Easter is coming

Baking Fun - Applesauce Cake

We made this cake last weekend to compliment our Easter feast!

Applesauce Cake

This cake was absolutely amazing. It was perfect for Easter because it was a nice change from all the chocolate we'd been stuffing down our throats over the weekend but it was still sweet and kinda special.

I used this recipe and I really don't think I'd change anything about it. The cake does turn out to be quite huge but in this case, I don't think the "less is more" rule applies. You could always make 2 cakes by dividing the batter in 4 different pans, making them thinner and serving more people.

The filling was fabulous too and I really liked not having to worry about icing the cake. Flop whipped cream, stack, flop whipped cream, stack, done.

The applesauce kept the cake moist and it was almost like a light-spice-cake taste. We had left overs for days and they kept really well in the fridge. The whipped cream keeps it cool so it's a good alternative if you get a craving for spice cake in July.

Overall, very happy with the turn out, easy enough and feeds a small country.

Peep-erific

Danielle blogged about this a couple days ago and I wanted to share the cute peep love!














We're all familiar with Peeps, the wee sugar-coated marshmallow chicks and bunnies that make an appearance on grocery shelves this time of year.

But other than letting them go stale and then eating them (we hear they're tastier that way), what else can you do with them?

The contest consists of creating pop-culture scenes and giving Peeps the leading role. Creative and delicious art for the win!

According to the Post, the diorama contest -- for which entrants create fantasy scenes out of Peeps and other materials -- is "a cultural barometer -- a three-dimensional essay on the state of the nation's collective consciousness, a sticky finger on the pulse of what's popular."

Click here to check out the diorama of the top contest entries!

Here's another entry that didn't make it to the diorama but has found a sticky place in my heart - fellow OBT member submitted her version of a peeped up world.

Easter Weekend Fun

Easter weekend is almost over. Sadly. :(

Maggie and Marc came over for the weekend and brought along their 130 pound Shnouze for the ride. Nova is smitten and has spent the greater part of the couple hours since they've gone pacing around the place, whining and sighing her blues away.

We had a great weekend and it was great to spend some quality time together. Maggie and I went for coffee, did some weddingy things and prepared insane amounts of food. I'll post about the baking in a bit. :)

I'm SO not looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow, oy!! Extra-long weekends should happen more.

Baking Fun - Easter Bunny Cuppy Cakes

I had to contain myself yesterday not to post these on Facebook in case Maggie saw them before she left Winnipeg... here's hoping she's already on the road. :)

Easter Bunny Cuppy Cakes

For the actual cupcakes, I used a pre-made plain vanilla cupcake mix and just tossed in a bit of extra vanilla flavor in them. I like to use a more subtle cake flavor when the entire focus is on the icing as to not over do it - this worked very well. Also, instead of using food coloring, I added chocolate to the icing to make the brown ones so they have a slightly different taste than the green ones.

I took the design and idea from this book. Hello Cupcake is just wonderful because it makes things easy, uses real words and doesn't tell you you have to buy this and that and the other thing in order to accomplish this.

For the Rabbit Butts, I used chocolate icing and covered that in Oreo crumbs. I spent hours and hours looking for circus peanuts in this blessed town to no avail - so I settled to cutting the ends off marshmallows to make the feet. I used a black jelly bean, as shown in the book, for the large foot-pad but I recommend using either a chocolate covered peanut or raisin. The taste of the licorice jelly bean does not go very well with the rest so people will just pick them off. I couldn't find any chocolate covered sunflower seeds so I used some extra chocolate icing for the toes. I stuck everything on with a bit more icing - be careful when you add the Oreo crumbs to leave a bit of space for the sticking of the parts. Icing does not stick well to crummy surfaces - the feet will just fall off. Overall, very satisfied with how they turned out.

For the Green Grass ones, I simply piped some little stars to create the grass and stuck some mini-eggs, small candy flowers and some colorful sprinkles to give it a bit of color and make it look all Eastery and nice.

I used in total about 2 and a half cups of butter cream icing for the whole thing. Colored a bit more than half - so about 1 cup and a half - in green using paste coloring. That made about 30 cupcakes. I also put different amounts of batter in some of the cups as to give it a bit of variety and depth and it worked out wonderfully.

Can't wait to eat them!! :) Happy Easter baking!

Happy Easter Weekend!

Happy Easter Weekend to those who celebrate it and Happy Long Weekend to those who don't. :)

We're having Maggie and Marc over for the weekend *squee* and it's 6:30am on Friday morning and I'm up. I blame the dog... and Js partly. There was a mess dinner last night, he came in late and I ended up sleeping on the couch. (Everything's good - it's purely because he snores like a jet engine when he drinks so I slept downstairs so that I could do just that... sleep.)

It's going to be a fun weekend filled with wedding preps, puppy love, good food and great company. I spent the evening last night making cupcakes (see next post for Baking Fun!) and my neighbor Claudia came over to help. What else are 2 girls to do on the Thursday evening before a long weekend? :)