Category Archives: Parties & Food & Cakes

Dinner Club: Flavors of Fall

25 Monday Oct 2010

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Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures this time, so I’ll briefly describe.

My Plan

I decided to try a cheese fondue with apples, bread, & grapes to dip, and I also experimented and made some apple cupcakes to go with a Maple-flavored whipped cream. Mmmmm.

What Actually Happened

I made the fondue (which turned out yummy!) with brie, a shredded Italian cheese bag, heavy cream & apple cider. Which was amazing. I nixed the grapes, got apple slices, and used homemade bread given to me by a friend. (Laura B has an electric knife that I used to cut the bread. SO MUCH FUN! We had two large bowls of bread.)

I LEFT THE CUPCAKES AT MICHELE’S HOUSE! Which is 45 minutes away. So no cupcakes. But I had the topping. So Laura & I made Maple Shortbread Cookies. Which were soft & fabulous. And I’m making them again soon.

So that was Dinner Club. Hopefully I can steal some of Jess’ pics when she posts on her blog. ;-)

Stupid Spirit Hands!

24 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by in Cakes, Parties & Food & Cakes, Photography

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This weekend was Harry Potter weekend, although for me it was only Harry Potter Friday. I spent Thursday and Friday at a friend’s house (Michele), and Friday we had her kids and two other teens for a Harry Potter marathon.

So, being the overachiever that I am, I had some snacks prepared.

But I’ll begin with Thursday and an impromptu shoot:

The Lovely Caitlynn

Unfortunately, I left my camera, so I only had my phone.

On to HP Weekend – Wands

I brought pretzels, molds, and chocolate and we made wands…

Arin really liked hers. Livi was jealous.

Cauldron Cakes

I started these ahead of time:

I cared more about the aesthetics than making them strictly out of cake. Black vanilla chocolate cauldron filled with chocolate cake pieces and homemade whipped cream & Biltmore’s black cherry syrup.

 

Butterbeer

Michele and I decided to use the simplest Butterbeer recipe we found online: cream soda and butterscotch. We didn’t end up making it Friday night, so Michele and the girls made it Saturday. Michele didn’t like it, but the girls loved it. Two of the girls have been to World of HP in Universal and said they liked this better, since it was much less sweet (and they could actually drink it all).m Here’s the pic they sent me:

Alas, they forgot to bring me some. :-( Sad times.

Coming tomorrow: Dinner Club, The Cupcakes That Time Forgot, and quite possibly An Afternoon at the Zoo.

It’s a Birthday!

13 Wednesday Oct 2010

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Which means…CAKE!

Today is my friend & co-worker’s b-day today. So of course I used it as an excuse for cake!

I’ve been wanting to try a peanut butter cake, so a few days ago, I made an almond cake & cupcakes and a peanut butter cake and cupcakes. I wasn’t sure how the PB would taste overall, but the batter was good. ;-) I was planning to bring Brenda the almond until I found out she didn’t like almond cake, so the PB it was.

The Icing Adventure

I didn’t really feel like making buttercream (mainly b/c I’m lazy and hate clean-up), so I decided to try a homemade whipped cream for the icing. I stopped by Wal-mart on my way home from the theatre classes I teach on Tuesdays so I could grab some whipping cream and various chocolate chips. (And there’s another story: the time a creepy man hit on me by asking me if I liked cheese.)

And then the adventure began. I made my whipped cream, which was delicious, and then added some melted milk chocolate. Also delicious. Then I thought I’d try to make some ganache for filler (white chocolate) and drizzle (milk chocolate).

Unfortunately, I did not actually even look at the measurements in the recipe, so the filling was a bit grainy and runny. It still tasted good (and is my favorite part of the PB cake), but I needed to put a solid wall of icing around the edges and it still ran over a bit.

The drizzled ganache turned out well. I didn’t like the flavor overall, but on the cake it was yummy. Added some chopped up reese’s cups, and there you go. All done.

I  just brought in some of the almond cupcakes and used store-bought caramel icing to top them. (Which I heard was amazing; haven’t tried mine yet.)

And now… PICTURES:

of course I forgot to take a pic before I cut it…