This past Saturday, I woke up at 8am and started baking. Why you may ask? Because I promised I'd bring desserts to the Sigma Kappa women at Ball State University during Sorority recruitment. As they recruited their hearts out (yay for making quota by the way ladies!) I put together some tasty treats and made the trek to Muncie for the afternoon. But first, I had to bake.
Now, I'm not a baker. I don't like measuring and all that jazz. I adore Holy Cow Cupcakes (so dangerous that they are right down the street from my home) and The Flying Cupcake (thank you for opening another location and providing me with more red velvet.) I leave the baking business to the professionals. But alas, once in a while, I whip out those red measuring cups and go to town. Like this past Saturday when I made 7 dozen cookies and 2 dozen cupcakes in 2.5 hours. Lovely.
When I was at the store, they were having a sale on Hershey bars, so I thought "Why not make s'more cupcakes?" And of course, I saw strawberries were also on sale, so the next thought was "and strawberry shortcake cupcakes too!" For cookies, I like all kinds, so I figured a variety mix would be good. Thus, double chocolate chunk, peanut butter and sugar cookies were made.
First up - cupcakes. I made a basic batter out of the good stuff (
per Ms. Martha's recommendations of course) and poured half of it into one prepared pan. The other half, I pureed some strawberries and mix those in before pouring into another pan. Then, I baked and viola, here they are. Unfortunately, the strawberry cupcakes did not rise as well as the plain vanilla - see the comparison?
Then peanut butter - with the fork pressing of course. The only difference is I dropped all the cookies rather than rolled - same thing with the sugar...
Sugar cookies. I thought I had some sanding sugar to top it off with, but I must have finished that up around Valentine's Day and just forgot to restock. So, they got red sugar crystals instead (it could have been blue, but that would have clashed even more than the red!)
Once all the cupcakes were cooled, I was ready for the fun part - decorating! These are what makes them look appealing right? Got together my toppings and prepped the pastry bag. I cheated and used fluff and strawberry icing...I'm a little bummed I made that call, but I was under a time crunch, so I'll forgive myself.
Strawberry shortcake cupcakes. I filled and frosted the strawberry vanilla cupcakes with strawberry frosting, though I did a really bad job piping for some reason. It was extremely light (yes, I know, that is what whipped frosting means) and just wasn't the consistency I needed. But putting a vanilla wafer and strawberry on top made them look extremely better.
For the first time, I wanted to make s'more cupcakes. Fluff (which I never heard of until I went to college and found out that is what the East coast kids grew up on - peanut butter and fluff sandwiches...anyone ever heard of jam/jelly before?) is what I decided to fill the cupcakes with and then top them for the sticky marshmallow topping. Then, I sprinkled some crushed graham crackers on them and added a piece of Hershey chocolate. Yum.
And there you have it! Lots of cupcakes and cookies for a job well done!
Of course, I left some in the cookie jar for the hubs. He would have been awfully sad if he came home and smelled the goodness to find an empty cookie jar.
Did I mention that I somehow got 3 loads of laundry done during this time too? All before leaving at noon...nice Angie.
Do you ever get in a baking mood - and if so, what do you bake?
As you can see, the icing didn't necessarily want to hold the gingerbread in place. My house of shambles didn't even make it to a photos. What you see here is what is left of hubs masterpiece. I might add, this is a friendly competition between the two of us that we do every year. Since hubs made 'stained glass windows' with sugar and his actually stood much longer then mine, he did win this year. I say by default, but he'd argue he would have won no matter what.
Breaking my number one rule of eating out (which is ordering the same thing,) we both ordered a seafood version of Eggs Benedict. Looking heavy upon receipt (I thought it was white gravy!,) I was pleasantly surprised for a light crab sauce. A few chunks of some delicious crab (hubs thought it tasted like a seafood sauce, not crab specific) gave great flavor to the dish. The eggs were over soft rather than poached - I would have preferred the later but was still happy to see egg yolks pour over the toasted English muffin. Great first snow breakfast! 
