Cake # 51 Christmas Cupcakes

 What do you get with strep throat on a Friday? (awkward silent pause) Saturday night fever!

So, I never really was a joke teller -- but I do like to try. Anyway, strep throat took over my immune system this week as I was trying to prepare for our annual Christmas Party. By Saturday, I was doing my best to make the Joan Rivers-like rasp in my voice sound sexy-- it didn't work.

Anyway, this week I decided to pull out the fondant and the food coloring again and make some Christmas Cupcakes for a Christmas party that Ted and I had on Saturday. These cupcakes were essentially a spice cake made with flour, baking powder, cinnamon, butter, light brown sugar, eggs, almond extract, ground almonds, and a little bit of sherry to top it off for the holidays. They were extremely tasty, but i made too many of them, so for some I followed the recipe and created holly-ed fondant icing, and for others I just made a traditional butter cream.

Here is the book's picture:

 And here are my cupcakes in a festive Christmas Tree cupcake holder:

Next week I am making a Christmas Mulled Sponge Loaf -- which I believe is just a sponge cake drowned in some sort of red wine . . . I wonder being pregnant am I allowed to have a bite?

Sigh- Until then.

Cake # 50 Orange Peanut Butter Cake

In the past six years of marriage Ted and I, just like any married couple in this economy, have struggled to make ends meet with a teacher's salary. So one of the things that we do to cut back on lunches is to eat peanut butter sandwiches for anywhere to one to two weeks at a time. Now that the holidays are here and Ted and I have been spending way more money than we normal spend, with presents, trees, pictures, cards, lights, parties, etc., the budget for this week's cake was cut extremely down. We had enough for me to buy one cheap item. To give you an idea I normally by anywhere between two to three new items for my cake every single week. The only cake that we had every ingredient for except one item, was Orange Peanut Butter cake- how perfect for us!

All we had to buy was an orange. Besides and orange, the cake called for orange juice, peanut butter, vanilla, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, baking powder, and powdered sugar.

Next week when we get paid again, I will make a more holiday-like cake- but for now, The Children are very happy eating their peanut butter cake bars.

Here is the book's picture:

Here is my cake:

See you next week with even more Christmas cheer!

Cake # 49 Frosted Raspberry Almond Ring

Finally December! As a kid, my favorite holiday was always Easter. I loved everything about it. Dyeing my fingers and my clothes more than my beloved "eggies" as I called them, trying to find more eggs than my twin brother, and most importantly, eating jellybeans. Believe it or not, the regular flavored, regular sized jellybeans (preferably from Wockenfus) are still my favorite candy of all time. Yes-- that does include the black ones, and I have always wondered why licorice is given such bad cred- really what's not to like? Sweet and bitter favors all in one chewy bite-- yes please! However, now that I am getting older, and I have a child (soon to be two!) of my own, my heart has followed my husbands, (and probably most of America's) and switched to Christmas as my favorite holiday.

Wrapping my daughter's presents from "Santa" and "Rudolf" and "An Elf" is what makes this holiday so special for me. All of our family traditions, old and new, coming together with a kid who is finally old enough to get excited herself-- well you can't ask for more than that. So because it is the first weekend in December, I am beginning the first of four of my holiday cakes.

This cake, the Frosted Raspberry Almond Ring, does not only scream winter in its flavors, but also in its colors. The topping of the cake is "frosted" with homemade marshmallow, which was my first experience in making marshmallow. To make a marshmallow topping you need, 1 extra large egg white, 1 1/4 cups of confectioners' sugar, 1 tbsp of dark corn syrup, and 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar (which if you didn't know is basically a compounded acid in order to help egg whites stiffen up). Since I do not have a double broiler, I do what many a moms have done before me and heated up a pot of water and stuck a bowl on top of it. Next, you mix all of the ingredients with a hand mixer over the hot water until the mixture can stand on its own and takes a more sticky consistency. The marshmallow came out perfectly, and tasted -- well just like melted marshmallows!

The rest of the cake was fun for me to make as well, because I love raspberries and I got to mash about a cup of raspberries to put them into the cake. The cake was also made of butter, flour, sugar, eggs, almond extract, and baking powder. Then after frosting the cake with the marshmallow topping- I added more fresh raspberries and slivered almonds.

Here is the book's cake:

Here is my cake:

All that is left is to have my two most favorite people in the world, (besides Lucille Ball and Jane Austen) Ted and Evalyn to try a bite! Tune in next week for more holiday baking!

Cake # 48 Banana and Carrot Squares

The holidays are among us and our family has much to give thanks about; if you have not heard yet, I am pregnant. We officially told everyone on Thanksgiving Day and it was fantastic. In an effort to make sure the family found out in a creative way (come on… I teach Creative Writing, could you expect anything else) , I gave my Mother a bottle of Prego with a baby pacifier tied to its lid, and I wrote a creative message spilling the beans on Teds Mom’s message board in her kitchen, waiting patiently through dinner until someone actually read the message and screamed. All in all it was a memorable Thanksgiving break. Ted, Evie, and I have since spent the rest of our weekend preparing for the holidays. The stockings are hung with care around the picture of rich people dancing on the beach in our living room, Ted spent hours (no lie) on the roof making sure the lights were just perfect, and the smell of baked goods is now pervading every corner of our house.

This week’s cake was a set of Banana and Carrot Squares. It was easy to do and delicious to eat. The recipe called for flour, baking powder, nutmeg, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon juice, banana, carrots, walnuts, and had a topping made of ricotta cheese, powdered sugar, banana chips, and rind of lemon. Though Ricotta Cheese sounds like something best served in a savory pasta dinner, it is quite tasty on deserts as well.

My Picture:

The Book's Picture:

Check in next week as the now expanding Childs’ family bakes up something special!

Cake # 47 Caramel Sponge Layer

Almost halfway there, and you would think I would be an expert by now, maybe this is the universe's nice way of saying, "Give up! You're just mediocre!" - And I just made the worst cake ever to prove it. Even worse than the Easter debacle- the cake just looks nasty. And it has been a pretty crappy week too. Car problems galore everything from slashed tired, burnt out lights, and a recall for an air bag problem that we had just shelled out 560 big ones for (at least we will get reimbursed). In addition, we are digging all in the front of my house to put a drain in because when it rains, we get lake Pequot in the front of our yard that no amount of running and leaping can surpass, and Ms. Utility marked the wires wrong (marked two wrong and completely forgot to mark the last one) so of course, we dug and we cut our neighbor's Comcast cable. To top it all off, Ted and I have to head to school tonight for play duty- now don't get me wrong, I love our school's plays and our students really do an amazing job, but Edgewood is not the place I really want to be tonight.

The cake itself took forever to make because I had to make the cake, make the frosting, and make caramel candy to go on top of it- which of course was the part that ruined my cake because the sugar was taking forever to caramelize so I decided to turn up the heat, and of course I burned the caramel candy- worse off I had no more ingredients to do it over, and since the tires are slashed in our car- no vehicle to get me to the store to get more sugar. Besides the sugar for the caramel topping, the cake included: butter, flour, baking powder, vanilla, brown sugar, eggs, and milk. The icing was a mixture of corn syrup egg yolks, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

Here is what the cake is supposed to look like:

Here is what my ugly cake looks like (however Ted said it tasted great, minus the burnt caramel)

Yuk. What else can I say?

Cake #46 Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

November has come and is rapidly going, and for this week’s cake, I chose to complete a recipe more in tune with the fast approaching holiday season; the Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cupcake. Tasting equal parts Christmas cookie, candy cane, and breath mint, this recipe has been an instant success in the house, as Ted, Evie, and Shakespeare have all enjoyed the cupcakes. The recipe called for flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, semi-sweet chocolate, peppermint bark (for the garnish), and peppermint extract (an ingredient I feared would be devilish to find, but was in plentiful supply at our new local Wegmans). 

My Picture:

The Book's Picture:

This blog is coming to you later this week, because after completing the cupcakes, the entire family jumped in the car and made their way to the Timonium Fair Grounds for the other Childs’ November tradition, the Baltimore Irish Festival. Ted works the bars at the Festival with his bestie Ben, and I walk around with the family listening to the music, enjoying the best fries and champs imaginable (the Irish really do potatoes well), and  yelling at Ted’s Mom for spoiling Evie with constant presents. Evie was hysterical while there, dancing to the music and at one point sticking her fingers into Ted’s Jameson, licking her fingers, and then going, “mmmmmm.”

I hope in a year or two, as Evie grows more, we can look into an Irish Dancing School somewhere in the area for her to start taking lessons. With her fiery temper, red hair, and unlimited supply of energy, she should do really well.

            Until next week, Sláinte! 

Cake #45 Gingerbread Cupcakes

An earlier post than normal this week, because my husband and I are taking a vacation to Salem, to do the whole witch hunt thing, which I am so excited for, especially after being "professionally developed" today at school- we both need to wind down. Lately I have been on a Holiday spirit kick- with almost all of my Christmas shopping completed already, (I know I'm sick) I felt like it was time to bring out the ginger and the cinnamon and the brown sugar and make some Gingerbread cupcakes. I actually prefer them to Gingerbread cookies because they are less bitter- most likely due to the larger amounts of butter. These cupcakes also called for flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla, and of course candied ginger. I also made my own frosting of butter, powdered sugar and orange juice.

I figured I would let Evie tell you how they tasted:

My cupcakes:

The book's

Have a haunting good weekend!