Attempt at Star Wars

First of all, I am not a Star Wars geek. I liked the "first" couple way back when, but I don't know everyone's names, I have only seen each of the movies twice, and I actually don't remember too much about any of them. This made fulfilling my latest order kind of difficult. They wanted a Star Wars cake and on a pretty short notice. I did some research and found some truly amazing cakes...that would all be either way too big or way too time consuming for my purposes. I also found some pretty messy ones and some that gave me good ideas. I combined two designs that I found and sketched it out. I'm getting better at this whole "planning" thing, normally I freehand it and something usually goes wrong. This time, the sketch came out great (I think) but I think I started getting tired by the time I got to the actual cake because I made some pretty obvious mistakes. For the most part though I think the little guy really does look like R2D2 and he's pretty cute. Yep, he's definitely growing on me.

Happy Purim!

This doesn't happen often, but I was inspired. Usually, on this holiday I am content with store bought Hamentaschen or, if I'm really lucky, my mom will make hers, but when I saw this post I knew I couldn't just sit idly by and let someone else have all the fun, so I "let it slip" to a friend that the holiday comes with cookies and she absolutely insisted that I make her some. Now that I was "cornered" into a commitment I was all set to roll up my sleeves and start baking. Laundry will just have to wait until a different day. I do still have clean clothes so it's not really urgent any ways.

First step was making the cookies themselves. The recipe was easy and straight forward and still I messed it up. I was trying to do things fast and ended up adding more butter than required. Quite a bit more. The cookies turned out delicious :) There was only one casualty where the folds came apart, but I dubbed that one the test cookie and moved on. The picture above is of the cookies while still in the oven. They looked so good I couldn't help sticking my camera in there.

Next up were the cupcakes. The recipe said that it makes 24, which I just don't know how to do, so I doubled it and ended up with a gorgeous, smooth and fragrant batter. This was the first time ever I tried a recipe like this and while somewhat lengthy, it was a great experiment and I'll definitely be making this again. The cupcakes came out light, spongy and moist. I filled them with some more apricot jam and brushed the tops as well to keep in the moisture and to hold the cookies. These were so much fun to make and came out looking fabulous. I can't wait to share these tomorrow and see what people say. Thank you Stef for a great idea and a wonderful recipe.

Catching Up

My computer has recently decided that it doesn't feel like recognizing any of the USB drives other than my mouse and even though I've been baking at least three times a week for the last two weeks, I have not been uploading any of the pictures. I guess I could have looked into this problem earlier, but like I said, I've been baking. So to catch up a bit I have some pictures of the Red Velvet cupcakes I took to the potluck party I went to on Valentine's day


It was a nice casual get together with a Southern food theme. There were amazing Red beans and rice, buttermilk fried chicken, mac-n'-cheese, and a very interesting stew. I thought that the red velvet cake, a Southern classic, would fit the theme perfectly, and I think they went over well with some people coming back for seconds :)

I made my Parrot cake for my boss's going away party. It's like a carrot cake, but it has shredded pears instead of carrots, making the cake extra moist and very flavorful. Unfortunately, I was running around so much I didn't have time to take any pictures. One of my co-workers snapped a few, but I still have not seen them, so you'll just have to take my word for it.


And finally I went to my very first fondue party this past weekend. It was really fun and now I want three crock pots of my very own. Everyone brought sweet and savory dippin's like bread, veggies, homemade angel food cake, homemade pound cake and fruit. After brunch we were going to watch 'Chocolat', but the DVD refused to cooperate and we ended up playing a board game instead, which ended up being even better since by that time everyone was in a food comma and watching a food-related movie would have put everyone to sleep. As my contribution I figured I'd make something to "munch" on during the movie, cake balls. I was trying to make cake pops like I saw on this blog, making my own cake and frosting instead of the store bought one, but I didn't have any lolly pop sticks or candy coating, so I ended up sticking with just the bon bon shape. They were delicious and the perfect over the top snack.

I have a growing list of things I'd like to try in the upcoming weeks as well as a few orders in the works, and now that my computer is being nice to me again I'll try to be more consistent with updates....I promise :)

Happy Valentines Day!

I'd like to wish everyone a very happy Valentine's day full of love, happiness and promise. Things can change in the blink of an eye and I hope that for you, they always change for the better.



In honor of this holiday, and because it's a wonderful excuse to bake, I made lots and lots of cookies. One of my coworkers ordered some for her bf and family and I made many many more to share with everyone I know too. I wanted to make something cute and since I have two crazy crazy friends that don't like chocolate, I settled on sugar cookies...and because they are the minority, I also made chocolate chip cookies. I've never before bothered to decorate my sugar cookies thinking that the icing is unnecessary and too sweet, but I couldn't resist putting a few touches on these before packing them into little cellophane bags to share with friends and ship to my sister down in Champaign. She's been feeling a bit down, so I thought a pack of roasted tomato soup, a package of cookies and a mix of tango club music is my recipe for a hot, sweet and sultry Valentine's day for her.


And now that the warm and fuzzies are out of the way, I want to take a moment for self pity. No, I'm not sad because I don't have a date because I made plans to meet a bunch of new people at a pot luck a few minutes away, so there will be no pint of Ben and Jerrys and a sappy movie for me tonight. I have, however, realized that my priorities are completely off kilter. When making the chocolate chip cookies I was rushing a bit too much and when switching out cookie sheets I sent the fresh out of the hot oven one flipping through the air. It landed right on my arm before landing, face down, on the open oven door. Instead of scrapping the whole project and running to take care of the burn, I cleaned the door, set the timer for the next batch of cookies and then went to get the burn cream (a staple in my kitchen arsenal). In the next 10 minutes while the last batch was baking, I learned that I don't own any band-aids larger than the ones that fit on your pinky and I don't have an ice pack. After a quick visit to google ("how to treat burns") I ran cool water over my arm, pulled out a sheet of cheesecloth (it's just like gauze, right?) and a pack of frozen corn on the cob, and ran to take the last batch out of the oven. Now, as my arm is bandaged up I ask myself, just who thinks to save the cookies instead of their own skin first?

A day of red

This post is a few days late, seeing how the pictures are actually from last Thursday, but I'm sure that I'll be forgiven :) I hosted a small girl's night at my house and as usual, I took the original plan of "just a few appetizers and dessert" and morphed it into a full dinner for 8, despite the fact that there would only be 4 people there. My two favorite things though were both red. The roasted red peppers with caramelized onions and a touch of olive oil on top of a fresh baguette were yummy as were the red velvet cupcakes that I made for dessert. I loved the way the red peppers looked under the broiler and I had to tear myself away from the oven to finish the rest of the dinner and stop snapping pictures. The cupcakes I mostly made to take to work the next day for our "desk swapping party". They were definitely better the next day and seeing as this was my first time making the infamous red-velvet, I was very happy with the results and with the fact that I didn't stain a single item with the red dye, something I was sure I'd do. I also made two loaves of chocolate bread, but I think I'll work on this recipe more before I post it on here and I'll probably include the recipe this time too :)