whoopie! - it's back to school

my summer came and went and now i'm back in school...though i was not SUPER excited about going back to work, now that i'm back into the swing of things, i realize i have a pretty awesome job!  each day is a new day and at least one student is sure to make your day :).

so in the spirit of back to school, i baked some whoopie pies for my coworkers...cheers to a "SWEET" year!

i followed bakerella's recipe:
http://www.bakerella.com/whoopie-pies/

mix wet ingredients

mix dry ingredients

mix wet + dry ingredients

scoop onto parchment paper

bake (i think i should have flattened them before i baked them...they were thick)

frost - vanilla

frost - cherry

frost - chocolate

assemble

stack

wrap - thank you joohee for the cute tags! :)

i decided to try making cupcakes out of the batter too.

mint chocolate

in the end, i decided need more practice.  my whoopies were more like whoopie balls than whoopie pies and i need to work on the moistness of the cake.  it was a fun learning experience though!

mixed plate

so summer is about to come to an end for this school teacher, but today is my department directed leave aka furlough day so here i am summing up my summer.

the past month has been filled with family, food, and fun.  my sister got married so we had lots of gatherings which meant lots of food and baking for me.  it all started with her shower.  we planned an "around the world" themed shower since she loves to travel.  we had stations of food from japan (because we're japanese), and mexico (because her husband's mexican), and italy (just because).  the food was delish!  to top it off, i made classic red velvet cupcakes decorated with the fondant flowers i got in washington (the box of fondant i bought and planned to practice with this summer is still sitting in the pantry...i guess that summer projects is now pushed into a fall project.)

japan sushi station

mexico taco bar

italy pasta bar

around the world on a plate

the next gathering was the rehearsal dinner.  my sister asked to help with desserts so of course i decided on cupcakes.  since there was a lot of family and friends coming from the mainland i decided to do tropical cupcakes: guava and lilikoi chiffon. :)

lilikoi + guava combo

lilikoi

the next gathering was the wedding.  i did not bake for the wedding...i took the day off and enjoyed.  nothing like seeing your sister get married and then making yourself and the wedding guests laugh and cry with the maid of honor speech :).  it was a lovely evening.

after the wedding festivities i had a little down time so i got together with my cousin to think up some new ideas.  i wanted to try a chocolate buttercream since most of my cupcakes have a vanilla-base frosting so we decided on doing a rocky road cupcake.  it was quite the rocky road that lead to a pleasant ending.  we used a chocolate batter and tried to put marshmallows in the batter.  since we didn't have mini's at the time, we used regular sized marshmallows and cut them in half.  for half of the cupcakes we put the marshmallow on the bottom and for the other half, we put it on top of the batter.  well, marshmallows melt in the oven.  they pretty much disappeared and made things sticky.  but they cupcakes were still savable, so we continued on.  the chocolate buttercream turned out well.  we used a recipe that was pretty much vanilla buttercream with melted chocolate added in.  finally we topped off the cupcake with the rockiness of almonds, chocolate chips, and marshmallows (we went out and bought minis).

after all this baking, i got inspired to do some actual cooking.  so when my sister's in-laws left, they dropped off the left over food they had from the house they were staying at.  included in this bunch of food was a bag of extra-long-grain rice.  so, i decided to get in touch with my mexican side and try out a batch of mexican rice.  it turned out quite well, especially from someone who's never made rice on the stove before!  if you want to get in touch with your mexican side, here's how:

in a pot, saute 1 clove of garlic and 2 tbs of onions (i also added in carrots).

add 2 cups of rice and saute until it starts to brown.

add in 1/2 c of tomato sauce and 3 cups of chicken broth.  bring to a boil, cover, and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

 then, ta-da!

oh, and i squeezed in one last bit of baking.  my mom had a class reunion potluck so i baked some butterscotch w/ vanilla buttercream and sea salt cupcakes.  i'm really liking this recipe :)

now it's on to back-to-school fun!  hopefully this school year brings good things :)

pop-a-lot + cupcake favors

this was a busy baking week.  on thursday it was my turn to bring refreshments for our writing class and it was joe's last day at the bank...so i baked. on friday we had a pot luck for our last day of class...so i baked.  i also offered to do favors for my coworkers retirement party on saturday...so i baked.

so here goes...here's what i did :)

for refreshments, i brought cake pops:  yellow cake with white chocolate, yellow cake with semisweet chocolate, and hello kitties.

for joe's coworkers i tried heart cake pops.

for my pot luck dish i brought maple cupcakes w/ a maple frosting, sprinkled with bacon.

and finally, for the party favors, i did red velvet cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream topped with "tiffany blue" flowers.  i have to thank my husband joe for this one because i consulted with him on the color combination for the ribbon/flowers.

for this upcoming week i'm planning on trying out some new cupcake flavors and baking for my sister's bridal shower! :)

pOp! ah-ha!

hello kitties! :)  i love her!

i'm SO loving summer.  this year i decided that instead of teaching summer school, i'd become a student again.  thus, i'm taking a summer writing course.  it's a three week course put on by the hawaii writing project.  it's at UH so i actually kinda feel like i'm in college again.  i'm learning to read as a writer and write as a reader.  it's nice because not only am i learning to teach writing, but i'm learning to become a better writer myself.  i also get five professional development credits.  another plus is that i'm out by 3:00, which is not super early, but definitely earlier than i leave school during the school year.

more kitties...gotta work on her ears, some of them look like
little devil ears and some look like cow horns...yikes!

this leaves me with more time to work on my baking.  this week i decided to focus on cake pops.  i've been improving.  in teacher terms, i'd say i've moved from a WB (well below, like a D or an F) to a DP (developing proficiency, like a C...maybe even a B-).  i'd like to thank my tutor YouTube :)  a wonderful resource!

my version of the birthday cake ball :)

here are some of my ah-ha moments:
- scoopers help make the cake-balls consistent in size
- dipping the sticks in chocolate helps the stick stay in
- freezing the balls before dipping help secure the stick even more
- sometimes when you take a frozen cake ball and dip it in the chocolate, it cracks

still working on:
- neatness
- smoothness
- time management

hoping for more ah-ha moments! :)  i'll share them as i discover them :) :)

wrapped to share!

cupcakes galore

chocolate sundae

this past weekend was my cousin's wedding and his fiance (now wife) asked if i'd bake for their wedding.  i was SO excited and felt SO honored.  we decided on 250 mini cupcakes and 50 regular cupcakes.  somewhere in the process, i got my numbers mixed up and got the idea that i was making 300 minis and 50 regulars, so my goal was to shoot for 350.

mixing red velvet

mini scoops

four hundred twenty-one

buttercream

loaded up

since this was my first huge baking project, i asked my cousin (not the one getting married, another one) to assist me.  we decided we'd bake on friday and frost on saturday.  our flavors of choice were red velvet w/ a vanilla buttercream and a chocolate sundae with a vanilla buttercream drizzled with a chocolate ganache.  so remember how we were shooting for 350 cupcakes?  well, i estimated that each batch would make 50 minis...turns out that each batch made 90 something minis!  this was a pleasant surprise.  we started baking at 8:30 am finished at 12:30 pm...not-so-bad.  4 hours and we ended up with 421 cupcakes (yes, i know the numbers don't match, yet again...but it's better to have extras!)

homemade royal icing flowers

red velvet

homemade chocolate ganache drizzle

minis

decorations.  my inspiration was cupcake wars.  i was shooting for elegance with a bam!  i wanted the display as a whole to be eye-catching, yet i wanted each cupcake to look nice standing on it's own.  since the wedding color was red, i made royal icing flowers with pearls in the center.  in the process, i learned that if you want a true red, you need to use a lot of food coloring.  in my first batch, i didn't use enough and ended up getting a coral color...nice, but not for this wedding.  i needed to redo it and this time i added way more coloring and even a few drops of purple.  this worked out way better.  when decorating we also added a sprinkle of silver balls to the red velvet cupcakes and chocolate curls to the chocolate sundae cupcakes.  it added spark and class!

bam!

in the end, the display was nothing short of what i wanted it to be and the wedding wasn't either.  it was a beautiful night.  congrats jenn & ryden and thank you to my cousin christy who worked with me on this project, couldn't have done it without you!