halloween 2011!!!

I love Halloween! This year I made my first scarecrow! A few kids actually got scared (and so did I, twice in one day.. actually twice within 10 minutes!) which left me thoroughly satisfied. Planning for this holiday began early for me when I was at Party City and saw Wilton Icing Knives. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them, but I knew it was a good idea just to have them. Then my friend Jon posted this link to my facebook for Frankenstein marshmallow pops. I tried these out before Halloween:
Love those Wilton candy eyes!! I added silver sprinkles as the bolts. I also bought two Halloween magazines--Martha Stewart and Taste of Home. They always have great ideas. Yes, it would be a good Halloween.

Mike and I bought a build-your-own haunted gingerbread house kit from the grocery store.
It came with the walls of the house, black & orange icing, sprinkles, jelly beans, sugar ghosts, jack-o-lantern gumballs and candy corn.

Of course I got into the spirit of things by wearing my bunny ears (we always have some kind of costume lying around).


You can also see our cute Halloween dishtowel on the oven handle.
Well here's the house!
Then we decorated it:
Ooooooh! Spooky! All the icing was dripping off and the decorations (especially the jellybeans) were not sticking. Oh well! We kept it in the fridge that night. Here's what Mike put on the roof:

I thought it was a nice touch! Spooky spider! I took a picture of the 2 of us with our house:


That was that for the house. We almost forgot to bring it out for the party! The day of the party (or the day before, since the big crazy snowstorm pretty much snowed everyone in, giving me more prep time) I made the pretzel rod witch fingers. I got the mold at AC Moore and the candy melts at Michaels (and another bag at Reny's when we were visiting Portland, ME).

This was my first time using two different colored chocolate melts (actually they were both vanilla-flavored, I think) in one mold. They all say to use a brush, but I didn't want to buy a new paintbrush or use an older one even though I washed them... So I just used a spoon as usual but I was very careful, and wiped off a lot of the extraneous parts with a paper towel.

Oooh! They came out so good! :) I put them all together in a jar with some pumpkin pie-flavored popcorn (also from our Maine trip):
Then I made the cupcakes (which is what this blog is really about)!!
Yum! These were pumpkin spice cupcakes from the Sprinkles mix! What I love about Sprinkles is their mixes come in big tubes and have the recipe for from-scratch icing, so you can feel proud & say you made at least some of it from scratch. It also bakes 12 cupcakes, so if you're only expecting a small crowd, you don't have to eat the other 12 yourself ;)

Mike found the wrappers for me--I'd seen them at Stop & Shop and had been looking for them all month, until he found them at Shaw's (again, in Maine). My friend Katherine and I had just been talking about how some wrappers are so cute, but once you bake them, the oil seeps through and you can't see the cute decorations anymore (I think I mentioned this in the post I did about the malted cupcakes). Well these were tin AND in Halloween colors!

I had also bought this cardboard cupcake tower at Michaels. Mike helped me set it up and I put my cupcakes on it, along with the candy knives!

Spooooky! I also put some red icing dripping down the stabbed cupcakes, and on some extra knives I had.
Michaels also had these great wooden boxes in the shape of coffins! I bought two and painted them. I put a Hershey's mix inside and made a little gravestone:
Oh, I crack myself up!
Then I made the marshmallow Frankensteins! The hair kept making me laugh because they ended up looking like nice gentlemen instead of scary monsters.
I ran out of candy eyes :( so I used chocolate chips on some of them. I thought they looked like girls so I gave them red lips! The cool silhouette border is actually a bunch of cupcake wrappers connected to each other. They were part of Chef Duff's cake and cupcake line, but they were too big for my cupcakes. Here's a Frankenstein I gave the Flock of Seagulls haircut to:
We also had spooky cocktails!
I got the idea from Dylan's Candy Bar (which I will post about at a later date). Dylan Lauren has a book out and had these wax lips on the rim of a drink as a suggestion for a Halloween party! Duly noted, Dylan! This was garnishing a cocktail I came up with: pumpkin liqueur, light cream and marshmallow vodka. Yum! It was a party favorite :) I called it Pumpkin Cream. Or, actually, Pumpkin Scream (for Halloween).

Funny enough, the only thing I ended up getting out of the Martha Stewart magazine was the idea for hanging paper bats above the cocktail area.
There was a template and I cut them out of construction paper. How cute!!

And, of course, our costumes (including Mike's cats):

Chunks as a bull, I guess, with a cowboy riding on him! Or just a giant cat with a cowboy riding him... or a regular-sized cat with a tiny man...


My brothers, David (as a bunny) and Hiro (as a Japanese street vendor) with me (Peg Bundy):
And my friends Kim (as Edward Scissorhands) and Katherine (as Little Red Riding Hood)!
There were other friends who I didn't get pictures of, but it was a very fun night indeed. Hope you had a spooky and fun Halloween!!

how 'bout them apples? (two cooking adventures in one post!!)

I went apple picking for the first time in my life last month. Apparently apple picking season is over come October, but Mike & I didn't realize this and got a stick and a bag (an expensive bag) and went about rattling the trees on Dr. Davies Farm.
We came right when a school was leaving. There were a lot of little apples in piles at the base of the trees.
The stick with the picker part was so long!  But I was able to use it!
Heck, we got a lot!
We ended up getting 52 apples. Whoa. Here I am with twins:
It was a fun day :)

Mike & I aren't huge apple enthusiasts, but you'd think we were, what with 52 apples and all. Neither one of us even likes apple pie, so we looked online for some alternative recipes.

APPLE CRISP

First, of course, you make a face on your apple with the peeler. And you put on your apple apron. Haha. Then you peel the rest of the skin off.
Naked apples!!
Mike begins a long night of chopping:

Pecans, then the apples.

And the pecans go in with the brown sugar.
Oh, gee! I needed a lemon.
How'd that get in there? Must have found a lemon tree among the apples ;)
Here I am mixing everything together with my clean hands.
We set out to make one pie. We had too much and ended up making two!


Butter this time. For the crisp!

Butter and flour, etc.... I thought it was a good idea to mix with my hands to really get the butter through.  Mike had to scrape chunks off my fingers, but it was fun. Then we sprinkle it on top of the pies!
Then they go in the oven!
And while you wait, I suggest picking up some caramel dip (Mike's idea):
We had some Reeses Pieces left over from another project and it was a great combination.

Yum!
Oh! Crisps are done!

We served ours with butter pecan ice cream and cool whip :)

Then of course we made caramel apples a few days later!

CARAMEL APPLES

This is what we used:
We made a little race out of unwrapping the individual caramels :)

Then I washed the apples.
We put wooden skewers into the 4 apples.

They look pretty fancy already:
While I microwave the caramel & a little bit of water (it looks gross)...
Mike crushes the Reeses Pieces (Chunks wants to help again)


We didn't have to de-wax the apples or anything because they're fresh from trees! Here I am happily covering an apple in caramel. It's harder than it looks!
The caramel was thick & I found it hard to twist the stick & distribute it evenly. Oh well! It looks pretty anyway!

Ta-Da!!
We had to cut the skewers so they'd fit in my cupcake courier to bring home. Later we cut them up and ate them in sections... and it was delicious!

maltshop memories

It has been OVER A YEAR since I've posted anything and boy, I feel really badly about this. What can I say? I finally finished my master's degree in early childhood education and early childhood special education. YAY!!! I graduated this past May and still had two state exams to take (out of 4 for NYS teacher certification) and finally took my last one in July, and found out in August that I passed it. PHEW! Now I'm just waiting for the OK from NYS to tell me that I'm certified (believe me, I have applied to places). So, since I have no teaching job for the fall, I am essentially back to where I was before I was in school. Working at a bookstore and not doing much else. So now I have time for blogging, baking (and eating) cupcakes, playing guitar & learning banjo, playing shows (at bars AND toy stores), etc etc etc. So hello everyone once again, and here is my latest cupcake adventure:

Chocolate Malted Cupcakes!!

I was flipping through Martha Stewart's cupcake book looking for a new recipe to try. My boyfriend Mike loves anything malted (whoppers, milkshakes, beer) so I thought I'd give the chocolate malted cupcakes a whirl and see how he liked them. He works at a supermarket so I met him as he got off his shift & he got me to the ingredients right quick! Without Mike I would've been wandering around the store squinting at aisle signs like an idiot for half an hour.

Here I am looking like Julia Child. I was still in my work clothes--fortunately I got this cute red apple apron from Target a few months ago. Martha says to mix the dry stuff first, so here I am whisking flour, cocoa, sugar (granulated and light brown), baking soda and salt. I had Mike measure out the malted milk powder and liquid milk since he likes malt so much.



And whisking, too! We're already making such a mess. Then I combined the dry bowl with the milk bowl and started adding the 3 eggs.


Then came a surprising ingredient, but one I'm sure really made these cupcakes.


Sour cream!


I couldn't believe how moist and rich these cupcakes were. Yum yum yum! Let's continue...

Martha also suggests using an ice cream scoop to measure out just enough batter for each cupcake. Great tip! Thanks, Martha! Except of course it was for a previous recipe I'd done (the classic yellow on her website, which I'll discuss later) that was only for 12 cupcakes... This recipe makes "about 28." So we made 24 plus three large cupcakes (in my large 6-cupcake tin).

So that's about a scoop and a half each. Into the oven you go! Then it was time for the frosting. This is one of my favorite things about cupcakes. For what is a cupcake without its frosting? A sad little cakey muffin. (Still very tasty, though. Like these. For once I wasn't eating a cupcake solely as an excuse to eat frosting).

Martha Stewart's frostings usually call for a ton of soft unsalted butter and confectioner's sugar. I guess that's what most frostings call for, period. I don't have a lot of frosting-making experience outside of my Martha book. I tried vegan frosting once but I wasn't very happy with the outcome. Remind me to try that again.

Mike sifted 4 cups of confectioner's sugar, one cup at a time. He actually enjoyed this. I mean, I don't hate it, but it was very nice to have helping hands :) I just realized that I always bake alone, and having some help not only makes everything go quicker, it's also so much more fun!


Butter, sugar, vanilla. Yum, yum, yum! Meanwhile, we took the cupcakes out of the oven and I had Mike put them on the wire racks to cool.

Frosting's ready, cupcakes are ready...

We did some dishes and cleaned up while the cupcakes cooled enough to get frosted.

Here I am with my trusty offset spatula. Where would I be without it? Mike got me a pastry bag a few months ago that I tried using once. I used it to make little mitten and house decorations on cupcakes for my friends' housewarming party (get it? houses and mittens?), which I will post later, but I haven't yet used it for the whole top of a cupcake, which I really want to do. Anyway...

Here they all are, 24 regular-sized cupcakes, all frosted with that lovely delicious Fluffy Vanilla Frosting (also from Martha's book). Martha puts sprinkles on them for decorations. While Mike & I were at the supermarket, I had an idea.

I thought it'd be cute to put chocolate shavings on top. We'd just watched our first full episode of Cupcake Wars (maybe he'd seen it before, I don't remember, but I certainly hadn't seen a full episode, which doesn't make much sense, considering how much I love cupcakes and how often people who know me tell me to watch it), and I was feeling pretty inspired. That (and my sudden freeing up of time) is what really made me want to get back to this blog.

So, I know, chocolate shavings aren't Cupcake Wars contender-worthy, but it was my little gourmet-ish touch. So Mike took me to the aisle where they have chocolate bars. He had been wanting to try the Cadbury chocolate bar, so we got that. (He doesn't eat candy or dessert really EVER, but he does now, because he's dating me). While exiting the aisle, I stopped, whacked his arm and said, "You know what would really be great?? Whoppers!!" He agreed (since that's pretty much his favorite candy) and we bought a box.




(This was the first plate. I realized after this that I should put the shavings on before the Whoppers.)


(Pre-Whoppers)

Then on the drive home I whacked his arm again and said, "You know what else would be great? Straws!! To make them look like little milkshakes!" So he helped me cut the straws to little sizes and bent them (of course we keep bendy straws at my house) and we stuck them into each cupcake with chocolate shavings and a malt ball on top. And I thought, Martha Stewart didn't think of that. ;)



By now we hadn't tasted them yet. My brother David had walked in asking if he & his husband Hiro could try one and I said, "No, we have to finish decorating them!" Well after Mike & I finished one plate, we tried them. Then we told David.

We made so many, I took them into work the next day. I really do think these were the best cupcakes I've ever made. So moist, so tasty, the frosting was great, the silver liners made them look fancy (thanks to Katherine for that suggestion--she's on a cupcake wrapper kick & noticed, as was my complaint too, that cute decorated cupcake wrappers always come out oily and blotted so you can't even see the cute decoration anymore! So she said your only sure bet is metallic wrappers. If anyone has tips for how not to grease up your paper wrappers and still have them come off without destroying the cupcake, please let me know!), plus they were so much fun to make. Just delightful!

Once again I used my Cupcake Courier from Bed, Bath & Beyond that my parents got me a few years ago. I can't live without it... and transport cupcakes. And what did we do with those 3 large cupcakes I mentioned?

Well, Mike bought some sprinkles when they were a new product at the supermarket and surprised me with them. They were Barn Pals and Zoo Accents. So cute!!


Barn Pals has chicks, cows, pigs and bunnies. Zoo Accents (I love that name) has gorillas, elephants, lions and dolphins.

We used the rest of the frosting to make 3 different colors and use the sprinkles. Mike wanted to use the cows (black & white) & decided that black would be an appetizing color. "No one ever uses black, so I thought it would look really cool," he says.  What I love most about his cupcake is the square of chocolate he put on the top.


I was laughing at him for doing black, though. It got all melty and I really couldn't stop laughing.

Especially compared to the other cupcakes we made:

My pink cupcake with pink & white piggies, and our (I frosted it and he chose the sprinkles) blue cupcake with blue & green dolphins.

He said he didn't use the offset spatula so that explains his.


But all together they don't look so bad!

You gotta love big cupcakes!!