Sweet Potato Pie

 

Another excuse to use the new creme brulee torch, Thanksgiving!
Sweet potato pie covered in mini marshmallows, kissed with the flame of the creme brulee torch.
I made a full size pie, and a miniature one. The pie pictured is the mini one.

S'mores Cake!

 
 For my husband's birthday, he requested a s'mores cake. This is what I came up with.
Graham cracker cake dotted with dark chocolate chips with dark chocolate and marshmallow cream frosting between the layers. Covered in a thick layer of the remaining fluffy marshmallow frosting.

This cake was the perfect opportunity to use one of our wedding presents: a creme brulee torch. I toasted the marshmallow frosting til perfectly browned.

Groom's Cake

As many of you know, I got married recently. I considered the idea of making our wedding cake myself, but decided it was too big of a project on top of wedding planning and working full time. However, I decided that a Groom's cake would be a much more reasonable undertaking.

I decided to make my groom a cake in the shape of a can of Moxie soda, in honor of our beagle- mix who shares the same name.

I'm extremely happy with how things came out, and my groom was so surprised. The cake itself was chocolate, the frosting was a sea-salt butter cream. It is covered with a layer of fondant and decorated with sugar sheets, which I hand cut to match the logo.

 

Mini Maple Whoopie Pies

Since I'm headed up to Maine this weekend, and because it's not far from my Dad's birthday, I decided to make him some treats. At his request, I made these mini maple whoopie pies. I've made whoopie pies before, including maple ones, however I decided to kick it up a notch. Instead of using extract to get the maple flavor, I decided to use pure maple syrup and pure maple sugar (finding the maple sugar was an adventure in itself).

The whoopie pie cookies have maple syrup and maple sugar in them. The maple flavor is subtle, but definitely recognizable. Staying true to whoopie pie tradition, the filling is shortening based and light and fluffy. The maple sugar replaced half of the powdered sugar in the recipe, which made the sweetness of the filling much richer. I was surprised to find that pure maple sugar (or, at least the kind I found) is more like powdered sugar than granulated. However, because it isn't purely powder, the filling ended up sprinkled with maple crystals. Those crystals nicely contrast the airy smoothness of the filling.

Valentine's Day Treats!





 For Valentine's Day I made some filled chocolates for someone special. They are Semi-sweet chocolate on the outside, and creamed fondant filling inside. I made four different flavors: Peppermint, Raspberry, Orange, and Maple. Extremely happy with how they came out; they tasted as good as they looked.

Inside of a Peppermint-filled Chocolate

Packaging for the Homemade Chocolates

I had some leftover semi-sweet chocolate chips, so I decided to dip some strawberries in it and add some decoration to the outside. I used three different kinds of sprinkles: red sugar crystals, X's & O's, and non-pariels. For the last pair of berries, I added fresh ground sea salt to compliment the sweetness of the chocolate and fruit.

Bagels Bagels Bagels

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Naturally, I've made a few goodies for today. However, as they are a suprise, I cannot post them quite yet. For now, I'm posting stuff that I made a while ago and haven't gotten around to blogging about.

Bagels. They're delicious. I've been playing around a lot with yeast based breads lately, so I thought I'd make some bagels. I've made them once before, and I've found the process to be a bit challenging; boiling a bread product before baking adds a new step to the process. But I'm happy with the end result. I made these with whole wheat flour, sea salt, and sesame seeds. Theyre not quite as pretty as the ones you'd buy at a bakery, but they were quite tasty.

Birthday Carrot Cake

I'm a horrible blogger. I really am. I've gotten caught up in so many other things (wedding planning, work, the holidays, etc) that I've completely neglected blogging. For that, I apologize. I may have neglected my blog; however, I am still baking semi-regularly. Most recently, I've been doing a lot of things with bread products and yeast. For now, though, let's back track to November.

SOMEbody requested a carrot cake for his birthday. Naturally, as most people would, he asked that it have cream cheese frosting.

Two layers of incredibly moist carrot cake sandwiched between, and covered in, cream cheese icing. I finished it with crushed walnuts on the outer edge. I'm incredibly happy with the end result, and so was he. It looked fantasic and tasted even better.