Holiday Baking

As I'm trying to get my business up and running, I'm trying a few test-runs, including selling holiday treats at my husband's office. I had quite a few orders, and they all turned out great!
I made mini Derby pies, red velvet cake balls, pumpkin cake pops, and red velvet cupcakes. I was a baking machine for a few days! Oh, and just for fun, I made sugar cookies, and decorated them too.
Check it out!
Sugar cookie snowflakes with royal icing and sanding sugar.


Sugar cookie candy canes with royal icing and sanding sugar.


Sugar cookie Xmas trees with royal icing, sanding sugar, and silver dragees.


Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting and holly berry sprinkles.


Mini Derby Pies: Chocolate Chip-Bourbon-Pecan.


Red Velvet Cake balls- dipped in Red (vanilla) and Milk Chocolate with holiday sprinkles.


Pumpkin Cake Pops- dipped in white (vanilla) candy and topped with holiday sprinkles.

I had so much fun baking all these treats, I can't wait until I get paid to do it all the time!

Pumpkin Cake Pops!

The last of my Halloween treats were pumpkin cake pops. They look and taste like pumpkin. I made these Saturday while watching Back to the Future :)

I followed directions from the Cake Pops book by Bakerella. She uses green tic tacs for the stems, but I couldn't find green, so I used orange. Every time I make cake pops they turn out better than the last time, so that's encouraging.


I made the balls with pumpkin cake and cream cheese frosting. Before I started I made sure that the baking sheet I had fit into the freezer and fridge, a mistake I've made before.


I melted the orange candy gradually according to the directions, and it was quite smooth, not like the chocolate I've used in the past. I'm still not satisfied with the bowls I have for dipping, maybe I need to search more for the perfect one. The pop has to be dipped in and out straight up and down, and that's my biggest challenge.

Anyways, dipped the pops, added the tic tacs for stems, and let them dry. They were already super cute!
Then, I used a food color marker to draw on faces for the jack o lanterns. Or at least, I tried to. I don't know what it was, but the marker wasn't working properly. I could get maybe one or two lines out of it before it died. I tried cleaning it on a paper towel, as suggested, but that didn't really help. I gave up after 4 or 5 pops, it was too time consuming and frustrating. Maybe the pops were too cold, but I left them at room temp for a while to see if it made any difference, and none at all. Oh well!
I still wrapped up the plain pumpkin pops in fun Halloween treat bags. Gotta love the dollar section at Target! :)
According to my taste tester, these were "mmmmmmm". I love how it looks with a bite missing. Yum!
This project was certainly more successful than the last, and hopefully the next one will be even better!

Cake Pops

So, I wanted to practice making more cake pops, to perfect my technique. I had leftover cake and frosting from the threadcakes challenge, so I used that. It was only the tops of the cakes that I cut off to level them, and it made over 50 cake pops!
The cake was a few days old, which I think made it better to work with. Last time I tried this, I used fresh cake and it was too soft and it fell apart. I also let the mixture sit in the fridge overnight once I added the frosting.I rolled up all the little balls, froze them, and then started to melt the coating.
I had some vanilla candy coating leftover, but I couldn't get it to the right consistency. It was way too thick, and the balls I tried to dip in it just fell apart. Maybe it's the brand, I got it at the grocery store, it's some no-name generic stuff.So the next day I went out and got Wilton candy melts. These worked great! Nice, smooth consistency, great for dipping. Will have to use those from now on.So I added the sticks, and got to dipping, about 12 at a time. The candy re-melted great after each batch.
For the decorations, I had brought back Smarties from Canada a few weeks ago and wanted to use them. These are not what Americans think of as Smarties, these are more like M&Ms, but better! They are slightly flatter and have a thicker candy shell, and come in fun different colors. I loved them as a kid, and they're still great!

I added a Smartie on top of each pop, as well as a ring of colored sprinkles around it. When I look at them all together, they kind of look like eyes! but the wrong colors of course.
Then I wrapped each one in a little bag and twist tie, so they wouldn't rub up against each other. Plus, it's super cute, like they are really lollipops.

Anyways, I was very pleased how they turned out, super cute! I still need practice getting the coating smooth over the cake, but sprinkles can always cover up any flaws :)

Cake Pops, Take Two

So once again, I tried making cake pops. The first ones were difficult, but I'm getting better. Practice, practice!
I had 6 leftover cupcakes from the jack and coke batch I made a few days ago. They were still super moist, and worked great as pops. There was the perfect amount of frosting with just what each cupcake was topped with.
I used actual chocolate bark this time, since I had stocked up when I last found it in the store. It was still a little thicker than I would have liked, but it worked ok.


So it turns out, 6 cupcakes make 24-25 pops. They got prettier and more even as I went along. Next time I'll make them perfect for sure! I put these in individual wrappers, but I didn't have anything to close them with. At least they're protected and won't stick to each other.


This is a great way to use leftover cake or cupcakes. If these cupcakes hadn't been so moist, I would have needed more frosting.

Chocolate Stout and Baileys Cupcakes and Pops

Happy St Paddy's Day! As usual, I made my world famous chocolate Guinness and Baileys cupcakes. However, I also make them into cupcake pops! It was very time consuming, and I messed up a few things, but they turned out great, and delicious too!

For anyone who doesn't know what a cake pop is, it's crumbled up cake mixed with frosting, then dipped in chocolate and decorated. On a pop! I think this is a great use for leftover cake or cupcakes, since the frosting moistens them up again. The possibilities are endless for decorating, but this time I just kept it simple.
So, the challenges I had: I first bought green candy melts, melted them, all was good, but then I tried to be creative and add Jameson whiskey to them to add flavor. The entire mixture seized up, and no mount of re-melting would get it back to liquid state. So I had to go out to the store to get chocolate bark, except they didn't have any! Apparently, it's a seasonal item. So I tried a few different chocolate products, and they ended up working ok. So half the pops were white chocolate and half were milk chocolate.
I also need to improve my rolling technique. Most of the pops weren't perfect circles, but kind of lopsided ovals. I will definitely try these again.
Oh, and the cupcakes turned out great too :)