Easter Whoopie Pies

It has been forever since I have posted. I do still bake!  Finding time to do it is tough so you can imagine finding time to post it. (PLUS, I rarely remember to take photo!)

I made these today for Easter at Alex and Laura's tomorrow. They are carrot cake cookies with orange cream cheese filling. I am not sure if that actually qualifies as a whoopie pie, but that is what I am calling them.  Allen, who has no sweet tooth at all, said he thought they were very good (if you know Allen, it takes a lot to get an actual compliment so I have to assume he actually does like them.  The man gets excited about nothing!) For me, they are eh.  I like the, but I don't find myself walking through the kitchen tearing a piece off every time I walk by, I must not love them. 

So tomorrow is Easter and two weeks later, Alex turns five. FIVE! I can't believe it.  I turn thirty three. I can't believe that either. I like to think of it as celebrating the 3rd anniversary of my thirtieth birthday. 

Thanks for checking in. I am sure I will have a post about Alex and I's birthday party.  I always do!

Leigh's Wedding a.k.a. My Biggest Project Yet!

So my friend Leigha hired me to do the baking for her wedding. We initially agreed upon this BEFORE discussing details (typical Kate) but I was just honored that she would trust me with such a thing! In the end she ordered 100+ sugar cookies, 150 cupcakes, and a small cake for she and her fiancé/hubby to cut into. For someone like me, this is quite an undertaking. I made a plan, ordered my supplies, and over the course of a few weeks, built up quite a supply of butter in my fridge. Every time I went to the store the check out lady looked at me like I was a weirdo; what could I possibly need all this butter for!?!?!

So we will start with the cookies. These cookies are not hard to do but they they take forever! In my opinion, these cookies are better a few days old, and that was good because I could make them a few days in advance.  After making three batches of cookie dough, I spent about 4 hours after work one night rolling out dough while trying to keep it cold, getting it on a cookie sheet, and getting it in the oven.  While they were baking, I did this all over again so I was ready withe the next batch right when the oven was available. I started working at 5:30 and finished just before 10:00. 

Here they are stacked up after baking. There really is no such thing as too much counter space. 

The next step on the cookies is to ice and sugar them.  THIS is what really takes a ton of time. I came home from work the next night and work from 5:20 or so until 11:20. Allen just LOVES when I work on these cookies.  Every.  Single.  Thing. in the kitchen is covered in powdered sugar and colored sanding sugar.  Including Chopper and I.  My fingers are stained pink, Chopper is high as a kite from licking powdered sugar off the floor in large quantities, and after all that, THEN I have to clean up the mess.  

The finished product: each cookie was individually bagged and tied. That was the night after icing them. So all-in-all, I am guessing I had over 12 hours in the cookies alone. 

The Friday before the wedding I took off work.  SO glad I did too because for one brief second, I thought I might just do it after work one day. C-R-A-Z-Y. I got up and started baking at 9am.  I finished up at 6:45. AND I mean, that was NO BREAKS. I didn't even eat except for a LaraBar. 1) Glad I took the day off. 2) The next house I have WILL have double ovens.  IT WILL.  3) Since the only time I sat down the entire day was to drive to pick Alex up from school and make a pit stop for MORE butter, my feet literally caused pain when I walked. I was, well, whipped. 

This is what my entire day that day looked like. Except five minutes after this photo, things didn't look so shiny and clean or organized. 

So I spent the entire day on Friday baking. I failed to mention that Leigha told me at one point that the RSVP list had reached 150.  Well, it just didn't seem right to do the exact same number of cupcakes as people attending so, I, well, I ended up making 216 cupcakes. I am nuts I know. Leigha had also requested a few different flavors. I agreed that was a good idea, but the problem there is that then people feel the need to get more than one cupcake. I felt like I should make more than 150 and I did. Turns out, I was right.  I had several conversations that went just like this:

Guest: Oh you did so well.  Your cupcakes are delicious. Good job!

Me: Oh! Thanks so much. Which flavor did you try?

Guest: What do you mean? I tried all three...

It was at this point I decided NOT to tell them how much sugar was in just one cupcake's icing. It is enough to kill an elephant.  I mean it. 

Here are the Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes: a strawberry cupcakes filled with lemon curd.  Iced with buttercream icing with chopped strawberries whipped in.   

Here are the Wedding Cake Cupcakes: A white almond cupcakes filled with apricot jam, topped with almond buttercream icing. 

And here are the Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with a simple buttercream icing. 

The day I did the icing was the Sat morning of the wedding.  I had NUMEROUS people (to my surprise) offer to help me on this day. I truly think people think that because the end result of baking can be so pretty, the entire process is pretty and fun. I feel like people glamorize it a bit. I have one friend that I am so close to, I KNEW she would help me where I needed it: washing up dishes so I could use them over and over again. SO I asked Sheila to come over at 8:30 on Sat morning (Yeah, she truly does love me). She arrived ready to help and didn't even complain when she washed my mixer bowls no less than 15 times. She did however give me puppy dog eyes and asked if she could put the sprinkles on the chocolate cupcakes. So sprinkle she did. And did you see them?!!?  I mean, they'd be NOTHING without those sprinkles! ;)  But honestly, if it weren't for Sheila washing those bowls, spatulas, and icing tips over and over again, this would have probably taken me a good 2 hours longer than it did. And she did get a glimpse of how truly unglamorous baking can be. 

Here are all 216 of them lined up in their boxes on my kitchen table.

Last but not least, I needed to do the cake. I told Leigha that I would make her a 6" round for she and Kenji to cut into.  She requested ombre: fading from dark pink to light pink. I had never done this before, but I concocted a plan.  A very abstract plan.  I am not even going to get into how the cakes came together but I will say this: for some reason I was very nervous about the cakes. I got the icing ready in a few bags in a few colors. I took a deep nervous breath just as Sheila started washing a bowl.  By the time she finished, I had iced the cake. Ok, cakes. I had made a back up cake just in case I got nervous and mucked it all up. But I had an idea and once I got started on it, I was moving very quickly.  Below are the two cakes. See the one closest to the camera? I ended up using that one for the wedding.  It was not exactly ombre, but I was so surprised at how quickly I came to this result with no flaws on the cake, I decided not to press my luck. So it didn't exactly fade from dark to light pink, but we got there in a round about way. The one in the background was my "back up" cake that I didn't use. In fact, the next day I took it to my neighbors house because it happened to be her favorite flavor.  Allen doesn't have a sweet tooth and I assure you I eat enough of this stuff! 

Here are Leigha and Kenji cutting the cake.  Awwww. 

Here I am, eating cupcakes in my usual, elegant way. 

So, quite a large project (for me anyway) under my belt. I learned that given enough time and forethought, I am a decent planner, I have a ton of people who support me and think I do ok at this gig, my neighbors rock, baking is in NO WAY glamorous, and two kitchenaid mixers and a double oven are necessary for me to commit to something like this again. 

Thanks for checking in! 

Veteran's Dinner

My neighbors the Losoles volunteer to throw a lovely dinner each year in their awe inspiring back yard pool/pub area for a local veterans organization.  It is quite the event and Joe and Teresa are very proud as it is something they truly enjoy doing for others.  This year I made some cookies for the shindig.  My cookies were nothing in comparison to what went into this dinner and next year Allen and I both hope to be able to help more.

It has been a long time since I have posted. Google and my computers were not getting along for a while. Trying to post pictures became so frustrating I gave up on it entirely for a while. BUT I'M BACK! Now that I know it is working again I will try to be more diligent about posting pictures as I take them.

Below are just a few projects that I have done through this "winter that wasn't".  We never even had a day this winter where the high was below 40.  I am a little worried about the bugs this summer. It is only March and the mosquito dragons are everywhere!

I made these fall cookies to take to AR when we went for Thanksgiving. When they are small like this they sure are easy to snack on.



These are some Christmas Light Cookies I made for mt Mom's Christmas party at her house.



These are some Orea Cookie Cupcakes I made for a gal who wanted them for her son's birthday party.  I bake and Oreo into the cupcake but the best part is the icing. Cream cheese with crushed Oreo pieces. Mmmmm...... I also made her some Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes but didn't take a photo of those (for some reason)

  
Mom has some lips cookies that she wants me to make for a book club gathering and I am in the middle of planning Alex's 4th birthday party (Dr. Seuss themed), so we shall see what I come up with!

Cookies and Cake for a Halloween Baby Shower

My friend Rachel has a sister who is pregnant. Because of the due date, Rachel's family decided on a Halloween themed baby shower. I loved this idea. Rachel commissioned me to make the baked goods for this soiree and I agreed happily. Above is a shot of the cookies I made.  Onesies in the colors of traditional candy corn. And below that is a close up detailed shot of the cake.

I am a nerd and come up with ideas and sketch them out.  I came up with the idea of a pregnant ghost and loved it, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. Thanks goodness I have a handy hubby. For the ghost I bought 2 big gumballs out of a machine and had 2 kabob skewers.  Come ghost assembly time, I called Allen over and showed him what I had and said GO!  In the end, I was VERY Happy with the result. One of my best yet I think.



2 Ingredient Pumpkin Cupcakes

OK, OK, 3 ingredients if you count the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top. These cupcakes are AWESOME.  First of all, you only need 2 ingredients! BONUS: they are in the same isle at the grocery store. ADDED BONUS: you just open them up and throw out the packaging. Easy clean up.  

I got this recipe (if you can even call it that) off of Pinterest. If you use the internet in ANY capacity and do not know what Pinterest is, I feel for you. I really do.  Pinterest.com - a virtual pinboard.  You know how you see a picture of something in a magazine and rip out the page so you can keep it as an idea for later? Pinterest is that exact same thing for the internet.  If you see something you like online you can "pin" it to a board that you create.  You can create ANY idea board you want to: Recipes I like, Ideas for the garden, my favorite movies, etc. You see a picture of something you like online and pin it to one of those boards.  It keeps the picture and the web link so you have it any time you want. The coolest part about itis you can see other people's pins and draw inspiration from those as well.  I found this recipe on someone else's pinboard.  

So i bet you can't guess the first ingredient! Ok, fine.  The first ingredient is pumpkin.  Good guess.  The second ingredient is yellow cake mix.  That's.  It.  

From the picture on Pinterest and even from the ones I have taken of my cupcakes, it looks like these might be dry. They are the opposite.  These are probably the softest, fluffiest, and most moist cupcakes I have had in ages. I dusted the top of them with powdered sugar and they were delish!

An easy something to do for a Fall recipe. 

In other news, I'll be in the kitchen practicing as I have a couple of baby showers coming up I am making cakes for.  I did a tiny practice a week ago.  The first baby shower is a Halloween themed baby shower.  I was not too thrilled with the way my cake turned out, but I have since changed my entire idea for the cake anyway. Below is what I WAS going to do, but not any more. 

Thanks for checking in. Hopefully with the holidays coming up and me needing to practice, I will have some more posts in the near future. I already have a few ideas for Christmas goodies. 

Orange Cake...........eh.....

I decided to practice a little on a fondant cake and make my first two layer cake. I did learn one important thing: put fondant on a room temperature cake, not a cake right out of the fridge.  I did the top layer at room temperature and the bottom layer from the fridge.  The reason I did this was because I put a crumb coat on the bottom layer, and then put it in the fridge while I worked on top layer.

The bottom layer puffed up.  The fondant puffed up and pulled away from the cake so............won't be doing that again.

Anyway, here it is. A double layer cake: One layer white almond cake and one layer chocolate.  both had apricot filling.

Orange Fondant with Pink Rock Candy Decor.

I still love the idea of the decoration/concept, but was incredibly disappointed with the cake as a whole. The puffed up fondant was one reason, but as a whole, the cake was not as smooth as I would have liked it to have been.  Again, I guess that is why we call it practice!