Yummy V-Day treats!!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

I made these delicious cookies to get into the spirit using the recipe located here...

http://annies-eats.net/2010/02/08/red-velvet-whoopie-pies/

They were really fun and surprisingly easy to make. The only issue I ran into was that the batter was a little thick and hard to get into the piping bag. I think it was because I doubled the recipe but only had one bottle of red food coloring. I used that bottle and a half teaspoon of gel coloring instead and it didn't make much of a difference.

See you for St. Patrick's Day!

Love, Irma

Happy Valentine's Day!

We haven't posted in a while, but January was just so busy!! Last weekend, Emilie and Irma made a birthday cake for their cousin Cara. We thought we'd double the recipe to serve 24, but I guess the servings were huge because the recipe for 24 made a big cake, 24 cupcakes, and 6 mini heart cakes!! We've never used fondant before, but thought we'd try it out on our heart cakes. It looked so pretty!! The cake was a yummy chocolate cake with cookies & cream frosting made by mixing crushed Famous Amos into vanilla buttercream frosting. mmm!!

Gingerbread Cupcakes!

Semi-homemade gingerbread cupcakes (Recipe from Hello, Cupcake!) and Cream cheese frosting.

Chocolate "Junkbox" bark!

When our (Emilie & Christina)'s mom makes brownies, sometimes she'll put a bunch of random things, like peanuts, m&ms, and marshmallows in them and call them "junkbox brownies." Today, Christina was making chocolate covered pretzels when Emilie suggested to just mix in a bunch of the pretzels and peanuts Christna had out and spread it into a bark. So, we did just that... and it came out really good tasting! Here's our original recipe:

12 oz of chocolate chips (use dark or semi-sweet)

Mini pretzels

Peanuts

1 tbsp milk

Melt the chocolate in a ban over a double boiler. Add the milk and mix until melted. Crumple about 2-3 handfuls of mini pretzels into the mixture. Add 1-2 handfuls of peanuts. Other nuts would probably taste good, too. If it seems like there's too much more chocolate than there it of anything else, then add more snacks to the chocolate mixture. Mix it all together and spread into a pan; refrigerate until cold and hardened. Break it up using your hands.

Add red & green sprinkles on the top to make it more festive (if you wish)!

Put it in a really pretty cellophane bag with a bow and give it as a Christmas present!!

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Using leftover sweet potatoes (organic I might add), I made sweet potato empanadas. I used the recipe below from allrecipes.com, but with a few variations. I used half whole wheat flour and half cake flour, I only chilled for an hour, and I rolled out 1 and 1/2 inch balls of dough individually instead of using a cookie cutter to make the shape. These are great with any type of filling that is thick enough not to leak through. I love to use pumpkin, guava paste, and apple pie filling, but I usually use powdered sugar for the guava and apple fillings. Delicious and bite-sized!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Empanadas/Detail.aspx

These Cupcakes Are Worth $400

This past weekend, Emilie, Irma, and Christina held their 2nd-annual Thanksgiving Cupcake Bakeoff! It all started last year when Irma was asked by a priest at our church to help her make a dinner (our church does a Dinner Drive where members make Thanksgiving meals, and on Thanksgiving Day they're delivered to needy families). To defray the cost, she asked the sisters to help her make Classy Red Velvet Cupcakes to sell to our family and friends to raise money for it. It was a big success!! This year, even though she wasn't asked, we all thought it would be a good idea to do it again. We baked a lot of cupcakes (some were burnt, so we made even more) and in the end raised $400 to donate to the Food Pantry that runs it all. Everyone loved them and it was for a great cause!!

HALLOWEEN!!!!!

So only Emilie made these... but Christina helped hand them out!! And they were a last minute thing so Irma didn't really know about them...

They were mint chocolate cupcake with orange buttercream frosting & sprinkles. Hooray for Halloween!!!!

P.S.-There will be more posts soon, especially with the holidays...