A Miniature Reese

Prepare the brownie mix according to package directions for cake-like brownies. Fill the cups half full with brownie batter. Place about 1 tablespoon peanut butter chips in the center of the batter, or press 1 peanut butter cup into the batter in each muffin cup until the batter meets the top edge of the peanut butter cup. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until the cupcakes are set. When they can be handled safely, remove them from the muffin tins and let cool completely on wire racks. Store in an airtight container. Chocolate Ganache 1 by cheftaz 8 oz (240ml) cream 1 tbls butter (optional but makes it stay really shiny even after refrigerating) 1 oz sugar 12 oz (340 g) semi-sweet chocolate Break chocolate into 1/2 oz pieces and place in stainless steel bowl. Heat cream, butter and sugar to boiling. Pour over chocolate and let stand 5 minutes. Stir from center out until smooth. After refrigerating 1 hour then fill your piping bag. Or use to ice your cake by pouring or spreading (allow to cool to room temp first)

The cupcakes now have their ganache topping & decorative pieces of Peanut Butter cups.

I’m also going to add crumbled peanut butter cups on top of the ganache for a little decoration! As you can see, this is a very simple recipe. Do not be fooled by the simplicity of it. These cupcakes are fabulous. They would make a wonderful holiday treat or the perfect end to a simple meal. Actually, they make a great snack also. Had some overripe bananas on the kitchen counter so I decided to also make banana cupcakes. While the banana cupcakes baked, I decided I wanted to try playing with filled cupcakes. I felt a good choice of filling for this flavor of cupcake would be vanilla so I pulled a package of vanilla pudding out & mixed it up. Then the fun started.

I won!! Filling is now in the banana cupcakes.

I had never made filled cupcakes before so I did some research on the internet. The directions I found were step by step & looked simple enough so I thought I was set. Wrong! The directions I found called for snipping a hole in the corner of a baggie, sliding a round tip in it, &  filling the baggie with the filling mix. Simple enough, right? Actually this part worked quite well. Maybe I’m just not co-ordinated enough, but I could not get the tip to just ease into the top of the cupcake. All the tip did was bounce off. Determined not to be defeated, I used my other hand to force the tip into the cupcake & proceeded to gently squeeze the baggie as the directions said. Oops! Pudding exploded out of a hole that I had NOT cut into another corner of the baggie. Then when I tried to carefully withdraw the tip from the top of the cupcake, the tip retreated into the pudding instead of staying snugly in the cut corner. Ok, it was obvious a plan B was needed. Not sure why the directions hadn’t sensibly directed me to use a nice decorating bag. Pulled a 10 inch bag out of my cake supplies & fitted a #7 tip on it. Filled the bag with vanilla pudding & tried again. Much better. Took a bit of trial & effort to get the hang of how much filling to insert, but it didn’t take long. This method was much more satisfactory. Filled the cupcakes in a very short time. Frosted them with the buttercream icing I had made using some of the vanilla pudding to flavor it with & they were done.

Here's a closeup of the Peanut Butter Brownie Cupcakes.

Frosted & filled banana cupcakes.

Cupcakes with orange icing ready for MNO (Mother

Used all the cinnamon icing I had left on pumpkin cupcakes until it was gone. Add the black & yellow icing to the decorating bag to do a swirl design. Iced all of the butter vanilla cupcakes with it. Then I used the rest of it on chocolate cupcakes until I ran out. Then I mixed up a batch of orange buttercream icing. Figured it would go good with all the flavors I had so I would only need to make one batch of icing. So I have fig cupcakes with orange icing, pumpkin cupcakes with orange icing, lemon-orange cupcakes with orange icing & chocolate cupcakes with orange icing.

The icing smells really good; I like the taste of it. Had a fresh palate & STILL don’t care for the butter vanilla cake. Sarah didn’t much care for it either. Jim really liked it. So I will definitely be pushing it at tonight’s MNO (Mother’s Night Out) as I want other opinions before I mark it as “Nope. Don’t think so.” It is disappointing though as I want a good vanilla cake. White cake tends to be so tasteless so I thought it would be good to have a good vanilla cake.

Tomorrow I really must start doing things with the crabapples. Found several recipes on the net & I think I have picked out the ones I want to try. Need to finish them up, because apples are getting ripe & I KNOW I want apples.

Pumpkin Cake Cooling

Barely had time to get it out of the pans before we rushed off to meet KaraLea, a partner in crime of mine. (We’re working together on a new business venture.) We met her & her Sara at Amigo’s. If you’re not familiar with them, it’s a Mexican restaurant. Having been driven to the edge by the aroma of the pumpkin cake, my Sarah & I were guilty of eating way too many chips & dip while waiting for our food. If you frequent Amigo & haven’t tried their Amigo salad, I heartily recommend it. Doesn’t matter if you get the chicken, steak or shrimp, it is sooooo good. If you can afford the bucks & the calories, go for the steak & shrimp.

We had a most enjoyable time. Also turned out to be a good thing that my Sarah came with me. KaraLea had not had time to look at the pictures. I emailed her of a potential building. Sarah just happened to have her camera with her & that was the camera that was used to take the pictures. Da dah! Don’t you just love it when your children turn out to be helpful on something?!

I covered the cake layers when we got home as I was too tired to think about icing the cake. Glad I didn’t. Overnight, my brain did some perculating & I remembered reading about a cinnamon icing that went with another cake I’m wanting to try. Cha-ching! Wouldn’t that be wonderful with pumpkin cake! Yes, we have a winner. So I made my ususal buttercream icing, but only used half as much vanilla as usual. Added @ ½ teaspoonful of cinnamon & @ ⅛teaspoonful of nutmeg to the icing mix. Taste test by Jim, Sarah & me confirmed this was a wonderful idea.

Pumpkin Cake with Cinnamon Icing

Did a fast crumb coat on the cake. Debated how I wanted to decorate the cake. Just didn’t feel like going to a lot of trouble. Ok, maybe Jim getting back from out of town had just a smidgen to do with that. Cut me some slack. We’re still very new newlyweds. So all the cake got was a simple dot around the top & the bottom. Worked for me. The cake tastes just as awesome as it smelled. The spiced icing complements it nicely. We have a winner! Time to enter it into the recipe file for Sugary Creations.

Jim & Catherine's Wedding Cake

Last week’s big cooking emphasis was a wedding cake. Not just any wedding cake, but MY wedding cake. By Monday I was 98% sure I wanted a heart shaped cake. I have the pans for doing a small tiered heart cake. What could be more romantic than a heart cake? Still hadn’t decided on the flavor for the cake, but at least I knew the shape.

Chocolate? No, even chocolate lover I am, I’m getting tired of chocolate cakes. Then I started debating about trying a new recipe. Hey it was my wedding! I figured I could experiment with the cake if I wanted. Have been reading on http://www.cakecentral.com about orange cakes. The most popular icing with the orange cake has been vanilla to give the cake a creamsicle effect. The more I read about it the better it sounded.

By Wednesday, I had decided for sure I wanted the orange cake. Go hunting around in http://www.cakecentral.com for the recipe. You know how it is. Having made the decision, I can’t locate the recipe I had seen on there. Tried searching but all I was coming up with was a doctored cake mix recipe. I’m not totally against cake mixes, but to me, they’re emergency cake stuff. Certainly NOT what I wanted for my wedding cake. I much prefer scratch cakes.

Spent a great deal of time Wednesday looking for the recipe & could not find it. Thursday morning I get up & know I’m running out of time to be able to do the cake I want unless I come up with the recipe immediately. I don’t have time to search. I’m supposed to go pick up my flowers that Sue Bee bought wholesale for me. I post a plea on http://www.cakecentral.com for a scratch recipe for an orange cake. When I get back home, I check the computer & have several suggestions for doctoring a yellow cake to make it an orange cake. I also have a kind soul that sends me an excellent orange cake recipe with a few notes on things she does when she makes the cake.

Why is it that when it’s most important for the cake to easily bake & come out of the pan, it doesn’t? I have a couple of ziplock baggies full of orange cake crumbs that will soon be cake balls or trifle because of that.  The cakes were finally on the racks cooling off. Orange cake. Oh but it smelled so good. You could smell it all through the house. Yum.. Was guilty of  nibbling on a broken layer of the cake & it tasted really good. Ahhh wedding cake. Hopefully it’ll be as sweet as our relationship. But if not, it’s ok. It’s cake. It can’t be all bad.

I finally get the 6 layers of cake baked. I made the vanilla frosting & put the crumb coat on it. With any luck, it’ll make everybody think of a creamsicle. While working on that, I also baked 2 6” round layers for a sales presentation I was pitching that evening. This cake was being used to sell an open house & hopefully recitals at a studio that gives music lessons of all kinds. Didn’t have much time to decorate it with everything going on, but I put a large music note & several small music notes on it. Finished it just shortly before I needed to leave the house.

I was pushed for time on the 6” round cake, but it didn’t present many difficulties getting the icing smooth. This pleased me. I felt like I’m finally getting some speed on smoothing the icing on a cake. That delusion lasted until I tried to ice & smooth my wedding cake. I swear I could hear that cake laughing at me. The more I tried to smooth it out, the rougher it got. Determined to have it perfectly smooth, I go to Porter Paint Friday to buy a couple of high density foam rollers to do the cake. This was MY cake; I wanted it to be perfect.

Then reality struck. No matter what I did this sucker wouldn’t smooth out. The tip of the heart is the worst! Determined to beat this cake into submission I stayed up until 3:30AM in the morning working on it. Is that crazy or what?! When I got up in the morning, I slipped on another thin layer determined to try again. I had slept; it would go better. Right? Wrong! I finally conceded the cake had beaten me & piped some shell borders on it. Then I quickly get started setting up the food tables.

When Shannon got there, she brought me beautiful deep red buttercream roses to finish decorating the cake. We’re standing in the kitchen working companionably on two projects. I’m finishing the cake & she’s mixing punch. So picture this: she’s scooping sherbet into the punch bowl. I have one rose on the cake and one on the tool for moving roses. She’s telling me about a conversation a neighbor’s child just recently had with her children describing graphically for Shannons’s children the details of how an abortion is performed. This was a young child! I’m horrified & absolutely shocked at the particular detail Shannon is telling me about when in reaction I jerk to look at Shannon instead of what I’m doing. One red rose is now on the floor upside down.

I stared at that rose horrified. Shannon laughed her head off at me & reassured me there were plenty of roses so the loss of that one woudn’t matter. Finally the cake was finished. It wasn’t horrible, but I would have been happier if I had won instead of the cake. At least on the tip of the hearts.