Busy Night
I decided to break out the bread machine this past Tuesday night. At work it was our teams turn to provide snacks for Hump Day. Hump day is held every Wednesday and its a breakfast where each team takes turn brining breakfast items. Personally… I love it! Snacks, visits, snacks… where do you go wrong?

Anyways, I had a grand idea to make these adorable cinnamon buns pull apart muffin things. They may have been the most beautiful little things I have ever seen. My buns never turn out this fluffy, usually they are kind of heavy, but I'm getting the hang of it.  Anyways, here are the steps to make these pull aparts.

Make your favourite bread machine dough recipe. There’s a sweet bread recipe in my book that is my go to for cinnamon buns, my machine also has a dough setting so it mixes and does the first rising cycle.

When it’s done it’s first rising cycle take it out and cut little thumb sized balls. Roll each ball in butte, and then cinnamon and brown sugar.

Place 4-5 dough balls in each muffin tin ( I sprayed mine just to be safe, everything came out easy)

Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place ( I took the dog for a run, maybe 45 minutes… I just kind of guessed they doubled in size)

Bake at 350 degrees until they are golden brown on top.

Let cool until you can handle them. I topped them off with cream cheese icing that kind of melted into all the cracks…. ENJOY!

So really, this is kind of time consuming but the bread machine did most of the work, but I also had a cake order for the next day as well. My friends last day before going on maternity leave was on Wednesday so I needed to come up with something gender neutral… I think yellow is the only gender neutral colour… red maybe, orange, I don't know yellow seemed to fit the bill.

This is what I came up with. The bottom layer is chocolate cake filled with chocolate cream and fresh strawberries (yum!) and the top layer and giant cupcake is red velvet.

All and all it was a pretty busy 4 hours after work. Cinnamon pull aparts, run the dog, and bake and decorate a cake. Remind me not to do that again! It took me forever to wind down to go to bed, but everything turned out great. At least I think it did. I didn't eat ANY of this. Seriously, wedding dress diet is killing me. But I made up for it today because I had to go to Picture Butte for a dentist appointment and had to make a stop at the bakery there… 3 glazed donuts and a pepperoni cheese bun later I think it all balanced out.

(I should have added a picture of my happy little dog that actually got walked for a change in the corner to sum up the night but the baked goodies will have to do.)

Big and Small

 

 

 

This is the first post I am writing using ‘Windows Live Writer.’ It’s amazing. It is changing my blogging experience for sure! It’s so easy to drag and drop in pictures… way better then the whole blogger thing! Anyways, enough geeky-ness(?).

These cupcakes were ordered only in regular size but as usual i had extra batter and icing so through together some mini’s for Corey to eat. They are just so darn cute together. I also looove the picture of all 24 lined up with their fluffy blue tops… its makes me happy!

Cupcakes in a Row

If I could choose anything to do for the rest of my life it would be to pipe icing on cupcakes. I want someone to give me a trays and trays of unfrosted cupcakes and a never ending piping bag and let me at it. There’s something relaxing about the motion of piping fluffy clouds of icing on top of a little cakes that I love… until the bag runs out and I have to refill it, that’s not so fun… messy, sticky, awkward. Not cool.

I always watch DC Cupcakes and watch them do this and never have to fill their own bags… they’ve got it figured out… Shout out to the DC Cupcakes ladies, I could so do the signature swirl… just saying… if you ever need a hand ;).  

These cupcakes were for the cheer team banquet that I just posted on. Liat requested velvet because she loves them. So I’m of course cool with that because red velvet is awesome… until I saw a recipe for… wait for it… wait for it… Chocolate Chip COOKIE DOUGH Cupcakes, Shut. Up. As soon as Corey and I bit into one we both decided they were life changing. Seriously, cookie dough inside a cupcake is awesome… not too sweet, a little treat in the middle. It doesn’t get any better than that!

The third cupcake I made was my ever popular Chocolate cake with a cream cheese icing. Classic.


These pictures make me happy, and they were fun to make… except when I had to stop and fill the piping bag.

Bad Blogger and Lakie Cheer

Every single day my morning routine involves checking all of the fantastic blogs that I follow... Joy the Baker, Our Best Bites, The Girl Who ate Everything, Cupcakes Take the Cake, etc. I envy how well these women can all write down their adventures in baking and cooking and make it so interesting... and then I remember... oh ya, I have one of these... I wish it was as cool as theirs. I guess getting good would actually involve writing something along with the pictures I manage to post every once and a while. Honestly, you guys (and by you guys, I mean probably just my mother and Corey who read this blog… hi mom, hi Corey) are missing out on a lot because I just simply forget to take pictures of some cake creations... and that's stupid... like really!

Anyways, so after sitting through 7+ hours of a Professional Learning Day today we heard this motivational speaker talking about lots of random things but the part that stuck out to me was that if you want something you have to go for it or else how will it happen… Duh. My mind immediately goes to "I should open a bakery" and then I shake my head and realize that honestly, I wouldn’t enjoy doing that if it was my job, I know I wouldn’t, it would be stressful and I don’t do stressful, like, at all.

So sitting there during the second speaker my mind wandered into a million different places thinking about why I couldn’t answer the questions she was asking of us about our 'happiness'... I’m so not that deep. Even people that are all philosophical like that kind of make me laugh, but whatever... we all need something... I have buttercream. Anyways I though one of the highlights of my day is checking the blogs… and that I should try… so here I am trying.
From this moment I dedicate to writing something down along with all the pictures I post. And now that you have read this (mom Corey) you have to hold me to it. So here it goes.

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This cake was made for the Lakie Cheer Team. If you haven’t heard about how amazing these girls are you are living under a rock… they are CRAZY awesome. Crazy. I have even told their amazing coach Liat that I would never be on her cheer squad as there is not enough money in the world to make me focus that hard on something. Liat is amazing like I can’t even explain. I love her. Love. Love. Love. The amount of time and energy that goes into this team is ridiculous… and she’s preggers… and never misses a beat. Love.

I actually had the opportunity to go with these girls on a trip to Phoenix where they competed against loads of American teams. The girls ROCKED it and won like that champs they are. They also got to perform at a Phoenix Suns basketball game, so cool… and they ROCKED it. It was a great experience to get to know these girls outside of the school setting and see what super athletes they are.

Anyways, so that brings me to the cake. After what I think is 7 months of cheer these girls finally wrapped up their season with a banquet which of course required dessert. Liat gave me the idea to do a horn with the girls names on it which is so cute. Each star has a name of a girl on the squad written in edible ink (ps, my new favourite cake decorating tool). She also request it to be tie dye inside. Super fun! I also made 7 dozen cupcakes to go along with the cake (read in next post).