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!")

Chocolate Is For Lovers

Ok, FINALLY! I've had a few complaints about how long it has taken me to get my Valentine's Day blog up and I just have to say, back off peeps! I'm lazy! C'mon!

But really, I was distracted by the lack of things I had to do this weekend, it was so nice to just sit around and not do anything. Plus my car died, so really, I've been grieving and couldn't even think about updating my blog. But here goes!

(the Radcliffe ladies @ the Party)

Valentine's Day at the Radcliffe house is quite the "to do." Every year we celebrate with a "tea party" (minus the tea) and lately I think it has turned into a party focused on how many desserts we can shove into our guests. I'd have to say we outdid ourselves this year as far as presentation. I'd give it a 12 out of a 10. The dessert buffet featured the following:

- Red Velvet Cake Hearts & Cake Balls

- Mini Chocolate Cupcakes filled with one of three flavors: chocolate, bavarian cream and raspberry

- Mini Cherry Cheesecakes (courtesy of Abby!)

- Vanilla ice cream served in Margarita glasses lined with pink sanding sugar

- Chocolate brownies with pink candy melts drizzled over the top (special thanks to our visiting drizzler Angela)

- Champagne Truffles

As you can see, our goal was to roll our guests out of the door after dessert. We gave everyone to go boxes to fill with their choice of desserts so they didn't have to ruin their pockets trying to save them for later.

My actual blog is going to very briefly explain how to make champagne truffles by sending you to another website for the recipe. Oh yes, I'm a classy girl. HERE is the recipe. Please make these...they are so good and so worth spending the extra time on. Truffles are not the easiest things I've made, as chocolate can be pretty finicky when it comes to actually forming it in to balls. I always make a complete mess and end up with a large portion of wasted chocolate on my hands. With that in mind, I'm sure there's a better way to handle it, but the best thing I can manage is to first dust powdered sugar on my hands and then form the truffles. I prefer powdered sugar to cocoa powder for the outside of the truffles, but it's just a personal preference. Also, I did watch a show on the Food Network last weekend that suggested using a small ice cream scoop or melon baller and dip it into hot water before scooping up the chocolate. They made it look easy, but I can't vouch for the method yet.

I also recommend inviting a friend to partake in the making of these truffles as you only use a very small portion of the champagne in the recipe. The rest, of course, has to be consumed as soon as possible to avoid the champagne going flat. Waste not want not! Well, maybe that's not the right phrase for this situation, but it's the one I'm going to use.

This week's project is again Cake Balls. But made with a Malibu Rum cake, dipped in chocolate and drizzled with caramel. I'm hungry already!

Ooo Baby, Baby!

Yes, it's true. Another baby post. It must be baby season at work, because another coworker of mine is with child and soon to pop. Since this is a lady coworker, she gets her cake before the baby comes. That's right, she has her cake and eats it too. Watch out for this one. I wanted to do something different than cupcakes (been there, done that), so I borrowed this really awesome baby bottle pan from my little sister (hey there Betsy!). The tricky part was not the baking of the cake, it was the decorating. I don't think anyone understands the massive task I was undertaking here, I have the worst case of shaking hands. I mean, they're shaking right now, at this very moment. So imagine trying to decorate an entire cake with those little bitty tips from Wilton. And of course the more I concentrate, the more the shake. So I ended up with a rather cute cake, with a hint of shaking on the side. I think it adds character.

This happened to be a big baking week for me (as will next week, more on that later). Another coworker and friend of mine asked me to make cake balls / cupcake bites for her niece's First Communion party. Of course I can't turn down a chance to bake cute things, so I made the red velvet cake balls and decorated them in a variety of ways. This included making some cake pops.

Cake pops are so very easy to make, especially once you've gotten a couple under your belt (I'm referring to making them, not eating them).

Supplies:

- Cake Balls

- Candy Melts or Chocolate for dipping

- Lollipop Sticks (You can find these at any Hobby Lobby or Michaels)

- Sprinkles for decorating

- Styrofoam Block

First thing you need to do is melt a few of the candy melts, I used pink. Then dip the ends of the lollipops into the candy melts and push them into the cake balls. The sticks should be standing straight up out of them. Put them in the fridge/freezer for a few minutes to let them set.

After they've dried, take the cake pop by the stick end and dip it into the candy melts. I use a spoon to make sure I cover the whole cake ball. Tap the stick on the bowl so the excess coating falls off and toss on some sprinkles or sanding sugar. Then stick the cake pop into the styrofoam block to dry and you're done! I wrap mine in little candy bags and tie them with string before serving them.

And because those pink cake pops turned out so well, I had to try some in blue for the baby.

All in all, it was a busy week of decorating and next week will be the same. On the agenda: Red Velvet Cake Hearts, Mini Chocolate Cupcakes & Champagne Truffles. Um, yum. Seriously. The massive outpouring of baking is due to a Valentine's Tea Party that my mom is hosting, I'm helping stock the dessert buffett. Plenty of pictures will be provided of both the desserts and the party next week. I know everyone is beyond excited, but you'll just have to be patient.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Delicious

So, I'm a little behind on the blog. Not on the baking, just on the blog. Still, there are no excuses - I have just been a lazy bum this past week as far as blogging goes and nothing could change that. In fact, the only reason I am blogging now is because I can't sleep and after laying in bed for TWO HOURS staring at the back of my eyelids, I decided I should at least do something productive with my time. So here I am, sure to be sleep-deprived in the morning, updating my blog for all ten of my followers, most of whom are related to me (Hi Mom!).

On a brighter note, I made some really amazing tasting Snickerdoodle Cake last week. I found the recipe here: Since I'm going with a lazy theme this week, I'm not going to go into details since the link to the recipe is above. I will tell you the changes I made though.

Instead of making one large bundt cake, I opted for tiny cakes. (Side note: I don't know if you noticed, but I love baking bite-sized desserts. They are just cuter and easier to serve.) I used a mini-cake pan from Walmart. Can't remember exactly what it was called, but it was Wilton Brand and they looked like mini-bundt cakes. Before putting the dough in, I sprayed the pan really well with PAM (am I the only one that imagines Emeril yelling PAM! when I see that?) and then sprinkled a cinnamon and sugar mixture over the pan. After putting the dough into the cups, I sprinkled a lot of cinnamon/sugar over the tops. Instead of baking them for 55 minutes like Dozen Flours does in her blog, I baked these babies for about 25-30 minutes and they came out perfect. No need to decorate, just cool on a rack, pack them up and then force them on your coworkers. I received an "amazing", "these are so good" and a "FA-BU-LOUS" for these, so I highly recommend them.

I also made some cute heart pies last week. I can't really blog about them though, because I totally cheated and used pre-made, pre-ROLLED pie crust, canned cherry filling and a pocket pie mold from Williams-Sonoma designed specifically for this purpose. I barely had to do ANYTHING. And I didn't even share them at work, I ate them all. This is probably another reason why I should not have mentioned this in the blog. Fortunately for you all, and unfortunately for me, I am too invested in the time I just spent typing this to delete it and leave you without a picture of my pretty heart pies. So here you are...

Well, without further ado I am going to attempt to catch a few moments of sleep before getting up and facing the dreaded Monday. If anyone has suggestions on recipes I should attempt to try, please comment. I'm starting to worry that I'll run out of good ideas before Spring.

Balls Everywhere! Cake Balls That Is...

As promised, I do not have tiramisu! I knew I'd come through on that one. This week has been pretty crazy busy and the only way to make it through a week like that is to create a sugar induced coma for yourself and everyone around you. Chocolate should always be involved as well, everyone knows it's good for your heart (sort of) and makes you happy (by distracting you from all other thoughts but obtaining said chocolate). So really, I was doing everyone at work a favor this week by making Chocolate Cupcake Bites. Which in reality are just the same old cake balls I always make, but decorated all cute to look like cupcakes.

CUPCAKE BITES! (not to be confused with "cupcakes bite" - that's just blasphemy)



Yeah, that picture is awesome...I know. You want one, right?

Fine...here's another....


Alright, now that we got that out of the way....

Supplies:
- Cake Balls (go here: http://bit.ly/30J8EK to see how to make them) I used Chocolate Devil's Food Cake and Vanilla Frosting. And lemme tell you, these things were goooood.
- Candy Melts (I used blue and pink)
- Chocolate to melt (I prefer Baker's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Blocks)
- Red Hots, sprinkles, etc. to decorate
- Peanut Butter Cup Candy Mold

This one is pretty simple....You want to fill the cups in the candy mold up with the melted chocolate about 1/3 of the way full. Then you'll place the cake balls into the chocolate so it pushes it up the sides of the candy cup (but not over the top, cuz it makes a mess...trust me, I know). Once you've filled a mold, throw it in the freezer for a few minutes and then take the cake balls out of the mold. The chocolate should have set by this point. Once you're done removing the cake balls you'll dip the tops into the candy melts (in other words, hold it by the chocolate end, turn it upside down and dip the exposed cake area into the melts). Shake it a little to get rid of the excess candy melts then place a red hot on the top of the cupcake and throw some sprinkles on. Let it dry on some wax paper and you're done. You've got adorable mini-cupcake bites. I get bored making the same thing through an entire cake ball process. The recipe makes like 50 - 60 balls, so I tried a few more things with them. I'll leave you with a few pictures and a promise of no tiramisu again next week. Look at me and my planning!



And just one more...


Seriously...I really love chocolate. These are sprinkled with vanilla sugar and cinnamon. Or dusted with gold sparkle sugar. Or just sprinkles. Regardless....there is CHOCOLATE CAKE on the inside.

Congratulations Babycakes!

Ummm, still no tiramisu. I really was going to make it this week. I even bought all of the ingredients. The problem is I left them at home in Jacksonville with my family before, you know, mixing them together and actually making the tiramisu. I didn't want to buy more ingredients (how often am I going to be using marscapone cheese??) so, luckily, I had a backup plan. This well thought out backup plan involved hoping that my coworker's wife would have her baby this week so I could make some congratulations cupcakes. Luckily, the baby was on the same wavelength as me and popped out right in time.



Supplies:

- Cupcakes (I used funfetti)

- Sugar Cookie Dough

- Alphabet Cookie Cutters

- Chocolate Frosting (I use homemade frosting - 1/2 cup whipping cream and 4 ounces chocolate chips)

- White frosting

- Blue Sanding Sugar

- Candy for decoration (the candy on the cupcakes that looks like pacifiers is actually from Walmart and called "Championship Rings." Why they would make candy pastel champion rings is beyond me, but I'm not complaining, it worked in my favor)

Frost your cupcakes with the white frosting before rolling the tops in the blue sanding sugar. Throw a few of those (championship!) pacifiers onto a couple of the cupcakes for decoration.

Cut out the letters to spell "Congrats!" in the sugar cookie dough after rolling it out about 1/4" thick. Make sure to dip the cookie cutters into flour first to make sure they don't stick. Bake for about 7-9 minutes until the edges are golden brown. Let them cool and then frost those babies with some chocolate icing. My recommendation is to spell out "Congratulations" and eat some of those letters after dipping them in chocolate. Yum.

Once you're done frosting, stick the letters onto the top of the cupcakes. And you're done. Easy. Peasy.

I'd tell you what I was going to bake next week but it would probably be a lie. So, not tiramisu. That's the best I can do. Now I need to go back to my dinner of pickle spears and sandwich bread. Yum. :)