Personal Desserts: Mini Caramel Bundt Cakes

Mini caramel bundt cakes!


Recipe from here, except needs some clarification... I only read where it made 48 cakes! And thought she was crazy, my mini bundt pan makes 6 personalized cakes. So I halved the recipe and filled 5 of them... What? When I looked closer I realized she must have mini mini bundt cake pan! Sort of like mini cupcakes!

While that's adorable, I wish there would have been something in the pictures to clue me in to the scale, I'm guilty of not really reading the post, just the recipe. Ssoooo on the first batch where I only got 5 cakes, I filled the pans too much and baked them a tad too long.

My delicious notes say one full batch made 6 small cakes but if I halved it the first time and got 1 pan worth, the full batch must make 12...I think...


Also should note, the ingredient list for the cakes has caramel liqueur in there, but it's not in the instructions to add. I was making booze free cakes anyway so obviously didn't add it and they came out fine.

I did use this caramel glaze recipe though. And it came out delicious. I made the cakes the night before, and made the glaze in the morning and poured it over the cakes. Then served them in the afternoon. I was torn if I should do the glaze the night before so it could sink in but this came out well. :o)

Cookie post!

I already did one gingerbread cookie post, but this will finish off my cookie post for Christmas baking! It will be a short one since I made Christmas cupcakes this year instead of cookies, plus some other desserts for parties.

So here was my other Christmas cookie!


I got it from a Martha Stewart Christmas cookie magazine I picked up in the super market! Martha knows her stuff. Dave actually picked this one out. I don't have a photo, but the cookie inside is a chocolate mint cookie, like a girlscout thin mint! Delicious!

Something odd happened with the white chocolate though, it melted, then it got really dry and lumpy and I couldn't bring it back to liquid and melty again over the double boiler. I've been meaning to google it and will post if I find an answer! I used Ghirardelli white chocolate chips, plus some bars I had bought for another purpose, but needed after my first bag of chips failed.



So my white chocolate coating came out a little lumpy and not as smooth as Martha's but they tasted good! Only other issue was the crushed candy cane sticks to your teeth when you bite into them, but I didn't hear anyone complaining, haha.

Here's the cookie plate ready for a party!


Next will be my epic dessert post!

Gingerbreading

It's been a long time since I made gingerbread. I think I was in highschool and my friends and I trashed the kitchen because we thought it would be funny to take pictures covered in flour. I never realized until now that my mom was pretty cool about all that... I don't remember the gingerbread being that tasty though, it was hard and the dough was evil and hard to work with. But this try went much better!


Last week I mixed a bunch of gingerbread, chilled it over night, then rolled it out and baked it up. Then let it cool and decorated it for like 3 hours the next day. I used this recipe, and also used her royal icing recipe. It was my first batch of royal icing ever. Exciting. And while my icing was pretty simple and I think it looked pretty good covered in my Christmas sprinkles! :oD


For the cookies, I baked up some normal sized shapes of gingerbread men, reindeer, trees, etc. And I also had a bunch of mini Christmas cookie cutters that made bite size gingerbread cookies. Mini anythings go over so much better with crowds! Recipe is awesome, I've had them covered in tin foil for a week and they're still nice and soft and chewy. Amazing.


For the royal icing though, I required much more water than the recipe called for to make it anywhere close to a good consistency for piping. In fact I could of used more I think, and I had a ton left over. I read it can be stored at room temp in an air tight container for up to two weeks, which I'm doing and had good intentions for a gingerbread house or something else cool, but we'll see.

Here's one more pic of a mini gingerbread tree with Christmas nonpareils.


And one more of a super cool full size gingerbread man.


More are in my baking adventures set, plus more to be uploaded this week!

Embroidered Christmas Cards

Normally I don't send Christmas cards, I'm really bad at hanging on to addresses, but that's what facebook is for. So i crafted christmas cards this year, using these instructions to get me started.

I traced cookie cutters for the stencils. I like the snowflakes best but they're also the most work! Each card took about 2 hours or so! These were sent to friends but I still hope to make some for family!

Definitely should of taken these pics during the daylight, but I had to send em! Here's how some of them turned out!





Right now I'm on a mission to finish a crochet gingerbread house in hopes it will be a center piece for a dinner part Sunday. :oX It's ambitious...so here I go!

Funfetti!

Tis the season for holiday treats, but it was also my friend Kristine's birthday last weekend!


Perfect occasion for homemade funfetti cupcakes! I used my standard go to for some vanilla buttercream too.

They came out great, only issue was the color on my sprinkles started to run and pretty soon they were mostly tye dye cupcakes. Then, well, when all colors start to mix, you get gray. But they still tasted good!

That is all! Lots more and super cute on the flickr page. Back to Christmas crafting! good night!

Thanksgiving Baking

I know it's December, and almost Christmas. House is decorated, cards have been sent, gifts are piling up to be wrapped and I've been gingerbreading.

But all that stuff has taken time and I baked some cool stuff for Thanksgiving that deserves a blog post! I short changed a lot of my fall baking treats that were pretty cool so I'm trying not to do that again!

So here's the last of the fall baking, keeping it short and sweet. :o)

1) Pumpkin brownie bites


I baked and pureed my own pumpkins this year (and I still have a freezer full of pumpkin puree). So I meant to bake these to bring to Dave's family that was our second stop on Thanksgiving but my bottom pan burned and I had to pry them out of the pan. :o( The top pan, however, was delicious.

It's a fabulous chocolate brownie "swirled" with a pumpkin cheesecake. My recommendation if you're going to make them is to make the pumpkin portion first then the chocolate portion. My chocolate portion thickened as it cooled and made swirling difficult.

2) Pumpkin cookies withe maple icing


Seeing as I couldn't bring only 8 or so good pumpkin brownie bites for Thanksgiving, I got up early that morning and in addition to baking an apple pie, I baked these pumpkin maple cookies!

I did have maple extract on hand as the recipe calls for and I have to say this icing was orgasmic. If I ever make it again I'll try it with real maple syrup (we bring back a high grade from Maine every year), but the extract gives it some serious flavor. I had a ton left over though and couldn't bring myself to just get rid of it, so I put it in some tupperware and brought it to my mom's to set out at dessert for Thanksgiving. It has the potential to be to all foods what bacon has become to desserts. My uncle tried it on pie and I think my cousin put it over her ice cream.

Anyway, these cookies have a nice pumpkin flavor and also stayed nice and cakey. Love em.

3) Apple Cake


Once back from Maine I had some apples left over from my epic apple pie baking. So I baked up an apple cake from my Totally Tea Time cook book! I really love tea, and going to tea rooms, the whole tea experience. In fact I'd love to own a tea room, I think I'd be great at it, anyway... I got this book as a gift awhile back and thought I'd make some apple scones but this used up far more apples. ;o)

Came out pretty good, I thought I'd frost it with some swiss meringue apple butter frosting I had in the freezer but I don't think that's the point of apple cake and it was good without it anyway. :o)

That's it! That's all my fall baking blogged. On to the next adventure!

The Apple Pie Post

The holidays are busy, cut me some slack... See the flickr page for Christmas photos until the blog catches up with the holiday baking and crafting! There are new photos of my epic gingerbread adventure and crafty holiday cards!

But this post is about apple pie! I made two apple pies this Thanksgiving. One for my fam and one we traveled to Maine with for Thanksgiving with Dave's fam. Here's the one that came to Thanksgiving at my mom's house with us.


I made my first unsupervised apple pie this year (featured in this post of fall baking) and it turned out so well, my mom asked me to handle the apple pie for Thanksgiving. I really was very pleased with it. I got the recipe from a book my mom photo copied for me, Aunt Jenny's Pies Husbands Like.

It's all about how to hook a man with pie, I think it was published in the 50s? So it has to be good. ;o) And the pie did go over well with everyone who tried it! It makes a big deal about the "water whip" method for pie crust that involves pouring boiling water over something called Spry...the same thing as shortening...and then adding the flour etc. I used butter flavored crisco and it did turn out lovely.

I also used my William Sonoma fall pie crust cutters!


Cute! I colored the dough with different color food coloring and cut the leaves out of that. I'm such a nerd. Here's pie 2 that went all the way to Maine. I came home after Thanksgiving and made this that night (hence the bad lighting) since we were leaving the next morning, so glad I had something to bring though, and again everyone seemed to enjoy it. :o)


My crust got a little burnt although I covered it with foil towards the end. I hear there are pie crust protectors that take care of this, but I have yet to see one.

I had some extra pie crust (I had to double Aunt Jenny's recipe for my giant pie dish) so I made some cinnamon and sugar pie crust swirl cookies. My mom and grandma always made these when I was younger with left over pie dough. We snacked on them in the car on the way up to Maine. :o)