Cupcake Wars... Better Late Than Never!

Oh my goodness, I am a bad girl! I promised Cupcake Wars pictures and didn’t deliver! Well, here is my winner… pink hydrangea flowers in a basket. I won first place in design on this one. The cupcakes are white chocolate truffle with buttercream frosting.
I got the idea for a cupcake basket from Pinterest and I just fell in love with them. There were a lot of good tutorials on making cupcakes look like flowers and I have a lot of them posted on my Pinterest
This is my recipe:

White Chocolate Cupcakes with Truffle Filling
Ingredients:
Cupcakes

1 3/4 cups (425 mL) cake flour (see Cook’s Tip)

2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder

2/3 cup (150 mL) whole milk

1/2 tsp (2 mL) Double-Strength Vanilla

4 egg whites, room temperature

6 tbsp (90 mL) butter, softened

1/2 cup (125 mL) granulated sugar

1/4 cup (50 mL) sour cream

12 round white or dark chocolate truffles, unwrapped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F (160°C). Place paper liners in wells of Muffin Pan. Whisk flour and baking powder in Small Batter Bowl. Combine milk and vanilla in (1-cup/250-mL) Easy Read Measuring Cup. In Stainless (2-qt./2-L) Mixing Bowl, beat egg whites on high speed of electric mixer until stiff peaks form. In Stainless (4-qt./4-L) Mixing Bowl beat butter and granulated sugar on medium-high speed until fluffy; beat in sour cream until smooth. On medium speed, add flour mixture in three additions, alternating with milk mixture in two additions, mixing until smooth. Whisk in one-third of the egg whites with Stainless Whisk. Fold in remaining egg whites using whisk. Using Large Scoop, divide batter evenly among liners.will melt into cupcakes.)

2. Bake 17-20 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in centers comes out clean. Remove pan from oven to Stackable Cooling Rack. Immediately snip a 1/2-inch-deep (1-cm) “x” into top of each cupcake using Professional Shears. Press one truffle into each cupcake until flush with top of cupcake. Remove cupcakes from pan. Cool 30 minutes or to room temperature. (Truffles will melt into cupcakes.) ***I found that a big truffle was too much so I cut it in half and it was fine.***

Yield: 12 servings

Nutrients per serving: (1 cupcake): Calories 510, Total Fat 28 g, Saturated Fat 18 g, Cholesterol 55 mg, Sodium 260 mg, Carbohydrate 59 g, Fiber 0 g, Protein 6 g

U.S. Diabetic exchanges per serving: 2 starch, 2 fruit, 5 fat (4 carb)

Cook’s Tips: To ensure fine-textured cupcakes, it’s important to use cake flour for this recipes. Cake flour can be found in boxes in the baking aisle.

I used a simple buttercream frosting which is;
1 cup white shortening
4 cups powdered sugar
2 to 4 Tbsp milk- depending on how thick you want this
1 tsp clear vanilla
1 tsp imitation butter flavor

Mix all up until creamy and pipe away!

My second entry didn’t win anything, but raised a few eyebrows since it was hard to imagine bacon on cupcakes tasting good. Well, it does taste good if the cupcake is French Toast with Maple Buttercream!
I used the recipe found here at Bakingdom
They were delicious, the bacon was my added touch. One thing about the recipe- watch overfilling the cups. I found I could get about 30 cupcakes from the recipe. I made it the first time I only did 24, so the cupcakes went all over the top of the pan. Not pretty.

Here are my beauties:

Always,

Ann

The Birthday Party Was a Success

If there's one thing my granddaughter, Chloe, loves, it's pink. Fortunately, so do I. It was a pink everything party, even the Barbie doll in the cake had pink hair. It was so much fun to put together and trying to find all the pink stuff. I think I blew a enough balloons to float to the Land of Oz if I had tied them all together and hung on.

I was the most excited about the ballerinas I made. I talked about them for days, took them to work with me to work on, told everybody about them, and being the Queen of the Last Minute, I finally pulled them together at the last possible moment just minutes before she got to the party.

She loves Barbies, too, so I made her dresses for her Barbies. Fortunately, these were made ahead of time, so no last minute rushes!
Here she is with some of the dresses;

One thing about the barbie cake- it was my first so I just kind of winged it, so I'm sorry there are no pictures, but I'll try to describe a bit of how she was made. I used a Wilton Wonder Mold
but found the doll was too tall for the cake. I added a layer cake to the bottom of the dress and worked it in under the frosting. But really, it could have used another layer to be tall enough to fit up to her waist. So I continued the rosettes to her waist even though there was no cake from her bottom on up. I used a star tip to make rosettes to her waist and then changed to a smaller star tip for the bodice. I used a ribbon tip for the white ribbon on the front of the gown and a drop flower tip for the flowers.
I intended to use a cake mix but didn't, and I am glad I ended up hand mixing the batter because I don't think a cake mix cake would hold its shape without falling apart. The frosting was buttercream.

My next adventure in baking comes next week at work for our version of Cupcake Wars. This is going to be on March 7. Me, being the Queen of Last Minute, has not picked a recipe yet. So, this Sunday I plan to have a bake off with my top 3 recipes and invite family and friends for the taste test. I promise to make pictures and obtain recipes and to blog all about it.

Until next time,

Welcome to My Ta-da

Ta-da: the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines this word to be used as mock fanfare to call attention to something remarkable.I thought this description best fit me in the way I approach everything. In a nutshell, I am creative, and in a painstaking way. So, finally calling something done is a cause for celebration for me.

In most things I do, I always sweat the finishing touches, I step back and look at my work, and then make a tiny adjustment, and then another, and another, until I feel the satisfaction that can only be felt when I know I have created a work of art. In other words- you know the moment when you can step back and exclaim with the greatest sense of accomplishment the best word ever- Ta-Daaaaa! The satisfaction that your work has finally been finished and it was a success.

So this blog will be a record of creations that I want to share, along with my how-to's (I love to share how I did something), and some good information and links to other great ideas and tutorials.

Right now, I am very into baking, writing, decorating, and sewing. So many things I post will be focusd on these things, although I could go just about anywhere with my musings.

The picture of the ballerina is my newest creation. It is fairly easy to make. I was inspired by this photo that has made its rounds many times on Pinterest




The instructions are in Russian, but I found another website that translated them here: Canadian Family. I did make an adjustment to the instructions; she said to cut the side of the snowflake open and tape it back up after you put it around the ballernia's waist. I found that if you cut the inside tip of the snowflake off to make a circle in the middle of it, you can slightly bend the ballerina's arm and slip the snowflake right over her head without cutting the side of the snowflake open. he snowflake stays in place by resting on the ballernia's skirt.

I also altered the instructions to suit my own taste by using 5 sheets of pink tissue paper instead of regular paper for the snowflake skirt. I cut all 5 sheets at once- an intricate design is not required for the snowflake. Then I tied curling ribbon around her waist and curled it before fluffing out the layers of skirt. Then I hung her from invisible thread. As a bonus, I noticed the ballerinas slowly spin on their own on the end of the thread. It is the coolest thing!

They made their debut appearance at my granddaughter's birthday party spinning their way amongst some pink and white balloons. More on the party next time!



Happy crafting and all that. Until next time,

Ann