Godzilla Peep Cupcakes

April 26, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Yeah, yeah, it’s been awhile since I last blogged… I’ll resume my regular obsessive blogging back in Ottawa next week!

Okay:

I don’t think I need to explain my love of holiday-themed baking to anyone.

Past festivities have witnessed me creating a wide variety of awesome baked goods and desserts, be it homemade maple leaf chocolates, painfully difficult-to-decorate Christmas tree cake pops, or fuchsia Valentine’s Day cookies coloured with pureed beets.

This was my blog’s first Easter.

After scrapping my original idea to bake the nirvana of all Easter chocolate – Cadbury Creme Eggs (see example here) – into my cupcakes (my excuse: those things cost like, $1.25 a piece, and I’m kind of broke…), I settled on a more low key plan.

I’m staying with my aunt in Toronto right now, and since she doesn’t really bake, I had to buy a lot of the dessert-making necessities. This purchasing saw a small bag of cake flour explode on my black jacket last Wednesday and several declarations of frustration silently aimed at the convenience store clerk, after his shop failed to sell mini eggs.

The end result was these Godzilla Peep Cupcakes.

376a2206e1ef41259dd330cfa7a729b3_7 — My co-worker Ron instagram-ed the hell out of these cupcakes.

In case you can’t tell, the chocolate icing (which was piped out using a freezer-sized Ziploc bag, go improvisation!) is supposed to resemble a nest.

I initially failed to realize how huge the peeps were, and so the cute marshmallow candies ended up looking like giants. They were so awkward looking that they needed a mention in the title of this post.

The cupcakes were infused with lemon zest, and were perfectly baked in my aunt’s normal person oven (which preheats at an Olympic speed, I was very impressed). Our student home oven would have created golden brown welts and a crispy bottom. God I love real person kitchen appliances.

I brought these into the National Post newsroom last Thursday – thus marking the restart of my “baking for colleagues tradition” just in time for the summer months.

http://twitter.com/#!/nationalpost/status/61089927357673472

I officially declare the dessert-carrying-on-bicycle season open!

PS: These cupcakes endured an hour-long TTC communte. I only dropped them once.
PPS: I made a mini cake for my aunt and uncle, since it would be unfair to take everything into the newsroom. The peep-to-cake ratio was a little less ridiculous on their dessert.

The mini cake I left for my aunt and uncle at home

Cookies and Creme Cupcakes with Oreo Cream Cheese Icing

January 28, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

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……..

Oreo cupcakes2 — 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.

Oreo cupcakes4 — Have cupcakes, will travel.

Note: All these pictures were taken by my talented roommate Brittany.

Candy Sushi (and my ultimate demise by sugar coma)

August 15, 2010November 2, 2010 ~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

There is one thing I dislike about my job. No, it’s not my co-workers, Summer Orientation days or designing parent newsletters. I positively adore all of the above. It is something substantially more ridiculous and avoidable: the amount of CANDY in our office, and my extreme effectiveness in eating all of it. Be it at the front reception desk or in my supervisor’s office drawer, there is no shortage of sugar. As all my co-workers know, I can often be found shamelessly sneaking into someone’s office to get Riesens, jubjubs, licorice or, most often, all of the above.

This being said, eating candy sushi after a full day of pigging out on office treats was not that enjoyable of an experience. Making this sushi on Thursday night, I found myself surrounded by a pile of fruit roll-up wrappers, Bulk Barn bags and Rice Krispies squares. Under normal circumstances, I would have been in heaven. This night, however, found my stomach lurching into an unpleasant rollarcoaster. Please do not get me wrong, these were good, but unless you would like to have a major sugar crash, I sincerely recommend you eat them one at a time.

So why in the world did I made this candy sushi? WELL, since we do everything together, my co-worker’s and I decided to throw a sushi party. After the great success of Gord and LJ’s sushi making adventures a few weeks ago, we all decided that these Japanese delicacies needed to be replicated in mass quantity.

Never one to conform to basic standards and bring something easy like cucumber or avocado to the night, I decided I needed to make something cool. This was where the website Mommy Knows (awkward site for a 20-year-old girl) came in. She posted a fantastic candy sushi recipe on her site, and it contained the best and most simple instructions on how to complete this treat. Basically, all you needed to make these sushi were fruit roll-ups (to double as seaweed), thinly-made Rice Krispie square sheets and some more sugary candy for the inside filling. Super easy to make and, I think, super realistic. Try it at home for your next sushi party!

I put my sushi on a cake, which may not have helped with the sugar overload…

So how did the regular sushi work out? Well it was just GREAT! As per usual, I ate way too much, but it was totally worth it. My personal favourite – avocado, strawberry and banana rolls – can only be described in one word: amazing.

Me, pre-sugar coma, happy as a clam.

Ginger Molasses Crinkle Cookies

July 30, 2010December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

No matter what delicious food I make in the future, I am positively sure that cookie dough will remain my favourite snack for the rest of time. As always, I ate about 1/3 of the prepared cookie dough prior to it being baked, a task which quickly threw my stomach into a state of mass chaos. Was it worth it? Of course.

I made these cookies at the request of one of my co-workers, Diandria (shout-out!!). She is a huge fan of the Starbucks ginger molasses cookies, so I knew I had to try my very best to recreate their treat. Not having ever made ginger cookies of any kind, I had no idea what recipe to use. Of course I turned to Canadian Living to fix my problem, and easily found the recipe for their Ginger Molasses Crinkle Cookies. Not sure where the “crinkle” comes in (since the word kind of reminds me of Christmas wrapping paper), but I’m not complaining.

I haven’t brought in a Friday treat for awhile, since our Fridays have been completely occupied by Summer Orientation sessions. Since today was our LAST Friday session (I can’t believe it), I decided to make these cookies to celebrate/mourn. Also, it’s weird, but I’m getting some sort of inner-gut feeling when something is done in the oven. Maybe that’s a super Foodie Freak thing to say, but it’s happening. Okay, or it might just be that my paranoia makes me check the oven every minute so things don’t burn. Either way, I’m learning.

PS: Sorry about the bland pictures. There is only so much you can do with cookies.

Pool Party Cake (!!!!!!!)

July 22, 2010January 1, 2012 ~ Hilary ~ 9 Comments

Before I begin this post, I feel it is important to note the following:

What you will see below is the cake of my childhood dreams. When I was young, my mom had a copy of Canadian Living’s “Kids in the Kitchen“cookbookwhich I would flip through occasionally, wondering how in the world one was able to cook. Now, a decade later, I return to my humble beginnings to complete the pièce de résistance of all Canadian Living cakes: The Pool Party Cake(each word deserves a capital letter because, to me, it is a holy entity of awesome). To be honest, I’m a little surprised my mom didn’t make me this cake as a child; I guess there were very few pool parties to go to in Northern Ontario and my birthday was in winter…

When I first heard back in June that we were planning to have a potluck at work, I very nearly had a happiness heart attack. I KNEW that the time had finally come for me to make this cake, and that the world was finally prepared to be exposed to its sheer wonder. Also, the cake kind of doubled as a surprise birthday cake for one of my wonderful work supervisors, Jeremy, who was (against his will) getting a belated birthday celebration at lunch.

Let the cake-making begin: Buying all the candy supplies was the hard part – I spent a solid half hour in the Bulk Barn, carefully measuring out gummy candies and determinedly marching up and down the aisles in search of the elusive vanilla wafer cookie (turns out I needed to get them at Walmart). A short time later, my shopping was complete, and with my new 9×13 glass cake pan filled with goodies, I waltzed (bused) home, anxiously wondering what the results of my cake attempt would be. Due to some sort of miracle, the cake turned out perfectly. Despite a minor meltdown that occurred when a deep crack developed through the middle of the cake, the process was rather uneventful and my neuroses was kept at bay for the most part…

Of course, my adventure to deliver cake to potluck continued this morning when I had to find a way to transport said item to school. Normally I would just ride my bike, however, I had invested too much time and emotion in this cake to see it slide off my handlebars and run over by my Schwinn bicycle. And so, my worried ass took a cab to school and, in an attempt to pay the driver with my debit card, almost granted the cake a death-by-debit-console-falling-in-pool disaster. Luckily, everything except my sanity made it to work in one piece.

I would also like to note one final thing: if someone on Ace of Cakes somehow stumbles on this post, please give me a job and/or let me tour your shop. I promise I would only freak out a little.

Hilary and Cake: an intimate moment. Also, note the wafer cookie entering my mouth…this was because of a failure in cake architecture that caused several half-wafer pieces to come unattached from their other sides. Beware future cake-makers.

Some happy potluck-ers/amazing co-workers, pre-cake arrival, pre-food coma.