Halloween Bakefest + My Costume!

Hello Friends!

Monday is Halloween, and everyone know that when Halloween falls on a Monday, all of the parties fall on the weekend before! I was inspired by the fashions in the movie ‘The Help’ this year and decided to be a 1960′s suburban housewife for Halloween. I carried a plate of baked goods (cream cheese chocolate cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, and Toll House Halloween Swirled Mini Brownie Bites) the entire evening and handed them out to the other party guests! Photos below:

^^^ I made a ton to ensure that everybody would get a treat! ^^^

^^^ With my little/roomie and big! ^^^

Until the next batch cools (and Happy Halloween!),

Karina

 

Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Hello Friends!

I recently bought a very large amount of cream cheese in bulk from Sam’s Club and decided it should be utilized in a very delicious manner. Sick of the same old red velvets with cream cheese frosting, I began to scour the internet looking for recipes that included my two favorite ingredients: cream cheese and CHOCOLATE! I stumbled upon this recipe from zestycook.com that has a great photo tutorial to go with it. I used super cute skull cupcake liners and added a bit more of the delectable cream cheese chocolate chip mixture in my cupcakes than suggested. It should be noted that I LOVE CREAM CHEESE! Anyways, here’s some photos of my yummy treats:

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

Three Flavor Post

Hello Friends!

I prepared three different items for the girls at meeting tonight . Enjoy the photos!

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Whole Wheat Devils Food Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

Sorry for such a short post, but I’ve been insanely busy recently with school starting back up again.

 

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

Quick Update

Hello Friends!

I’ve been really busy with my internship this summer, but should get back into the baking swing of things after I return to Tech in late August. In the meantime, here is a photo of some Texas State University themed maroon and gold red velvets that Heather and I whipped up last night:

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

Whole Wheat Vanilla Cupcakes

Hello Friends!

Tonight was High Rider’s Girls Night In! One of my fellow High Riders Emily and I made cupcakes for the group and decorated. Some are chocolate chip and some aren’t, some have different sprinkles, but they’re all basically the same! We used the yellow cake recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens 14th Edition Cookbook but substituted whole wheat flour, and a basic buttercream recipe for our frosting.We used the silicon heart cups that Isabelle gave me and the silicon flower cups that Meagan gave me for our cupcakes. (The yellow ones are sunflowers!)

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

White Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream and Red Sugar

Hello all!

I was feeling lazy today, but still wanted to make some pretty cupcakes for the High Rider meeting tonight. I decided to use a *GASP* box mix.

But I made the frosting by hand using this recipe! I filled a ramekin with sparkly red decorating sugar and dipped the freshly iced cupcakes in the sugar to give them that extra oomph.

The finished products:

For some reason white cupcakes don’t expand widthwise as much as other cupcakes. I’m not sure if it’s the absence of egg yolks and the fact that it’s a lighter cake or what, but I was super happy to see them bake up instead of out because this meant that I could finally use my super cute cupcake carrier that happens to have TINY cupcake openings!

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

Jumbo Whole Wheat Chocolate/Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting

Hello Friends!

Today is my mom’s birthday! She loves chocolate, but is healthy minded, so I found this recipe for vegan chocolate cake and substituted whole wheat flour for the regular stuff. Keep in mind that my version of this recipe is NOT VEGAN because I added chocolate chips that have milk products in them and frosting recipe I used has milk and butter. It is however, slightly lower in cholesterol because there are no egg products involved.

The apartment is clean and ready for my family’s arrival in Lubbock today! Hooray!

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

Vanilla Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting and Peeps

Hello Friends!

I was in a springtime mood today and decided to make these for the meeting tonight!

I used this recipe:

From this book:

I used margarine instead of butter because that’s all we had, but they turned out ok nonetheless:

I cheated on the frosting and used the canned stuff to save time:

I saw the Peeps when I was picking up eggs this afternoon and thought they would look cute. Walgreens has limited decorating supplies, so I decided that the chocolate frosting might look like a nest. In hindsight I think I should have used a star tip to make a textured nest look, because these Peeps kind of look like they’re pooping! Oh well, at least they taste good!

Until the next batch cools,

Karina

 

My Personal Baking History:

Hello reader(s?)! My name is Karina and I am a college student studying Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management at Texas Tech University. I am starting this blog in order to document my struggles and successes in the world of baking! I think I’ll start out with a brief (actually quite long now that I’ve finished!) history of how I got into this delicious, time consuming, and expensive art!

My first experience decorating cupcakes was with my awesome friends Sandi and Shanna! We decorated these the summer after graduation from high school. I thought it was fun, but never thought I would be addicted to it!

Yummy cupcakes:

My Sophomore year of college I was given the task of baking cupcakes for a club at school and I asked our club sponsor, Mrs. Todd, if I could use her recipe and her oven to bake some red velvets. She happily obliged and a couple of hours later, I was hooked!

Over the next Christmas break I took on a feat that seemed impossible! I decided to bake and decorate a holiday cupcake wreath for an upcoming visit to my boyfriend’s new home. I collected all of the ingredients and pulled it off without a hitch! (Thanks to mom for all the help!)

Red velvet jumbo cupcakes, cream cheese frosting, white candy leaves, sixlet berries, deco sugar:

I made a Jack Skellington cupcake arrangement with the leftovers!

Red velvet cupcakes, cream cheese frosting, melted chocolate chips, deco sugar:

In the beginning I stuck mostly to mixes and canned frostings. I got a little creative with flavor combinations and adding pudding into the mix (tip from Mrs. Todd). My next big project was cupcakes to celebrate the birth of a friend’s baby girl, Ava.

Strawberry chocolate cupcakes with strawberry and chocolate icing:

By this time, people started to catch on that I was into cupcakes, and the cupcake books started rolling in as gifts! To date I have 7 cupcake related cookbooks!

I really got a kick out of decorating and began to experiment a bit more with flavors and adding ingredients that were not included in the original recipes. As always, I tried to tie the flavors in with the decorations.

Raspberry vanilla cupcakes with raspberry frosting, dark chocolate M&M’s, and melted dark chocolate icing:

The summer of 2010 I was really into red velvets, and my friends and family enjoyed them as well! I have made quite a few up to this day! Here are some photos of my favorite batches:

I didn’t stick to only red velvets that summer though:

Chocolate cupcakes topped with strawberries (my birthday):

Dark chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate M&M’s:

Sprinkles’ vanilla cupcakes:

Marble cupcake with marshmallow fondant: This was a disaster! The fondant tasted ok, but it had a terrible texture!

In Fall 2010 I returned to Lubbock for school and moved into my new apartment (equipped with my very own oven!). I got into the fall spirit and whipped up these beauties:

Spice cupcake with spiced brown butter frosting:

Pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting dusted with cinnamon:

Halloween themed marbled cupcakes with chocolate frosting:

I got kind of bored with cupcakes for a while and made a chocolate cake:

and some tomatillo chicken:

but it wasn’t long before I got back into cupcakes! Plus, I had requests to fill!

High Rider Garage sale:

Graham cracker cupcakes with key lime cream cheese icing:

Gingerbread cupcakes with marshmallow fluff cream cheese icing:

Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing:

Requested by Kirsten on her blog (www.triplemaxtons.com), souffle cupcakes:

Chocolate soufflé cupcakes with white chocolate cherry cream and chocolate sprinkles:

I got into the holiday spirit with these yummy concoctions!

Hot chocolate soufflé cupcakes with marshmallow fluff:

A big hit among my friends are my from scratch chocolate chip red velvet cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting! For the December graduations I was asked to prepare batches of those goodies for two of my friends, Courtney and Shae! When I told my mom that I was getting more and more cupcake requests, she decided to buy me a red Kitchenaid Mixer (for red velvets!) as an early Christmas present (thanks mom!):

With the new Kitchenaid, I was able to whip up tons of batches of chocolate chip cookies for my club’s weekly meetings (I never seem to take photos of these for some reason! Perhaps my next post?)

I also had the chance to whip up these delicious peanut butter cupcakes with nutella-peanut butter frosting:

My boyfriend’s roommate is a peanut butter fiend and really enjoyed those ones!

Over Christmas break I had the chance to whip up a batch of cream puff squares with my friend Kristin:

I also hosted a cookie decorating party for my friends and their children (baby Ava is picture here being held by her aunt Kelsey, her momma Leah is on the right):

By January I was bored with cupcakes again and tried my hand at cake balls and cake pops:

Blue velvet cake pops:

Assorted cake balls:

Cake pops:

For my roommate’s birthday  in February, I made this cupcake arrangement as per her request (red velvets of course!):

Since January I have mostly been baking cookies for meetings and home consumption. Sugar cookies, spice cookies, chocolate chip cookies, buried cherry chocolate cookies, you name it! (I really need to start photographing those little buggers!) This brings me to today. Today I was wandering around my apartment looking for something to do and I stumbled upon a very simple muffin recipe in my BH&G cookbook. I added chocolate chips and these yummy artifacts were the result:

I hope that you enjoyed my little history of my adventures in baking, and I would love if you kept up with my oven related exploits in the future! I plan on updating at least once a week with a yummy treat. Wish me luck!

Until the next batch cools,

Karina