Pretty Peach Roses

I'm a little bummed. I went to my decorating class this last Tuesday night and made so many different flowers: daffodils, violets, lilies, and roses. The daffodils and lilies I was especially excited about because I just love those flowers. Lilies in particular are my favorite.

The flowers... didn't quite make it through the drive home.

Really, this is okay in the big picture. I wasn't going to use them for anything. I just wanted to share them on the blog and now I can't.

Instead, I have these cupcakes that I was going to post about along with the ill-fated flowers. I  made these a couple of weeks ago (see how behind I am on blogging?) and they were my very first attempt at making roses.

I felt pretty good about them, being my first try and all. The Wilton method has you do them in layers of 3-5-7, but sometimes I forgot to count so I ended up with extra petals on some of these. It just makes for fuller roses!
Roses are so simple to make. They always looks so lovely and, with practice, I think that anyone can do it.

These pictures don't do the blue roses any justice. In real life they were a wonderful and quirky aqua color. I mixed leaf green and sky blue and the result was just beautiful. For the peach I mixed rose pink and lemon yellow. I had never tried either combination before. I was pleased as punch.

The cupcakes themselves were a delicious, moist chocolate. I didn't bake from scratch, I used a box mix. To spice it up a little bit I used the same method I used for this bundt cake; although I didn't have enough Bailey's to make them Irish cream-chocolate. I'm sure that would have been tasty. Instead I used what I had and used replaced the rest of the liquid with water. The Bailey's was just enough to make the cakes super moist.

The frosting was a simple powdered sugar buttercream. I added vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract and oh. my. goodness. It makes such a difference.

I have a big cake project coming up in the next few days that I'm excited about and I can't wait to share it!

xoxo
Stephanie

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons

These. Are. So. Good.

These cookie were an unexpected treat I made last week (yes, I'm behind on my blogging. Expect a lot of posts this week as I play catch up) due to the fact that I had shredded coconut in my house and I never have shredded coconut in my house. I'm thinking of making it a staple from now on.

If you like macaroons, I promise these are amazing. They may also be one of the the easiest cookies I've ever made. There are only four ingredients!

• 3 large egg whites
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 14 oz. package of sweetened flaked coconut

Looking at that picture you may be thinking "Hey. That doesn't look like a full package of coconut." It isn't, but there was still enough to make the cookies.

See, I had made some granola early in the week that needed just a little coconut and I had most of the bag left over to do something with. In case you're wondering, the granola needs work but it was edible.

The first step is to preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Then, in a large bowl whisk together the egg whites, sugar, and salt until frothy.

Yum. With a fork, or spatula like I used, mix in the coconut nut until moistened.

Pack the mixture into level, tablespoon amounts and drop onto baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes. I checked mine at 20 minutes and they were perfect. Know your oven.

Once they were cooled I made up some ganache; because I had some cream I wanted to use up and chocolate-dipped macaroons sounded amazing. Ganache is also ridiculously easy, but here's the recipe for anyone who would like it.

4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 cup heavy cream

First, chop up that chocolate as fine as you can. This will help it to melt more evenly. Place it in a heatproof bowl. Next, bring the cream to a boil over medium heat in a saucepan. Pour the cream over the chocolate and let it sit 10 minutes. Stir the mixture gently until fully incorporated. The ganache should appear glossy.

After I made that I dipped the cookies half-way into the ganache and placed on waxed paper. I did not get any good shots of this process, but you can imagine. Then they're all done!

I took these to work and they were gone within an hour; and that was even with the cupcakes that someone else had brought in. Those were not gone in an hour, but to be fair, there were more cupcakes than cookies.

xoxo

Stephanie

*recipe from Martha Stewart. Again.

Adventures in Gluten-Free Baking

I love having company over. It's a lot of fun and I make a lot of food. One of the greatest joys I get from baking is the happiness it brings to other people. Unfortunately, some of these people can't eat what most others can. Namely: gluten, eggs, or dairy.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a house guest last weekend that needed her own specialty cake. It was interesting for me to bake this way; very different. There were some challenges (guar gum is harder to find than the much more expensive xanthan gum) and uncertain moments (don't know how I feel about those fake butter sticks...) but overall, it turned out great.

 For the cake I used the same chocolate cake recipe from Martha Stewart that I used before in this post, but changed it up a bit.

Instead of regular butter I used Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks, almond milk instead of cows milk, applesauce and baking powder took the place of eggs, and I found some gluten free flour and guar gum. I'm glad I found the guar gum in bulk because I only needed a little bit.

Just a little note: I used 1/4 cup of applesauce plus 1 tsp of baking powder per egg. It worked really well.

Snack Attack!

Spring has sprung! ... Well, a little bit. Once in awhile we'll get a nice day of sunshine. It rains a lot where I live. When we do get that sun to come out we try to make the best of it. A day at the beach, a nice walk sans coats and, of course, barbeques!

I attended one of these little shin-digs the other day and when asked if I needed to bring a dish the host asked if I would like to bring dessert. Me? Dessert? Oh... I suppose.

At first I was thinking cookies. Cookies are simple and delicious. They didn't feel barbeque enough for me, though. You know what does feel like barbeque food? Puppy chow.

Not real puppy chow of course, but chex cereal covered in peanut butter and chocolate. Yes please. It's crunchy, sweet, and a great snack to munch on while playing Apples to Apples. Oh, and it's easy. Ridiculously so.

For anyone who has never heard of this snack (and don't feel ashamed, I hadn't until last summer) here's the recipe.

Puppy Chow

1/2 cup butter

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 cups milk chocolate chips

1 (17.5 ounce) package crispy corn or rice cereal

1 pound confectioners' sugar*

Are ugly brownies still tasty brownies?

Brownies may have been my first real baked-good love. That may be because they were the most common in my household growing up; that and chocolate chip cookies. Either way, you can't go wrong right?

It wasn't until adulthood that I actually started making brownies from scratch. That's right, the boxed kind made their way into my life and my stomach for many years. I may never be able to go back now. Especially now that I have the most adorable brownie cookbook. The Brownie Experience is so precious it's ridiculous. The illustrations are all hand drawn and the writing is all hand-lettered calligraphy. Most important, the recipes are delicious. I've never had a bad experience.

Sort of. I think any problems I experienced with the following recipe could be attributed to myself somehow.

Many of the books brownies have some wild ingredients (One day I will make the Coconut Key Lime Brownies) but since I promised my boyfriend (Michael) brownies when he came home I needed one that I already had all the ingredients for.

Chocolate Caramel Brownies
1/4 cup butter
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup pecan halves*
Caramel Syrup (see below)
3/4 cup chocolate chips

*I lied. I didn't actually use these but they were the one thing I didn't have and it seemed silly to go to the store for one thing. Although later I barely had enough flour so had I needed more of that, there would have been pecans.

Caramel Syrup
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup brown sugar, lightly packed