First Post :D

Yay! So I saw everyone else making a blog and I wanted to make one too lol. This is where I'll post my baking (mis) adventures over the summer :). Ever since I realized I couldn't bake effectively at VT and also how fun baking was, I promised that I would make up for that over the summer.

So last week on Wednesday I got really bored and made some cupcakes. My mom had three boxes of cake mix just sitting in the pantry and we have a lot of random stuff just sitting around so I figured why not. I was in a lemony mood, so the result was a batch of slightly lemon flavored cupcakes filled with black raspberry/red current jelly and lemon buttercream frosting. +/-

Cupcakes with a hint of lemon, filled with Black raspberry/red current jelly and frosted with lemon buttercream. :D

There was also a pastry bag and some pastry tips lying around from when I bought them at Tech, so I wanted to practice decorating. Here was the result. And here is what a decently filled cupcake looks like on the inside (some of the cupcakes didn't have that much jelly in them because the piping bag would clog occasionally...probably because I didn't melt the jelly enough):

And I forgot to put salt in the frosting, so it was a lot sweeter than I wanted, but amen it still turned out pretty good :). I ended up bring the cupcakes to Bible Talk at William and Mary for snack, so they served a good purpose.

The next day, the urge to bake was still there, so this time a cake and a dozen cupcakes came out of it. It took over 2 hours to do everything o_O! Over the course of June, the campus ministry here in Norfolk split up into different Bible Talks. Mine meets on Thursdays, which happened to be the same day I'm baking all of these goodies. So the cake ended up as Bible Talk snack. There aren't any pictures of the cake or cupcakes, but the cake was a boxed golden butter cake from Duncan Hines with half a block of cream cheese mixed into the batter for some richness. To top it off, coffee buttercream frosting. The frosting was much more coffee flavored than expected as I didn't have a chance to taste both the cake and the frosting together that well (I can't just eat a slice of the cake and then serve it to others, that would be kinda strange lol). I remembered part of a recipe that my mom told me about adding coffee grinds to the frosting and it turned out really yummy, so I tried that here. Kinda failed, the ground coffee just ended up giving the frosting some speckles and no real coffee taste. Maybe we used a different coffee that time, because we have gone through quite a few different flavors when that happened. Anyway, some brewed coffee was added and gave it a very strong coffee taste, but it still tasted pretty good.

And the cakes were some of the flattest cakes I've ever seen XD. But that's probably because I used one box of cake mix divided between two cake pans. But layering them worked out. And some more piping work was done on the cake to practice some cake decorating.

As for the cupcakes, a sister's birthday was that day, so I made here vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting. I tried a recipe online for homemade vanilla cupcakes and they turned out very good, but also quite dense. A lot more dense than the boxed cake mix. And I was short the amount of vanilla required, but it still tasted like vanilla so mission accomplished! The chocolate frosting was a bit of a hassle because I've never done legit chocolate frosting before with cocoa and all and I ran out of vanilla so I had to go an alternate route. We had some Ghirardelli 60% chocolate squares left, some cocoa powder and some Hershey's chocolate syrup and made it work. It was pretty good, not too sweet with the 60% chocolate in there (it's not as sweet as milk chocolate), but sweet enough with the powdered sugar and the Hershey's in there.

The cake went over pretty well at Bible Talk, and it was a great lesson as well that night! Unfortunately, I forgot to tell everyone that the cupcakes were a gift for that sister and the cake was for everyone, so other people started eating the cupcakes and singing happy birthday over the cake XD! But amen, that shows that they were good, right?

After that, some people went to see Snow White and the Huntsman while others went to see the Avengers. Snow White wasn't as good as the trailer made it out to be, but it was still fun being with the others.

I might post the recipe for the buttercream frosting I make later on, but it was a good baking week. Seeing how amazing baking is, I started to make a list of supplies needed to be more effective. My mom was going shopping so she said to give her the list. I only starred a few things that I wanted as to get everything on the list would be too expensive for one trip. So I wake up the next morning and see this! (this was taken later but you get the idea lol):

It was so crazy! Needless to say I was excited. We were especially in need of the cake and cupcake carriers as we didn't have a sturdy was to transport the baked goods from one place to another :/. So now my mom is helping me and giving me ideas for cupcakes even. It's so much fun to be able to make stuff for other people. Hoping a lot will come out of this summer and beyond!