Shower for a baby girl!

Ok, so I've only done two baby shower cakes before this one, but they've both been boys, so I'm excited to get the opportunity to make a girly cake :)

Baby shower II

This past weekend, I got to make another baby shower cake for a wonderful lady from my church, who is expecting a baby boy! (and I may be making another for Wednesday for a baby girl!) Anyhow, they've already picked out the name, and the theme was elephants, so I designed this :)



Cinnamon Rolls

This weekend, I tried my hand at the Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls!  I'm not going to lie, I was intimidated, but I'm so glad that I made them anyway, because they're really easy!  The most time consuming part, is just waiting for the dough to rise.  If you want the recipe, I encourage you to go to Her fabulous blog and just search for cinnamon rolls.  The only change I made was to use a mix of 1c white sugar and 1c brown sugar for the filling, and really liked the flavor.  The entire recipe made 5 8" pans of rolls, so either cut the recipe down or make sure you've got some friends to feed!

cookies and cream cheesecakes

So, I recently bought a book by Martha Stewart filled with cupcake recipes.  I kind of want to do a Julie/Julia project type thing with this, not even kidding!  There are so many wonderful sounding ideas, and thankfully, I've started going to a women's Bible study, so I have some people to eat my creations!  So, for the first test, I decided to try the cheesecake cupcakes.  I've never made cheesecake before, but I've been wanting to.  They ended up delicious and very easy to make!

All you need is ;

• 42 Oreo cookies (30 for the bottom of the cupcake and 12 to crush and put in the batter)
• 2lbs cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 eggs at room temperature lightly beaten
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1tsp vanilla
• cupcake liners
• you probably want 2 12 cupcake pans, because you need to chill the cakes in the pans while they set

Now then, set the oven to 275 degrees and line your cupcake tins with the paper.  Place one full cookie in the bottom of each cupcake liner.  This will be the “crust”.

In a mixer, cream the cream cheese, then add sugar and vanilla.  Next, drizzle in the eggs until just mixed in.  Lastly, beat in the sour cream.  Once you’ve got that mixed, stir in the crumbled cookie bits by hand.  (well…with a spoon, but you know what I mean)

fill each cupcake liner until almost full.  Place cupcake tins in the oven and bake for about 11 minutes.  Rotate pans, then bake for another 11 or 12 minutes until set*.  Remove from the oven, and let cool on racks.  Once cool, place pans in the refrigerator for 4 hours or up to overnight.

*You’ll know they’re set when the top has lost the glossy sheen to it, and is slightly firm to the touch. 

Threadless

Hey kids!  If you love decorating cakes, there is a competition going on right now on Threadless.com.  It's a t-shirt company that wants bakers to design a cake around any of their designs (Threadcakes is the name of the competition)  You have to use real cake and document your whole process with photos that you'll upload once you're ready to enter.  I believe that you've got until mid August to enter, so get baking!  This is what I've entered.  I'm pretty happy with it, especially since I finally womaned up and made my first solo stacked cake! 

This is my cake inspriation:

This is my cake :)

Happy Birthday husband!

Well, it's my husband's birthday and so it is thus time for a cake.  His first birthday as a married man, I did not decorate cakes, and he wanted brownies. so that was that.  Then, the next year, I did decorate cakes, but had started working and so his cake didn't get the time it needed and fell apart.  literally.  saddest dr pepper can ever.  So, this year, I wanted to make sure he got something nicer than last year...which really could have been anything.  I asked him what he wanted.  "whatever, I trust your judgement."  Ok...well, what flavor would you like, anything at all!  It's summer, it's good fruit season, anything you want!  "eh, that cake you made for my coming home from SERE training was good, I want that."  .......alright, well then I'll make it square, since I've never done that, and I just got new square pans that I couldn't wait to try!  On top of that, I found super cool candles, so I don't feel quite as inadequate :)

Welcome home

My husband came back from 2 weeks of very rigorous training, so as part of a welcome home meal, I made him a cake.  It is chocolate with reeses in the filling (pretty much the same as the winging cake, but without the peanutbutter mousse filling, and I used chocolate buttercream instead of plain.)  I used a new buttercream recipe, but I'm not much of a fan, I'll probably go back to the recipe I've been using.  I got a lot of air bubbles, and the flavor just wasn't was I was hoping for, but it turned out alright.