Mar 25
Who Eats the Watchmen?
Posted by admin in Childhood, Eye Candy, My inner geek on 03 25th, 2009| icon33 Comments »

Made these about a month (pre-film-release). They’re sugar cookies with Royal Icing. The black marker you see in the pics is an edible food writer marker.

watchmen1

Read the rest of this entry »

Mar 23
My Version of the Hostess Cupcake
Posted by admin in Childhood, Recipes on 03 23rd, 2009| icon32 Comments »

Ahhh, the popular Hostess Cupcake. Growing up this was alway a special occasion treat because A) we didn’t get a lot of cupcakes as a regular dessert (we were a family that honoured the chocolate chip cookie) and B) we couldn’t justify buying a snack cake if we could just bake it.

So I decided to whip up my own version of this cupcake.

First of all for the cake part, I use my go to chocolate cake recipe. I doubled the recipe to make 48 cupcakes (I have lots of mouths to feed!). Variation to the measurement time: Fill the cupcake wells ¾ of the way so that when they rise, it’ll give you plenty of cupcake top to cut off. Bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes.

When cupcakes are cooled, use a serrated knife to cut the tops off.

hostess01

Create chocolate ganache: Place 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chip into a heatproof bowl. Heat ¾ cup of whipping cream until it just starts to boil. Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate. Let chocolate melt and then stir with a whisk until ganache is smooth. Spread ganache on top of the cupcake tops. Refrigerate so the ganache can firm up.

Meanwhile, make the frosting glaze: Mix 1 cup icing sugar with 2 tbsp. milk. Add more sugar to get a pipeable consistency. Put frosting in a pastry bag and pipe a desired design on the ganached cupcake tops.

Create pastry cream: Whip 2 cups of heavy cream with ½ cup of icing sugar until soft peaks form. Dissolve 1 tsp. of gelatin in 1 tbsp. of water over a low heat. Add gelatin mixture to the cream mixture and whip until stiff peaks form. Feel free to add 1 tsp. vanilla to the mixture. Place a generous dollop of cream on top of the cut cupcakes.

hostess02

Now, take those pretty little cupcake lids and place them on top of the mount of pastry cream like so…

hostess03

Enjoy!

Mar 23
What You Missed
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on 03 23rd, 2009| icon3No Comments »

Okay, aside from not actually updating this site in a while, sometime over the holiday, the server deleted some of the last few posts. Here’s what you missed (or rather what was deleted):

  • CupcakeCamp.ca launched! It was awesome.
  • I wished you Happy Holidays
  • I posted a recipe for a Pastry Lasagna - I will likely post it again (God bless the Facebook RSS feed - who knew Facebook would actually serve some sort of purpose?)
  • I bitched about self-rising flour and provided how to make your own (will also re-post since it’s pretty useful)

What I failed to update you guys on:

  • CUPCAKECAMP TORONTO! January 25 was an exhausting, chaotic, yet amazing day. Met some GREAT people and learned quite a bit on how to make the next one better. Looking forward to it. Here’s the play-by-play!
  • I made Watchmen Cookies - I’ll post pics later

That’s all me these few months, baking-wise. I’ll do my best to keep on top on my baking shenanigans.

Out.
Michelle