Fear Be Gone!

I keep discovering as I tackle another fear how they are not as difficult as I thought. I get this idea in my head that oh I can't make that. Or I made that once and it did not turn out so I won't try again. So yesterday I decided to make angel food cake from scratch. I have made it 3 times before with 2 successes and one failure. Each time I tried I used a cake mix. That I ever used a cake mix is hard for me to believe. I always bake from scratch. Well my mom who is an amazing baker told me once that she made her angel food cakes from a box. So I thought that that was the thing to do. My mother since informed me that she does not do that any more cause of all the unhealthy stuff in a cake mix. She also told me how healthy angel food cake is. There is no fat, very little flour, a bit of sugar and mostly egg whites. So go and slice your self a big piece. Unless you did as I did filled it with pudding and slathered on the whip cream. Oh so good! I have this great cookbook that I love called Better Homes and Gardens Old-Fashioned Home Baking. They have this recipe in there for lemon angel food cake. What they did was once the cake is made you cut off the top of the cake about an inch of the way down. Put to the side.Then cut an inch from the edge and an inch from the middle and cut all around pulling out this middle part making a well in the cake. Which you fill with lemon filling. Then put the cake top on and cover with whipping cream. I then shaved some lemon rind on top. Turned out great! I was so pleased. I will definately make again.

 

  

This bottom picture is suppose to show you the lemon filling in it. But my recipe for the filling said adding food dye was optional. Well I see now that to get the nice yellow colour they had in their photo I needed to add the food dye or found some natural way to do it. Any suggestions how to yellow this more with out food dye? 

Cupcake Craziness!

So valentines is here and that means time to make valentines treats. So I asked my kids what would you like to make as a treat to give friends for valentines. They both said cupcakes. As my daughter got a recipe box filled with only cupcake recipes for Christmas, I knew we would be making ones from there. So we picked to make Boston Cream cupcakes and Sweetheart cupcakes. Both I was a little nervous with  as parts of the recipe I was not sure how it would work. The Boston Cream ones required a yellow cake to be made. Also it needed a vanilla pudding and chocolate frosting. So once all the components were assembled I got to work putting them together. The recipe said to stick a hole in the bottom of the cupcake and put your pipping bag with pudding in it into the cupcake and fill. Fill? How much? Could I fill it too much and have it burst? Would I know when it was filled? Do you know a cupcake can hold a lot of pudding? You may be wondering, but with a hole in it won't the filling come out? No very little did come out. A drop or two out of a few of them. But they turned out good. Kids tried them today and said they were great! I wondered if I had over baked the cupcakes but the kids did not notice. I am more picky about these things. Then we also made Sweetheart cupcakes and they turned out nothing like the picture. What you were to do was bake a chocolate cake and make a white icing that you added some raspberry jam to to turn it pink. Again I think I baked the cupcakes too long. Oh well what can I do now? So once the cupcakes were cooled you slice off the top and cut a heart shape out of the middle of it. Put a heaping of icing on top of the bottom of the cupcake and place the top on. The icing will fill the heart up and it looks really pretty. According to the picture. Well I could not get the cookie cutter part to work. Either my cookie cutter was to small or too big. The tops just fell apart or did not look right. Oi! Well I said forget that. I just iced the tops and they turned out fine. Just different. Tasted great. I really liked the icing with the raspberry jam in it. I would do that again. So do you celebrate valentines day? What a great time to tell the special people in your life what they mean to you. Yeah over here in North America we have commercialized it. But despite all that I think its a day to remind us to tell the people in our lives we love them. Sometimes we forget to do that and this just reminds us.

Another New Look

So I am at it again. Changing the look of my blog. The last one I really liked but there were glitches with it. I could not figure out how to fix them. One being the date would not show up and in its place would be the words undefined. Drove me crazy. So I went to Leelou where I got blogger templates before. I added it to my other blog and it worked great. So I tried Leelou again. She has so many FREE templates and other goodies for your blog. Did you catch the word free? She makes great stuff. Anyways hours spent on the computer trying different sites out settled on Leelou added the template and Voila! New templated but wait what is that I see? No date agian and undefined in its place. Ah!! Not again. So bare with me as I figure out all these things. Also let me know what  you think of the new look. How important is it for you to have a date? Well have a great day all. Thanks for stopping by!

Mini Pies

Check out my Mini Pies I made aren't they just the cutest things? I love them. I hope everyone I give them to loves them. They are so fun to make. Check out my previous blog to know how. What great gifts these are. I forgot to take a picture of the pie with filling in it. But I made a  cherry filling. Yum!

This is what I am up too

Hello All,

So sickness is gone from our home. I pray. Kids never got it and I hope they don't. So now I can focus better on others. We have a friend who is really sick right now and I want to bring him some stuff. So I have been baking today. One of the things I want to give is this really cute pie. I have never made it before but it looks great. I use to be afraid of pies but now I love them. My sister had thought of getting me this pie bible cookbook for Christmas but she thought that it would be too much of a challenge for me. But I wish she had. It looks great. Pie is so fun oh and so tasty. What are you afraid of that you have not tackled yet? The year is young and its never to late to overcome a fear. What ever that is. So tell someone what you are afraid of and ask them to hold you accountable to overcome it. It is such a freeing feeling to overcome  something. I am so excited that I can make pie now. I love it! Know that you are not alone in your fears. There is someone out there with the same fear as you. We all are afraid of something. But you can overcome your fears. If  I can I know you can. I have had some of my baking fears for years. But slowly I am overcoming them. Well back to my pie making.

Sick :o(

So I have been out of commission this week. I got the flu. I started the week by trying to plan a baking challenge for this week but it has not happened. Oi! I hate being sick. Just like everyone else. I do have a baking challenge planned for Monday though. If all goes well here and no one else gets sick. More details on that to follow. But it should be good. Have a great weekend!

Things that would make me happier!

Well I am pretty happy already. But I was checking out Doughmesstic's blog today and she was featuring things she wanted. Things that was in her Drooler box. I thought it was a cool idea and as I am not baking today I thought I still wanted to write something. I do want to bake something this week but what? It has to be a challenge for me. I may tackle the dreaded angle food cake. As I bought my self a pan at Christmas. But in the mean time while I figure that out I thought I would feature some things that I want big time. One of which I am going to buy can you guess which one? Ha bet you can't Hey how about if I give a prize to the one who can guess it. Also if you have any suggestions as to what my baking challenge should be let me know.
The cupcake apron I just love. Check it  and others out here .  carolyns kitchen online Then the cookbook Intercourses. I saw it one day at the bookstore and got to look inside. Great pics very tastefully done. The recipes look wonderful too. Would be great for Valentines. Take a look at the authors website. Intercourses
Oh and I just recently discovered Cupcake wrappers. They are adorable. I just love them. I want them all. What a great gift for a friend. To make them a cupcake and put it in a wrapper. You can check more out at these two sites. Cupcake Wrapture Shop  Accent the Party Blessings All!