Chocolate Cupcakes

All last week I was in the mood to bake something. Finally Thursday evening after a trip to the gym, dinner, and walking dogs I decided I still had enough time to bake something quick. I gave Daniel the option of either the banana muffins or emergency blender cupcakes from the Weekend Baker cookbook. He said the cupcakes sounded intriguing. I was amazed at how easy they were to make and how few dishes they produced. I decided to make mini cupcakes, but I ended up with enough batter to make 3 regular size ones as well. I had some leftover chocolate icing frozen from a previous cake so I defrosted it overnight and then remixed it to make it smooth.

Daniel and I each ate one cupcake, and then I took the rest to work. I figured it would just be a nice Friday treat, and since I went with the mini ones I think people felt less guilty eating them. The texture and flavor of these cupcakes was great. I had lots of compliments on them and the icing. I need to figure out my recipe for that icing one of these days because it was actually a icing recipe that I had botched and then fixed, and it has ended up being one that I've received the most compliements.

Brown Sugar-Peach PIe with Coconut Streusel

I had originally planned to make a peach pie with the Fredericksburg peaches I got a couple weeks ago, but they were just too soft to slice for a pie. So, I bought some peaches at the store for the pie. I decided to go with a Cooking Light recipe and also made their pie crust as well. It was my first time making a the pie dough from scratch, and although it didn't look that pretty I thought it tasted good. I never was a big fan of fruit pies as a kid, but now that I've started making them with fresh fruit I really do like them.

Flowers and Basketweave

I finally got to take Wilton Course 2 after having to postpone it for my foot surgery. The last class was this Thursday. The first two classes were spent learning new techniques rather than decorating cakes. In the first class we made a bird using a color flow technique, but I think most people ended up tossing their birds rather than putting them on the cakes. In the second class we made royal icing flowers. I didn't like some of the flowers I made in the class so I spent part of Memorial Day weekend making lots of new flowers. (My hand is still cramping up after that.)



Then in the last class we learned the basketweave which I had done before but on a much smaller scale in the cupcake and cookie classes. It certainly isn't hard, but it's pretty time consuming to cover the entire cake with it. We also learned the rope border and decorated our cake using the flowers that we made before. This was probably one of my favorite cakes that I've done so far. I took the cake to work the next day, and it was mostly gone pretty quick. People seemed afraid to cut the flowers though.



And, it was another scratch cake - Devil's Food Cake. That's probably my favorite chocolate cake recipe so far. The only issue was it was supposed to make 3 layers rather than just 2 which I realized as I was putting it in the oven so I pulled them out and made 6 cupcakes which Daniel took to work.