Peanut Butter Chocolate Whoopie Pies
These were delicious and so easy to make. A whoopie pie is in between a cake and a cookie so the batter is a bit goopy. That kind of worried me at first but after I saw, and tasted, the finished product, I understood. Use a frosting bag to ensure that you get fairly round and equal sized cakes. I used a cupcakes swirl for the filling, it’s just prettier.
Find the recipe here.
Angry Bird Cupcakes
Another birthday party order for an angry birds fan! These were extremely labour intensive but fun to do. The cupcakes are vanilla and vanilla frosting with a hint of lemon. I also did a dozen vanilla with lemon glaze icing for the adults at the party.
Star Wars themed Vanilla cupcakes
I made these for a birthday party for a young Star Wars fan. I hope he liked them!
Chocolate-stuffed Red Velvet Cupcakes
So, I got a request for Red Velvet cupcakes, but I truly think red velvet are boring and bland, so I found a way to kick it up a notch by filling the cakes with chocolate ganache.
I followed this recipe.
And for the Honey Cream Cheese icing, I followed this one (scroll down to the icing). It’s a bit runny and also kind of too sweet. Next time I’ll just use a couple tablespoons of honey, instead of the 1/4 cup this recipe calls for.
Red velvets have buttermilk and cocoa, but the cake neither tastes like a buttermilk cake, nor a chocolate one. Adding ganache middles really allows it to take a stand on flavour!
Also, the dimples let the cream cheese seep into the cake, melding it with the ganache. They taste amazing and I’m now resolved to adding ganache to as many cupcakes as possible.
Harry Potter cupcakes
Made these today for a kid’s birthday party. The decorations were fun to make, though very time consuming. I made them last night, and the cupcakes this morning. There’s 12 chocolate cakes and 6 vanilla. Hope they like ‘em!
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies
I haven’t baked since Christmas Eve and, while I needed to take a break, I sure have missed it. Baking is easy and sometimes very fast.
In the cookie bakery where I work, the peanut butter cookies are the best and since I’m off the whole weekend and had a hankering for one, I whipped these up. They took me about as long to bake as it would to use store bought batter.
I first learned to bake by watching, learning and trying with my mother. She never bought cookies or sweets at the store, so if we wanted a cookie we had to learn to make them.
I know people are busy and have other priorities and I can imagine not liking to bake or cook. But the excuse that it takes too much time doesn’t really fly with me. These took less than 20 minutes. 5 minutes to prep, a few minutes to form and place on sheet and 10 minutes to cook. And your kids can help. Some of my favourite memories of my mother are from the kitchen.
Oh, and another thing. I had all the ingredients on hand. A well stocked baking cupboard is a must. Nothing in this recipe required additional shopping. Sugar, flour, butter, egg, vanilla, baking soda, peanut butter. Done.
I used Anna Olson’s no fail Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie recipe, then added mini chocolate chips.
Christmas cupcakes for chocolate lovers:
This is a Joy of Baking recipe. I used dark chocolate for the frosting rather than semi-sweet chocolate. I was short a cube of chocolate so I added a tablespoon of cocoa. Recipe link is here.
