Popular Posts

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Cake Addiction continues...

Hahahaha! Yes. Another cake. It was for my birthday [MY 21ST!!] so I feel like it was justified!!!!

This one I LOVED making! The outside decorating was super fun and turned out totally adorable!!



The inside was just two funfetti cake mixes (I know I know. Not enough time for making my vanilla from scratch) and I attempted to do a strawberry poke cake variation on it....but I underdid the pouring and so there was really no strawberry pockets to this cake. Sad day.

 The outside was created with a base of vanilla butter cream frosting. The flower was achieved with coloring the same frosting orange and yellow and adding each alternately to the same piping bag. The effect was an awesome two-tone petal! For the center of the lovely flower, I utilized chocolate malt balls. I sliced them  in half (well TRIED to slice them in half lol) and placed them in a circular patter :)

Around the base, I alternately placed full malt balls and strawberry slices. As you can probably see in the picture, the straweberry juice started soaking into the cardboard circle. I'm not sure how to fix that...or if it's even possible to haha. If YOU know, please SHARE!! :D


Funfetti inside. 
attempt in the very front and  the lower right corner
You can sorta see the strawberry poke 


The pics are a little blurry. Bad camera plus bad  lighting equals bad picture. 

BUT it was still waaaay delish!! Perfect celebration dessert for my 21st!



Happy eating!
~MollyMarie

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

It's...............ANOTHER CAKE!!

So when we last checked on me...it appeared to the world that I had an incurable case of bread baking addiction. I mean, I made my fantastic rolls about 300,008,332,091 times, tried a variety of other roll recipes, made sweet bread, savory bread, and cinnamon rolls...and loved them!

Today, I realized as I have looked back on recent posts...I am suffering from cake addiction. It might be that there are a million birthdays and celebrations come summer, but regardless, I have made so much cake that I think it may be coming out of my ears.

But...like the bread baking...I LOVE IT! I get really attached to my cakes.

This cake is no different. A "Mountain Dew" cake masked in Legend of Zelda decor for my little brother's birthday!

Now I write "Mountain Dew" as such because this cake was for my 9 year old brother and my mother drew the line at incorporating the actual soda into the cake...which I'm sure would have been delicious. BUT I'm glad she didn't let me, because THIS cake was absolutely FANTASTIC!!!

 I used a lemon cake mix (I'm the QUEEN of lazy baking haha) and a lime gelatin mix to create a lemon-lime poke cake!

You bake the cake according to your package instructions and let it cool. Use a fork to poke holes in the cake but don't poke all the way through! Stop the poking before you hit the pan :)

Mix the 3oz package of gelatin with 1 cup boiling water. Stir. When gelatin is fully dissolved, add 1/2 cup cold water and mix well.



Pour the gelatin over the poked cake and let it soak in. Cover and refrigerate. I let mine sit over night.

 Decorating cakes is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART of making cakes!! This one uses my lovely and reliable butter cream frosting (I gave the recipe in this past post) as a cover base. I lined the outside with Heath and used an orange food coloring with the same base frosting for the writing.

Now...Link looks amazing! You know why?? Because he isn't made out of frosting :/ I'm a little saddened that I "cheated" and printed him out. *sigh* I ran out of time. But it turned out looking better than any measley attempt I would have made anyways. For someone else's birthday, I guess that's more important than my wounded pride haha.

 The cake was rich. Rich rich rich. It's the billionaire of cakes lol. But it was soooo delicious. I felt like I was eating gold. Ok. I'm on the money metaphor and tooting my own horn...but it really was very tasty. I plan on trying many more poke-cake variations with different gelatin mixes. We'll see how it goes!


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

STAR WARS!! (...more cake lol)

I am a nerd. I accept the title willingly and proudly. I AM A NERD! And so I spent one Saturday at a Star Wars marathon(it's been a couple weeks since...I know. I AM SUCH A TERRIBLE BLOGGER)... Of course I couldn't arrive empty handed...so I brought these beauties...


Just a basic chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting with food coloring paste for decoration. Her side buns are made from an Oreo cookie with black colored frosting piped around to disguise the white Oreo filling :)
 Princess Leia's lookin' mighty fine!















Love me, my friends do :)

May the force be with you
~MollyMarie

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

A Spoonful of Sugar...and Some SPRINKLES!

SWEETS.
I think it's my favorite food group. Actually, scratch the think. I KNOW it's my favorite food group.

And there's always one sweets recipe (okay okay...like every recipe) online that just inspires you to create...or recreate. And as I was searching online for a quick and easy donut recipe...I came across these...donut-pancakes!! And so I made 'em!



I modified the original recipe a bit.
Batter:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups milk
2 large eggs
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup granulated sugar

The only difference between these and regular pancakes is in the shaping! Use a decorating piping bag (or make one using a plastic bag!) to form the "donut" circle. Use the same rules for cooking normal pancakes-wait for the top to get a bit bubbly and then flip. [For the fluffiest pancakes, don't flip more than one. They'll get flat and won't look as pretty! Or taste as wonderful]

Glaze:
1/4 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
SPRINKLES!!!

Melt butter in a saucepan (medium size) over med. heat. Once butter has melted, stir in powdered sugar, salt and milk. Whisk until sugar has dissolved completely then stir in baking soda and whisk for about 30 seconds.Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. 

To be honest, they are just regular pancakes with a glaze. So in reality, you should use your favorite pancake recipe and favorite glaze recipe! These were VERY sweet. So if you don't like sugary stuff in the morning, or you're watching your waitsline OR you just plain don't have a sweet-tooth (who ARE you? And WHY do you call yourself human??? lol) don't make 'em. 

Pre-sprinkles and glaze


Jon, however, would highly encourage  you to make them :)


May your day be as SWEET as today's recipe!
~MollyMarie

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Graduation Celebration Cake :)

What begins with college and ends with graduate??

MEEEEEEE!!!!

That's right my lovely readers. I have graduated from college! Crazy crazy crazy. I actually graduated two weeks ago and things since then have been mighty hectic. Which is why I haven't posted in a while. I'm still thinking about my Avenger's dessert (the avenger promise). It's HARD! I'm just not on that level if creative genius quite yet...

BUT I did make an awesome cake (yes I made my own graduation cake lol)...and by awesome, I mean totally fantastic...if i do say so myself.

CHOCOLATE CAKE, VANILLA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING, RED M&Ms
           

the frosting recipe: HERE

The cake was made from:

two 18.5 oz devil's food cake mix pckgs
4 eggs
3 cups water 
1 cup oil
red M&Ms





I used two 9x13 cake pans and stacked the cakes on top of eachother to give it about 4" heighth. I used the frosting as a layer filling instead of making an entirely separate concoction. (Less work AND it tasted PERFECT! I win.)








The pictures aren't too spectacular, but in real life, this cake looked and tasted GREAT!!



Life is just the best!
Keep baking, keep creating, and keep reading! :)

~MollyMarie

Friday, May 4, 2012

The Avengers!!

OK ok...I know. It's a food blog.

But...

I just went to the midnight showing of THE AVENGERS!!!!



Oh gosh and golly, by the name of miss molly...I LOVED it! It was just enough over the top to be fantastic and it was so funny!! Much funnier than I expected :D

It was pure bliss watching Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evens and Robert Downey Jr. for 2 1/2 wonderful hours. Especially Chris Hemsworth! It made me want to run home and watch Thor...and then see the Avengers like 50 more times lol.

And so. I just had to blog about my excitedness!  Hopefully I haven't made you expect more from this movie and therefore ultimately disappoint you...but I love action movies. Anything with good fight scenes, nerdy one-liners, and dramatic climaxes is a win in my book!

But...the movie has inspired me. Soon some baked something or other will be revealed. Totally inspired by my lovely and epic Avenger experience...

So stay alert!

One hammer to rule them ALL!
~MollyMarie

Monday, April 16, 2012

Molly Marie Plays Catch-up...again...

It's another catch-up day! (I think the theme of this blog could very well be, "better late than never!" Blog title change? haha maybe...) I think so far, I have promised you cake, sugar cookies, and frosting. (If there is another unfulfilled promise floating around on one of my posts, you'll have to let  me know!) So, let's not waste any time here! 

Cake!

I wasn't lying when I told you I used a cake mix. Just a plain, store-bought vanilla cake mix. I find they make delicious cakes and they don't cost a lot AND I save time (which I can use for making better designs). A small exception with this cake is the strong splash of cinnamon I added. And when I say strong...I mean too strong. I think a teaspoon would have been wonderful. My heaping two...not so much. Haha. When I use spices on the fly...I tend to over do it. Don't make my mistakes. If you want to experiment with strong flavors, just be warned haha.

Wow. I sound like this cake turned out disastrously. It didn't!! But it would have been more pleasant if the cinnamon had been more subtle :)

          
                
                            you can see here the mass of cinnamon lol
         
         
         
         I think it turned out GREAT!! Only...like I said...it was a mite bit too cinnamony for my tastes. Next time I'll measure before thinking I can just wing it with spices lol.




 As you can see, I have two layers. One the cinnamony cinnamon  flavor, and one I kept just vanilla
It'd look mighty pretty in one of these :)
"Simplicity Cake Plate with Dome"

SUGAR COOKIES!
Let me just quickly say this: I LOVE sugar cookies!!! And you will too with the cookie/frosting combo I'm going to give you!! Sugar cookies are THE BEST for a recipe that always tastes delicious, but you can easily tweak to fit the occassion! If you take a look at an earlier Christmas post (here) you can see that by just using different cookie cuttuer shapes and food coloring, you can acheieve fantastic results!!



But enough of me going on about how great they are. Nothing I can say will convince you as much as tasting these cookies will! You'll have to make 'em to believe me!!:D

SugarCookieDough:

3/4      cup   shortening
1         cup   sugar
2                 eggs
1         tsp    vanilla extract
2 1/2   cups  flour
1         tsp    baking powder
1         tsp    salt
Mix shortening, sugar, eggs, and flavoring thoroughly. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt together. Blend the dry mixture into the wet. Chill at least 1 hour.
Heat over to 400 deg. Roll dough out (1/8" thick) on a lightly floured board. Cut with cookie cutters (3"). Place on an ungreased baking sheet. BAKE: 6-8 min. (I always go for the lower time) You don't want these cookies golden. They should be a bit puffy when they come out of the oven. If you over bake, they'll be hard. (But don't stress if they do get over done...the frosting fixes EVERYTHING! I'm not even kidding. at all.)

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:


2   cups             shortening
1   tsp               salt
2   tsp               vanilla extract
1   cup              water         
3   pkgs (16oz)  powdered sugar
Combine shortening, salt, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Beat at med speed of an electric mixer until blended. Alternately add small amounts of water and powdered sugar, beating constantly at low speed, until all blended. Beat 8 minutes at medium speed. (I chill the frosting to let it set more, but it isn't necessary).
This can be stored at room temp for several days or in the refridgerator for 2 weeks! NOTE: Prepare icing twice if you want to double. (If you double it will be enough to frost a 3-tiered cake! A LOT of frosting!)



These are so kid friendly it is ridiculous! I mean, as a kid, nothing is more fun than drawing with frosting. It's a bit messy, but in the messes of life we find ourselves. The same is true of sugar cookie messes!

I hope this post has filled you with a desire to make messes in the baking of life!
Sincerly,
One who has found herself within the mess of a kitchen
~MollyMarie