushi in?) and it was extremely hot that day, the Hazelnut chocolate icing softened in the heat. I think for parties in colder weather this would be great and the tray fits exactly 54! Also a bit of refrigeration or freezer would have did some good before delivery as well. Regardless they were enjoyed and the house was better than the photo!

Happy new house to Janet, Milan, Olive & Dorathy Dog!

Strawberry Princess Ari

Strawberry Princess Ari - Rich vanilla cupcake finished with fluffy strawberry cream frosting topped pink sprinkles and a strawberry malt ball.

My dad and I recently made our own strawberry jam so perfect, I can use it in my frosting. (Making jam is so easy, just slow cook an equal amount of fruit to an equal amount of sugar til it thickens, then leave to cool - Voila! You got jam!) I just used a standard buttercream and added strawberry jam to it (yes using regular jam is fine too) and it turned out so perfect and it tastes so good too. Be sure not to add too much cause the cream will get runny and will be very hard to pipe (i learned this the hard way)... if you want a deeper pink color, use a few drops of red coloring. Also if need be, put your frosting back in the fridge til it's a good consistency and try again.

This is a big week for me and cupcakes, Hughy's birthday is tomorrow (doing some Blue Hawaii - coconut cupcakes & pina colada ones) and Saturday I got to do a chocolate collection for Janet & Milan's house warming. Cupcakes are so great for any occasion!

Blueberry Citrus Cupcakes and Silicon Baking Cups

While shopping for cupcake liners at Michael's, I notice some great solid colors. I looked at the price - what the? $18.99...these better be some great cups. So with a bit of research I realized that these cups were made out of flexible silicon, can be used without an existing muffin tray, and of course are reusable. I splurged and bought them as a test and the results were.... THEY ARE AWESOME! Not only did the heat distribute nicely (I tested with yummy Blueberry Citrus cupcakes which i finished by brushing on lemon syrup), they popped out so nicely and were so easy to clean. They are also dishwasher safe. I also did a quality test on them by letting Ari play with them, throw them around, squish them, sit on them, step on them... and the shape just went back to its perfect form.

I'm going to go buy 12 more in other colors cause not only can you use these for baking, you can be creative and use them for things such as Jell-O treats.

Red Velvet Cupcakes & Natural food coloring

I have always been drawn to food from the south (USA) for some reason. The comfort foods like mash potatoes, meat loaf, bbq's, corn on the cob, fried chicken (yes once again i blogged about fried chicken), and of course Red Velvet Cake, or aka., the Chocolate Cake of the South. The cake has a bit of a sour taste to it because of the buttermilk but it's quite enjoyable because it sort of feels like you are eating a decadent chocolaty scone. The icing also really makes it for me and for this one I used a cooked vanilla butter icing. Cream cheese would also be really yummy and I heard that is very popular. There is also a lot of food coloring needed in most Red Velvet cake recipes - I'm talking like 4tbsps to get that deep desirable red color so be sure to use a natural alternative with a red beet juice coloring extract.

Make your own ingredients:
1 cup canned beet juice, 2 teaspoons vinegar
Instructions:
Drain the can reserving 1 cup of liquid. Add 2 teaspoon of vinegar to this and you're done.

Not sure how this homemade one works in Red Velvet Cake but you can also always find a Natural, Vegan, Gluten free, Kosher liquid food coloring in certain health/whole food stores to keep things simpler:

Natural food colors are becoming more popular with consumers especially as evidence shows a correlation between certain diseases and the use of artificial colors.

Beware of bakeries that use un-natural ingredients in their food. Always ask before ordering something such as Red Velvet cupcakes.

Didn't want to throw a damper on red velvet cake, but you know, when you eat a cupcake, you want to feel good about it! :)

Also, congrats to Wyness & Eileen for making the mini-8! Enjoy this batch! I ate 6 testers myself (no joke).

Oatmeal Cup'cakes'!

The mini-muffin pan isn't only great for cupcakes, it's great for making mini bite size cookies as well or mini little treats. These are my cranberry chocolate oatmeal cup'cakes' or should I say cup'cookies' topped with a melting chocolate wafer. It's fun to be creative with conventional tools and rethink some of their uses. I absolutely adore the mini-muffin pan and i think if i were to put together a box of 24 mini petits for sale, this would have to be one of the choices (goes great with tea & coffee). These are very decadent and of course, good for you too. Everytime I make these cookies they are gone too fast!

Sugar Rose Petals & Rose Water Cupcakes

Last night I had a hell of a time sleeping so i read the entire "Cupcakes" by Susan McMahon. Only took me 20 minutes or so to go through the 160 some-odd pages as the recipes were all quite similar from one to the next, and more of a visual guide than anything else. The only real new thing that popped out at me were sugar rose petals. The recipes in this book was quite simple and because I was surfing online at specialty cupcakes, I thought it was a very interesting flavor and wondered how it was done. Well here is the recipe for 12 sugar rose petal cupcakes, super easy:

You need:
12 rose petals (make sure they are eatable, ask the florist)
1 egg white, lightly beaten
4-6 Tbsp sugar

Instructions: To crystallize the rose petals, brush them with egg white, lightly sprinkle with sugar evenly and place them on baking parchment paper and let dry.

Note: Do not eat if you are pregnant or sensitive to raw eggs, as this recipe calls for raw eggs... Not sure if I want to eat them myself but they do look very nice... I think I do have to try just one.

As for the cupcakes, just create a standard cupcake recipe - replace the vanilla with rose water.

I'd give you the recipe in this book, but everything is in grams and ounces (This book, I realized is produced in England which means their system of measuring isn't like ours in North America). I will convert and do a post on measurements another day soon, but I wanted to add that when buying books from England, Canadians pay the same price as Americans cause the price is converted from British pounds. Cool, didn't know that. This book only cost me $12.95 + tax. Fair deal I think and looks nice in the collection.

Black Forest Memories...

If there was to be a cake that reminds me of my mother, it would have to be Black Forest Cake. I remember when i was very young, my mother would get my brother and I Black Forest cake from Safeway with the dark chocolate cake, filled with Bavarian cream, topped with chocolate shavings and candy-syrup red cherries. I guess because it's nostalgic for me, I can't have Black Forest cake any other way because I always end up saying - "Something just ain't right...". So I attempted to make this into a cupcake - with a few tweaks. I however didn't use fresh cream, which i found out was a big mistake as vanilla frosting is just way too heavy with the bavarian cream filling (even though it was whipped). Next time however to make it a bit more of my own, I think I will grind up the cherries right into the chocolate cake for more of a cherry flavor. Overall, I still think cherry+chocolate+bavarian cream=pretty awesome! This is one cupcake I vow to perfect.

Also, shoutout Ben's peeps at Sutton Real Estate head office who has this batch in their tummy!

For those that dream in chocolate...

So I made a special batch of Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes topped with milk chocolate frosting and centered with a caramel filled Hershey's kiss, exactly a year ago from today for my good friend Scott (who just ordered me my first shipment of cupcake containers - thank you!). They turned out so beautiful i took a photo of them, anticipating that i will be blogging about cupcakes one-day (j/k... but i did take a photo cause they looked so scrumptious). I can't say I LOVE CHOCOLATE like those around me (minus David, my other half, who actually hates chocolate flavored anything), and I don't know why that is, but I do love chocolate cake - a lot. For me chocolate cake must be moist and chocolaty and the icing must not be too sweet - you know, the type of icing you can eat cups of without feeling like well... you ate cups of it.

Cool facts about chocolate:

• 71% of chocolate eaters prefer milk chocolate. (i like dark myself ;)
  
• 40% of women and 15% of men crave chocolate but it is not physically addictive.
• 51% choose a chocolate from a selection box depending on its shape.
• Chocolate makers use 40% of the world's almonds and 20% of the world's peanuts.
• Hershey produces around 23 million kisses a day in a variety of flavors
• The U.S. produces more chocolate than any other country but the Swiss consume the most.
  
• In 1939, Nestle introduced Chocolate Chips.
• Chocolate's melting point is just below your body temperature, so it melts in your mouth.

Also about my first order of cupcake containers: It turns out that the prices in the states are 60 times...yes i repeat 60 times cheaper than the suppliers in Canada. I spent 2 days calling, reseraching online, with over 20 suppliers, both in Canada and the USA before I placed an order. I mean, there is a chance that I missed a key supplier here in Canada but for now, I'm sticking to what my research shows. How unfair is it to us Canadian business owners? My cupcake containers and boxes are going to be shipped to my place in Bellingham. Let's just hope they don't charge me an arm and a leg at the border... regardless though, it's not going to be 60x the price! Entrepreneurship is harder in Canada than the US... proof is bank!

Forget Chicken & Waffles, Chicken & Cupcakes is where it's at!

My ol'friend Arty - aka Buddha Sax came over with a bucket of KFC yesterday and his new girlfriend Jackie (very sweet & charming girl, good job art! ;). I was feeling still a bit under the weather (because I once again caught what Ari had) and didn't feel like baking, but he so desperately wanted me to make a batch of cupcakes for dessert and you know i can't refuse a request from someone that brings me fried chicken... plus i had a new recipe i wanted to try from the Cake Bible. I took a few short cuts such as... eggs weren't at room temp. and i replaced the milk with soymilk and i didn't let the butter soften (i microwaved...shhh...). The result was a harder top than the other cake recipes i tried but nonetheless they were gobbled up and the minty green cream cheese frosting was light and yummy! I was also out of fondant so I topped it with one of my daughters whole-wheat puff stars and centered it with some pink frosting. Turned out to be very cute! In the end we were all happy and that's what important.

I also realized that i need new mixing bowls! This one is too heavy for my little weak under worked out arms. As they say? A baker is only as good as the ingredients and tools she uses?? i dont know if that is a saying or if i made that up right now. Regardless, I'm getting new mixing bowls and soon!

Making your own Lemon Zest - Lemon poppyseed cake

So i decided to try something different today and I have always been a fan of lemon poppyseed loafs at coffee shops and local bakeries. I found a great recipe and am very excited to try and maybe incorporate the recipe into a delicious cupcake one day. The recipe calls for lemon zest and instead of buying it, i decided to make my own with organic lemons and while i am at it, decided to make orange zest as well! I of course went to google to see how it's done and it's easier than i thought. Here is the recipe:

You need:

• 6 oranges, lemons or limes

Use as many or as few as you like but remember that you can make a lot of this at one time and store it in your cabinet for later use.

Instructions:

Clean and dry your oranges removing any labels if necessary.
Using a medium-fine grater, grate your fruit until only the white pith remains over the fruit. You now have Zest!
After you have grated all of your fruit, you can add it to any dish calling for it or you can dry it and store it.
Using either a silicone baking pad in a pan or the "release" variety of aluminum foil, spead you zest over your foil or pad, closely together but not in a mound. You want a flat layer of zest.
Place into a cool oven at 200 degrees or on a "Warm" setting and cook for one hour.
Using a spatula, turn the zest over once and stir slightly to make sure that the zest dries evenly.
Check after one hour to see if the zest is dry. If not, turn off the oven and allow the zest to dry overnight or to remain in the oven for at least one more hour.
If your zest is now dry, you can pour it into a clean and air-tight jar and store in your kitchen cabinet.

Cool Tip: After baking, baste the cake with a real lemon juice sugar syrup. Equal amount of lemon juice to sugar and boil til it becomes thick, stirring frequently. Baste the cake right as it comes out of the oven on all sides. Mmm.... finally found the secret to great lemon poppy seed loaf. Fresh lemon rind and lemon sugar syrup!