-Phew-

Ok. This weekend has been uber hectic. I had to make my mother's birthday cake, cupcakes for my anniversary, pumpkin pies, and homework. On the plus side, all of it got done, and I had an amazing week, especially as far as my baking endeavors go. I have gotten several requests to make cakes, for birthdays and anniversaries. So I'm super excited. Getting my trademark and business licenses soon. That's more to be excited about. And I just found out that I will be able to go to the university that I want to go to. So everything is currently going great. Most of my requests are for November so that will be an extremely busy month. I don't think I'll be taking any requests over the Christmas holidays, my family gets me then. :P But with all the requests coming in, at least that gives me the opportunity to get used to how busy it will be when I have orders coming in. Only problem is, right now it's just me and my sister. We don't have any other help and we generally have little children under our feet and in the way. So this should be rather interesting, but it's good practice so it's ok.  My friend made me an order form. (: Its so pretty. But right now, it's just being used to keep track of what people wanted and then being thrown away. I'll use it as an actual order form once I get my business license. I'm so excited about what's to come. (: Anyways, I'll post my cupcakes and my mother's cake on separate blogs so that I have room for them without writing a novel on here. :P and that will have to be done tomorrow. It's my anniversary after all.

Happy Anniversary to me and my love. (:

-you know I'm sugarlaced-

Pumpkin Pancakes

Okay. So after my tasty treats yesterday, I wanted to bake again today. Except today, I had a lot of cleaning to do. I had to go through all the cabinets and the fridge and find everything past its expiration date and then organize the shelves. Well. Mission accomplished. (woot woot) So with some time left over in my morning before having to prepare for the family cookout tonight, I wanted to try a recipe I found for Mini Maple Pancake Muffins. So I used some Bisquik and some mini chocolate chips, but I couldn't find my mini cupcake pan. But I did find my Mini Pumpkin silicone pan. So, since I'm uber excited for the upcoming fall anyways... I used it. Too cute. (: My little pan-muffins aren't maple like Bakerella's. They're basically chocolate chip pancakes in the form of a pumpkin shaped muffin. 

They're so adorable. All you do is dip it into syrup and instant mini breakfast.

They taste good too. (:

-you know I'm sugarlaced-

 

Lovely Cake Pops

 Okay. So this was my first attempt at the Cake Pops (finally!) I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I'm not tremendously pleased with the way they turned out. But oh well. Practice is practice. I'll walk you through the steps.

We used a box of white cake mix and added some pink, white and black sprinkles to create our own Fun-fetti Cake in Hello Kitty colors.

We let it cool before breaking it up into crumbs and adding some Duncan Hines® Creamy Home-Style Cream Cheese Frosting.

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  Then we mixed the icing in with our hands and put it in the fridge to set. After about half an hour, we rolled out fifteen little ovals for Hello Kitty's head

Then we melted down the Vanilla Candyquik®, dipped the tip of the lollipop stick in the melted candy and stuck the stick into the bottom of the Hello Kitty head.

Then we stood them up in a Styrofoam block. >

Next, we added Nestle® Chocolate Chips for the ears, dipped the bottoms in the melted candy and placed them as evenly as possible onto the tiny cake heads.

 Then we waited for them to cool and set and for the candy to harden so the ears didn't fall off. And then we dipped them, one at a time, into the melted candy. Had to be quick as the candy hardens fast (You may have to re-heat it a few times. We did. But don't over-heat it. It will burn and will NOT go back to its silky smooth texture) Try to get a bowl deep enough that you have room to get the whole cake head in one dip. I did not have a bowl deep enough. So we ended up losing 3 kitties due to them deciding to fall apart in the bowl.

We waited until the candy hardened on the cake heads and then used a toothpick to spread around a little bit of melted candy (used as glue here) onto the back of our little yellow noses and pressed it to the middle of the face. It should set quickly, ours did.

We went ahead and put our whiskers and our eyes on. Bakerella suggests using a edible black pen, but I couldn't find one so I had to use a Gel Tube. It worked okay, could have been a lot better though. Then we got our sprinkle hearts, the bigger ones work best, but we could only find the small ones (I'm well aware that this sounds wrong), and our little red dots and put them on the cake head. Putting a small dollop of melted candy below the right ear and then adding the small little sugar pieces worked best for me.

This is our finished product. ^ They don't look as good as I'd like them to, but they're okay. And they taste delicious. It was good practice and I hope that Anna likes her late birthday present. I do not take credit for the idea for this or the recipe. I did alter it a bit from Bakerella but I didn't create it. And I want to thank her for coming up with such a cute idea. (: I made a x.x face on Hello Kitty because of the joking around me and my sister did about the last one to be stabbed with the lollipop stick. This one was my favorite.

You can view the whole baking album for this experiment here.

-you know I'm sugarlaced-

 

Big Sigh.

Ok. So I'm uber lazy. But in my defense, my sister is too. (Not much of an excuse, I know) We were supposed to make those Hello Kitty Cake Pops the other night and we totally vegged on the couch in front of DC Cupcakes (Sorry Anna!). And with shopping the next day for loads and more loads of clothes for the new, drama-filled, epic fail of a school year up ahead, along with all the folders that cut into your arms and book bags that give you scoliosis. (See? School is bad for you), we didn't have much time for baking and decorating. Especially since I needed to rush home and break my washing machine. -sigh- Good thing I have new clothes. Unfortunately, I didn't get the satisfaction out of smashing my washing machine with a Louisville slugger after a hard day. Nope. It broke from having too many clothes in it. Well, with the Senior Year starting tomorrow morning at an ungodly hour (Oh Joy) I doubt I'll be getting to those Cake Pops. I do have my friend's eighteenth birthday party this Sunday and I had been asked to make her cake, an honor that I gladly accepted. But, her baby sister said she was making it and I'm not going to step on any toes, so no baking for me this weekend.  But I do have mother's birthday coming up on the 18th and I'm hoping to surprise her with a cake. And I have my anniversary on the 22nd.. maybe I can have some fun with that too. So, though there will be no Cake Pops for me right now -tear- August seems to be a month full of baking. That should be good for practicing. I will be baking some brownies from scratch tomorrow after I get home, so... Fail or Win?

-you know I'm sugarlaced-

  

Just Starting Out...

Okay. I'm rather new to this 'blogging'. But I'm gonna give this a try. I'm starting out on my senior year in high school and I'm hoping to work my way to baking-bliss. And with the help of my family, mainly my oldest sister, and hopefully some followers on here, I'm going to keep practicing and honing my skills so that I can open my own bakery. I will be posting pictures of my failures and of my random success, as well as recipes and such that I have found helpful and ones that I have randomly discovered in randomly-epic baking experiments. Such as tonight, my sister and I are attempting Hello Kitty Cake Pops for a friend's birthday. An idea we got from Bakerella (love her), so big kudos to her. I'll post pictures on how they turn out later on. And I will upload my epic success on my nephew's birthday cake. (: (credit to my sister as well). So as I study my way through my last standing glory in high school, make my way through medical school and scrounge up the money for a store front, I'll be posting my progress on here.

-you know I'm sugarlaced-