Cake Endeavours

You can never have too many chocolate chip cookie recipes.  What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than with some Bailey's Irish Cream?  I saw this recipe on The Bitchin' Kitchen website.  I love this show.  It's so much fun!  Nadia is so funny and has lots of delicious recipes.  I didn't have any coconut and I ground the pecans instead of chopping them.  I like the flavour but not the texture.  They are very tasty!  I hope the girls at wine night approve!

These are for E's day care.  One recipe of Fantastic Fudge Brownies made over 6 dozen mini brownies.  Pretty awesome that you basically get 6 dozen two bite brownies for less than five dollars.  I didn't use cupcake liners, just greased the pan.  Don't use the caramel kisses, they just stick to the bottom of the pan and are nasty to get off.  Fortunately only a dozen were destroyed by using caramel kisses.  For the icing I just used white chocolate chips melted into the icing.  Also added a candy heart to each one. Fortunately, I am to send Tim with a container to work and a container for me.  It's amazing how much more our co-workers appreciate some home made baked goods.  *grin*

The inspiration for these cupcakes came from probably my favourite blog that I follow: Confessions of a Cookbook Queen . I love her posts.  Not only does she have great recipes and fabulous pictures to go with them her antidotes are always entertaining and insightful. I want to try every recipe. This was my first pick. I learned very quickly that it's not easy to replicate this recipe when you live in Canada.  I could find a family size box of brownie mix, so I settled on using my mom's brownie recipe instead and didn't change anything.  I ended up with 22 cupcakes from one recipe.  Then my search for Hershey's Bliss White Chocolate Meltaways  became a quest.  I was only able to find a mixed bag with 3 different flavours.  With only 5 white chocolate squares in each bag I really couldn't justify spending all that money to get enough white cholocate squares.  So, I decided to try Lindor White Chocolate Truffles  instead.  I only ha...

My friend Theressa just got married in Jamaica so I had a girls' night out to celebrate as a post bachelorette party.  I made the lemon cake for dessert.  This time I made the lemon curd for the filling.  It was definitely worth the effort. Note: Keep refrigerated until you're ready to serve the cake and don't travel with on your lap with the heat vent blowing on it while in the middle of a snow storm!!

I made this cake for cutie Lauren who's request was to have some butterflies and for it to be chocolate.  Got to love a girl who knows what she wants at 4! :)  I got the idea for from the blog Layers of Love .  Lauren was a happy birthday girl. This was also my first go at making fondant from scratch.  The recipe is from allrecipes.com .  It was very easy but messy.  Fortunately I had the foresight to make it a day in advance since you need to refrigerate it overnight.  I added the dye while it was mixing.  You definitely need a heavy duty mixer to handle it though. I ended up with almost 2.5lb of fondant that cost me less than $4.00 to make.  I will definitely make my own as much as possible since it cost $15.99 for a 4lb tub from Bulk Barn, and that's a good deal.   Cake: Perfect Chocolate Cake Filling: Buttercream Icing Decorations: Butterflies were made with heart cutter from Pampered Chef that I cut off the end on an a...

Last night we celebrated my friend Joy's birthday as a belated surprise.  Her birthday is really December 24th but it needed to be celebrated properly since we weren't able to before now.  Joy is an amazing baker so I could not disappoint.  Of course I turned to Martha for inspiration and found a lemon cake recipe with a whipped icing.  I would have loved to have made the lemon curd for the filling but I had already sent Tim out once to buy lemons and sugar, I couldn't send him back out for the eggs.  I needed 8 egg yolks for the curd!  Next time, I will add this for sure. The icing was really easy to make.  However, you really have to be careful when dissolving the sugar in the egg whites that you don't end up cooking them.  Otherwise it makes a brilliant white and light icing. This cake was really good.  You'd think you were eating lemon meringue pie.  It's definitely a keeper. Cake: Lemon Cake Frosting:  Whipped Frosting ...

This is my 2nd time making this design.  It is certainly much easier and less stressfull doing a repeat design!  This time it was a 2 tiered 10" cake.  Not as many snowflakes this time so I was able to make it more symetrical *grin*.  I love my snowflake cutters!  I made this for a co-worker for a Christmas dinner. Cake: Cookies and Cream Filling: Buttercream Icing  - green