Lemon Balm Bomb

Last night was Iron Cupcake, herb challenge. It was my second time competing and I was nervous with the ingredient. Herbs.. hmm. I don't ordinarily use herbs when I cook. Weird, right? I just like salt, pepper, and garlic. Basil gives me heartburn. Rosemary is good but I don't grow any and never order rosemary dishes at restaurants. Sage is something I burn to get rid of spirits.. don't normally eat it. The list goes on.

Last year Brad brought two kinds of mint home from his work up in La Honda. One was chocolate mint and he said he and the kids called the other one "fruity loops." I liked them both, but fruity loops the best. It literally smells like fruit loops! The plant flourished in our yard along with the chocolate mint. We still didn't know the proper name, so last month when I needed to start thinking about my herb for the iron cupcake challenge, I looked it up online. To my surprise, it was called lemon balm. I had never heard of it before! Apparently it is a really popular herb for lemon teas and it also helps sooth bug bites and herpes.. haha! I guess the greek name for it- melissa something- makes reference to bees. Totally makes sense because there are always bees all over my plant! Education!

Mystery solved, I worked out my recipe.. in my head. Had no time to actually try it out before the challenge. I started by making lemon balm butter by mincing up the lemon balm in Brad's vitamix blender and whipping it up with butter in my mixer. I let the butter/lemon balm honeymoon for a few days in the fridge.

The weekend FLEW by. I overbooked for Sunday.. lots going on in the morning followed by baby³ shower in SF at 7pm (I baked choco cupcakes for dessert). I got out of the shower by 9, and booked it home to learn the Lost finale was 3 hours long! I planned to bake before the finale, but I knew I couldn't stay up until 3, and Lost had to be watched before all the coworkers spoiled it the next day. So.. I watched Lost (still not sure how I feel about the finale), got to bed at 12 (tg for dvr and skipping commercials) and woke up at 5:00 to bake my balm bombs. Okay I actually got out of bed at 5:30 :)

I needed a butter heavy recipe for both the cake and frosting, because that's where my herb was at. I went for a basic lemon cupcake, but only used half a meyer lemon (recipe called for 4 regular lemons) because I wanted my herb to stand out. I also subbed some plain applesauce for one of the eggs because... I was out of eggs, haha. The cupcakes came out great, just a little bigger than I had hoped for. On to the frosting.. I went for a honey cream cheese frosting, but had to find one that used butter (not as easy as you'd think!). I found something I liked and tweaked it slightly to add more honey and butter so it was herbtastic. It still came out heavy on the cream cheese side, but it was 6:55 on a Monday morn and I had to be at work in a little over an hour, so, I moved on. Decorating was... a disaster. I used a flower tip hoping to make pretty ribbon swirls. Well, the herbs clogged up the fine tip and the result was a swirly disaster looking brain. Herbs on the brain!! Haha. I garnished with some dried lemon slices brad helped me dry out the night before. They didn't look cute, but I counted on them being cute in numbers all lined up on the tray at Leland.

This time there were only 10 contestants.. a very low number. But, there was no lack of tasters! Everything went quick. There were a couple of spit outs, and none that I really liked- not even my own, haha. Although, I have to admit, mine was my favorite. The highest score I gave for taste, which was a 4/5, went to #7, but I don't even remember what flavor that was. It didn't end up winning.
Things moved quickly.. and winners were announced around 8:30. Most creative went to this really cute looking cupcake that was italian themed. 3rd place went to a cute pair who made lemongrass cupcakes. 2nd place.. WAS ME! Haha. I was super excited and shocked, totally didn't expect to win :) Very fun to win when you are sure you're about to lose. 1st place went to a woman who made ginger cupcakes with a rose/flower frosting topped with a sugared rose petal. Her's looked very good, but the frosting was like eating potpourri. I'm not being a poor sport but I really didn't like the flavor and didn't realize anybody else did. It was very elegant looking though and might have gotten high marks for the appearance. Also, I didn't know ginger was an herb. I still need to educate myself, apparently!
Had a ton of fun, especially because JoAnna came out for this one. She plans to bake next time. Now I'll have some real competition!! :P

My Lemon Balm Bombs:

Mother's Day

I put Mother's Day off a week due to JoAnna's shower. The only real reason for this was I wanted to make a cake, but knew I wouldn't have the time or energy the day after the shower. My mom and Brad's mom were both very understanding :)

My mom really wanted me to make the same cake I made for Molly's birthday earlier this year: chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream and raspberry filling. I have to admit, this is my favorite cake too. And I don't mean the cake I think I make best.. I mean my absolute favorite cake EVAR! Haha.

I really wanted to practice some rose making but ended up not having time, so I decorated with tiny pink flowers. I was pretty impressed with how nice it came out and that I didn't fudge up the writing. I learned and finally put into my normal routine practicing with the piping bag prior to putting anything on the cake. So now when I'm all excitable and ready to decorate, bag in hand, I do whatever it is I plan to do on the counter or my turn table until I get my technique down, then I start for reals on the cake. I'm also trying to remember to clean my tip periodically while I'm in the middle of decorating- it also helps avoid disaster. All of these things I'm hoping I'll eventually do without having to remind myself.

The Cake! and roses from JoAnna's shower.. they lasted forever!

Another Comish

So, I'm a big deal again. I have another commission, this time to make cupcakes for a bridal shower. The lady came to me through the same channel as my last "customer." She approached me by asking if I made mini cupcakes, and I told her of course! Thanks, Iron Cupcake!! Ha. After I showed her some pictures and quoted a very low price per cupcake, she told me her order:

2 doz red velvet
1 1/2 doz choc with peanut butter frosting
2 Doz choc with van buttercream
2 doz van with milk choc buttercream
1 ½ doz lemon with lemon frosting

That's a total of 9 dozen mini cupcakes! I'm kind of undercutting the competition here, but I have my reasons for the time being. I'll be able to charge more once I get up and running for reals.
The order is due June 13, so it will be a while before you get to read about how it went! She has given me creative license to decorate however I want. Ideas are welcome!

p.s. The lady who ordered the cake called the following week to tell me it was delicious and thanked me several times. Victory!

JoAnna's Bridal Shower

JoAnna is one of my most girly friends. She knows all the tricks, from hair to makeup to perfume. Her nails are always perfection, her skin clear.. she's just plain amazing and beautiful! She asked me to be in her wedding, so naturally her other bridesmaid and I were to throw her a shower, and I knew it would be anything but ordinary.
True to form, JoAnna gave us a list of about a million options, but Devina and I were able to pick out her favorite easily- a Kentucky Derby themed shower. Only JoAnna!! <3
True to my form, I immediately began to think of cake options. Of course the first thing that popped into my mind was the red velvet Armadillo Cake from "Steel Magnolias," a cake that's stuck with me since the very first time I saw the movie as a small child. The sheer COLOR! It was almost blinding!
Well of course as we all know, red velvet it super popular these days. I'm not sure why, because the cake itself isn't fantastic.. the flavor is a little bi-curious if you ask me... neither here nor there, and red, of all things. I think people enjoy it because it's so moist. Hands down the majority of people prefer oil+buttermilk cakes to anything else. I know I do!
I decided to go with a small cake and cupcakes for the shower. I like variety! I made the 8" cake the night before the shower, and it came out great. Next I needed to make the cupcakes, which was supposed to be easy because I already had all the ingredients out. I zoomed through and got the cupcakes in the oven, started putting the ingredients away and realized I forgot to add... the baking soda! AHHH!! Of all things! So of course the cupcakes came out like little red rubber paddle balls and I had to throw them away. I still needed to make the chocolate horseshoes so I decided to have round two with the cupcakes in the a.m. I woke up at 7, went to the grocery store for more buttermilk, and made only 12 cupcakes this time because there was too much to do. Plus I only had enough horseshoes for twelve of them anyway :D
The cupcakes came out fantastic, and the cake was amazing too. I'm still pretty impressed with myself, haha! I think people enjoyed the cake, I know they loved the cream cheese frosting, and only one person asked what the little "c's" were on the cupcakes.. but everyone else seemed to get it. Hurrah for successful baking!

I was so busy, a photo almost didn't happen.
Big thanks to Andrea for being a fab photog!

p.s. I have another baking commission.. I'll share the order details in a post later this week.
xo!

May Babies

We have four birthdays in the month of May here at my office. Of course, that doesn't even begin to compete with the seven January babies and seven Capricorns (holla!). But it does mean I'm not making cupcakes four times this month. As much as I would love to, there's no time with JoAnna's shower coming up.. and just wait until you see the cupcakes for that! Soon... soon.

I had another go at the buttermilk cupcakes I made last week, and this time, I made the whole recipe because halving an odd number of whole eggs and egg yolks is just terrifying.. not to mention nearly impossible. I also decided to pair the cupcakes with a vanilla marshmallow buttercream, something I've been really eager to try. Basically you add marshmallow cream to beaten butter, and throw in some powdered sugar and vanilla. EASY! And it comes out tasting great.. smoother than the other easy buttercream you typically find.

I was curious about the marshmallow cream's ingredients, and when I read them, I realized why it makes sense to use it in a frosting. Corn syrup, egg whites, cream of tartar. Doi! Those are classic frosting ingredients! I should really learn how to do this myself.

Oh yeah! This morning as I woke up, I asked Brad if he had any of the scraps I left him, and he said no because he didn't see it waiting for him in the cabinet (as far away from Fiona's sand paper toungue as possible). When I was in the shower, he came into the bathroom with the plate of scrappy frosted cake I left him, and with a mouth full of it, told me it was good! He never likes anything but chocolate! Victory! The fact that he woke up specifically to try my cake at 7 a.m. on a day he goes into work at 2 p.m. is just adding to my joy. :D

I didn't take photos last night, so I ran into the kitchen this a.m. with my phone and snapped the photo below.

Caramel Cupcakes.. hmmm...

I was bound to fail sooner or later. And as hard as it is for me to do, I will share

my most recent failure.

A coworker had her birthday last Wednesday, but wasn't in the office due to a training. So I planned to make her some cupcakes and bring them on Friday as a treat for everybody. She likes the combo of chocolate and caramel. Easy enough, right? Well, I was sick of making chocolate cupcakes. I really wanted to try Martha's buttermilk cupcakes.. selfish, yes. So I decided to make those cupcakes with a caramel frosting and a chocolate drizzle (that one was for you, Jodie).

The cupcakes came out great.. so YUM. But then I cheated on the frosting and made it with brown sugar. Still tasted like caramel, but by the end when I needed to add powdered sugar, I knew I was in trouble. Sugar on sugar.. halp. It wasn't easy to spread and didn't come out very pretty.. not only that, it was SO SWEET. The kind of sweet that hurts your teeth. Meh. Then I moved on to the chocolate drrrizzzzzzlle and whoops.. I made something that looked like it belonged in Willy Wonka's chocolate river. So soupy. I had no time or patience remaining, so I just went with it. As I looked down at my caramel chocolate nightmare completely depressed, Jane Fondant suddenly came to the rescue. I rolled out some previously dyed hot pink fondant and cut out little hearts. I imprinted a "T," "I," "N," and "A" on four, and called it a night.

Next morning, when the fondant was hard enough, I put them on the cupcakes. I brought them into work and learned Tina decided to take the day off to go to NYC last minute. HAAAAA! Then I opened up my carrier to find the fondant melted down into sad droopy hearts. One coworker said they looked fine, "but.. uh.. maybe you should take off the ones with letters that spell Tina.."

How sad! How hilarious! .... this is usually how one of my fails goes! Do not fret, there will be plenty more...

And oh yeah, the coworkers devoured them; a couple mentioned they were great with coffee due to the sweet factor.

:)