I made these cupcakes late last week in preparation for a field trip I was taking on the weekend with my roommate Britt. She, and the rest of the Carleton varsity nordic ski team, happened to be competing in North Bay this past weekend. North Bay just happens to be a hop, skip and a jump away from my hometown of Sudbury, so I decided to take a little break from the madness of Ottawa and have a weekend breather at home.
Since I was bumming a ride off a bunch of athletes, I wanted to do something to earn their acceptance. And of course, everyone loves cupcakes. So, I set out across the Internet to find the most delicious looking cupcake recipe that I could. I found the recipe for these ones on my favourite food blog, Annie’s Eats.
Get this – there was half an Oreo at the bottom of every one of these cupcakes (see picture below!), making the first bite a sweet surprise. Then there were chunks of oreos chopped into the cupcake batter. To top it off was a decadent cream cheese icing with crushed oreo crumbs and a cookie garnish. I think I bought out the grocery store’s entire supply of oreos in preparation to make these, but it was totally worth it. Also, making these cupcakes reminded me of how miserable I am at icing things. Since proper piping bags aren’t really in my student budget (although I have managed to snag some of Britt’s in the past), I was using a floppy Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner. Even though the cupcakes looked nice, I ended up with half the frosting all over my hands, in my hair, on my apron……..
The fancy schmancy Oreo base
While I modeled the food (aka ate part of the cupcake so a picture could be taken of the inside), Britt got her camera out on the bus. After some shaky pictures taken while travelling down a bumpy northern Ontario highway, we decided to wait until we got to North Bay before having a full fledged photo shoot with these cupcakes. And then, I shared with the team, and earned their acceptance, one cookie-filled bite at a time.
Have cupcakes, will travel.
Note: All these pictures were taken by my talented roommate Brittany.
Okay, so maybe these aren’t that festive anymore since it’s now January, but shush.
So I know it must seem that all I’ve been doing lately is baking. This is, in part true, but only because I haven’t had much time to eat anything but my copious amounts of reheated, leftover soup. To add to my massive amounts of baking, I present to you these fruitcake cookies. After I made my dad’s fruitcake back in December, I was left with several bags of leftover gooey fruit and peel. In a stroke of genius, my roommate Britt came across this recipe for fruitcake cookies on one of our favourite blogs, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. When we measured out my leftovers ingredients, I had EXACTLY the right amount of fruit. It was like the fates wanted me to make these cookies and really, who am I to deny the foodie gods anyways?
Now, these are technically called cookies, but they’re really more of mini whoopie-pie-like cakes. I didn’t actually like the fruitcake that I made for my dad (although he loved it!), so I was a little skeptical as to how these were going to turn out. In the end, they wound up being fantastic and, although not for everyone I’ll admit, had a hearty taste and a chewy softness that made me super happy. Also, there was a cup of brandy/whiskey in these babies, which absorbed quite nicely into the fruit…
PS: WHY do I blog before bed?! All I want now are the enchiladas that the Pioneer Woman has on her homepage. Deadly.
Yesterday one of my dear roommates Amanda celebrated her 21st birthday.
Seeing as she is the first of us to hit this age of eternal youth and glory, we were obviously expected to celebrate in style. No one, and I repeat with emphasis NO ONE loves their birthday more than Amanda loves hers. She even has a name for her week of birthday festivities: Amandapalooza.
One of her birthday wishes this year was for me to make her white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. You see, Amanda almost loves cookies as much as she loves her birthday. And so, a birthday wish was granted, and three dozen mini clone cookies were created.
But WAIT! Just because Amanda’s birthday was yesterday doesn’t mean that the fun has stopped. I may be out of town this weekend with my other roommate Britt, but the festivities continue. Amanda, have a blast this weekend and have a shameless time feasting on cookies and cupcakes (calories also don’t count on your birthday weekend!!!). Have fun and make this the best Amandapalooza ever (until next year, that is)!
PS: the recipe for these cookies can be found here. :)
Happy Boxing Day everyone! Since the stores in Sudbury are closed on boxing day (thanks to a rather archaic bylaw which I quite adore), I took the good graces to extend my annual Christmas “sit around the house and do nothing but read and eat” festival into the depths of December 26. Still being in a disgustingly full state, I decided to settle in and do the only activity you can do while in a food coma: food blog!
Here is the old Duff family tradition around which this post is based:
Every Christmas for the past 25 years, my dad has been the recipient of one of my Nana’s famous homemade fruitcakes. The tradition started when my dad, who moved to Canada 31 years ago, stopped returning home to Ireland for Christmas after he met my mom. Since my Nana passed away almost two years ago, this family tradition has risked extinction. Last Christmas, my dad was eating fruitcake from the year before that had been hidden away in the depths of our freezer, making this Christmas the very first where he would be without his traditional holiday fare.
Everyone – my life has been changed!!! How you ask? Well, quite simply put, it is through the purchase of this fantastic new cookbook:
I saw this book yesterday while I was in Chapters with my family. Bakerella has been a favourite blogger of mine for sometime now, and I often peruse her site endlessly in my delusional dessert daydreams. Bakerella is famous for these special little cake pops/bites. She is so famous for these heavenly morsels that she even has a BOOK TOUR. Cool, right? Basically, these cake pops are cake crumbs mixed with icing and covered in a candy coating. Not for the light of heart, hyper five-year-old or cavity fearer, but perfect for those suffering from low blood sugar! Once I saw this book, I knew I had to have it. I had resisted purchasing it once (as a partial Christmas gift for best friend Britt), but I could resist no longer. Nope, I was 100 per cent committed to making seasonal cake pops.
And make them I did. My favourite part of Bakerella’s cake pop recipe is that it calls for boxed cake mix and icing from the can. Endless hours of baking from scratch were saved!
Also, the funniest thing happened to me when I was at the grocery store shopping for supplies. Here I was in an unfamiliar baking aisle, frantically flipping through my glossy new cookbook to decide what to buy. I must have been looking completely disoriented and confused when a woman came up to me and said something along the lines of “hey, I made cake pops last week!” This introductory statement led to a 15 minute conversation about cake pops and how much we love Bakerella. Turns out she had made reindeer, turkey and snowmen cake pops earlier in the year, a task which I have yet to conquer. Want to hear something even more weird? The woman, whose name is actually Karina, turned out to be a teacher at a high school in Ottawa where I had gone to write a journalism story last year. SMALL WORLD, right? Anyways, she gave me some great tips for making these (only use 3/4 of the frosting, melt shortening in with the chocolate to keep it from hardening), and it was a neat little conversation that sparked only out of me holding my new Cake Pops cookbook in the store.
After the grocery store I trekked off to the Bulk Barn where I spent a small fortune on chocolate candy coating (those cool little coloured disks of moulding chocolate that don’t look like food), lollipop sticks and sprinkles. My meagre student budget is going to start suffering thanks to the purchase of this book… Also, I partially over-purchased on the chocolate for this one, so I’m going to need to think of something creative to do with 2 pounds of coloured chocolate over the next week… I’m open to suggestions…
SO MUCH extra chocolate!!!
The thing with Bakerella’s cake pops recipes is that it’s kind of complicated to let the chocolate set on the cake. Since I decided to make these kind of at the last minute, I didn’t have time to find the styrofoam block that Bakerella requires. This is normally the thing that you stab all your lollipop sticks into so that your cake pops stand up straight. With a little ingenuity and a lengthy trip to the Dollar Store, I created a cake pop standing device out of foam cups and masking tape. Baking challenges, bring it on!
Since it is CHRISTMAS EVE (can you believe it?!) I spent my entire day…I mean HOURS, coating and hand decorating a dozen and a half little Christmas trees. The end result was totally worth it – I mean, come on, you need to admit that they’re cute! If you plan on making any of these, make sure you follow Bakerella’s recipe to the tee, since she has everything perfected. On top of the Christmas trees, I made little tuxedo (as my mom calls them) cake bites, with half white chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate. A little less extravagant than the trees, but fun and tasty nonetheless. Pour yourself a big glass of milk to go along with these and you’re all set!
To end off this post, I am happy to announce that we delivered some cake pops to our neighbours across the street, and in return they gave us a freshly baked apple pie! What a trade off!
Hilary Makes 