I'm Moving!

I'm moving my blog to the following address: mollybakesalot.blogspot.com  You can follow my new baking adventures there!

Forgive Me...Please? Pretty Please?

So, it's been awhile, but I have many good excuses. Or, as my dad might say, a plethora of good excuses. I currently don't have a computer because it joined the electronic heaven in the sky. The jerk took all my pictures with it, so I have some work to do on that. For now, we'll have to make do with my not-so-sexy blackberry photos. I also just moved and am finally able to bake again. I celebrated that momentous occasion by making a Snickerdoodle Cake and not taking any pictures. It was a repeat recipe too, so I failed doubly. On the bright side, it was delicious.

In an effort to catch everyone up on any baking that I did accomplish the past few months, I'm just going to throw a bunch of pictures up here for your viewing pleasure.

OPENING DAY CUPCAKES

Those STL Logos were not easy to make. It involved candy melts, tracing, wax paper and freezer time. And they were still a little messy, but cute enough.

EASTER BUNNY POPS

This idea came from Bakerella...as most good Cake Pop ideas do. This was part two in our project to help the Heifer Project at my home church in Actionville, IL.

BRIDAL SHOWER CUPCAKES (BEACH THEME)

Miss Melissa Tull and I made these for a Bridal Shower that Melissa threw. We used graham cracker crumbs as sand and chocolate in a shell candy mold to create the sea shells and starfish. As you can see, they were adorable.

That's all I've got for now, but I'm sending you all a picture of my new kitchen. This will be where all the magic happens...or action is...or you know, baking stuff.

Until next time...and no, I don't know when the next time I can update this is. I'm sorry!

A Month's Worth of Baking In One Blog Post

Prepare yourself, because you are about to be bombarded with some baking goodness here. I apologize profusely for being so late with the pictures, blogging, recipes, etc. But it just means that you get a monster blog entry today. It involves traveling back in time to St. Patrick's Day first...enjoy!


Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes (Or the more PC version - Bailey's, Guinness and Whiskey Cupcakes)

I found the recipe for these cupcakes here on Smitten Kitchen's website. Seriously adorable site with a seriously adorable name.


This has got to be the best icing I have ever tasted. So delicious, not to mention that every time anyone opened up the container to grab a cupcake, the smell of sugary goodness and Bailey's filled the air. That is a winning combination.

I used a Wilton 1M tip to decorate these. It's my new favorite tip and I've started using it on all my cupcakes. It makes it look fancy with hardly any work at all, you can't beat that! I am drooling over these cupcakes and currently trying to find a reason to make them again (sans whiskey this time, I can't stand the smell).

Ok, so those went over really well at the office. They were like little bites of heaven, or what I imagine heaven would taste like in the form of an alcoholic cupcake. The next baking project was something I did for my mom. The kids in Sunday School at my church back home in Jacksonville do a bake sale every year to raise money for their Unicef Project. It's a great cause and this year they wanted to purchase a cow which means they needed to raise $500. I decided to help out with my baking prowess (ha, I have always wanted to use that word). Here was the result...

Chicks For a Cause

This idea came straight from the gifted baking brain of Bakerella. I absolutely love these little guys. I think it's because they're so round and tubby, something about them just oozes cuteness. It's almost sickening how cute they are. I had the help of a lovely assistant, my baby sister Betsy. Who also made her first ever loaf of bread that weekend, we'll show it off really quick:

The chicks are actually super easy to make and Bakerella does a great job of explaining it. I'm more about pictures and end results here. One of my favorite parts is the packaging. I just bought tiny treat bags and threw them over the tops of the chicks, used raffia in different colors to tie them shut and created cute little cupcake tags for all of them.


I also made cupcakes (from scratch!) with my favorite recipe. It's called Plain Jane Lets Loose...but you can only call it that if you use alcohol in the recipe and, considering this was a church function, I decided to skip the liquor. So these are just Plain Jane cupcakes, but then I added some fabulous pink icing and sparkling sugar inspired by the Fancy Nancy books. Yes, I know these books are for little girls, but the illustrations are gorgeous and there are sparkles everywhere and she uses fun words like dapper and ooh la la! And Xenophile. I mean, really, these books are amazing.


Plain Jane Meets Fancy Nancy Cupcakes

I know what you're thinking...ooh la la!

I used the Wilton 1M tip again and actually just used vanilla store bought icing. I dyed it pink with some fuschia food coloring and the awesome sparkles and cupcake liners were purchased from one of the best websites ever: bakeitpretty.com I could drop some serious cash at their online store. One more picture and then I'm done. Sorry, I think that posting pink sparkly pictures is just about the best thing ever.


Au revoir cupcakes!

A little break from desserts...the day after I made all of these goodies I headed to Florida for a nice mini holiday with my pops. We spent some time in Jupiter watching a few spring training games, checking out the beach and eating food. Then we went to Disney for a day and enjoyed some rain...and more food of course.

This is when I force you to look at vacation pictures!

The beach!
Baseball!
Brie!
Erika!

Ok, I'm done. I had to include Brie and Erika because it had been over two years since I'd seen them last. That's forever. I was so excited that I got to spend some time with both of them, it made my trip. :)

Ok...this post is getting ridiculously long. I'm making it a "To be continued..." blog post. Don't worry though, it will be continued later on today. After I've enjoyed some lunch and wine with Miss Angela Rickard.

So...to be continued!

Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?

I went to see Alice in Wonderland at the Moolah Theater last weekend with Angela, Melissa and the Nancy's. In 3D no less.

(Miss Melissa Tull pretending to drink wine)

(Angela with our SUH-Weet! drink me tags - provided by yours truly)

The movie was wonderfully weird and the lovely Helena Bonham Carter's character, the Queen of Hearts, inspired my cupcakes for the week.

Supplies:

- Cupcakes (I used red velvet...obviously - the Queen of Hearts would stand for nothing else I'm sure)

- Wilton Ready to Use Fondant

- Red & Black Food Coloring

First I colored two sections of fondant, one red and one black. I then rolled them out with a fondant roller (essentially this is just a rolling pin, but the fondant is less likely to stick to it). Once they were rolled out very thin I cut out circles with a cookie cutter in the black fondant and hearts in the red. I just placed the black fondant circle on top of the cupcake and then wet the back of the heart with a tiny bit of oil and put it on top of the black fondant. And then I was done. I wish it was more exciting than that.

Anyway, I hate big cupcakes so I only made a few large ones and then used the rest of the mix for mini-cupcakes that I decorated with red/pink icing using a large star tip.

I'm ready for the Mad Hatter's tea party, if only I could get Johnny Depp to invite me...

If at First You Don't Succeed...Move On to Something Else

That seemed to be the theme last week when I tried to make my Upcakes. I visited Bakerella's site and saw the cutest cupcakes themed after the movie Up. I thought it was fate being as I had just watched the movie with my sister. But...not so much. I made one, didn't like how it looked and then just frosted the rest and threw on some sanding sugar. Not to say they didn't taste delicious either way, I am just really picky about how my desserts turn out. If they aren't cute, they're not going with me to work.

So, since I was without a dessert to blog about I found a new recipe to try. Vanilla & Sparkling Wine Pound Cake. Gooooooood Lord it was good. Of course I ate a few pieces and then shared the rest, but really... yum. The recipe is HERE. Another brilliant case of baking something and have alcohol left over to enjoy on your own. Instead of making mine in the 10" loaf pan I used a bundt pan. I just feel like everything turns out prettier when you use a bundt pan and it takes no effort at all.

See? Pretty.

This is a really short blog, but you'll have to forgive me because I wasn't very creative this week and I am WAY behind on the blogging.

Here's my lackluster attempt at an Up Cupcake.

Not so pretty.

I haven't forgotten!

I just haven't had time to post. Will be posting TWO, count 'em, posts tonight in order to make up for my negligence.

The 4 Major Food Groups: Chocolate, Caramel, Coconut and Rum

Yay! More cake balls! I know, I know...enough already with the cake balls. This is the last you'll see of them for awhile, I promise. These were pretty awesome though, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I totally rocked them.

I got the idea to make chocolate, caramel and coconut cake balls partly from Samoas (or whatever they're called now), my favorite girl scout cookie, and mostly from Melissa, one of my co-workers. She loves Malibu, they even call her Malibu Mel. Catchy name, right? So I'm sitting around thinking about how I can work Malibu into a recipe. Of course I google it _when in doubt I always turn to google) and I came up with THIS fantastic recipe. Then I think, why not make it into cake balls? Brilliant, I know! Here's what I did...

SUPPLIES:
- Malibu Rum Cake (ex-nay on the Rum Glaze, that does not help us here...unfortunately)
- White Frosting
- Semi-Sweet Chocolate to Melt
- Sweetened Coconut Flakes
- Caramel to drizzle

Treat this like you would any other cake balls. After making the Malibu Rum cake and letting it cool completely, go ahead and crumble it up in a big bowl and mix it with a can of white frosting. Form the mixture into ball shapes and throw in the freezer for a few minutes until firm. Dip the balls into the melted chocolate and place on wax paper - immediately decorate with sweetened coconut flakes (otherwise they won't stick). After they've dried, you can drizzle caramel to your heart's desire. I put the caramel in a Wilton Candy Squeeze bottle to make it a bit easier. It drizzled just the right amount in my opinion.


Here's the kicker...I don't even LIKE coconut, but I love these things! They had just a taste of coconut to them and I left coconut flakes off about half the cake balls to keep it from being too overwhelming. I think everyone was happy with the result and Melissa - lucky her - gets to drink the leftover Malibu Rum. :)

Next Week: I make a dessert in honor of an Oscar Nominated Movie. I'll let you guess...but if you want to cheat, I found the recipe on bakerella.com.

PS - I also made some Brookie this weekend...for those of you not in the know, this term was coined by one Miss Brittany Rowan whose blog is located here. She is hilarious. She is also a walking, talking version of Twitter. If you have a term you need shortened, there's no need to go to bit.ly or tiny.url ...Brittany will think of a way to shorten it within seconds. Before it was Brittanized, Brookie was known as chocolate chip cookie dough brownies. The recipe is on Betty Crockers website, I highly recommend it.

(as Melissa would say - "Come to Mama!")