Cupcake Pops

Cupcake Pops
For complete list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions, check out Bakerella's site! She even has a video demonstration from when she was on Martha!

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While scouring the internet for recipes for my St. Patrick's Day treats (or trash, because that's where they ended up), I came across a website dedicated to American Food Holidays. Now we've established that I love holidays--numerous times--so food holidays are right up my alley! These are celebrations I can really get behind! Scanning the list, I noticed that my birthday happens to fall on National Prime Rib Day. Nice. There are some bizarre holidays included on the list too, such as "Shape Up with Pickles Time," to be celebrated the first week of February. Sadly, I missed this one. Although I'm really not sure what shaping up with pickles entails.. However, there was one holiday I noticed I hadn't missed yet that was worth celebrating. Today, March 28th, is National Something-On-A-Stick Day. Alright! Now how am I going to celebrate? Corndogs for dinner is a must. Sides are going to be a bit harder to come up with. And dessert? I could go with popsicles or lollipops. But that's too easy. How bout cupcakes. On a stick. It's time to try out what I've been lusting after for awhile now. Cupcake Pops--Bakerella style.

I've been without internet at my house for almost a week now. So yesterday, I snuck over to my boyfriend's (not really. He knew I was coming over.) and hijacked his internet, along with his kitchen, and started the task of making Cupcake Pops. (I also stole my favorite pair of his pajama pants, the ones with pirate-looking skulls wearing Santa hats, and later, his bed for a quick nap.. Shh. Don't tell.) Looking at Bakerella's site, the cupcake pops seemed pretty easy, but quite time consuming. Oh well. I had the whole day ahead of me! I started with the cake mix from a box that I've had hanging out in my pantry for who knows how long. It almost felt like blashphemy. I've taken pride in making things from scratch rather than a box, but I have to say, I'm glad I used the cake mix. It made it so much easier. Plus I would have felt bad ripping apart my beautiful cake as soon as it cooled. Although, that was actually kinda fun! It got quite a bit messy though after you mixed it with the cream cheese and rolled it into balls. My hands looked like they were covered in blood. Maybe red velvet cake wasn't the best idea. After the cake balls chilled in the freezer for a bit, it was time to make them look like cupcakes! Too bad I didn't have the kind of cutter Bakerella showed on her site. I'd have to make do with my 1.5 inch biscuit cutter.. Which didn't do well at all. The cutter was way too wide, and way too tall to make it look anything like a cupcake. Looks like I was in for another Michaels run.

$2.50 and a half an hour later, I was back on track with cake balls that were looking more like cupcakes than blobs now. Time to chill again and start melting chocolate for dipping! I had trouble dipping the bottoms into the milk chocolate. I couldn't seem to hold on without squishing the tops or dripping all over everything. My boyfriend seemed to have better luck. (I actually let him help for the first time ever! I figured since I was making a mess in his kitchen, I may as well let him in on it. He did a really good job too!) He dipped the milk chocolate while I dipped the pink and topped with sprinkles and a red M&M to look like a cherry on top. Only a few looked absolutely disasterous.. The dripping pink chocolate on some reminds me of a melted ice cream cone.. But all in all they came out looking alright. Not as beautiful as Bakerella's, but not terrible either! The cake inside the pops seems a tad too moist, bordering on squishy, but they're still incredibly tasty! It just took a bit longer to put them all together because we had to keep refreezing them so they didn't fall apart. Maybe next time I won't add all the frosting right away. I'm not sure that was the problem, but it could help. I'll definitely make these again! Who knows, I may even attempt the absolutely adorable Hello Kitty Pops someday! (The first time I saw these on her site, I squealed at a pitch I'm sure only dogs could hear.. They're just so cute!)

Alright. I've got the main course (corndogs) and of course the dessert (Cupcake Pops) of our celebratory Something-On-A-Stick dinner.. Now what are we going to have as a side?? Anyone know how to get mashed potatoes on a stick?

St. Patrick's Day Disaster

I love holidays. I think I mentioned that before. I love that there's a holiday just about every month. After Valentine's Day, I was already thinking about what I wanted to make for St. Patrick's Day. I knew I had to make sugar cookies. That was a given. And I knew I wanted to make them in the shape of Shamrocks. Okay, great. But I've already done Sugar cookies. I needed something else that I hadn't done yet to put up here, cause really--who wants to read a blog about making sugar cookies every other post. As much as I like sugar cookies, not even I would. I debated and thought and debated some more, and still couldn't think of anything that sounded even remotely St. Patrick's day-like. I was stuck. It took a random comment after a trip to Target to spark my imagination. I have no idea how it came up, but as we were walking out of Target my boyfriend said he wanted some drunken cupcakes. *Lightbulb moment* Drunken cupcakes.. the Irish like to drink.. What kind of Irish drunken cupcakes could I make? How about Irish Cream Cupcakes! That would be perfect! I had my idea, and now it was time to run with it!

The only problem was... I don't drink. Ever. Like never in my life. So I had absolutely no idea what Irish Cream even tasted like.. My boyfriend tried to explain it to me, but I just wasn't getting it. And I have an adamant no-drinking policy for myself, so I couldn't actually try it. So I tried the only alternative I could think of. Irish Cream flavored coffee creamer. Oh man! If the real thing tastes even remotely close, it's a good thing I don't drink! I'd be in big drunken trouble! It is SO good! I started drinking it in glasses of milk ALL the time. So if that's what my cupcakes tasted like, this was going to be the best recipe EVER! Now to actually find a recipe. My boyfriend suggested I pair the Irish Cream with a chocolate cupcake. However, I couldn't really find a chocolate Irish Cream recipe. I could find Chocolate Stout cupcakes with Irish Cream frosting, but no chocolate Irish Cream. I did find one recipe for a yellow cake Irish Cream, so I put it on my list of cupcakes to test, along with modifying a white cake recipe and a chocolate recipe.

I tried the white first. I quartered the recipe so I would only have 6 cupcakes instead of the full 2 dozen. They came out alright, but not fantastic. You couldn't really taste the Irish Cream. Onto the yellow cake. This one was better, but it took about a day for the cupcakes to really have the Irish Cream flavor. And even then, it tasted not quite right. Onto the chocolate. This was my least favorite of the three. As a chocolate cupcake, it was great. But if you didn't know you were supposed to be eating an Irish Cream cupcake, you'd never know. There was no Irish Cream flavor at all. Maybe that's why there are no Chocolate Irish Cream recipes. Okay. Yellow cake recipe it is. Now the great debate came--do I continue to use the coffee creamer even though it wasn't the greatest in the cupcakes, or do I spring for the real thing and hope that makes all the difference? After pricing the bottles of Irish Cream at several grocery stores, I decided $21 for a bottle of something I'd use a cup of and never touch again wasn't exactly worth it. Even the mini bottles, about 2 cups worth, were $10.. I'm broke. $10 for a batch of cupcakes...Hmm.. I dunno. I think I'll stick with the $2 bottle of coffee creamer I can drink the rest of. Maybe that was the beginning of my demise.

I was off work yesterday, so it was baking day. I started with the cookies because they needed time to cool before completely before the icing ordeal began. I halved the recipe like I usually do. I got the butter and the sugar creamed, and started to sift together my dry ingredients. I've got the recipe mostly memorized, but not completely yet. So I had to take a quick peek to see how much salt goes into it. This is when it all went horribly wrong. Glancing at the recipe, I put in the teaspoon and a half of the salt it said. I sifted it all together and mixed it all in my mixer. I tasted a little bit of it before I flattened it out into disks to refrigerate. It tasted kinda funny. A bit salty. I realized that while I had halved everything else, I put the full amount of salt in without thinking. Part of me said, "Throw it out and start over. This is never going to work. You messed up, so get rid of it and make it right." The part that won out was the little devil on my other shoulder that said, "You already used up 2 sticks of expensive butter. You can't throw it out now. Throw a little extra sugar in there to cut the salt. It'll be fine." Well I should have listened to the angel side.. it didn't turn out completely fine. Some of the cookies came out alright. Others spread way too much and looked more like a blob than a shamrock. And even more came out completely brown and crispy. And more than just a handful broke in half. Needless to say, I was discouraged. Sugar cookies are my pride and joy. And now they came out looking terrible. Well there was still my cupcakes to make.

Mixing went fine with the cupcakes. After my cookie mistake, I read all my ingredients and instructions carefully. The batter tasted fine after it was mixed. More than fine actually. It was damn tasty. Into the oven they go; 20 minutes on the timer. When I opened the oven I could tell they weren't done. 2 more minutes. Still not done. Ok 2 more minutes. Finally I had to pull them out cause the tops were browning quite a bit, but the toothpicks I was sticking in were still coming out kind of sticky. After I let the cupcakes sit for a little bit so I could pull them out to let them cool, I noticed that they were kind of sinking. Great. The rest of the batches had the same baking time problem as the first batch. They all seemed squishy and some were sinking, and they all looked rather disgusting. They were cracked at the top on some of them. The last batch I pulled out, I had a WTF moment when one of them was actually bubbling what looked almost like foam out of the top of one of the cracks. It looked like my cupcake had rabies. By this time I was horribly discouraged. Nothing was going into work with me to share because it all looked like crap. I'm sure my coworkers would eat it all anyway, but I'm a perfectionist. I don't do blobby rock cookies and rabies crater cakes. I basically gave up at that point, and didn't even bother icing anything. Oh well. Hopefully my next holiday baking excursion won't go quite so bad. There's a food holiday coming up towards the end of the month that I'm really looking forward to, so *fingers crossed* hopefully I don't screw this one up!

On a much better note, I seem to have a little bit of luck from the Irish today. I actually got a picture of my Peanut Butter Cup-Cakes published on both TasteSpotting and FoodGawker! Yay! And it's a beautiful day outside--63 degrees and sunny! So I'm sitting out here writing my blog and getting ready to kick back and read a book until it's time to get ready to go to work. Yay for almost spring! I can't WAIT!! I am SO done with winter!!

Now if I could just get this monster to keep his mouth shut, we'd be in heaven. But likely, I'll have no such luck on this front. He's a really mouthy kid.

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There's no Irish Cream Cupcake recipe since it came out horribly, but if you'd like to try your hand at the sugar cookies check out my Conversation Heart Sugar Cookies from Valentine's Day for the recipe.

Angel Food Cake

Angel Food Cake
From Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, page 178
Makes one 10-inch cake

1 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
1 1/2 cups superfine sugar
1 3/4 cups large egg whites (about 13 large eggs), room temperature
1 tablespoon warm water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350F, with the rack in the center. Into a medium bowl, sift together flour and 3/4 cup sugar four times; set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites and the warm water on low speed until foamy. Add salt, cream of tartar, and vanilla; beat on medium-high speed until soft peaks form, about 3 minutes. While beating, gradually add the remaining 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Beat on high speed until peaks are stiff and glossy but not dry, about 2 minutes (do not overmix).

3. Transfer mixture to a large bowl. Sift flour mixture over egg-white mixture in six parts, quickly but gently folding it in with a rubber spatula after each addition.

4. Gently transfer batter to an ungreased 10-inch tube pan. Run a knife through the batter to release any air bubbles, and smooth with a small offset spatula. Bake until the cake is golden brown and springs back when touched, 35 to 40 minutes.

5. Invert pan onto its legs and let cool completely, about 1 hour. Carefully run a large offset spatula around the sides of the cake to loosen, then invert onto a wire rack. Cake can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.

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I had a mild case of baking withdrawal today. Nothing too severe.. and nothing that baking a nice cake couldn't cure. I've been wanting to bake an angel food cake for awhile now. Especially after single-handedly eating my way through the entire Tres Leches cake (minus the one piece I shared with my boyfriend the first day).. So rich and dense.. It was time for something light, airy, and subtle, and angel food cake was just the thing.

Although I've wanted to make an angel food cake for a couple months now, I never got around to it. One of the main things holding me back was my lack of a tube pan. Last week, I finally broke down and bought one. I also mistakenly bought a dozen eggs because they were on sale, not realizing that I already had almost a full dozen still at home in the fridge. So today, being off work, I got bored and that's when the baking bug bit me. I'd use up the eggs in the fridge and use my new baking pan at the same time and finally make an angel food cake! I reverted to my old ways and consulted Martha again. (Hey I made it the whole way through the Tres Leches post without ONCE mentioning Martha! Cut me some slack!) The recipe in the Baking Handbook was simple, so it was time to get cracking! Literally.

13 eggs. And I only got yolk in my whites twice. I was able to scoop them out with a spoon, so not too bad! I put them in the mixer with the salt, cream of tartar, and vanilla, and walked to the other end of the counter to get my sugar to add once soft peaks formed. I was gone all of 30 seconds at the most, but when I came back my egg whites had gone from being foamy at the bottom of my bowl to this MONSTER pile of fluff! I thought for sure it was going to overflow the bowl before it was done! It was up over the part of the mixer where you attach the whisk to the arm! But it turned out alright. No total disastrous messes! At least not at that point.. It says to transfer to a large bowl. They're not kidding about the size of the bowl you need. Find the biggest one you have in your house. Use a barrel if you can find one. I put this massive foam into the biggest bowl I had and it still was too small. Folding the flour mixture into the egg whites proved to be a bit difficult. Or at least a bit messy. Or... a lot messy. I had egg whites all over the place! I guess I need to work on my folding skills a bit more. But I was able to get it all mixed and into the pan without deflating my whites too much.

35 minutes in the oven and an hour of cooling on the tube pan's legs and it's all done! My cake came out beautifully golden, and really moist and fluffy. Perfectly light with just the right amount of subtle sweetness. The angel food cake was simply divine. With a dollop of whipped cream, some plump strawberries, and a drizzle of chocolate, it was truly a cake worthy of heavenly creatures.

I can't wait for St. Patrick's Day next week! I've been testing out a few different cupcake recipes to see which one I like the best, so hopefully the Irish will pass along some of their luck, and I'll end up with some very tasty treats to show you! By the way-- would you believe I have about 190 cookie cutters.. and not a single shamrock? And do you know how hard it is to find a shamrock cookie cutter a week and a half before St. Patrick's Day! All I can find is Easter now! Apparently I should have been buying them before Valentine's Day..

Now onto figuring out what I'm going to do with all of these.