Piano cake

My piano students had their first piano recital this month so I made a piano cake for them.  It took me a while to find the white Kit-Kats but I'm glad I found them!

Birthday Cake

I made a birthday cake for my friend's daughter recently.  She was having a "spa" birthday so I made a cake that looked like a spilled bottle of nail polish.  Teal is Emma's favorite color and I think it came out great!

Toddlers!

This is why you can't trust toddlers!

This was the bottom layer of my sister's wedding cake.  Thank goodness you cut the top off and flip them over before you decorate them! But even after cutting the top off to even it up, there were still some little finger holes!  She went down pretty far!  Oh well, no one knew the difference!

First paying cupcake job!

When I made those root beer float cupcakes, I never thought it would help me get a job as a cupcake maker (is there a name for that kind of a job?). David thinks "cupcake-atier" should be the name but I think that's a little too much.  There must be something simpler, but it does sound fun.  

Anyway, I posted the cupcakes on facebook and my friend Katy saw them and wanted some too so I brought them to her house.  She had lots of other friends over and they loved the cupcakes too, in fact, so much that one person asked me to make cupcakes for her daughter's birthday.  And here they are:

I was a little worried when she picked out a Valentine's themed design, but thank goodness I was able to find lots of pink and white and red candies and with a little of imagination, designed my own cupcakes using what I had found.  They were a hit and the family has asked me to make cupcakes for the next 2 children's birthdays! So I guess I'm in the business now!

Bake Sale Pie Cupcakes

For my sister's birthday last year, she had a fall theme. These bake sale pie cupcakes went great with her theme.  It's something you would have at a fall festival, except instead of real pies, these are yummy cupcakes.  (I know my brother, Nicholas, would rather have pies over cupcakes any day, but sorry, my specialty is cupcakes, not pies.)

I used the butter recipe cake mix and they were delicious.  When my sister-in-law tried to make these earlier that year, we were dumb.  We didn't realize the purpose of the foil cupcake cups.  Obviously, they are to resemble a pie tin.  As I said, we were dumb, and while she was gone, we just put the batter in the inner paper cup instead of the paper/foil combo cup.  But they were still good and I think she forgave us.

Once the cupcakes are cooked and cooled, you just frost the top with icing.  Put some cocoa powder in some vanilla frosting until it looks "pie crust" color. It doesn't need alot of frosting on the top.  Just enough so the candies stick.  

This is a good project to enlist some help.  You have to separate the mini M&M's by color.  Tell the helpers they can have some (but only the orange ones! :) Then, you put the candies, letter side down, in the frosting.  You can make chocolate pie, apple pie, cherry pie, lemon pie, blueberry pie, and any other pie you can come up with.  

Next, you put the "pie crust" frosting in a ziploc bag and cut a small hole in the corner.  Pipe the crust along the edge of the pie.  Then, pipe the lattice over the top by going left to right and then right to left. And you've got a pie look-a-like!

I added little name tags for each pie and arranged them on cooling racks to look more like fresh pies.

Try it out!  It's fun and easy and they look great!

I will be teaching how to make these pies and other cupcake techniques in person on October 15 at the LDS meetinghouse on Adam's Hill Dr. in San Antonio.  Come on by if you want to try it out!

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

I found this recipe on the web.  It seemed like a fun thing to have for Labor Day so I made them.  I ended up making them twice because my friend, Katy, saw the pictures on facebook and wanted me to make some for her too!

Ingredients:
1 pkg. Betty Crocker French Vanilla Cake Mix
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon Root Beer Extract
1 can Root Beer
 Pirouette cookies (buy them from the dollar store if you can)
Vanilla Frosting (storebought or your favorite recipe)
Red Fruit Snacks

Combine first 4 ingredients in a large bowl.

Place glass dessert cups/small jars on a baking sheet and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Fill 1/2 full with cake batter and bake at 325 degrees for 18-22 minutes until done. Remove from oven and let cool completely.

Cut pirouette cookies in half. These will be your “straws”.

Put vanilla frosting in ziploc bag and cut the corner of the bag  Pipe icing onto each cupcake making a large swirl shape, top with a red candy and your straw. Serve or refrigerate until needed.

These are the ones I made for Katy and her friends.

By the way, these cupcakes are super rich!  You will definitely need a glass of milk to go with them!

New Blog!

       So I decided to start a new blog just for the things I like to make.  As I tried to come up with a name for this blog, many ideas, not very good ones, came to me.  First I thought, Kate's Kitchen.  David has said that someday I'm going to have a restaurant because I cook so much good food.  Whenever I make something he particularly likes, he says, "Add this to the menu!" and he means the menu for this restaurant I'm going to have in the future.  :) But I couldn't have that name for my blog because it wasn't available.

So then I thought Katherine's Kitchen, but no, it wasn't available either.  How about Katherine's Kitchen Kreations, nope.  Then I'd be the KKK.  Not good, so I decided to call it what it is to me--my creative outlet.  Making food, desserts, hair bows, and clothes helps me to have an outlet of things I can do and feel good about.  Sorry, cleaning house doesn't always make me feel like I've accomplished something, sometimes, but usually I just get it done so the sight of it doesn't give me a nagging feeling in the back of my brain.

Making things that taste good or are pretty and that make other people happy makes me feel like I am accomplishing something.  Especially since I never thought I could do these kinds of thing.  I find that I really enjoy it and I'm kinda good at it.  When I was younger I always wished I could make cakes that were as beautiful and tasted as good as my grandmothers.  I also always wished I could sew pretty dresses like my mother used to make for me and my sister.  Now that I am home, I've had the time to try these things out, and voila! I can do it!  And it's not as hard as I thought it would be so I'm going to share what I've learned so maybe you can try it to! (by the way, I don't come up with these things on my own, the internet is a wonderful source of ideas and knowledge)

Back to School Cupcakes:

White Good and Plenty candy

Red Runts

Chocolate covered mint cookies

Pretzel sticks

White Frosting--dyed yellow, brown, and green, leave some white for the letters

After baking your favorite cupcake recipe, I used angel food (I'll describe that later), frost them with the yellow frosting.  

Then poke two pretzel sticks into the back of the cupcake almost strait up and down.  Then lean the cookie on the pretzels.  

Place the two pieces of candy in front of the cookie.  

Put the white frosting in a ziploc bag and press the air out.  Then cut off a small piece from the corner of the bag. Pipe the letters onto each "chalkboard."  

In another bag, put the brown frosting and cut a little bit larger hole out of the corner of the bag.  Pipe the border around the cookie.

In another bag, put a small amount of green frosting and cut a tiny hole in the bag.  Pipe the apple leaves.

And there you go!

Basket (or Bamboo, as my cousin says) Cake

Frosting (dyed whatever color you want)

Favorite cake mix

4 containers of Pirouette cookies (I bought mine at the dollar store)

ribbon or tulle

Just make your favorite round cake and frost it all around, even the sides.  Put extra frosting on the top for the texture.  Take a spatula and dip it gently into the frosting on the top and pull it toward the center.  Go around the whole cake.

You can either have your cookies the same size or different sizes like I did here.  If you want them the same size, you need more cookies.  Take a serrated knife and saw through the cookies.  Place them side by side on the cake.  Take a ribbon or tulle and tie it securely around the cookies. (this helps them stay in place and look pretty too!)

Sprinkle "fairy dust" on top.  It's edible and sparkly and I love it.

So have fun and enjoy eating (and sharing) your cakes!