father's day surprise

Looks like the perfect marriage!


I had my little helper making his daddy a favorite cookie for his Father's Day surprise.

Oatmeal Raisin!




Don't worry...we washed hands first!!

scratch caramels

A few weeks ago I became obsessed with making candy. In particular, delicious vanilla caramel. After about 6 attempts to make the perfect caramels, each batch had its own unique problem: too hard, too soft, burned particles, you name it. I never got the perfect candy. Really though, no matter what the problem was, it was still SUPER tasty!




this is the batch with the little burned pieces:


butter, sugar, vanilla, salt...




salty caramels!

scratch lemon meringue

My boss' birthday was last week and she had requested lemon meringues I made a while ago. She made the request about four months in advance! I had lots of fun making these little meringues. Last time I made them, they were in cupcake form but I'm so addicted to using my new muffintop pan that I wanted to try mini muffintop lemon meringues. They are just like lemon meringue pie, but with cake instead of pie crust. I wish I would have made one for myself!

lemon & zest of lemon.


mixing the cake batter.


incorporating the egg whites into the batter.


filling the muffintop pan.


making the lemon curd.




the finished lemon curd.


first step to meringue. egg whites & sugar over simmering water.


blending the sugar and egg whites.


ah, meringue!




voila! lemon meringue muffintops.

hubs is easy to please

Photo essay will do the talking:



All this scratch baking and all hubs wants are Rice Crispie Treats...oh, the irony??!

breakfast goodies for united church

Every year, Paul's preschool hosts a thank-you tea for the congregation of the church that allows the preschool to use their space. This year, I am making the goodies!

I was going to bake a bunch of cupcakes, but then I thought, "Who wants to eat cupcakes at 9 in the morning?" Well, I actually have eaten cupcakes at 9 in the morning...but isn't it tastier to have some breakfasty goods?? (I did make some cupcakes though, ha ha!)

You betcha!
On with it!

Started with an empty cupcake liner.


I made two kinds of cupcakes. Brown velvet (which is red velvet without the food coloring!) and sour cream apple cinnamon. OK so that one is kind of my own creation.

Brown velvet just out of the oven:


Apples:


Apples & Cinnamon in a frying pan:


Apples & Cinnamon frying in a pan can you smell it:



Oh! I also bought a new baking pan. It's a muffin pan but it makes only muffin tops! (in more ways than one, ha ha)


here are the muffin tops before the oven:


just baked:


and the side view so you can see how tall they are:


I also made mini-cinnies! (miniature cinnamon rolls)






mmmmmmmmmm I love cinnamon rolls!




Here is a pic of the box I am sending to the church. It has the mini-cinnies and also some single serving coffee cakes. I didn't take any other pics of the coffee cakes but you can get the gist...moody shot.


I haven't frosted the cupcakes yet. Or the muffin tops. Will take pics of those after I'm done! I hope everyone likes them and they get eaten! :)

The best part? Seeing my boys enjoying them!




Here are pics of the frosted cupcakes & muffin tops. I just finished frosting them this morning so that they were freshly frosted. This caramel glaze is delicious!

coconut cupcakes and cake balls

The husband asked me to bake something for the birthday celebration day at his work. So, after much deliberation and quick overview of my supplies, I decided upon coconut cupcakes. I baked this recipe for a delicious Easter cake and was anxious to do it again!

The cakes, naked:


and frosted:


Here is another pic of the cute little birthday cakes.


Well, I had some cake left over, so what did I do? CAKE BALLS! Yummy coconut cake balls...




Delicious!