A Little More Baking...

I have been on quite the baking kick again. It's kinda nice. I made some of my triple chocolate chip cookies to take to Kendra's birthday party Friday night. These are packed with semi-sweet, dark chocolate and milk chocolate M&Ms. I say if one kind of chocolate is good, three is even better.

I baked up these cupcakes Sunday, but I will tell you more about them later. Just know that they were yummy.

I saw the recipe for Peanut Butter-Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips on the Brown Eyed Baker's blog a while ago. I never managed to have ay overly ripe bananas to use in the recipe, but tody I finally did. So I whipped up the batter.

I poured the batter in a lined loaf pan.

And I baked it up until it was golden brown and beautiful.

I have not had a chance to taste it yet, but based on the smells coming out of my kitchen, I think this recipe is going to have to be repeated.

 

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Baby Shower Cupcakes...

I love when I have the opportunity to bake for my friends. My friend Patti was hosting a baby shower and I volunteered to make some mini cupcakes for her.

I woke up early on Friday morning and decided to get to baking. White cupcakes and red velvet cupcakes were on the menu.

I don't know what it is about mini cupcakes, but I just love them. They are so stinking cute. I made half batches of both flavors and it was enough to make three dozen of each.

Saturday, after my run, I made vanilla buttercream frosting for the white cupcakes. They got pink sprinkles on top, because the baby is a girl.

What else can you put on red velvet cupcakes but cream cheese frosting. I just couldn't put pink sprinkles on these very red minis, so they went sprinkle-less.

It feels good to be baking again. I have some more baking to do this week, I'll leave that for later.

 

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Cupcake Craziness...

So I am one week away from the biggest cupcake adventure ever!  Well so far, anyway.  I got a referral from a co-worker, one of the people that have benefited from all the practice I have put into my cupcakes in the last six months, to bake 600 cupcakes for a bike rally/wedding over Labor Day weekend. 

The idea has sunk in, I have bought all my supplies except for the milk, strawberries and blueberries, and have a plan laid out.  I am more than a little terrified and have been loosing some sleep over the whole thing for the last couple of weeks.  I wake up in the wee hours of the morning and my mind starts racing, thinking about all those cupcakes.

The hardest part for me is that I like to make all my cupcakes from scratch, but for this I am doing what the bride has asked me to.  She wants 200 pineapple upside down cupcakes, which create an interesting problem since you don't actually bake them in a cupcake holder, but actually should save me a little time because there is no frosting involved.  There will also be 200 angel food cupcakes, with a frosting made from cool whip and cream cheese fruit dip.  Who would have thought that?  She also wants a slice of strawberry and a blueberry on all of these.  Both of these will be made from a box mix.  Oh no!  Again, she's the bride and she has hired me to help make her wedding all she wants it to be so that's what I'll do.  The final 200 are half devil's food with peanut butter butter cream and half red velvet with cream cheese frosting.  So I get to get my cupcakes into the mix.

It's going to be a busy weekend.  I am taking off Friday to start baking.  My plan is to have everything baked on Friday so all the frosting will take place on Saturday.  I am also planning to squeeze in a 5k, the Brookhaven Run.

And make time for Hurricane Hannah's pool party for her birthday.  

I am lucky that I will have Josh, who is also taking off on Friday, I am thinking he will be on dish duty and helping to keep me on track.  The girls will be out of school Friday as well, so I'll get to throw in some free child labor.  Camy is so excited and really wants to help me ice the cupcakes.  We'll have to see about that.

It should be a stressful, exhausting, fun filled weekend.  Who knows I might never want to see another cupcake in my life, but I doubt that.  If I can do this, I can do anything.  I am thankful that my friends have been so supportive of my new business venture.  I do already have an order for cupcakes for Thanksgiving, pumpkin with cream cheese frosting.  Sure hope they get that pumpkin shortage worked out this year!