"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!