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

Psychedelicakes

April 7, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 14 Comments

PSYCHEDELIC CAKES.

There, do you get the clever title now? I have Brittany to thank for that one, it’s genius!

I think my entire life has led up to me making these cupcakes. Ever since I started baking I’ve wanted to make a rainbow cake. I was initially inspired by my favourite blog, Color Me Katie (check it out, she’s AWESOME!). Here is a post about cute cupcake sandwiches she made. Throughout my cooking adventures I’ve also stumbled on some other amazing rainbow-themed baked goods. Ogle over them here, here, here, and here.

So I guess you get that I like colour, huh?

After a successful first venture into the world of colourful food with Christine’s American-themed birthday cake, I figured I could take a bit of a risk with this one. Britt had a load of gel colours leftover from making cookies for one of her class projects, so I had all the materials on hand to make some legendary cupcakes. I used Martha Stewart’s cake batter recipe and divided it into six bowls. I excitedly dropped a small amount of dye into each bowl, and watched the batter transform before my eyes into multi-coloured hues. The colours were so bright that the cake almost looked inedible. Almost. Kindergarten in a bowl.

Since I had no class to feed, my roommates were gifted with these. Twenty cupcakes, six roommates, 24 hours eating time. We’re averaging about four cupcakes per person… Healthy habits FTW.

Finally, I’m so happy that I got a new header out of these cupcake photos. I had intended to revamp my blog, and these cupcakes were the perfect subject for my new site. I figured it was about time I got a food related header photo…

I wasn’t sure how I wanted my header to look, so I took some 100 pictures of these cupcakes out on our patio. At one point I made Amanda and Ariel hold up white paper to create a neutral background. They were extremely (un)enthusiastic about this…

Rainbow cupcakes11 — Fun fact: Amanda said she looked dirty and requested to be cropped out

In the end, I settled on a picture I took on top of our television. Simple, clean, effective (I hope).

I topped my cupcakes with cream cheese icing. My roommate Alex said that they were the best ones yet, and that they were even better than some of the cupcakes we’ve sampled as part of my Ottawa Cupcake Challenge. I’m beyond flattered.

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Chocolate CJTV Cookies

April 2, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

On Thursday I had my last journalism class of third-year. HOW CAN THIS BE? It seems like just yesterday I was blissfully unaware of the magic of broadcast journalism and was not attributing things and was writing run-on sentences (see what I did there?). I now consider myself a seasoned half-expert and a complete broadcast convert. God I love my program.

To celebrate this love and the end of the year, I wanted to make something for our last television class. I imagine many of you are unfamiliar with the end-of-semester routine with Carleton journalism, so let me explain. We have these three newsroom days where we basically get thrown into the world of same-day production. With tv, this means that you are reporting, shooting and editing something within a few hours, just like the big guns down at CBC and CTV do. You learn so much, but the days are a tad stressful. Food, particularly baked goods, always helps reduce this stress. So here we are.

CJTV cookies1 — The first and last time I will ever try to pipe a four letter acronym onto a tiny cookie.

When I got home Wednesday, all I wanted to do was bake. I had handed in two major assignments earlier that day and thought I deserved a little treat. I was devastated that I had already had to scrap my plans to make a Twitter-inspired fondant cake for my multimedia class, so I thought both me and my classmates deserved this late night baking extravaganza.

I knew I wanted to make some sort of corny television inspired cookie. I originally thought of doing these with a shortbread or sugar cookie base, but quickly decided in favour of something a little more chocolatey. The decorations were completely impromptu. I bought a bag of shoelace licorice with the full intention of cutting them up to make little antennas but, after I (a) ate 3/4 of the bag, and (b) couldn’t figure out a way to stick them on the cookie, gave up and ate the rest. The white and red outlining you see on the cookie is piped chocolate. At 11:30 p.m. that Wednesday night I was hunched over the counter decorating them, so I hope they look good!

PS: I love slightly undercooking chocolate cookies so they taste like brownies.
PPS: CJTV stands for Carleton Journalism Television.

And so, signing off from my kitchen, this is Hilary Duff, CJTV News, Ottawa.

Source (chocolate cookies): Cake Batter and Bowl

Vanilla Pavlova with Chocolate Mousse and Fresh Berries

March 18, 2011March 17, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

I made this pavlova for my best friend and roommate Brittany’s birthday. She just turned 20 on St. Patrick’s Day, but is wise beyond her years.

Pavlova5 — Birthday girl Brittany, rocking a very Lara Croft-esque outfit (Nat lurking in the background)

But before I start, I believe the majority of you will need me to define “pavlova.” And by that, I mean you’ll need Wikipedia to define it. So here we are:

“Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. Colloquially referred to as “pav,” it is a cake similar to meringue with a crispy crust and a soft, light inner.”

So basically it’s a light, heavenly dessert with an initial crunch and a satisfyingly chewy middle. Delicious.

I have fond memories of many a dessert eaten in Ireland visiting my dad’s family (yes, this is how I’m attempting to tie this in with St. Patrick’s Day). Whenever there was any sort of a fancy or important event, like my Nana and Pop’s 50th wedding anniversary, my talented aunt and godmother Ann would make pavlova. She made the best pavlova I’ve ever tasted. Alright, so technically I didn’t have a lot to compare it to, but I just remember it being good. Also, back then I was a picky eater, so anything that a younger Hilary declared delicious must have been extraordinary. Ann would always pile whipped cream and strawberries on top, adding to the already decadent value of the cake.

I decided to do the same, except with chocolate mousse and a variety of berries.

When Britt originally asked me to make pavlova, I was incredibly worried and hesitant. I’d heard several a pavlova horror stories, many of which involved the delicate pavlova shell simply shattering (this partially happened to me). On the day that I was making it, I ran into my friend/foodie extraordinaire Ella who gave me some helpful tips. These tips included things like make sure there is not a drop of egg yolk in the egg whites, dry your bowl completely before using it, etc. etc. If you’re reading this Ella, please know that I took your advice extremely seriously, and that I full on give you credit for this pavlova being a success.

It turns out it wasn’t really that bad to make. Sure I had to turn our powerful oven down to a mere whimper of the recipe’s ordered temperature (it was in at 150 degrees fahrenheit), but other then that, everything went off without a hitch.

Mixing egg whites with sugar is really quite a phenomenal experience. Seriously, it is magic. How can two seemingly simple ingredients create such a marshmellowy smooth cream? It’s wonderful, really. I am stunned and humbled everyday by the power of desserts.

Anyways, the recipes I used to make the pavlova and chocolate mousse and down beneath the pictures. The only thing I would have changed would have been to make my pavlova larger in height, versus diametre. This would have lent itself more to that chewy pavlova centre I made reference to earlier. You want all that you can get of that good stuff.

PS: Be gentle with this one. Pavlovas are all about precision and carefulness. I kept the finished pavlova in my bedroom so it wouldn’t face torture in our shared dining room. Promise me you’ll keep this in mind.