Craving Crazy Cakes

Have you ever craved something and then thought “Hey I wonder if I could make this into a cupcake?” no? Well I have. Cupcakes are one of the most versatile things you can bake, you can make them taste or look like anything you want. Craving spaghetti? you can make cupcakes that look like spaghetti, maybe you’re favorite food is bacon, bacon goes great with peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes. You can do amazing things with cupcakes and this is just part one of craving crazy cupcakes, a series of blogs exploring the versatility of cupcakes.

I had a craving for one of my favorite sandwiches the other day and you’re probably thinking how are you going to make a sandwich into a cupcake and have it still taste good? Well start with a good sandwich, like Nutella and peanut butter with bananas. I know to some of you it may sound weird but if you like all of those things you will love these cupcakes.

I started out with a simple peanut butter cake recipe and then added some mashed bananas into it. Next I made the icing I followed the recipe for  regular chocolate butter cream icing and then added Nutella instead of melted chocolate.

Just a side note, make sure your butter isn’t too cold when you make your icing otherwise you get chunks of butter that don’t quite mix in.

Then once the cupcakes came out of the oven and were cooled I iced them and stuck a peanut and slice of banana on top for decoration.

Stay tuned for another entry in Craving Crazy Cupcakes

Wedding cake and a Suitcase?

On June 13 2009 My Grandmother and I were in Saskatchewan putting the final touches on a wedding cake and grooms cake for my second cousin's wedding. This was a few months in the making and took a great deal of planning. We coordinated with the bride and groom, discussing what they would like to see on the cake, what the color scheme was going to be and roughly how many people this would need to feed. We also had to decide what kind of cake we were going to use and how we were going to safely get this cake from Kamloops, BC to Regina, SK.

After much deliberation we decided that two tiers would be red velvet and one tier would be lemon, our colors would be purple, blue and lime green, colors we had found in a peacock feather the bride would be wearing in her hair.  A couple weeks before the wedding we made a test cake and took it on a trial run to my cousin's graduation in Alberta, it was a success.

Upon our return we began making all of the accessories to go on the cake. This included fondant flowers and various edible pictures to go on the grooms cake as well as luggage stickers. We baked the cakes and covered them in fondant to lock in the moisture, leaving all of the flowers and little extras off until we got there. We also made sure to make lots of extra flowers just in case there were any incidents on the way. Thankfully the cake made it all the way there with no incidents and we had more than enough flowers to go on the cake.

Everyone loved the cake and was amazed that we had managed to get it all the way there in one piece. And to be honest so were we. That cake was the first cake I had ever baked for an event that wasn't just a bunch a friends. I never realized how much planning would need to go into a cake.

Cake Pops

Alright so I found this really interesting book about these things called cake pops. All you have to do is bake a cake, crumble it into tiny pieces, then mix some icing into it, and cover them in chocolate. I'll post a full tutorial with step by step instructions in a couple days. Until then here are a couple that I have done on my own. They didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped and there were many casualties along the way but it was a pretty good first attempt. I will be trying this again as they went over amazingly well. They can be stored for quite a long time in the fridge and still taste fresh and all of my friends loved them. And they're a little cuter and more creative than plain cupcakes. This is a link to one of my favorite websites about cake pops.bakerella

Anybody Out There?

Ok, so this is my first blog post ever. I'm not entirely sure what I should write about so if this gets rambly and kind of jumps from topic to topic that's why. I'm a little nervous, so don't judge. I am going for my teaching degree, I have a part-time job and a passion for baking. I have made many cakes in my time ranging from dinosaur and other themed cakes to a 3 tiered wedding cake.  I also make cupcakes (including recipes for those with dietary restrictions) and cookies. I hope to add a few links to some of my favorite baking websites as well as some pictures of my own creations.