Cupcake Cake Pops

Cake pops, cake pops, cake pops. If I'm being completely honest, every time I'd think about all the cute cake pops I'd see pop up on the internet, the thought of trying to make them myself intimidated me. I have a cake-pop/doughnut hole maker so making the pops itself would be simple enough, but the whole dipping and decorating part completely scared me so I stayed away. 

But more and more I'd see such cute creations and I decided there must be a way to do it without having the cake balls fall off the sticks or getting the chocolate to coat and dry smoothly. Thankfully I came across a great post by Homemaker Chic and it had all the answers I was looking for. Check it out, her tips made all the difference for me.

A few days ago I got a text from a friend asking if I could help her out by making some cupcakes or cake pops for her sons birthday less then a week away. I took this as a sign that I should face my fears and attempt to make some cute cake pops worthy of any birthday boy. 

The only requirements were that they'd be blue and chocolate. Dots and swirls on a cake pop would be simple, but I really wanted to push myself. So, I thought why not include everything she asked for in one! So here they are, chocolate cake balls covered in chocolate, made to look like cupcakes with blue frosting and sprinkles.

To make these I used brown and blue chocolate melts, some sprinkles, and modeling chocolate for the cherries. Prep your cake balls and chocolate melts as suggested by Homemaker Chic and your ready to decorate as follows.

Step by step pictorial:

1) Dip in chocolate and allow to dry.

2) Dip the top third in candy melts in your choice of frosting color and allow to dry as well.

3) Re dip top third in frosting and SLOWLY swirl as you lift it out.

4) Quickly add some sprinkles before it can dry.

5) Top with a modeling chocolate ball or pearl for the cherry on the top before the chocolate dries as well.

6) Step back and admire your cute little cake pop cupcake!

 Me thinks I like to make cake pops now and will be looking for excuses to make many more! I foresee some Christmas cake pops to gift in my near future.

Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies: Recipe

My new favorite Christmas cookie...for the moment anyways. I love soft peanut butter cookies and then you add some chocolate and then the sweet and saltiness of the chocolate covered pretzels, heavenly!

Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cup your favorite peanut butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda

Directions:

1) Cream together butters and sugar. Beat in the eggs

2) In a separate bowl, sift together remaining ingredients.

3) Add flour mixture to butter and eggs.

4) Once combined cover and refrigerate for about an hour.

5) Roll chilled dough into 1 inch balls and place onto a baking sheet.

*For plain peanut butter cookies flatten each ball with a fork making a criss cross pattern.

*For reindeer cookies  roll one 1 inch ball and one 1 1/2 inch ball per reindeer. Use the bottom of a glass to flatten the cookies and place the smaller circle onto the larger one (don't center).

6) Bake for 8-10 minutes in a 375 degree preheated oven, just until the edges begin to brown. Be careful not to overbake. 

*For reindeer cookies add M&M nose, Keebler Fudge Dipped Pretzels, and mini chocolate chips for eyes immediately after taking it out of the oven. Then move to cool.

7)Move to foil or cooling rack to cool. 

Chocolate Covered Oreos (tutorial)

So this month I tried my hand at making these chocolate dipped Oreos. At first I had a hard time with it and than I realized it was just because I was over-complicating it (I blame it on being a perfectionist). Once I realized that, this project became very simple!

To make chocolate covered Oreos all you need is:

• Oreos
• Chocolate melts
• shortening
• fork
• wax paper/foil

Directions:

1) Melt your chocolate melts and about 2 tbs of shortening per bag (directions on bag)

2) put your Oreo into the melted chocolate, use your fork to make sure the entire cookie is covered (I usually need to scoop some extra chocolate to cover the top and sides)

3) Using your fork lift the cookie out of the chocolate and tap the fork gently on the side of the bowl to remove excess chocolate. As you do this the chocolate will also naturally smooth itself out.

4) Place your covered cookie on some wax paper or foil to dry.

*if you wish to add sprinkles, add them before the chocolate dries

*if you want to drizzle a different color chocolate on your cookie to fancy it up wait until the chocolate dries before drizzling.

  

Simple right?! So you are probably wondering how I seemed to over complicate such a simple process. Well as you see in the photo above, the white chocolate on the top two cookies isn't very smooth, here's why. During my first attempt at making these cookies here are all the things I did wrong: dipping the cookies with my fingers, using a toothpick instead of a fork, shaking the dipped cookies instead of tapping, not tapping gently, dipping half of the cookie at a time, and using a knife to spread on the chocolate.

To make a long story short, none of those methods worked and I made a mess.

If you want to make these cute reindeer chocolate covered Oreos just add two Keebler Fudge Dipped Pretzels for antlers, a red M&M for a nose, and two dots of brown chocolate for eyes.

*Eyeball variations: roll tootsie rolls into balls or mini chocolate chips 

Melting Snowman Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Christmas is right around the corner, and nothing says Christmas like snowmen and cookies. But here in Hawaii  since I don't live up in Mauna Kea a snowman sadly would not survive. So these "I'm melting!" Snowmen Cookies are a great tribute to Christmas here in the islands. I've seen similar cookies done before on Pinterest and figured I'd give it a decorating go myself. They are quite cute and tasty if I do say so myself! 
It was also an awesome opportunity to test out a Chocolate Sugar Cookie Recipe and to once again use my new favorite royal icing recipe (I actually feel like I'm a professional decorator every time I use it). I'm not that huge a fan of sugar cookies, but these chocolate sugar cookies are absolutely amazing!!!

CHOCOLATE SUGAR COOKIES:
      Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup Dark chocolate cocoa powder
1/8 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. (3 oz.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar
1 large egg
½ tsp. vanilla extract

 Directions:
In a small bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder and salt; whisk to blend and set aside. In another bowl combine the butter and sugar with an electric mixer.  Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.  Blend in the egg and vanilla.  With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated and no streaks remain.  Form the dough into a disc, wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, 1-2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 325˚ F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.  On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough out to about ¼-inch thickness.  Cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters and place cut outs on the prepared baking sheet.  Bake 10-12 minutes, just until set.  Let cool on the baking sheet about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Decorate as desired.

Yield: will make 30 1 1/2 inch round cookies, but amount will vary depending on the size of the cookie cutter(s) you use.

*P.S. I made one batch and then 3 more because they taste that good!

I'm working on a few other Christmas craft projects so I'm sorry I've been missing in action for a while. I should be posting up a few more recipes by the end of the year (fingers crossed).

Happy Baking!

It's a Boy cupcakes and White Chocolate Frosting Tutorial

Cupcakes for another Boy Baby Shower!

Since these toppers were made with white chocolate dipped Oreo cookie bark I decided to try out a white chocolate frosting. The name is a little deceiving because there is no actual white chocolate in this frosting. However it is white chocolate flavored with the help of the secret ingredient...shhhh this secret ingredient does all the work for me and get people guessing how I did it. It also keeps the frosting nice and light and creamy but thick enough to not melt right off like a whipped cream frosting. So, what is it?

It's white chocolate flavored instant pudding! It helps me end up with a nice creamy texture that isn't too sweet.

White Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients:
-1 box (1 oz.) Jello white chocolate instant pudding
-2 C. heavy whipping cream
-1 C. powdered sugar

Directions:
1) whip together the pudding and whipping cream until nice and thick with an electric mixer (5-7 minutes)
2)add in powdered sugar and whip for another 2-3 minutes making sure the sugar is well incorporated.
3)do a quick taste test (WARNING: after this step you may need to make an extra batch)

Yield: This will frost about a dozen standard sized cupcakes if you are going to pipe it on, 2 dozen if you just want to spread it on.

Note: For the cupcakes above, I doubled the recipe and added some blue food coloring paste to half of the frosting and topped some semi-homemade Devil's Food Cupcakes.

Royal Icing Recipe and Thanksgiving Cookies

I discovered an amazing Royal Icing Recipe over at Sweetopia. I've always wanted to be able to decorate sugar cookies like a pro (you know with an icing that would harden and be able to be packaged and given as a gift for any occasion) . And once I discovered the recipe I knew I needed a reason to test it out. I tried as best as I could to wait until after Thanksgiving but I opted out of baking cupcakes for our Thanksgiving dessert and made these cookies instead. They turned out pretty good for my first attempt at decorating.

The Royal Icing hardened perfectly and it even tasted good! I was afraid of it tasting like pure sugar but it has just the right amount of sweetness for me :0) Here's the recipe:

ROYAL ICING RECIPE
Ingredients:
-3/4 C. warm water
-5 Tbs. Meringue Powder (vanilla flavored, if not just add a tsp. of clear vanilla extract)
-1 tsp. cream of tartar
-2.25 lbs.powdered sugar

Directions:
1) Mix water and Meringue Powder together with a whisk until frothy and thickened (about 30 seconds)
2) Add cream of tartar and whisk for about 30 more seconds.
3) Add all of powdered sugar at once and mix at the lowest speed with your mixer using a paddle attachment if available for 10 minutes. The icing will get thick and creamy.

You can now add food coloring (the gel kind is best) or water to get desired color and consistency (I might only add water for icing used to flood cookies).

I'd highly recommend checking out the cookie decorating tutorial over at Sweetopia, she does an excellent job giving tips and tricks for any newbie cookie decorator like me!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, I'm grateful you stopped by! I'd love to see how your cookie decorating turns out if you use this recipe.

Cupcakes for a Baby Shower

I love love love how these turned out!!! Thanks to an Oreo bark recipe that I found on pinterest I was able to  make these adorable toppers that taste just as good as the frosting and cupcakes themselves. I have so many issues with decorating because I don't like to use a bunch of fondant that no one eats and ends up just throwing away. And then when it comes to choosing between looks and taste, I always go with taste. I don't care for the taste of too much buttercream which is perfect for doing some pretty fancy decorating but it is too sweet for my taste and I'd rather use a frosting that I love to top my cupcakes. So with this new found solution, at least for this cupcake flavor (the most requested anyways) so many doors have been opened! I'm so excited I am dancing around (really I am)! This is the most success I've ever had with actually decorating my cupcakes.

Sushi Cupcakes

These sushi inspired cupcakes are super simple to make. I had some extra black cupcake liners, baked my favorite white cupcake and used a pineapple and some colored fondant for my sushi filling!

Witch Cupcakes

This year for our Church Trunk or Treat we decided to go with a Wizard of Oz theme for our costumes, and trunk. So of course we needed our treats to match as well. I had seen some witch hats on pintrest that I loved originally posted on the Betty Crocker web page.

I also saw these cute witches originally posted by cupcakestakethecake

So what better Wizard of Oz character could I go with than a melting Wicked Witch!!

I came up with 2 different versions. Which one do you like best?

Version 1

 ...or version 2

I used Oreo cookies for the cookie since these are Cookies and Cream cupcakes. I say why make food that looks good if it's not going to taste good too!

Tutorial:

What you'll need:

• your favorite chocolate cupcakes
• frosting for decorating
• green and black food coloring
• Hershey kisses
• Oreo cookies with cream filling removed
• red mini M&M's
  
  

What to do:

1)After baking your cupcakes cut out the center to fill. Put cupcake cores in a bowl and set it aside.

2)Now fill your cupcakes with your favorite filling. I used the whipped cookies and cream frosting.

3) Use your cupcake cores to make cake balls for your witch heads. Crumble to cake cores with some frosting, shape into balls, place on a plate or cookie sheet, and refrigerate for about an hour.

4)For cupcake version 1 now use a knife to frost your cupcakes.

or

For cupcake version 2 take some green frosting and make some squiggles on the top of your cupcakes. This is the already meted parts of your witches so it doesn't have to be perfect.

5) Now it's time to make your hats. Use frosting to glue a Hershey kiss onto the unwritten side of an Oreo cookie. Add a band with colored frosting if you'd like.

6)If your cake balls are firm enough you can now place them on the center of your cupcakes.

7)Frost your cake balls green. Pipe on some black eyes and hair and a green crooked nose.

8)Use a red mini M&M for the mouth and place on he hat.

And there you have it a melting wicked witch! I think it might be fun to do a hybrid of the two versions.

These cupcakes tasted wicked good (in my best wicked witch voice)!

Mummy Brownie Bites

Yummy mummies for our tummies!