Happy Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day I decided to make mini cupcakes for my students and regular sized ones for my coworkers.  After seeing a post on Bake It In A Cake a while back I thought what a perfect idea for Valentine's Day.  Instead of tinting half of the batter I chose to use Red Velvet instead, and for the white part I thought I'd use part of the recipe for the cupcakes I needed to bake for the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club on the 15th.

Here are some photos of my mini red velvet and chocolate chip cupcakes and the heart in a cupcakes.

Hope everyone had an excellent Valentine's Day and for those without a Valentine's it will come, I remember the days when I hated February 14th. I think you should eat a cupcake anyways.  Off to make dinner for my honey. :)

Enjoy!

No Friday Favs this week

Cotton Candy Cupcakes

I have too much going on, which means I'll have tons to blog about after this weekend.  I'll post some great recipes and projects on the weekend.  So look forward to cheesecake balls, two types of cupcakes and other valentines treats (inedible). Have a great weekend everyone!

Cherry Coke Cupcakes

Chocolate and butter cream cupcakes

Friday February Favourites

Valentine's sugar cookies from last year

Yey, it's February!  I love this month because we have Valentine's Day and Family Day.

Saying that Valentine's is only two weeks away I thought I'd do this week and next in Valentine's Day themes.

Here are my favourites for the week

• Over at Dingbat Press they have this super cute heart print saying When You Know (you know), that's exactly how I feel about my relationship :) (sickening I know)
• Super cute conversation heart cupcakes by Hello Naomi. 
• An AMAZING blog post on the cutest Love cupcakes over at Sweetopia. 
• I have a "thing" for Bakerella, she always comes up with the coolest ideas.  The cutest little Valentine's bear pops.
•  This adorable card is from Dude and Chick letterpress, called We Just Click.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Friday Favourites

Another week has passed, it's been a busy busy one.  Not only do I work full time I also volunteer for Pride Toronto as the DisAbility Coordinator.  We get a lot of training which takes up one night a week plus the duties we do.  By no means am I complaining, I'm just pointing out my excuse for not posting more this week.

Here is my top five for the week.

• Cake hearts inside a cupcake, from Bake It In A Cake awesome, awesome idea! 
• An amazing new design blog by Izabela called Design Your Footprint 
• An great video for my new favourite song Hello by Martin Solveig and Dragonette
• A Cold Sneeze, got this super cute shirt yesterday from Woot, it's now on their reckoning wall.  Still super cheap at $15.
• I have to give another shout out to Herbal Infusions Tea Co.  Finally got to the store, what an awesome selection and amazing service.  Check it out if you are in Toronto.

Have a great weekend!

Enjoy

Sour Cream Cake Glazed Donuts

Donuts, donuts, yummy yummy donuts!  I love donuts, I know they aren't great for my waste line but they are a yummy treat.  For Christmas I was given a mini donut maker and the book Doughnuts by Lara Ferroni so I thought it would be a great time to finally use it.  

Well, the donut maker isn't really that good but the recipes from the book are great.  I first tried the regular baked donuts recipe which would have been good but due to the maker they were not.  So I decided to kick it old school (or true school) and take out the wok to deep fry a batch of Old-Fashioned Sour Cream donuts. They tasted awesome, my only issue was coming into obstacles along the way. 

Just one but probably the most important, my candy thermometer was broken.  When I was rolling out the dough I look over to the wok and there is water bubbling away in it, then oil started coming in the tube.  The result was my oil was way too hot and almost burnt the donuts.  They do look burnt but the dough is dark already so it's not as bad as it looks.  They were really yummy but not as good at Tim Horton's sour cream glazed.

The recipe is super easy to make, I would make these lovelies again maybe next time with some apple filling or something. 

1 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

pinch of salt

1/3 cup superfine sugar

1/4 cup sour cream

1 egg

1 tbsp. butter or shortening

Sift together dry ingredients.  In another bowl whisk together sugar, sour cream, egg and butter.  Slowly add the dry until the dough forms.  Put in the fridge for 15 minutes.  Roll out the dough and cut with cookie cutters.  Heat your oil to 360 degrees and fry for 1-3 minutes depending on the size of your donuts.  Take donuts out and drain on a piece of paper towel.  Once they are completely cooled dip into glaze (3/4 cup powdered sugar plus 2 tbsp. milk).

Rolled out dough

Oil

Dough circles

Cut out dough

Just out of the fryer

Glazed Donuts

Enjoy

Friday Favourites

Cupcakes from Cupcake Camp Toronto '10

I'm going to try something new.  I got this great idea from a fellow blogger and friend Cailin over at A White Picket Fence, I've seen quite a few blogs do this and I thought why not.  I spend a lot of time on the internet checking out other people's blogs and sites, so I think it's the perfect why to build some content.

What you do is pick a bunch of your favourite things you've seen over the week.  I'm pretty sure you'll see a lot of the same sites popping up week after week but I'll try to keep it diversified.

So here goes my first Friday Favourites (or Favorites, for you Americans).

• I love whoopie pies and I love Cakespy.  She has a new recipe for peanut butter Elvis Whoopie Pies, they look delicious.
• I originally found out about Bitter Sweetz on All Things Cupcake.  Bitter Sweetz is a etsy shop run by Karly, she makes these super cool cupcake dudes out of polymer clay.  I think I might have to get one as my wedding cake topper.
• Loving these Neff winter hats (toques or beanies), they look just like ice cream cones, they also sell cupcake ones.
• This slow cooker apple butter from A White Picket Fence looks delicious, as soon as I get a slow cooker I'll definitely make some.
• I came across this new business in Toronto called Herbal Tea Infusions, which has awesome loose leaf teas.  They had a media event last night and m:k:photographics was there to take pictures, great photos from the event were taken and some posted here.

Hope everyone has an excellent Friday and weekend!

Enjoy!

Walnut and Caramel Cupcakes

I had a couple of things I need to bake on Sunday for a going away party at work on Monday.  After making the whoopie pies I was quite tired and didn't want to make too much mess.  I found a box of Butter Pecan cake mix and decided to doctor it up a bit.  The result was these awesome cupcake-muffins (I say muffins because there was no frosting on them) that were super moist and had sticky carmel parts in them which made them really difficult to stop eating.   Unfortunately there are no photos as they all were out of focus, next time I need to use a tripod.  But trust me they are worth making.

To make the cupcakes I took a box of Butter Pecan mix, added the ingredients on the back of the box plus a 1/2 cup of dulche de leche (you could also use caramel ice cream topping or something along those lines).  Once all incorporated fill your cupcake liners with the batter.

For the topping

1 cup chopped walnuts

2 tbsp. sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup dulche de leche

2 tbsp. butter, cubed

Mix all of the ingredients together with hands to make sure all of the butter is incorporated.  Spoon about 1/2 tsp. on top of each cupcake.  Bake as instructed on the back of the box.  Let cool.  

The topping will sink to the bottom due to the extra liquid you added, I thought of using less water in the batter but the extra liquid made them so moist.  You can frost with cream cheese icing or top with some dulche de leche.  I found they were perfect with nothing on top but the choice is up to you.

Enjoy!