Thursday, April 28, 2011

Silly Chick

We sent some Chicks home with Lisa for their Easter celebration. Her daughter, Sara took these hilarious pictures! We all need a good laugh!

The comments below the pictures are the titles Sara gave each one.


Chick with the Easter Bunny

Can you find the Chick?

Happy Friday everyone! We are finally getting some sunshine today. =]  Enjoy your weekend. 

Chicks

We had some extra cake balls and decided to make some Easter chicks. They turned out adorable! Its always so much fun to try new things and have them turn out.

Little Chickadees
Random little fact, the feet are made out of gingerbread sprinkles our brother-in-law Jon got us. Christmas sprinkles do come in handy in April!

Chicks!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Easter Eggs

Our wonderful friend, Lisa, from the gym requested Easter egg cake balls for their holiday celebration. Her daughter and daughter-in-law also go to the gym and have a love for cake balls. Lisa, being the wonderful mother that she is surprised the kids with these! Easter Egg Cake Balls.

Lisa's Beautiful Presentation

Krista and I both thoroughly enjoyed working on these. However, I think Krista's artistic ability took the cake on this one.

Can you guess which one Krista did and the one I did?

These Easter sprinkles were my favorite and looked good on all the eggs.

Easter Pearls

A Holy Hannah's post wouldn't be complete without a slew picture.

Slew of Easter Eggs

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Vanilla Bean & Strawberries

If you know anything about me, you know that I love chocolate. Rarely do you find me baking something that doesn't include chocolate. It doesn't seem like dessert and doesn't quite satisfy the same if there isn't chocolate in my dessert. So, you may find the following sentence strange if you know me or can relate to my chocolate addiction: I made vanilla bean cupcakes with strawberry buttercream frosting topped with fresh strawberries and I thoroughly enjoyed them! They were an absolute delight. The perfect summer dessert. Even though it snowed the day I made them. Yes, you heard right, it's snowing here at the end of April. I'll accept your pity in the form of an airline ticket to anywhere south of Minnesota.
The cupcakes were very easy to make except for the recipe called for the seeds from one vanilla bean, which seems key to make vanilla bean cupcakes, right? Well, I strayed from the recipe on that one a bit. I am my fathers daughter and frugal is one of my proud qualities. 3 vanilla beans would have cost me $14.99 at the grocery store and I said no thank you! They still turned out very good, but probably would have been a little better with the bean.

The frosting was interesting, I wasn't quite sure how to do a fruit dessert since I've never made one before! I think I should have borrowed Emilee's food processor for this, the recipe recommended that but I didn't feel like going to get it! I might try that if I make these again.
Overall, the cupcakes were a hit and I got great reviews. My roommate was so kind to tell me this might have been my best baking week ever! This is another contender for the next ROTM. Let's make it fun, cast your votes for which recipe you would rather see in May :)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Monster Cookies

As promised, I made a big batch of monster cookies this past weekend. They were the bomb dot com, seriously, so good. I have had a monster cookie recipe that I've used for years, but I stumbled upon a gluten-free blog the other day and she made gluten free monster cookies. I thought I would give the recipe a try and it did not disappoint!

[Delicious Gluten Free Monster Cookie Dough]
The recipe said to use 1/4 cup to measure out each cookie. This made for massive monster cookies. Check out those new measuring cups I got for my birthday :)

Everyone at work loved them, Mike loved them, my roommate Maddie devoured them and even my mom and dad enjoyed one each! And that's saying something for my dad since he rarely strays away from the standard chocolate chip cookie. They were still soft and chewy even after a day or two, we're still enjoying them! This is a definite contender for the next recipe of the month! :)

Friday, April 15, 2011

Lemon PoppySeed Muffins

My Michael requested lemon poppyseed muffins this past weekend. Since I'm a lemon poppyseed virgin, I looked through and considered many recipes before choosing the muffins to make. I chose the recipe that could have used more lemon in the actual muffins, but Mike said the glaze was perfect.




These weren't a favorite of mine, but I'm looking forward to some awesome monster cookies this weekend. Stay tuned :)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Basketball Cupcakes

This past weekend we made basketball cupcakes for a 12 year old's birthday. They were strawberry cupcakes with buttercream frosting. Super easy to make and turned our adorable!
 Basketball Cupcakes

Strawberry Surprise Inside 

Holy Hannah's Wishes Sam a Very Happy 12th Birthday!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Carrot Cupcakes

My coworker and friend Megan celebrated her birthday last week and in honor of her special day I made her favorite dessert. Carrot Cake! Only I made cupcakes instead because they are easier to distribute. I personally don't care much for carrot cake so I was a little nervous about making it. I wasn't sure of the exact size the carrots are suppose to be grated down to or what it was suppose to look like. My mother gave her blessing (except she wanted more frosting) the night before so it made me feel a little better about gifting these to Megan. From all the reviews (hopefully they were being honest) the cupcakes were a hit!

 Carrot Cupcakes

 The frosting was cream cheese with pecans mixed directly in it.

The birthday girl with her cupcake and balloons!
Notice the cupcake balloon - I couldn't pass that up!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Puppy Dogs

A coworker's wife received her white coat for Veterinary School. In honor of her huge accomplishment we made puppy dog cake pops. After all, she will be saving animal's lives!


These turned out to be really easy. Just a normal cake ball dipped in candy melt. A lifesaver for the collar. A chocolate sunflower seed for the nose. The ears were made out of candy melt that we formed using a plastic spoon. Assemble them all together and you are left with the cutest dog around!

Top View of the Puppies 

How could you resist this puppy face? 

Puppy Dogs 
My coworker is really going to impress his wife with these!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Cinnamon Roll Cookies

I branched out a bit this past weekend. I wanted to make something a little different and I came across a cinnamon roll cookie recipe. Emilee loves cinnamon rolls so I thought these would be right up her alley. They took some time, having to set in the freezer for a half hour and two different points in the process, but they turned out well.


They were quite delightful! And I'm impressed with my photography skills on these, aren't you??

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Baby Shower

Our FAS (Favorite Auntie Shannon) requested some pops for a baby shower for her niece Heather. Heather is expecting a girl and we made some cake pops to resemble her nursery.
I have been having so much fun piping on cake pops recently. It's actually pretty easy and I think it's starting to help my cake decorating abilities. I also think the buttercream frosting on the cake pop tastes great too.




Monday, April 4, 2011

Bobbers

Our cousin Tammy requested another order of cake pops, this time for a retirement party. The lucky retiree is to retire to a lakeside cabin to spend his days sleeping in, relaxing and most importantly, fishing. We thought making some cake pops that looked like fishing bobbers seemed most appropriate.

They turned out adorable, however the drying/hardening time on these lasted a little longer than we would have liked. They took awhile but Tammy loved them and we're hoping they were a big hit!





Friday, April 1, 2011

Hoppy April

Or should I say Happy Birthday! Did you know today is this beautiful lady's birthday? No joke people. She turns the big 2-5 today. She is a wonderful older sister and our family wouldnt be the same with her (and her sharp tounge).

My Hot Sister and her BF

A new ROTM has been loaded. After a few requests I put up the recipe for the Snickerdoodle Muffins I made the other weekend.  I hope you all enjoy the recipe and if you are in MN the nice weather we are suppose to have tomorrow!