Baking With Love

I know a lot of people who hate Valentine's Day (yeah, yeah I know, it's been over for a bit, but still) and I've never quite understood why. Is it because you're single on Vday? Well, I've been single on several Vdays and I still enjoyed them (though maybe not as much as the day after when I would buy a shopping cart full of 50% off chocolates). You have TONS of things to love on Vday if you don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend. You love your family, right? You love your friends, right? You love your animals, right? See where I'm going here?  Is it because you've never gotten anything for Valentines day? Ryan and I didn't even celebrate it that day. I didn't get flowers or chocolates or a teddy bear and I'm still okay. Granted, he did take me to dinner for a 'belated' celebration that weekend but that's beside the point. I still enjoyed the 14th very much. I think Vday is a great holiday... even if it was made up by Hallmark for more money.  Blah, blah ...and that's the end of my rant!! :):)

Anyway, what I love most about Vday is the sweets. Shocker, right? The night before I baked cupcakes (yes, again- the same ones in my other posts but just added cocoa powder to them) to take to work on Vday to show all of my co-workers how much I luuurve them! I have to say, they were a succes. I wanted to tackle chocolate cupcakes for the first time AND wanted to make a great buttercream. I still can't believe it's taken me so long to get that right, which brings me to this: the best buttercream I've ever made... TA DA!

I used this recipe Fluffy Buttercream Frosting and changed it just a tiiiny bit. I added about two teaspoons of shortening and about half a cup less of powdered sugar. I was jumping up and down with excitement when I was done with this frosting. I kept yelling, "RYAN, RYAN! COME LOOK!!! IT'S SO AMAZING!!" The recipe I used was such a great one. The writer gives a few tips/tricks that worked perfectly. Baking Tip #10: Follow every tip that recipe includes, I couldn't believe how much of a difference those little things made. I found in the making of my frosting that beating the butter/shortening for 7-8 minutes was very important. It was white when I was finished beating it and I truly think that's what helped in the making of it, not to mention I used actual, real butter this time! :-D

Something else I tried was a Pinterest find: Cookie Dough Frosting. Sounds amazing, right? I surely thought so!! However, mine didn't turn out anywhere CLOSE to the one on that website. When I was mixing it, it started to look great but then I asked myself, "How is this going to come out of the piping bag? It's too thick!" So I added more milk. I guess I added too much because I got this:

Uhhhh... Not cute. I dumped it back into my mixing bowl and put more flour/powdered sugar in it. It helped a little bit but they still turned out weird/runny.

Maybe I'll save that for another time. I think I might try to make it by itself as a sweet dip or just something for me to eat by the gallon with my hands...?

Another thing I was super excited about was the decorations on my cupcakes. I wanted to make little red fondant roses but after baking/mixing for 3 hours I was ready for something a little quicker. So, I tried an experiment. I had mini chocolate chips for the topping of the cookie dough "frosting" I made and I figured they melted just fine, won't they work if I pipe out some cute heart designs? Nope!!! Baking Tip #11: They're more expensive and they're definitely more work but you should really buy candy melts. I wanted those chocolate chips to work SO badly but it wasn't in the cards. The candy melts harden very nicely and hold their shape whereas my chocolate drawings started to melt as soon as I took them out of the freezer. They weren't hard enough sitting out on their own so I put them in the freezer. I don't even know if THAT was a good idea. Haha! My designs turned out okaaay but they just didn't hold as well as I would've wanted them to. Next time, I'm definitely going for the candy melts.

Well, I hope everyone had a good Valentine's day and got to spent lots of time with your loved ones!

Until later,
Baker in Training

And here I leave you with my last amazing thing: MY CUPCAKE LINERS DIDN'T STICK TO THE CUPCAKES!!! How? I have no clue. I didn't put any oil in this batter, is that it? Everything I know from experience would point towards oil being the reason they wouldn't stick, not that they would stick. Right? Uhhh... I'll just practice more and find out! See ya!!