Christmas Cake Pops

For my family, I made Christmas Cake Pops. Cake and frosting were dark chocolate and the pops were covered in red, white, and green candy melts. For the first time, I succeeded in getting a nice smooth coating. And they were delicious!

Snowman Cupcakes

Snowman cupcakes for my parents' neighbors. Each house got a family of four.Cupcakes were chocolate, snowman heads were rice krispie treats covered in buttercream. I formed the rice krispie treats into balls, stuck a pretzel stick in each, and stuck the other end of the pretzel stick into the frosted cupcake. The frosted cupcakes were dusted with white sparkling sugar. The nose were orange banana runts (they were called "crazy bananas!" at the candy store--whoopee!), the scarves were fondant, and the arms were pretzel sticks. I finished them off with piping gel facial features and buttons. Had I had more time and energy, I'd have given them fondant hats, too, but laziness set in partway through the afternoon.

Christmas Ornaments

For the Merrimack Concert Association Bake Sale, from the Hello Cupcake book. Very quick and easy. Close up of one:

Josh's Birthday Cake

Yes, it's blue. I was going for a moderately manly look, so I avoided flowers. Instead I hand-piped the snowflakes and added pearl drops for the snow.

Apple Cider Donuts

These were delicious hot out of the fryer. From an old Washington Post article.

Manger Douse

I made this cake in order to try a technique I'd just learned of: Frozen Buttercream Transfer. I'm interested in any non-fondant technique, because though I love how fondant looks, it tastes like butt, and cake is supposed to taste good, right? This technique requires a piece of Plexiglass and a picture. You tape the picture to one size of the glass, tape plastic wrap to the other, and trace the image with frosting. You put the whole thing in the fridge for at least a half hour, then flip the image upside down onto a frosted cake.

I used canned frosting for the outline, which was a mistake. You can see that it peeled off the edges in some places. The rest of it is homemade buttercream, slightly thinned, which worked excellently.

Have you ever wondered what you'd accidentally think of if you were told by Gozer to choose the form of your destruction? I think I have my answer here. It wouldn't be the Stay-Puft Man, it'd be Danger Mouse. I decided that since this was a practice cake, I'd do the first feasible thing that came into my mind. So, "crumbs!" Danger Mouse it was. However, I've always struggled with my spatial relations, as anyone who's asked me to read a map might know. If I'm in the car with you and I say, "the map says to turn left," you should turn right. Or go straight. Or back up. Try anything but left and you'll have a better chance of getting where you're going. Well, my spatial relations caught up with me here. I forgot that the transfer would be a mirror image, and Danger Mouse has his initials on his shirt. So he came out as "Manger Douse" instead of Danger Mouse.

Oh, and since the cake has been consumed, I feel comfortable saying that I've discovered that the cat loves butter. First I caught her licking the buttercream frosting. She won't lick ice cream, but apparently buttercream does it for her. Then, when I'd buttered and floured the pans for the cake, she licked that, too. I scooped out the part she'd licked from the frosting, but I left the pans. A little kitty spit never hurt anyone...did it?

I Don't Like Apple Pie

In an effort to release my family from the horrible duty of constant cake consumption, I've been branching out to other baked goods. Also, I'd never tried apple pie before. You'd think I'd been born in India or something, but no, I'm American through and through. However, apple pie has no chocolate, which explains why I've never had any.

The recipe for the crust and pie came from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The crust was delicious, but the general verdict was that the filling needed more spice. I'd add my own two cents in, but it turns out that I don't like apple pie. So tart! So unchocolatey! However, I feel slightly better about my life knowing that I tried it, at least.

Not pictured but two other recipes worth sharing that I've made recently:
This is my holiday standby, and the moment it turned from September to October, I had to pull that lonely can of pumpkin from the cupboard: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread.

I'd never made muffins before, but this recipe is excellent: To Die For Blueberry (or chocolate chip, if you're me) Muffins.