Cupcakes - Pikachu

These are cupcakes I made of Pikachu (one of the characters in Pokemon - a show on the Cartoon Network). My nephews were obsessed with Pokemon (12 years ago) and my son got that gene passed down to him. I made these for this 6th birthday party at school . This photo is only half the batch because I ran out of those gummy candies that I used for the ears.

When I decided to make these, it was late, I was tired, it was raining hard outside and I had no cake mix. So, after going out to buy the mix, you can imagine I didn't think it through very well. The cake and face were simple. I used yellow frosting and black Wilton pre-made icing. For the rosy cheeks, I used M&M's.

The ears were the challenge. Since it was so late, I wanted to just use stuff we had in the house.  I tried: cutting graham crackers (too crumbly), cut corners of Madeline cookies (too soft), Gold fish (these actually worked but I didn't want to ice them, and they felt too small), and cut corners of marshmallows (these worked but, again, I didn't want to ice them to make them yellow.

Nothing I had at home actually worked. So I gave up, went to the store tonight and bought those gummy, sugar-coated wedge candies. The problem is, I needed 30 cupcakes and the box only had about 18 yellow wedges. So, I guess I have to go back to the store in a little while. 

The look on my son's face as the yellow cupcakes took shape into Pikachu was priceless and make it all worth the effort. 

The Dragon New Year ... and a giveaway

Happy Chinese New Year. This is the Year of the Dragon - MY year. :) Which, if you can do the math, means I'll be 48 at the end of the year. Yikes! With my Aunt getting older and my mom living so far away, I cooked the whole meal (well, most of it) for my family. It was surprisingly so much fun. 

Chinese New Year is akin to Thanksgiving for us. Its a time of reflection, happiness, and hope for the future. So, even if you are not Asian, Happy New Year everyone. May the luck of the Dragon spread to you all

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And for the occasion, I have a giveaway printable poster. Grab it here.  

I wanted to make something to go in a frame that I rotate prints in. I am also printing one for my mom's restaurant - with the addition of the restaurant name. 

GONG HAY FOT CHOY

Food fun - its Grill Time!

Happy Post 4th of July, everyone!

As the weekend approached, I got an email from Michaels showing these way cool cupcakes that looked like little grills. I put my own touches to it but basically, they are the same. Here are the ones I made.



Here are the 'instructions':

Fill silver foil cupcake liners about 2/3 full with packaged cake mix.
After baking and cooling, level off the cupcakes with a knife so that they are flat.
Ice with dark Chocolate frosting. I used Dunken Hines' Whipped Dark Chocolate.

Sprinkle Red sanding sugar in the center to simulate hot coals.
Select Black ready to use Wilton icing. Using a round piping tip, evenly squeeze lines across the icing to simulate the grill bars. (Michaels suggested silver bars using a mix of black and white - I don't know about you guys, but my grill has been black since day one. lol)

For the candies, I used yellow Jelly Belly jelly beans, wrapped with the green part of fruit roll ups. Did you guys know how hard it is to find green fruit roll ups? I ended up having to buy a mixed box of 3 different types, and cut the green part off of a 'double-sided' kind. This is sorta what the box looked like, only mine didn't come with tatoos.

To make the steaks, I cut the caramels into 3rds so that they were thinner and pinched them in at the bottom a bit.

The hotdogs were the pink and red Mike and Ike candies. And the burgers were some random bug shaped gummies I'd found and pressed way into the icing.


To make the grill marks on the candy, used cake decorating pens. They came in a set of 4 different colors in the baking aisle. They didn't have black, so I ended up using blue and they seemed to work just fine.

April Food Break

All this scrapping and creating makes you hungry, no? I thought the time was ripe for a food break. heh heh heh

I'll start with my April Fool's treats. I made these worm riddled apples for my son's lunch bag and it came out so cute that I decided to make 2 more for each of his teachers. They loved them and one of them saved it to take home to show her son. :) I love a 'pay it forward'.

I saw this 'treat' on a site or a magazine and I can't recall which, or else I'd give them their due credit. Here is how it was done, I trimmed a gummy worm, used a paring knife and dug out a hole. Then dripped some lemon juice inside to keep it fresh. To keep the gummy candy from getting too gooey too quickly, I dabbed the hole after a little bit. Then I shoved the cut side of the worm in. That's it!

Next Up are Cake Pops. You seen these online a ton of times by now. There are many variations: cake mixed with a binder (like cream cheese), straight up cake baked in ball shapes, or scooped out to ball shapes. Covered with a chocolate concoction, covered with frosting then fondant, frosting and dipped in chocolate, and so on. These were from my local Starbucks on Third and 48th in NYC. Rocky Road, Birthday Cake and Tiramisu. They were a little too sweet for me, but I wanted to try them, so I had to buy 'em. Cute though, huh?

For my DHs birthday, we had some of our close friends and their kids over on Saturday night. For his actual birthday, I didn't want him not to have a cake, so I picked up this peanut butter silk pie at Perkins. They have some yummy pies. I topped it with these colorful, rubber, finger puppets (available at Target). Aren't they hideously cute?

Office Bake Off

Today was our Baking Contest. It was such a hoot. We were cracking up the entire time. Perhaps it was all the sugar. (ya think??). Tomorrow I'll post the pics and stuff, because I have no idea what any of the names of the entries were, what awards anyone won or anything cuz we were too buzy being all loud and stuff.

I will tell you I made my Double Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti with Pistachios, and The Picky-Palate's Cinnamon Rolled sugar cookies.

One of them won something. I'm not being a tease, because I have no idea what it was it won. LOL

How is THIS for a completely useless post? LOL LOL

Red Velvet - Chocolate dipped 'strawberries'

Something delicious for Valentines...

Wowwee. Look at what I found online. Its from the Dollhouse Bakeshoppe (which I'll be going back to check out some more).

Its the night before Valentines Day so, I'm clearly not making these, especially since I just made like 12 dozen cookies for tomorrow's Office Bake-Off. But don't they look so cute and so dee-lish?



She dipped them like regular strawberries. Maybe I'll try them -- one day.

If you make them, drop one by MY house. ;)

Free Calories

as long as you don't eat them. lol

I'm participating in a Bake Off at work next week, so we're testing out a few recipes at home. Sorry for the diet distractions but I just had to share the latest ones. They came out so cute. They are tiny little cinnamon roll cookies. (again... Loving the Picky Palate!)


If you live near me, I'll drop some off. Heh, Heh, Heh.

Post 9 - Friends

I mentioned this in the ScrapMatters forum but I'm clearly not doing these daily posts ON the day, so I've renamed mine to Posts #x instead of Day #x - that way I'm doing it on my terms and I don't have to self-flaggelate for not getting it done 'on time'. lol

So... friends. Wow. This post comes at a particularly appropos time in my life as I just lost a great friend, Bonnie. And that has caused me to reflect on my relationships - friendships. I spent the memorial service talking with my friend's sister telling her stories of how Bonnie was with us at work - a life her sister wasn't part of - and all the antics she would get up to. This led me to think ... I don't want to have these conversations with my friend's survivors - these conversations of how great they are, what fun they have, how much they mean to me. These are stories I need to share with them.

As a result, I have started writing short but genuinely heartfelt emails to those friends who knew both of us (mainly because they understand where my emails are coming from and they, too, are grieving). What I did not expect AT ALL - were the responses. Gee. I'm such a dope!! lol
I totally didn't expect responses. I have no clue why not - perhaps because I've had no sleep in days. Anyway... lol... they all reciprocated, which made me well up. Hmmmm...that wasn't my intent! Who the heck wants to make themselves cry?? I need to rethink this idea! ha ha

(Its still a good idea but now I tell people... no need to reply). lol

Here is my very first layout I ever did. It was for a template/mini-kit challenge at MScraps. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know if I HAD to use all of the elements, so I was left with this bow thing. I stuck it on my pal, Alana's head. She is soooo not a 'bow in my hair' kinda girl, so it cracks me up every time I see it. lol

Credit: EH Studios template/mini-kit challenge

Journaling (with link to recipes/blog) says:

A fun, food-filled weekend where we laughed more than I have in a long time. We cooked and ate a weird mish-mash of delectable food from pasta to dumplings to French onion soup, and topped it off with white wine Sangria.

After waking, we had a full day of Scrabble in our jammies, more laughing and leftovers -- oh yeah, and cupcakes with bacon on them. Surprisingly good!

Brownie covered... What??!!???

I was reading my rss feed the other day and came across a post (forgive me, I don't recall who's site I saw it on, but will gladly give credit if anyone knows) for this yummy treat that was all store bought, easy, and... OMGosh so yummy.

The original blog was the Picky Palate - who has some amazing stuff. She made these Brownie Covered Oreos which were scrumptious. I made a batch (or two) and they were a huge hit.

For those of you interested in the How-To, she has a step by step on her blog but its so simple there is no recipe. Just buy a box of brownie mix and a package of Oreos. Make the brownies according to the box directions then drop an oreo in the batter.

Grease a muffin tin and drop the brownie-battered oreo in there. (important step to avoid the sticking) Bake for 15 mins. You're done!

To make it even worse, I dunked Reese's cups in the batter and baked a few of those. OMGosh... beyond heaven! Soooo delish.

Directions are same as above but with the candy instead. We talked about trying a Peppermint Patty -- but I'm not a fan of mint cookies, so I passed. But my DH liked the idea.

Hints

I usually grease then flour my pans - its guaranteed non-stick. And when I make a chocolate dessert, I mix a little cocoa powder with the flour. It doesn't really do anything extra, I just don't like to see the white flour on the chocolate.

I tried a few different Brownie mixes in my 'test kitchen' and Betty Crocker's regular ole original brownie mix worked the best and stayed moist the longest.

The Picky Palate suggested using white chocolate to drizzle on the top of them. You'd think it wouldn't need more sweet, but on the Oreo ones, I drizzled some homemade royal icing (confectioners suger mixed with a tiny bit of milk - mix well then drizzle) because I'm not a big white chocolate fan. My friend Jenn (JK703), made the oreos with double stuffed oreos and used Whipped Icing. I think I went into a sugar coma just hearing about hers... then she made me taste one. I drank 2 cups of milk. lol

Crazy Sandwich Cookies

Tomorrow I am going to a memorial for my dear friend's passing and after, we've been invited back to her new apt to celebrate her life. We are all bringing something so I chose to bring some of her favorite foods - things she'd ask me to find in Jersey for her like a certain pate and lobster spread.


I also thought I'd make some cookies, but how to tie it into my theme? Well, my friend was nothing if not fun-loving. She loved a good laugh and it could be at anyone's expense, even her own. She was also my boss and when we moved to the new office, she put my office in between these two girls (who we both adore) but they had some idiosynchracies. So I playfully yelled at her one day, "I can't believe you put me in the middle of a Crazy Sandwich!" (meaning I'm between Crazy and Crazier). The term stuck. She'd say, I'll meet you down by the Crazy Sandwich or we'd call the girls the Crazy Twins.


So, I made a Sandwich cookie - fits rights? Its basically a homemade Oreo type of cookie with a carmel or mint flavored filling. I colored the filling in bright colors because my friend loved color. In fact she could match a color from memory.I made them heart shaped because she still holds a bit of my heart (along with many, many, others). The cookies came out really cute so I'm sharing them.

Bonnie's Crazy Sandwich Cookies

Just finished these - "Bon"ana Whoopie Pie cookies.

Bonnie loved banana desserts. Every year I got her a banana cream pie or banana pudding for her birthday so again, in her honor, I thought I'd tackle something similar. If she were attending, I know she would love these. Cheers, Bonnie.

Wait, scratch that, I just tried one and I KNOW she'd love these. YUM. 

click on the image for a link to the recipe