Baking For A Cause

On Friday March 11, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan unleashing a tsunami which crashed through Japan's eastern coastline sweeping buildings, cars, homes, boats, and people for miles inland.  In efforts to support the recent tragedy, I have donated my baked goods to a Japan Disaster Relief Fundraiser.  All proceeds will go to the American Red Cross . 

I baked up Red Velvet cupcakes, Cookies n Cream cupcakes, and brownies.  There were some yummy Snickerdoodle cookies and Peanut Butter cookies too!

Take a peek (sorry for the bad quality = cell phone pics).

You too can donate!  Please visit http://www.redcross.org/ to make a donation that will help those that have lost their homes, family members, and are living in shelters without basic living needs.

L.O.V.E.

Ahhh yes Valentine's Day.  The day when you shower your loved one with goodies.  Some say it's a "Hallmark" holiday, I say it's another reason to bake (as if I really needed one).  It's also a day to get flowers delivered to your work so that you can make your co-workers jealous.  haha what? did I say that? :)

Valentine's Day is just around the corner and while millions of men run out last minute to buy their sweetheart something special, I'll be in the kitchen baking up some yummy treats. There are endless goodies one can make and I know these days most people are looking for the most economical (aka cheapest) and easiest treats to whip up. In fact, ATTENTION MEN! You can bake this stuff too!! AND homemade is MUCH more romantic than picking up a cake at the good ol' grocery store (plus their frosting/icing is usually g.r.o.s.s.). Wow her with your baking skills! or if you have kiddos, you guys can make these together.

Check out these fun/easy (and of course yummy) ideas for treats!

ahhh yes the simple red velvet cupcake. This is the most popular cake requested on Valentine's day (duh, it's red!). Slap some cream cheese frosting on this puppy, sprinkle some red sugar and done! Make anyone's heart (and mouth) melt.

Cookies! Anyone can make these, from the little kiddos to the big guys.  The funnest part? Decorating them of course. The possibilties are endless!! Serve them on a pretty platter or wrap them up with a nice ribbon.  Everyone loves cooooookies!

These are similar to the whoopie pies I just made. VERY easy to make. Buy a kit, follow directions and BAM, red whoopie pies (they are deelish!)

These are America's favorite treat (ok maybe I made that up but it sounds true right? Just go with it). People have been making Rice Krispie Treats for decades and this is a good one if you want the little boogars to participate. They are sticky and fun...and what kid doesn't like a sticky mess.

and last, if you have zero baking skills but have the ability to buy a cute little jar like this one (find one at your local Michael's, WalMart, JoAnn's) buy some brownie bites (although they are seriously easy to make but buy if you must) fill them up in a jar and wrap some decorative ribbon around it for a homemade (almost) treat like this!

Ok don't say I didn't try to help out.  These are fab ideas that would make anyone's day, wife, mom, sister, grandma, aunt, girlfriend, co-worker, secret admirer, stalker (well it may piss your stalker off but you get my point).

Hurry up you've got 5 days left!

Oatmeal Cookie Love

I had an itch to bake tonight but wasn't sure what I wanted to make.  I found a recipe for Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies, but it ended in a #FAIL when I headed to the grocery store and found they were out of pumpkin. What? It's fall and there is no pumpkin? LAME! So I ended up with Oatmeal Raisin (hold the pumpkin) Cookie and here they are... yummy!!

Ready to Go! 

Perfect! 

You HAVE to enjoy with milk of course!

Here is the recipe for these yummy treats:
2 sticks butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3 cups oats (like old fashioned Quaker Oats)
1 cup raisins


and don't forget the milk!

Wilton's Cake Decorating Basic Course

The displays for the cake decorating courses at Michael's have always caught my eye and I finally thought, well why not? Could be fun right? They're inexpensive and I'd love to learn new ways to decorate.

So they have 3 courses (they are each 4 weeks long, meeting once a week):

1. Decorating Basics
2. Flowers and Cake Design
3. Gum Paste and Fondant

I was REALLY interested in the 3rd class, gum paste and fondant. I love working with this stuff! But I figured, let me take all 3.  I signed up for the first course, Decorating Basics (and bonus, all classes were 50% off! so I paid something like $22 - cheap).  You buy the student kit that basically comes with most of the things you need to get you started (used a coupon - of course - so came out to about $17).

Had my first class tonight. I seriously think some of the people in my class have never even seen what a cake looks like.  I know the course is "Decorating BASICS" but COME ON.  Yaaaawn, what a bore! The instructor spent the majority of the class, a whopping TWO hours, showing us what baking pans look like, how to make cake FROM A BOX - uh you read the directions? and showing us how to use all the tools in our student kit.  Oh and she made Wilton's Buttercream Icing Recipe in class, which let me tell you, it's GROSS. Tastes exactly like the crap they use at your local Ralph's / Vons / Insert your grocery store here.  So apparently this is the recipe we are supposed to make to decorate our cakes.  I have no problem using this for things like borders and flowers, but to frost my whole cake in this junk? Let's just say I will NOT be eating my cake from this class. (Stay away from this recipe). Oh and the instructor said "for real buttercream icing, you don't use butter" Sorry Sarah Lee, I'm using butter.

Anyway, the only real hands-on exercise we did was decorate a couple cookies with ONE tip, the star tip #18. I guess the purpose of this is to start practicing how to use a decorating bag and how to make little stars (a huge bore I tell you).  Throughout the night I had to keep reminding myself that I DID sign up for the basic class.

Wanna see what I made?  2 stupid shortbread cookies with a shitload of stars.  Oooohh Aaaaahhh impressive, I know :-/

Exciting stuff huh?

I won't say it was a complete waste of time, I did learn a few tips on baking and it was fun to watch some people showing off the stars they made all proud, when they actually looked nothing like stars.

Next week we are supposed to bring in a one tier cake to decorate in class.  I am a bit excited about this because so far the majority of my cakes are fondant cakes. I'd love to practice making regular buttercream cakes (using my OWN buttercream recipe).
Let's see how this goes. I'll keep you all posted.

P.S. the cookies weren't half bad, Mr. sweet tooF ate them both right when I got home (did you expect otherwise? haha)