Cake #64 Banana Whiskey Cupcakes

Saint Patrick's Day is my husband's favorite holiday. He is a part of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, he works at the Irish Festival every year, and for the majority of his life he walked in an Irish parade. In fact, he showed up to school on Friday in a kelley green blazer. He is Irish through and through and when our daughter was born with red hair, he had recieved his Saint Patrick's day present for years to come. This Saint Patrick's day we are six months pregnant with our first son, and we are naming him Liam, which is another amazing gift for Ted, a boy with an Irish name that is a variation of Ted's own middle name, William.

So, it should not have come to a surprise to me that when I went to make my cake of the week, a simple banana cupcake, that he would want to made some adjustments, like dying the batter green and adding a bit of Michael Collins to the batter as well as to the glaze on the top. The cupcake itself was simple, eggs, flour, sugar, cornstarch, butter, vanilla, baking powder, and bananas. Then we add a shot of whiskey to the batter and for the glaze we mixed honey and whiskey, topped with a sliced piece a banana and viola we have Irish Banana Whiskey Cupcakes, or as Ted called them, the "Michael Collin's favorite".

Here is the book's original Banana Cupcakes with a passionfruit glaze:

Here is our Irish modified cupcakes:

In a couple more months our Irish boy will be born and I can only hope he loves my cupcakes as much as our Irish princess...

Cake #63 Berry Crunch Cake

Of course when you are extremely busy, the only thing to do is to add more to your plate. So with Evalyn’s party only a day away, cleaning looming, and a whole lotta school work to be completed – I decided to make my Saturday cake, a Berry Crunch Cake. This cake was a lot of fun to make and is very colorful. It consists of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, raspberries, blueberries, and ginger snaps. The cake was filled with the berries and then the rest of the batter was mixed with crushed ginger snaps to create a cookie crumb topping. Ted has been so gracious today to do a lot of the cleaning and I have been on school and baby duty. Which I think I got the better of the deal; because, who wouldn’t want to spend more time with my beautiful daughter, who as she will tell you herself, is TWO! (Well she is almost correct, she will be two on Monday). She also knows that she is going to have a party and that means cake and that she blow out candles, which she has no problem with as we found out at her great-grandfather and Aunt’s recent birthdays. However, I think I am driving him crazy, because if I were the one cleaning I would pay much more attention to other details, but since he is doing it and I am watching Evie – I need to make sure to keep my mouth quiet and be happy that is he helping!

Tomorrow may not mean anything to my daughter, and she would much rather have her daddy and mommy to play with today as oppose to cleaning for her party tomorrow- but to us it means another year with a truly smart and beautiful little girl. To me, it means that she is no longer my baby- which brings tears to my eyes as I type this, but that she is my little girl. Who incidentally is sitting next to me as I am typing this and having a full conversation with her Ariel doll.

This time next year my one cake a week challenge will be over – but I cannot imagine what will change in my little girls life in the year that is to come.  I do know one thing. Even if the cake challenge is over – there will be cake!

Cake # 62 Blueberry Cupcakes with Sour Cream Frosting

This weekend's cake had more to do with convenience than anything else. We had left over blueberries and an orange, some powdered sugar and sour cream- and bazonga we get our blueberry cupcakes.

From swollen feet, chocolate fairs, birthday dinners, and church- I am worn out - and gasp I almost did not make the cake Saturday morning. As Evalyn is flashing her belly because her 2Ts no longer fit her, I am definitely feeling the pressure of her second birthday coming up in eight days. Pressure is not the right word, more like, oh my god, where did my baby go? Who is this girl? And why is she so tall? (Check that- we all know why she is so tall.) So the cake had to be a no-brainer- I made it, baked it, frosted it, and ate it all in thirty minutes, so this cake definitely won out for its speed.

Besides blueberries and orange rind, the cake called for flour, butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and baking powder. The frosting was powdered sugar and sour cream- and the cupcakes were topped off with a single blueberry.

Take a look!
Here are the book's cupcakes:

Here are my cupcakes (I did more powdered sugar than sour cream for the frosting... it just seemed nasty to do too much sour cream).

Off to wrap presents for Evie's birthday!

Cake # 61 Blueberry Orange Streusel Cake

My daughter loves blueberries! She is totally my husband's child - I am much more of a raspberry or strawberry girl, and I don't even like blueberry flavored anything (including candy! - shocking I know). Every Saturday when I bake a cake, Evalyn is my little helper. I normally get her to throw away trash, hold a bowl for me, or taste the batter to ensure its tastiness of course. As I was putting in the orange grind for this cake, Evie could not stop staring at the blueberries. Now, knowing how tart they are, and how much I hated them, I thought to myself no way will she like them. But, Evie was pretty persistent in her "peassseee" so I of course gave in to see what would happen. To my surprise she popped it in and smiled and said "more peease". Six blueberries later, I made Ted go out and buy more because If I can get Evalyn to eat fruit that is not a banana or mixed in a drink or a yogurt- I am a happy momma. So it is not surprising that this Blueberry Orange Streusel Cake is not only a big hit with my husband, but also with my daughter.

Besides the blueberries and orange grind, the cake called for flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs, butter, baking powder, and almonds. I then made a crumble topping of butter, flour, sugar, and orange grind.

Here is my cake:

And the book's:

In other Evie related news, we also got her to tells us where her brain and her heart were, as well as what sound her heart makes. She is growing up so fast - the transition from the crib to the big girl bed was no problem at all she not gotten out of her bed once, and she turns two in 15 days! As all parents say: She is growing up so fast! I am just truly grateful that something as spur of the moment as "Hey Laura, why don't you do a two year challenge cake blog?" has turned into a place where I can capture the sweetness of my cakes unfold with my daughter.

Cake #60 White Chocolate Valentine Cake

What a weekend! After a particularly disappointing work week, I decided to make some changes in my life that I can control – my house. So, this weekend has been the beginning of the “Evie Project,” as we are calling it here at the Childs’s residence, or in other words we are moving Evalyn out of the nursery and into a big girl room. Because Evalyn is turning two in . . . twenty-two days, and we only get weekends to really have enough time to do any significant damage, we realized that we needed to begin the “Evie Project” this extended President’s Day weekend. Now, it would seem that moving our child from one room in the house to the room directly next to her would not need such hyperbolic terms as “Project” and “damage,” but because our house just fits in the bracket of “charming” in its smallness, changing one room means rearranging three.

            Evalyn is getting a Little Mermaid themed room, and the new baby (a boy! Liam Pearse) is going to take over Evie’s current nursery, which actually means no new furniture to buy for the nursery. However, you better believe that I already have a registry for new bedspreads and bumpers and curtains and everything that I can to make it more “boy-like”. So, what basically was an idea of “let’s turn the computer room into Evie’s big girl room” turned into, “let’s get everything down from the attic that is baby stuff and figure out what we need for Liam’s Nursery, move all of the computer room desk, and bookshelves, and crap down stairs, make Evie’s playroom smaller from downstairs and add some upstairs to her new big girl room ,and oh yeah- actually get all of my old furniture from the attic down for Evie’s room. Which then turned into, “Laura you have all your old stuffed animals, and Barbies, and toys, and apparently over fifty TY Beanie Babies in the attic- can we get rid of them all too?” Well you can imagine how the week has been going from there- somehow, I felt it to be an imperative to clean out the hall closest amongst all of this rearranging - and even now as I am typing I am looking at the computer desk (that is now currently downstairs) and am thinking “ the desk and computer need a good cleaning too.”  

Picture of our newest addition!

Liam Pearse Childs

Pictures of our damage during "Project Evie"( I realize I look like I have a belly here...but I am 5 months prego! No judge!)

            So it is shocking to me that I was able to make a cake- a Valentines White Chocolate Heart Cake nonetheless, amongst all of this chaos. This cake called for the standard, sugar, flour baking powder, eggs, butter, and vanilla, but also required white chocolate shavings and chocolate chips. To make things even more interesting, the cake is in the shape of a heart- and I do not own a heart shaped pan, so I make a round cake and then cut it to a heart – I think it turned out well and the dog sure enjoyed the scraps. 

Here is my cake and then the book's picture.

Cake #59 Teatime Cupcakes

What is amazing is that it is 9:19 am and I have finished our Saturday cupcakes in time for breakfast because truly these are a cupcake for breakfast. These "teatime" cupcakes go perfectly with a cup of tea and as one might figure they are made with a strong Earl Grey tea. The rest of the recipe was simple mix the dry ingredients of flour, baking powder, apple pie spice, then stir in the wet ingredients of butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, and the tea. Finally, add 1/8 cup of currants and bake for twenty-five minutes at 350 degrees. I also put a couple of currants on top of the cupcakes as well before baking. When they came out I sprinkled some powdered sugar and cinnamon on top, and that was that.They were a perfect breakfast for a snowy Saturday morning with some tea.

In fact, I really have had a perfect weekend so far. Last night Evalyn, Ted, myself, and baby that we will soon know the sex of, went to Babies R Us for some diapers and to check out toddler mattresses for her new big girl Little Mermaid room that will be a surprise for her second birthday, and Evalyn was an angel. Then we went to Italian Sensation for some pizza, and she ate a whole slice of pizza with a fork! Finally, we went food shopping and she was happy the whole time, so much so that when we were on our way for checkout Ted could not resist getting her the Lady and the Tramp blu-ray to watch for when we got home. So Ted put away the groceries, and I gave Evie a bath, and then we all snuggled in mommy and daddy's bed with her two pillow pets, a cup of milk, and a cookie and watched the "dog dogs". She watched a good thirty-five minutes before she started to get tired, so we kissed her goodnight and she went right to sleep. This morning was no different, she slept in until 7:30, woke up happy, and when she saw the snow she hugged the dog and ran to get her "'noman" stuffed animal, which I couldn't believe how smart she was to make that connection. She ate all of her breakfast and has been happily playing ever since. In fact, we even discovered that she loves currants - so yay for another healthy food we can add to the list.

Next weekend should be exciting too. Besides Evie's first Valentine's day that she will be able to enjoy chocolate, we will be one week closer to baby number two!

The book's cake:

My Cake:

So here is to good futures, and to future cakes!

Cake # 58 Peach and Cinnamon Pie

A friend of ours, while observing a once smaller Evie playing in her room, gave her the nickname Tank, because as she watched, Evie bounded from one activity to the next, bouncing off of toys and walls, climbing over obstacles, and ignoring any of the usual toddler-aged melt-downs that accompany real and imagined pains caused by tumbles and falls. As I have watched Evie this weekend, it has occurred to me that this nickname Tank may just stick. My daughter is a whirling dervish of activity, a tornado in size 6 shoes. From the floor she can climb onto our bed, from the bed she can climb onto the floor, on either surface, she regards the established laws of physics as mere theories that are to be applied to lesser mortals. Watching her play, it is hard to believe that she is approaching only her second, and not fifth or sixth birthday; her height, vocabulary, and attitude all fit the temperament of a much older child.

                It was among these reflections that this week’s cake, Peach and Cinnamon Pie , was made. The recipe was easy, calling for a batter of flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, butter, eggs, and vanilla, as well as cut peaches and corn flakes for the crunchy topping. The batter was split in half, with part going on the bottom of the pie, and the other half mixed with cornflakes to go on top of the pie, after the peaches were added. The result was a sweet, crunchy, gooey mixture of peachy goodness. 

Here is my cake:

And the book's cake:

Check in next week to see what Evie the Tank and I have made. Until then!