Chocolate Fudge Brownies with Butterscotch Chips and Pecans

I'm trying to get caught up with my blog posts. This one is about a week late. I had an exciting evening last Saturday of going to the grocery store after going out to dinner. My husband invited his friend over to play video games, and I was in the mood to bake when I got home from the store. I picked these brownies partly because I love butterscotch and because I had all of the ingredients. They were pretty simple to make and tasted good, but I think the topping needed to be added a little earlier so it would stick in the brownies better. Also, the butterscotch didn't stand out as much as I thought it would. Daniel really liked these served a la mode.

50th Birthday Golf Cake

This post is a few weeks late, but a lot happened between now and then that got in the way of sitting down to post. I offered to make my stepdad's 50th birthday. My mom suggested a golf theme, and I looked through pictures online of neat golf cakes that I thought I could do. I knew I couldn't use fondant so I was a little more limited in design. I found one similar to this one except it had indentions for the golf ball on the white zero and didn't have the "grass" around the cakes. I got a new cake pan for these which allows you to make any number or letter. They're a little block like, but that could be fixed by carving them a little. The cakes are two different flavors. The 5 is Devil's Food from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook with buttercream, and the 0 is Spice Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes with a modified version of her Dreamy Creamy White Chocolate frosting. I just add extra powdered sugar until I get it to a consistency that works for me. I really liked the way the cakes turned out. They were both incredibly rich.

For my next big cake I'm doing my in-laws 25th anniversary cake. I get to use fondant and try to do my second two tier cake. I'm even going to try making gumpaste flowers. It should be fun!

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.

Spice Cake and Roses

My grandmother and her husband came into town this weekend, and my mom had us over for dinner so I offered to make a quick cake. I had lots of leftover icing from class this week and my brother's birthday cake earlier in the week. I went with a spice cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes because I'd made it before and knew it was pretty simple. I decided I wanted to practice doing roses since I hadn't done them in a while. I managed to throw the cake together including decorations in two hours! The cake didn't cool fully, but since we were cutting into it soon anyway it wasn't a big deal. It ended up being very moist. My husband said it was one of his favorites, and my mom requested I make it with a cream cheese frosting for my step-dad's 50th birthday.

Chocolate Birthday Cake

I seem to be unable to get my blog posts done right after I finish the cake. This one I made on Sunday (after getting up early to do a short triathlon in the morning) for my brother Daniel's birthday on Monday. His requirements for the cake was no flowers and some sort of American buttercream icing. So, I made this Chocolate Buttermilk Layer Cake with chocolate buttercream and did a simple swirl pattern that I saw online.