Happy Halloween / Frankenstorm

My friend had her birthday/Halloween bash this weekend. Last year the pops I took to her party were a big hit so she hired me to make 30 for the partaay! Yay! My second sale!  She let me pick the flavors and designs.  I was lost. I had bought some orange and lime green chocolate melts and thought I would make some zombies or frankensteins.  Plus with Hurricane Sandy coming it would be appropriate to make some frankensteins aka frankenstorms! ha! With the orange I knew I'd make some pumpkins but the orange monsters were accidents. The green zombies were sort of accidents too. I had intended on making them all Frankensteins but the chocolate wasn't cooperating so I just blobbed chocolate on them.  Then I wanted to make skulls, but they didn't work out either so I went with mummies. I was struggling with the chocolate....it would never get "liquidy" enough for me. All of the orange pops were made with pumpkin spice bread and pumpkin cream cheese and the green & white pops were made with chocolate cake and vanilla frosting. Happy Halloween everyone! Hope everyone affected by Sandy is okay too.

  

Auburn Football Helmets

Okay so I tried to make the helmets I had initially intended to make for Billy's bday. I used candy writers for the helmet details. I know it's not the right blue, but I figured it was okay because they were just for Billy anyway. I didn't really like how they turned out but they're okay I guess. Oh well! War Eagle! 

Happy Birthday Billy!

So it's my husband's birthday today and we're getting together with friends to celebrate at a local Irish pub to play some trivia.  I made some cake pops yesterday to take over instead of having to deal with a big cake or cupcakes. Much easier to transport over there. I went for the footballs again. Except this time I used the left over frozen guinness cake from the "Manual"pops and used Bailey's Icing again. I think the footballs turned out cuter than the first time I made them.  I had intended on making football helmets too but I ran out of time and couldn't decorate them. I'll try to make those this weekend. 

They passed the taste taste!!

Back to School!

"Back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool! I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight!" 

School started the week before Labor Day this year. So much like Billy Madison tried to get on Ms. Vaughn's good side, I decided I would start off on the right foot with the important people at school....i.e. Administrators, department chairs, guidance counselors, the bookkeeper, and our secretaries. Have to make sure the important people like you right? :) Just kidding.....but seriously.

So here is my take on the traditional apple for the teacher!  

And as the old saying goes, "An apple for the teacher will always do the trick when you don’t know your lesson in arithmetic."  Here's to a great year back to school! 

He forgot to take the pops!!!

Billy forgot to take the pops with him on the Manual!!! (Okay....we forgot!) As we're driving to the Baltimore I realized we forgot them! I guess in the rush of last minute packing and getting Amos & Tinsely into the car, we forgot!! I thought if I made it back in time, I could go pack them up and overnight them or at least use 2 day FedEx and they would arrive on Saturday but alas! A little rain and lots of traffic from BWI back into VA made us miss the last pick up.  Guess how much it would cost to overnight 8 cake pops to Alabama? Like $75!! If I went with the 2 day service they would have gotten there a day late. I was so upset because I really wanted the boys to be able to enjoy them together.  I was really close to coughing up $75 but I thought I could really use some new shoes or something for $75! Ha!

Well, I decided to just freeze them and go to the post office on Monday to ship them to their houses. I guess the good thing is that now their wives get to enjoy them too!  

"So what kind would you like for your bday??"

Famous last words. 

So my 8 year old niece was having a family birthday party. So how is a family birthday party any different from any other party you might ask? Well basically it comes down to the fact that Emma is a genius!  Her birthday is July 18th and last year she realized that a lot of her friends couldn't come to her party because they were out of town on vacation. So this year she made sure to take advantage of her classmates still being around and had her bday party a month earlier in June while they were still in school.  So that was her "friend" birthday party.  However, you still need to celebrate on your actual birthday, so she decided that her real bday would be celebrated with family. Genius right? 

Well, for the family birthday party she asked me (2 days prior to her actual bday) to make cake pops. I'm thinking, "No biggie. I'll have enough time, plus it's only for 12 people tops." So I said, "So what kind of cake pops would you like for your bday Emma?" At this point you're probably thinking, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry....something like that right? Well here is how Emma interpreted my question, "Uhhmmmm. How about monkeys? I'm not sure if I want girl monkeys or boys monkeys though. Maybe both. Maybe the boy monkeys can be regular and the girl monkeys can like have a bow in their hair." Oh Crap! I had to do some research on how in the world I was going to make these and what they should look like.  I decided on a version of these two pictures. 


I used cheerios for their ears and then used a toothpick and lots of patience to paint in their faces. For the girl monkeys I drew little flower designs with a hot pink candy writer pen on parchment paper, waited for them to dry, and then stuck them on their cute little heads. What do you think? 

                    

What's a Manual?

Happy 13th Annual Manual Billy, Chris, Brian & Adam!

My husband Billy and some of his closest college friends from Auburn have been getting together for a "Man Trip" every summer. If I mention that Billy is out of town on the Manual the response is always, "What's a Manual?" Then I go into my explanation that it's an Annual Man Trip, hence Manual. Their group number has fluctuated throughout the years, but these 4 guys have been going strong for...you guessed it, 13 years!! Impressive right? I must say I am extremely envious of their tradition and keep telling my girlfriends we need to do it too!! Billy's friends all live in different states and they usually try to rotate the trip locations and keep it close to one of them so they don't always have to travel very far. This year Brian is renting a lake house in Alabama on Lake Martin, so that is where they are headed. 

The Manual usually consists of a fair amount of cerveza drinking, so in honor of the Manual I decided I would make beer shaped cake pops out of Chocolate Guinness cake with Bailey's Cream cheese frosting. I actually got several uses out of this recipe. I made a couple of cupcakes for Billy just because, and then in a 9" round pan I baked the rest of the batter. I used half the cake for the Manual cake pops and froze the other half of the cake for a future use.  

Here's the recipe I followed courtesy of Dave Lieberman on the Foodnetwork.com: 

• Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, plus more for dusting finished cupcakes
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups all-purposeflour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • Pinch fine salt
  • 1 bottle stout beer (recommended: Guinness)
  • 1 stick butter, melted
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 3 large eggs
  • 3/4 cup sour cream
  • 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened at room temperature
  • 3/4 to 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 (1-pound) box confectioners' sugar

  Directions

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

  In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cocoa, sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt.

  In another medium mixing bowl, combine the stout, melted butter, and vanilla. Beat in eggs, 1 at time. Mix in sour cream until thoroughly combined and smooth. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

  

  This isn't my picture but my cupcakes were almost identical, no joke.  

  Lightly grease 24 muffin tins. Divide the batter equally between muffin tins, filling each 3/4 full. Bake for about 12 minutes and then rotate the pans. Bake another 12 to 13 minutes until risen, nicely domed, and set in the middle but still soft and tender. Cool before turning out.

  To make the icing:

  In a medium bowl with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the heavy cream. On low speed, slowly mix in the confectioners' sugar until incorporated and smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. Icing can be made several hours ahead and kept covered and chilled. Top each cupcake with a heap of frosting and dust with cocoa.

The cupcakes were pretty delicious by the way. Oh yes, my cake pops! I created a little mug and pilsner glass. I had a difficult time writing 'Beer' on the mugs though. I used one of those food markers which supposedly says you can write on just about anything. I'm not convinced you can write on chocolate. I used peanut butter chocolate melts for the mug/glass and white chocolate for the overflowing foam.  On the mugs I used a Cheerrio for the handle.   

My first sale!!

Luckily, my colleague decided that instead of 200 graduation cap cake pops, her daughter wants different designs. Pheeeewwwwwwww!!!!! The picture to the right is what showed me. So the next step was trying to figure out pricing.  By no means am I a professional baker, so I didn't feel quite confident to charge what the local bakeries are charging per pop.  Anywhere from $2.50 for plain designs up to $3! Craziness! I guess that's what you get for living in the DC metro area. So I decided to charge $1.75/pop....it's my first sale, plus she's a colleague AND she's ordering 200 after all!!!  

Her daughter wanted the following flavors: Red velvet, Spice Cake, Vanilla, and Chocolate Peanut Butter. She also gave me a very pretty multicolored napkin they would be using at the party with just about every color known to man and said, "these are the colors we want you to use." In order to help her distinguish what flavor each cake pop was, I picked a variety of chocolate colors I thought would best match up with the cake flavors and kept in mind the above picture. I decided I would let my creativity take over and just make random designs but keep all the red velvets some version of red and white, spice cake some version of orange and white, vanilla cake would be lime green and hot pink, and chocolate would be blue. 

Here is how they turned out!!

Red Velvet Pops

Vanilla Pops

Spice Cake Pops

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops 

I believe the blue designs turned out to be my favorite followed by the red. 

Perhaps you are wondering how this novice teacher/baker managed to deliver 200 cake pops to school....My amazing husband and handy man built me 4 wooden carrying boxes and drilled over 200 holes so my pops could stand upright! You can make out the boxes in some of the pictures.   

My colleague said everyone loved them! She displayed them in a variety of jars filled with jelly beans. She said she was hoping to have some extra pops left over, but people kept trying all of them and then took some home as a favor.  She said I was underpricing myself and gave me a little tip too! :)  Yay!!  

Congrats to the Class of 2012!

So today one of my colleagues asked me to make cake pops for her daughter's graduation party. Two of my tennis girls recommended my pops to her! I guess they really liked their tennis ball pops! 

They are still trying to figure out what they want exactly. They are thinking they want graduation caps. They showed me pictures of the ones from Bakerella. They are very cute, but they're not actually made of cake but rather Reese’s peanut butter cups. 

So I started doing some searching for actual cake pops with graduation caps and here's what I found: 

 

Oh yes...I forgot to mention she wants 200 of these bad boys!!! Help!

Tennis Senior Night

So now I'm in the middle of coaching tennis! Our girls are awesome and really go all out for senior night. This year I unfortunately have 4 really great girls graduating. The juniors decided on the theme "Our Seniors Rock!"  We tie dyed purple and black shirts last week and I ironed on some cute electric guitars for the seniors' shirts. One of our girls is allergic to gluten so I bought some betty crocker gluten free chocolate cake mix to make tennis ball cake pops! I used the vibrant green chocolate melts and a white candy writer for the lines.  It has been a hectic week getting ready for this, but my girls are so great it doesn't matter to me. Happy SBGT Senior Night!