Mexican chocolate Buttercream

I have to start todays post with a big “Thank You”, that goes out to all of you, my readers! I cannot believe how positive all of your responses were towards my latest cupcake adventure. Creating a personal cupcake tasting to satisfy a proud icing fanatic was a lot of fun for me, and it was just as much fun reading all of my lovely comments! Woohoo!

So as my way of saying thanks, I’m going to give back and share with you one of my favorite recipes that came out of this weekend. Mexican Chocolate Buttercream Icing! This is best paired with a really dark and moist chocolate base. I say “base” because I can very easily see this icing used on cake, cupcakes, or even BROWNIES! Mmmm…

That’s all for today, but I suggest you come back on Friday! There will be a DIY and giveaway! Plus, then it’ll be the start of the weekend – and we can’t complain about that, can we?

Thanks for stopping by!

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A Cupcake Tasting

I was given a challenge!

A loyal reader of the blog wrote to me and explained that her soon to be “40-something year old friend” was guilty of decapitating every cupcake that she ever eats. In other words, (as my sister would describe) this Birthday girl has a cupcake eating condition whereby she prefers a higher icing to cupcake ratio.

This reader wanted to know if I could create a batch of cupcake tops (like muffin tops) with various icings piled on top for her friend as a birthday gift.

I accepted the challenge!

Since there were three ladies getting together for the reveal of cupcake icings, I decided to take it a step further! You know the other two ladies weren’t going to love sitting there watching their friend devour the icings and listen to her description of the various tastes and textures; nor were they going to ask the birthday girl to share her favorites either. So I went ahead and made a batch for each of the friends so they could all bite into the different flavors and combinations at the same time and do this “Mmmmmmmmmm”.

Surely, if you’ve done the math you’ll notice that there are sets of four on the table, and I’ve mentioned three ladies. That leaves one extra of each flavor combination. Well, The Boss was kind enough to be my “creative editor” for the day and photographed every single set of cupcakes for me. That saved me a LOT of time; I paid him in treats for his labor!

Here’s a closer look at the line up!

Mexican Chocolate- Spiced Chocolate Buttercream/ Chocolate Cake

Birthday Cake- Birthday Cake Icing / Funfetti Cake

Smores- Toasted Marshmallow & Ganache center / Graham Cake

Bertie’s Lemonade- Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting / Vanilla Cake

Cherry Blossom- Cherry Buttercream / Cherry Chip

Tiramisu- Espresso Cream Cheese Frosting / Vanilla Cake

Peppermint Patty- Peppermint Buttercream & Ganache / Chocolate Cake

The Classic- Chocolate Buttercream / Vanilla Cake

Boston Cream- Ganache with Cream Filling / Vanilla

Peanut Butter Nom- Peanut Buttercream & Ganache / Chocolate Cake

**MIA** The “Vanilla Dream” and “Salted Carmel” were the last icings made, and of course I was running a little tight on time and they unfortunately did not get individual “fashion shots”.

Then they were all packaged up including a tasting menu and a bow!

So what do you think, how did I do? Is this a box of treats up might like to receive for your birthday? More importantly I have to very important questions for you…

1) What would you be willing to pay for a dozen customized cupcakes (or just tops) with your choice of cake and icing combination?? Complete with a menu and bow!

2) Reflecting on the flavors I created for these ladies I think I did a good job varying the icing flavor profiles  and textures. What flavor would YOU have liked seen featured in a cupcake tasting?

That’s all for now folks, thanks for stopping by!

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Friday Round up: Cool Cookies

Like most of you, I have several blogs/feeds, Flicker accounts, and Facebook pages that I follow on a regular basis. Some are photography based, and others triathlon and running related, but the bulk are blogs/bakers like me. But out of all of the baking blogs, the gals who really impress me weekly are often the cookie decorators! Who would have thought that cookie decorating could be brought to such a high standard?

So without further ado, here are a handful of The Best of what I Found (this week)!:

These cookies are by a gal who goes by SweetAmbs. I kid you not, her work always looks this good!

Then there is this lady who I stumbled upon while working on my own Facebook page. These Kitchenaid cookies have to be one of the greatest cookie decorating ideas I’ve seen!

These next fishing cookies actually make me kind of jealous. I grew up fishing with my Dad, so camping and fishing is pretty special to the both of us. These are for you Pops… I might just mimic these someday!

And finally to top off the Friday workday, albeit not cookies, I present to you a fabulous after work drink!

Thanks Val So Cal, for the Coconut Margarita recipe! Just what I’ll be looking forwards to this Friday afternoon!

Well that’s all for now, have a great weekend!

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Oscar Worthy Dessert

Is everybody as excited as I am about this weekend’s Academy Awards and Oscar Red Carpet Showdown??

Now I don’t get too revved up about the Grammy, Emmy, or Tony’s Awards, but I sure do love the Oscars! I am a huge movie buff and love seeing all of my favorite peeps get super styled out to celebrate another year of great entertainment (ahem, also their multi-millions of dollars made…).

Now I promise come Monday morning I will not go on a rant about who should have won what, but I might just have to comment about my favorite dress! We’ll see, I hope this year is not a dud for fashion!

Now, getting back to the post; I present to you the Bakery’s take on how to enjoy the show! Since we don’t get to tread the Red Carpet like all of the stars, I figured we should at least be treated to something just as eye catching!

Bertie’s Bakery Red Carpet:

There you have it! Short and sweet. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and it was enough to get you jazzed about the award show this weekend!

If you would like to enjoy some cream cheese frosting the recipe is here.

If you would like to see how I made my totally awesome Red Carpet cupcake wrappers you can find out here.

I am still not totally happy with my Red Velvet cake recipe so I’m holding off on posting that until I create a really good one!

Thanks for stopping by!… who do you think is going to win best movie??

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My Pet Shark

For the past year The Boss and I have had a small “tiff” between us. It all started when I told him that I would like to have a pet Bunny. He simply laughed and said no. Period.

I left it alone for a while, and then eventually asked him again. The response was again a simple “No”. I wasn’t making any headway by myself, so I eventually confided in some family members to get their help and advice. Their response wasn’t much better, they even followed up with gag presents of bunny paraphernalia and the such.

Then, this past fall The Boss thought it would be funny to buy “Me” a pet substitute. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that this “pet” wasn’t really meant for me; it was totally his. He would even taunt me with it in the most of inconvenient times!

This particular incident made it’s way to You Tube.

Anyways, it’s been about a year since I initially voiced my want for a pet bunny, and with no bun-bun in sight I’ve had enough. I work from the house and spend a lot of time here alone, and therefore I would like to have a companion through out the day. So I took back my “gift” that was never really fully handed over to me! Now during the days we’ve been doing all kinds of things together!

Since the weather has been so nice out as well, we spent an entire afternoon hanging out!

First we just hung out in a sunny spot. Turns out Sharky likes to read as much as I do!

Then, since he was so well behaved I agreed to take him to the playground in my Neighborhood. He wasn’t too sure about this whole “slide” action and refused to go down without me!

“Weeeeee”

I was surprised by how often we had to take pit stops. Turns out Sharky likes to mark his territory!

Soon enough it was time to head home! It was lunch time after all!

What do you want for lunch?

I was so impressed with my new friend and how well we got along, I even took him along this past weekend to a local running race. The Boss was running, so we took to the course to ring the cow bell!

I wasn’t sure if we were going to be accepted by other cheering squads so we found a nice quiet spot about a mile into the race course.

We both got a little nervous when the police came by first! But he didn’t give us any trouble.

For the most part all the runners were entertained by our presence. Turns out we were pretty much the only cheering squad along the course with a shark! Go figure.

That’s really it for me and the shark for now. I’ll be sure to keep taking pictures as we find new adventures. Until then, if you want to head over to The Boss’s blog and maybe give him some encouragement to come to a floppy eared agreement, I sure would appreciate that!

I even think I’d be more willing to make more free Bakery Treats as giveaways if I had a pet Bunny! What do you think? Is a bunny a good idea? I would give it such a good home!…Mmmm Carrot Cake for Bunny!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Lemon Scones for Breakfast

It’s a long weekend here in the States, “President’s Day”, and I am thankful for a long weekend! The Hubsters is a work-a-holic and long weekends are always a great for us to unwind.

This morning he is waking up to freshly baked Lemon Scones! But shhhh he doesn’t know this!

This is a very simple recipe, and if you have lemons in your fridge I would be willing to bet you have everything else that you need to go make these right now!

As always the recipe is located at the bottom, skip ahead if you want, otherwise enjoy the picture show!

1) First get out your butter. You don’t want your butter to be too soft, so don’t take out the butter too far in advance. It' needs to be in a state such that it can hold it’s shape without melting into the batter.

2) Put all of your dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and using a pastry cutter or two knives, start cutting the butting into the flour.

***You don’t want your butter mashed into the flour, instead it should look like crumbs. You will see the dough come together when you add the milk. In the meantime, the chunks of butter are what will eventually create a light and fluffy scone. When the scone is put in the oven to bake, the butter melts and leaves a cavity in the dough, thus leaving air pockets for a fluffy end product! Moral of the story, you are NOT trying to mash the butter in to flour to create a batter or dough… the milk will do that.

3) Once finished cutting in the butter, add your lemon zest and gently fork that into the mixture as well.

4) You are going to fold and cut the milk mixture into the flour until just combined. Do no over mix. Remember we are trying to save our butter chunks!

5) Then pour the batter out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and shape into a circle. 

6) For the sake of ease, make a pile of flour and dip your pie cutter into the flour before making each slice. Just trust me on this!

8) Last step, lightly brush the tops of the scone slices with an egg wash. This is an important step because the proteins in the wash help the scone develop a nice golden crust on top.

***Optional, I also shake out a little extra white sugar on top of scone after the egg wash.

Bake at 400* for 20 minutes and devour!

Yum!

Don’t hesitate to leave a message if you love scones, have a question, or a flavor suggestion!

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