Banana Cake!

I had two bananas that were minutes from going bad. And I needed to make a pound cake for one of my art pieces. I had never heard of banana pound cake, but you can find anything on the internet. I got this delightful recipe from Taste of Home. It turned out beautifully!

Baby Cakes

I bought a couple of these.

They're little.

And they make the cutest little cakes!

I liked the look and taste of these- especially with a little melted chocolate in the center.

Magical Mixer

Back from my holiday break. For Christmas, my wonderful family all chipped in to get me a fantastic present. I've been wanting one for a while now. And I've already used it quite a bit.

Kitchen Aid Professional Mixer! Complete with paddle, whisk, and dough hook attachments. It works beautifully. I made these fun little guys from scratch the other day, just for the sheer joy of it.

And then decorated them with delicious jellybeans.

Cake Plate-ery

This semester has been a whirlwind of baking frenzies, trips to Lowe's, and family chats.  Most of the projects I've been working on haven't been assigned, but I feel like I'm on the right track- in art and in life. 

The thing I'm most proud of at the moment is my plexiglass cake plate. 

It was a learning experience to say the least.

It comes apart and can be shaped into other configurations. 

Perfect for cakes, pops, tea sandwiches and other snacks.  I plan on putting it to good use, especially in the coming weeks.

Turtle Mousse

The other day,  I ran across some chocolate turtle flavored Jello instant pudding. It was on sale after Thanksgiving. It sounded good in its own right, but I decided to turn it into mousse. I made the pudding as instructed on the package, but then added in some heavy whipping cream. I just mixed those until the cream fluffed up. It was really delightful! A strong chocolate flavor with a finishing note of caramel.

No pic to post, unfortunately. It was so good that we just ate it straight out of the mixing bowl. Besides, I don't own any fancy ice cream glasses yet. Those would make serving more impressive.

I'm still trying to decide whether a turtle-moose would be a turtle with moose antlers or a moose with a turtle shell. Not sure which I'd prefer to see.

Move Over Turkey!

Thanksgiving is all about rich, decadent food and large birds with feathered fan tails, right? If that's the case, I think I really hit the nail on the head with my Peacock Pies.  It's the same cheesecake recipe from an earlier post (found here), but instead of doing it in a spring form pan, I went for the cheapy store-bought crusts. Obviously, homemade graham cracker crust is better, but if you're in a time crunch they work beautifully!  And, a half recipe made enough to fill two of these babies.

I liked experimenting with the colors. I was able to get some pretty impressive blues and greens with McCormick neon food coloring. I've used that for my last several food-dying projects with much success.  I had a great time designing them.  Proud of both, but I think the second one is my favorite because it's the essence of a peacock feather without being too literal. 

Still Poppin'

I'm turning out a batch (or 5) of cake pops almost every week. There are lots of bakes sales going on right now, plus the holidays are coming up. My goal is to get really good by Christmas so that I can give them as gifts or take them to parties.

Of course in addition to looking cute, they need good flavor. That was the project today. My grandmother, great aunt Lulie and I decided to try flavoring with extracts and oil. We ended up with gingerbread, almond, lemon, strawberry, raspberry, and peppermint. With the cake pop maker it was easy to divide out the cake batter and flavor a few cake pops at a time just to see what they would taste like. If it needed more flavor it was easy to adjust.

In order to tell them apart, we coated and topped them with things that would enhance or hint at the flavor.

Gingerbread:

Lemon:

 

Strawberry:

Raspberry:

Peppermint:

Aren't they pretty? And the "pops" don't have to be on sticks. We did them bon bon style and I think that works out pretty well.