Cake Pops!!

 Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Candy Coating

Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Candy Coating

Omg! I can't stop making these lil guys! Yum!

Cats and Cuppies!

My little cat, Hermes, would like you to know that these cupcakes have been confiscated by him. Either that or he just hates that I caught him checking out the cupcakes when he wasn't supposed to be up there. ;-)

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

Better Homes and Gardens special issue dedicated just to cupcakes! 

I must admit that while the cupcake was rather forgettable (I just couldn't taste the root beer in the cupcake even though I added plenty of root beer and root bear extract)...the Vanilla Ice Cream Frosting (yes! it's actually made with ice cream!) was unbelievably delicious! I'm pretty sure I could have eaten it all straight from the bowl! :-)

Easter Dessert Table!

Cupcakes & Cake Pops

Cake Pops

Of course it's obvious I'd be making cupcakes for Easter, but I really wanted to add another element to my Easter desserts.

I love cake pops! I love how they look and how they taste. And I just had to try them out. Nuff' said. :-)

Cake Pops

from Bakerella

1 box cake mix (cook as directed on box for 13 X 9 cake)

1 can frosting (16 oz.)
Wax paper
Candy MeltsLollipop Sticks

1. After cake is cooked and cooled completely, crumble into large bowl.
2. Mix thoroughly with 1 can frosting.
3. Roll mixture into quarter size balls and place on wax paper covered cookie sheet.
4. Melt chocolate in the microwave per directions on package.
5. Dip the tip of your lollipop stick in a little of the melted candy coating and insert into the cake balls. (Insert a little less than halfway.)
6. Place them in the freezer for a little while to firm up.
7. Once firm, carefully insert the cake ball into the candy coating by holding the lollipop stick and rotating until covered. Once covered remove and softly tap and rotate until the excess chocolate falls off. Don’t tap too hard or the cake ball will fall off, too.
8. Place in a styrofoam block to dry.

The recipe looked easy enough so I was pretty excited to start making these little

guys.

The only problem was...they aren't that easy.

Oh, the first couple steps are. Baking the cake, crumbling and adding the frosting was all easy. I actually think that the cake needed 1 1/2 cans of frosting, but all I had was one. Also, make sure your cake is completely cooled. I didn't wait and my little balls had a harder sticking together.

I made the mistake of misreading the directions and put the rolled balls into the fridge first rather than waiting till after I placed the sticks in them. I see now that the lollipop stick would have stuck better if I had let it firm up in the freezer and then dunked the whole thing in the melted chocolate. Stupid mistake.

Since the balls kept trying to pop off the stick (causing me much anger and frustration) I spooned the chocolate on the balls rather than dunking. I didn't get a nice clean look, but at least I got it on there successfully!

This is where it becomes time consuming by the way. I would not recommend making cake pops if you don't have at least 2 - 2 1/2 hours to spend. My first time making cake pops took almost three hours with all the problems I had.

Once you add the chocolate, immediately add any sprinkles etc. If you don't the chocolate will harden quickly and you won't be able to decorate.

I would also recommend piercing your Styrofoam block with the lollipop sticks before you start anything. This will allow you to just place the cake pop onto the block without any trouble.

The first Cake Pop of Fail batch. Haha. They weren't that bad. Just not perfect like I had wanted.

Second batch was easier, but I didn't try to decorate these. My patience was wearing thin by this time. :-)

Keep your cake pops in the fridge until your going to "serve" them. They taste fine room temp, but having that chilled feeling is awesome and the chocolate "crunches" more when you bite into it!

They don't look perfect, but they were a big hit with the family!

Don't forget: Bite...don't lick! :-)

I'm definitely going to keep making cake pops! I am determined to make these little guys to perfection (or as close to perfection as you can get)! Cake Pops are definitely worth it! :-)

Meatloaf & Cornbread

I've kept this strictly a baking blog, but I thought that since I also cook it might be nice to vary it up some! I have made it a point to cook things that taste good and are pretty easy to make. I rarely use cookbooks because they usually contain ingredients that I don't readily have on hand. So years ago, I started my own "cookbook" that contains tried & true recipes I've found at my favorite cooking site AllRecipes.com and other random places.

Let me first start by saying that I don't like meatloaf. It's dry and rough. And generally doesn't taste like anything. And while many people make meatloaf I haven't run across anyone who just absolutely loves it. Whenever you say the word meatloaf you can almost hear this groan of despair coming from the listener. But in my usual fashion, I just had to find a recipe that would be easy to make and delicious on top of that.

What makes this meatloaf extradinary is the sauce. It's a simple blend of ketchup, brown sugar, and mustard. It may look like a lot of sauce, but it's important for the meat to soak up all those flavors and still have sauce on top for an extra "pow!". I've always made this meatloaf with ground beef, but just last night I tried it with ground turkey meat and it came out just as delicious! So feel free to experiment with it! I can safely say that if you make this meatloaf recipe you will instantly be a favorite with the crowd. Haha! :-)

Meatloaf Extraordinaire:

meatloaf:

1 Egg, beaten

2/3 cup Milk

3 slices Bread, crumbled

1 cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese

A dash of Onion Powder

1 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Pepper

1 lb Ground Beef

sauce:

1/2 cup Ketchup

1/2 cup Brown Sugar

1/4 cup Mustard

• In a large bowl, combine the first 8 ingredients. Crumble beef over mixture and mix well.
• Shape into a loaf. Place in a greased 9-in x 5-in x 3-in, loaf pan.
• In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, ketchup and mustard; pour over loaf.
• Bake at 350° for 60 minutes or until no pink remains.

Corn Bread. I know a lot of people who like cornbread. I'm not one of them. I think it's completely useless if you have to dunk a piece of bread in soup just to make it soft and edible! Since I'm Puerto Rican, I didn't have to worry about running into the cornbread issue very much. Thank God! My mom rarely ever made cornbread and when she did it was a little bitty pan that was eaten mostly by my dad. I've tried other people's cornbread and my opinion remains the same. Eck.

It was quite accidental that I ran into this recipe. Nate needed to make cornbread for a lunch chili thing at work. I inwardly groaned. How was I supposed to make cornbread when I didn't even like it?! I went to AllRecipes and typed in cornbread. Recipe after recipe looked the same. And then I found one that was described as "moist" and "sweet". I had to give it a try! I mean, after all, how could you not try a cornbread recipe that has you use pancake mix instead of flour?!

Waikki Cornbread:

3 cups Buttermilk Baking mix

1 cup White Sugar

2 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 cup Yellow Cornmeal

3 Eggs

1 1/4 cups Milk

2 sticks Butter, melted

• Mix the first 4 ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
• Beat eggs, milk, and butter until creamy in another bowl.
• Stir in "flour" mixture until well combined.
• Pour mixture into a greased 9 x 13 pan.
• Bake in preheated oven at 350°for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.

I promised easy recipes didn't I? Now go try them and see how good they taste! :-)

Vegan Cupcake

Yeah. I made vegan cupcakes. I had a few people asking me if I made "healthy" cupcakes. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a "healthy cupcake". If you want a something healthy then go eat a muffin. Cupcakes are delicious and sinful. 'Nuff said.

Haha. Can you tell I feel strongly about this.

I was thinking about a cupcake I could make that would be "healthy", but would still remind me of a regular cupcake. I looked at Gluten-free recipes and decided against that. There was no way that I was going to buy all these special ingredients for one batch. Then I started thinking about Cupcake Wars. I've seen several contestants that were Vegan bakers and the judges were amazed at how good the cupcakes tasted. So Vegan was the route to take for me.

The recipe I found was easy and simple. It was in this amazing cupcake book (booklet? magazine?) I found a couple weeks at HEB.

On a side note, I also got these awesome stakes so I could use them as cupcake toppers.

It took me less than ten minutes to pop them in the oven. I looked at several Vegan Frostings, but I was grossed out. Sorry. So I used my tried & true Vanilla Buttercream Frosting instead. I even had a chance to use my new Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla!

I was pleasantly surprised about the cupcake. It was moist. And it did taste like chocolate. I still like my Chocolate Cupcake recipe, but in case someone really, really wants me to make a Vegan Cupcake I have a recipe I can use. Begrudgingly of course. ;-)