White Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

Taking pictures for this blog can be an adventure. First off, I use a point-and-shoot camera. It's not really that bad. What's hard is finding a good spot in our house that has a lot of natural light.

Yesterday, I baked white cupcakes with vanilla frosting. It was a bit cloudy and the light present was less than ideal. All my pictures were dark. So I decided to head out to the garage and take pictures there. I also brought a piece of bond paper to serve as my background. Cute craft papers is something I should really buy.

Most of the time, my picture-taking skillz are non-existent. A lot of things that are not supposed to be in the shot is included. Sometimes my hand makes a guest appearance and then an otherwise good shot is ruined. I'm still practicing and I'm hoping that practice does really make you better.

But what I didn't expect when I took these pictures was our dogs wanting to eat the cupcakes. It become hard to take shots of cupcakes while trying to fend off hungry dogs so I called for reinforcements. My sister came and distracted the dogs while I quickly took pictures.

The brown one is Kokoy (don't ask me about the name, I don't know either) and the other is Bobby. Bobby was not that really interested in the food he just wanted to be held. Kokoy, on the other hand, was a crazy one. He did everything to get to eat the cupcakes. He was jumping, running and escaping from my sister so I also needed to be on guard most of the time.

In the end, though, the cupcakes made it without any casualties.

My cupcakes turned out dense. It's not really the recipe's fault. I was being stupid and used a way too small bowl for four eggwhites. The top part was already at stiff peaks but when I was ready to fold it into the batter it was still liquid at the bottom. I didn't want to wash the beaters again so I just left it as is. The cupcake still tasted delicious though.

Oh, about the 200 cupcakes and 200 cookies we baked, as you can see, I'm still alive :o I'm really grateful for my cousins' help because otherwise I would've gone crazy. And it also helped that I pre-measured the dry ingredients during the week.

Snow White Vanilla Birthday Cake

From Sweetapolita

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

2 cups white sugar

3 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 cups ice water

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

4 egg whites beaten stiff

Method:

Add sugar to the butter and beat until light. Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with ice water and flavourings, beating thoroughly after each addition. Fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour into greased layer pans and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

That’s the Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had (I halved this)

From Tasty Kitchen

5 Tablespoons Flour

1 cup Milk

1 teaspoon Vanilla

1 cup Butter

1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar!)

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.

200 Cupcakes

My cousin and I are making 200 red velvet cupcakes to sell at her school on Valentine's Day. Any tips? I actually think that it's pretty manageable. But I might not be wrong about what I'm getting into. So if you experienced being crazy enough to make 200 or more cupcakes in one go, tips on how to do it is very much appreciated :)

Red Velvet Cake

I think Red Velvet is a really weird flavor. It has a hint of chocolate but you can't consider it a chocolate cake. But it's not vanilla either. And with the buttermilk and vinegar added the batter kinda smells sour to me. Plus it's red.

But it's really, really delicious. It's seriously one of my favorite cakes now. The cake itself is so moist and not that sweet that I feel like I can eat half the cake in one sitting. The cocoa taste is not that empowering but you can certainly tell that it's there. And the frosting is just perfect. It complements the cake beautifully and it's not very sweet too. I'm a big fan of desserts that are not very sweet, can you tell?

Aside from the taste, the other thing I love about Red Velvet is the appearance. When you look from the outside it looks blah. The white frosting just doesn't excite me as much as chocolate or even pink buttercream. Then when you cut into the cake and see the red cake, it's just striking.

I guess I shouldn't judge cakes too quickly.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Have you planned anything special yet? If no, make a cake. Cake is good. Red cake is better.

For the cake, I halved this recipe and baked it in two 6-inch pans. Same for the frosting. Just enough for you and your loved one for Valentine's. If you're shy about eating a lot of cake there's gonna be leftovers.

Red Velvet Cake

From Bakerella

Makes a 9-inch cake

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 Tablespoon cocoa (I use two)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups oil

1 cup buttermilk

1 Tablespoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 oz. red food coloring (I use 1 oz.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans.

Lightly stir eggs in a medium bowl with a wire whisk. Add remaining liquid ingredients and stir together with whisk until blended. Set aside.

Place all the dry ingredients in your mixing bowl and stir together really good with another wire whisk.

Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix on medium-high for about a minute or until completely combined.

Pour into cake pans and then drop the pans on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

After about ten minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack. I also cover in plastic wrap while the cakes cool.

Then make the frosting.

That’s the Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had

From Tasty Kitchen

5 Tablespoons Flour

1 cup Milk

1 teaspoon Vanilla

1 cup Butter

1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar!)

Bake your favorite chocolate cake and let it cool.

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (If I’m in a hurry, I place the saucepan over ice in the sink for about 10 minutes or so until the mixture cools.) It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.

Grab a spoon and taste this wonderful goodness. If there is any left after your taste test, spread it on a cooled chocolate/red velvet cake.

P.S. This is my first layer cake! I'm such a noob.

Snickerdoodles

It was already noon and I was rushing for the cookies to cool. I woke up early to have enough time to bake, cool and pack the cookies. But in between reading the newspaper, eating breakfast, calling the theater and basically procrastinating, I ended up rushing to finish the cookies. Time management is just not my forte.

My siblings and I were going to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. It was the very first Harry Potter movie I was going to watch so I was eager to watch it. I just finished reading the books last year. I know, I'm very late in joining the HP Bandwagon.

Fortunately, we managed to get to the theater in time. We bought our tickets and settled in our seats. Snickerdoodles were the only kind of cookie that I brought. I was planning to bake more but I ran out of time. I have to say, they weren't missed.

Together with the cookies we brought a liter of apple-flavored green tea. It's this bottled drink that's sweetened with honey and meant to be drank cold. Apple and cinnamon are definitely a good combination. The green tea was in my sister's bag and the cookies were in mine then we covered them with the rest of our stuff. I'm not sure if bringing food inside the theaters was allowed but I certainly did not want to pay for their overpriced food. We managed to smuggle it in without problems though. Yes, I'm a smuggler now! Unless bringing food is allowed then that just means that we went to all that trouble for nothing.

I love these cookies. They're so soft and full of cinnamon-y goodness. It just melts in my mouth when I bite into it. I've brought this to school once and my friends enjoyed it very much. I wasn't sure at first if they would like it since cinnamon is not a very common flavor here. It's mostly chocolate, vanilla and mocha.

My brother also brought some to school with him and two of his classmates wanted to buy these cookies. It's that good.

Snickerdoodles

From Lovin' The Oven

I baked my cookies for 11 minutes at 300F and these are smaller than the recipe states. I used a tablespoon of dough and made 28 cookies.

1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

For rolling:

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars with an electric mixer on high speed. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth.

2. In another bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

3. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well.

4. Preheat oven to 300 degrees while you let the dough rest for 30 to 60 minutes in the refrigerator. [I preheat the oven when I'm rolling the cookies.]

5. In a small bowl, combine the sugar with the cinnamon for the topping.

6. Take about 2 1/2 tablespoons of the dough and roll it into a ball. Roll this dough in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and press it onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat for the remaining cookies.

7. Bake the cookies for 12 to 14 minutes and no more. The cookies may seem undercooked, but will continue to develop after they are removed from the oven. When the cookies have cooled they should be soft and chewy in the middle.

Makes 16 to 18 cookies.

I love this picture. It looks like the cookies are going to start speaking.

S'mores

Believe it or not, I first ate s'mores only this year. Growing up, our house was not stocked with a lot of junk foods. Chocolate bars were only available when relatives from abroad come home and bring bags of chocolate. Also, it didn't help that s'mores were only some food I see on cartoons.

When my uncle came home from the US, he gave us some Hershey's bars so I bought marshmallows and graham crackers. I roasted the marshmallows on the stovetop and placed it on top of the waiting graham and chocolate. I placed another piece of graham and squished the whole thing. The marshmallow released all this gooey goodness. It was so good!

This time though, I didn't roast the marshmallows, I microwave them instead. I used Meiji Black instead of Hershey's. I have to say, the dark chocolate tastes so much better. It cuts the sweetness of the other elements of the s'mores.

I also used all store-bought ingredients. If it tasted this good without using homemade stuff, I can't imagine what it will taste like if I made my own graham crackers and marshmallows. It will probably blow my freakin' mind! (For all How I Met Your Mother fans out there ;) )

Vampire S'mores!

Oh, wait. Introductions! I'm Marie from the Philippines. I'm eighteen years old majoring in Accounting. I love to bake in my spare time. Hello, world!