BOGHAD!!!!!!

That's right, buy-one-get-half-a-dozen! 

Order from me for the holidays whether it be Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, New Years Eve, or any other celebration you may be having this winter! If you do, you will be receiving a free half dozen cupcakes along with your order!

Here's what's on the menu next Tuesday evening:

-Vanilla bean cupcakes with dirt cake icing (you get a free, scrumptious, slimy, worm crawling out of it)
-Chocolate cupcakes with orange vanilla butter cream punkinheads 
-Pumpkin Spice "sugarless" cupcakes with homemade whipped cream and pecans--this treat is for Daddio's birthday

This is the best time of year, why not celebrate the season with Liv's Bakery?

Cheers!! 

P.S. Your autumn treats are meant to go wonderfully with a nice, cold pumpkin beer! 

Pumpcan Streusal Breakfast Delight

What first comes to your mind when you think about autumn? For me, it's the colors red, orange, and yellow, warm pies, cranberries and walnuts, pumpkins--carving and eating, and Halloween!! Who else likes when Hocus Pocus comes on ABC Family and we count down from the 13 days of Halloween on TV? Fall has GOT to be my favorite season as we pull out the sweatpants, cuddle in our Raven's snuggies, and watch our boys kick some @$$! What else could be any better???

Oh yeah...my Pumpcan Streusal Muffins that I made last Sunday!

So far this month, I've made a double layer snicker doodle cake with apples and cinnamon in the middle and a brown sugar cinnamon butter cream; warm apple dumplings; these pumpkin-pecan streusal muffins (get it??? pump-can???) and ALL have been a great pleasure. The apple dumplings could use some work but I think next time, I will be making apple cobbler which will be so much easier and taste exactly the same :)

Last Sunday will have wrapped up Oktoberfest month with my scrumptious autumn desserts, unfortunately. Next Sunday, I'm making a sugar-free dessert for my dad's birthday! He was the lucky one born on Halloween.

Anyways, back to my pumpcan muffins...I've never made streusal before (and in fact, I don't even know how to spell that word because each way I spell it, the computer says it's wrong!) so I wanted to see how easy it was. That's right, it was SUPER easy--cold butter, brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon! Mix it with your fingers to make it crumbly and BAM. Now, I ended up having left overs so I froze the rest in a tupperware. I read online that you can do this...now I just have to find something else to use it on! Perhaps a coffee cake?

The inside before adding more batter...streusal and pecans!

As far as the muffin goes, the ingredients were literally all that would go into a cupcake, just add the pumpkin puree. My friends that tried said that they were moist, flavorful, and one of the best treats I made so far :) I added some pecans and streusal in the middle of the cupcake then some more streusal on top before putting them in the oven. It actually worked out lovely that I made the original recipe (which made 12 regular muffins) yet poured the batter into a 6 cavity souffle pan and made bakery-style muffins! It was JUST enough batter.


I would probably change nothing about this recipe, however, I would most likely add more pecans next time and fold them into the batter instead of sprinkling them in the middle of the muffin. Raisins would also be a great addition...or chocolate chips! YUM!

It may look like the sides are burnt, but that's how the picture is!

I quote my friend "I think these are one of the tastiest things you've made."

P.S I highly recommend making your own vanilla extract. All it takes is about 25 vanilla beans sliced length wise, a liter of mid-grade vodka, and an old wine bottle. Madagascar beans are one of the best and you can get them on Amazon. Let the bottle sit in a dark cabinet for AT LEAST 5 weeks shaking frequently and there ya go! You will have extract for a lifetime and it adds some speckles to your treats :)

Schmapple Schmumplings

Who doesn't like desserts with apples and cinnamon in them!?

That's right...

no one! 

It just dawned on me while writing this blog that last weekend, I made the snicker doodle cake with apples/cinnamon mixture in between layers and this past Sunday I made a dessert with a very similar taste but even BETTER!

Sunday, I made apple dumplings for the first time! As soon as I glanced at the recipe, I knew I had to use it. It reminded me exactly of my dad's apple dumplings that he made on the cool, wintery nights when I was younger. They warmed our bellies up! Although, I didn't remember how cumbersome they can actually be...

I've been using recipes from Taste of Home because they always get great reviews. I should probably leave a review one of these days, I just never think about it. While searching for a scrumptious apple dumpling recipe, I came across lots that had chopped up apples, weird store-bought doughs, and even came across a "southern apple dumpling" recipe that had Mountain Dew as the sauce. Talk about weird! I may have to try them one day though...

Then I came to the recipe that sounded exactly like my dads. It involved full, peeled and cored granny smith apples wrapped up in homemade dough with the yummy cinnamon/sugar mixture sprinkled inside each apple before bundling it up. I made homemade dough when I tackled the blackberry cobbler a few months ago and it's definitely the way to go--I don't use any of that Pillsbury stuff, NOT IN MY HOUSE! It can take some work, especially when you have to mix in the cubed butter for 20 minutes to make the dough crumbly. But then you pop it in the fridge to become "workable" and voila! You have homemade dough that can be made into warm biscuits or used for autumn pies, dumplings, cobblers, bakes, and anything else that involves dough. All it takes is flour, salt, baking powder if you want it to rise, butter, and water! This recipe actually called for shortening but I've learned (thanks Mom) to substitute butter for that. I couldn't even tell you what shortening looks like!

I also added some nutmeg to the cinna-sugar mixture, plopped a teaspoon of that inside of each cored apple along with a teaspoon of butter, wrapped 'em on up, whipped up the sauce, baked for 55 minutes and there ya go!

It's actually not THIS easy. I only made 4 of the dumplings and ended up coring 2 apples and slicing 2 apples. I didn't have a corer handy, unfortunately, and I thought I was going to cut my hand off after the first two by trying to core them with a knife. Therefore, I decided to go the easy (and probably safest) way and slice up the other two. I piled the slices up and wrapped the dumpling that way. It made the two of them open up a little while baking, but this in NO WAY takes away from the warm, amazing, homey, awesome flavor once that fork touches your mouth.

Whether it's an apple pie, an apple bake, an apple cobbler, or an apple dumpling, it all melts in your mouth and is BY FAR the best autumn dessert in all of mankind. I am DEFINITELY going to be making many apple cobblers (it's an easier version of it all) this winter!

Next on the list, PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS!!!!

P.S. Check out Joy of Baking...Joy's blog has been named Best Baking Blog by Food-buzz and was nominated for Best New Blog in the Bloggies. She resides in L.A. and her cookbook has found a place in my home :)

Who's Ready for Autumn? This Girl!

Autumn has finally showed her face and I am SO ready for the yummy treats that she brings!

October brings the scents of apples, cinnamon, pumpkin, and sweet potatoes and those flavors are most definitely on the menu for my blog this month. To me, these smells bring a homey feel to my life--just like that pumpkin spice latte that I get from Starbucks and the apple pie that I eat on Thanksgiving. Even though I hate when the weather gets chilly, these flavors definitely bring joy to my world!

Last Saturday, we went over my cousin's in Potomac to celebrate his 21st birthday and my aunt had asked me to bring the cake. I had no objection to this! Even though my specialty lately has been cupcakes, I was very interested in trying out a two-layer cake for the...second?...time. These cakes make me NERVOUS. My worst fear is one of my desserts falling apart and then next on that list is tasting so dry that ya never want to eat something from Liv's Bakery ever again. I can't say that the last worry has ever been a problem over the past five months...but the first one has been present and unfortunately, happened this time.

I decided to be festive and make a double-decker-snicker-doodle-apple-cinnamon-party-in-your-mouth cake for the get together. Everyone loves snicker doodles (if you don't then something is for sure wrong with ya) and everyone KNOWS cinnamon and apples go together like pretzels and chocolate...yes, one of the best combos. I found a recipe for a snicker doodle cake and decided to put cooked Gala apples (basically the filling of an apple pie) in between the two layers of cake.

 I cooked the apples for about 45 minutes on the stove with a half cup of light brown sugar, a few teaspoons of cinnamon, and a slab of butter. I was thinking of adding either cloves or nutmeg, but that reminded me too much of an apple pie and that wasn't what I was really going for with this cake. I simply wanted to successfully capture the flavors of apples and cinnamon. And that's what I did!

I iced the whole outside of the cake with the brown sugar cinnamon butter cream recipe that is on the recipe above. I used my new prep bowls to mix two different colors of icing--dark brown and rusty orange (that's actually how it came out and was utterly festive) for decorations. The tan butter cream, rusty orange, and dark brown went wonderfully together.

My boo-boo: The cake batter tasted DELECTABLE but when I took both cakes out of the oven, I decided--the distracted dummy that I was--to let them stand for only 5 minutes and then put them right on a flat surface rather than a cooling rack. They were both also upside down. This was a big no-no as one cake cracked almost completely in half. Good thing I did this the night before! So the next day, I made half of the cake recipe and it came out perfect that time :)

Next time: I would probably put more awesome-apple-filling in between both layers of cake because when it was cut at the party, some pieces only had a few small slices of apples in the middle.

What I LOVED: The icing was impeccable. My favorite flavor is cinnamon (with literally EVERYTHING) and there was so much of this in the whole cake. It was autumn in my mouth!

What did we do with the ruined cake?

Literally MOST of my roommate's doing. He sat in front of the cake, used my left over rusty orange icing, and chowed down with a fork! At least it didn't go to COMPLETE waste!

Just Another Manic Monday!

Monday Night. Bored. Still got work to do on my recipe. Who wants cupcake minis!?

Tonight was going to be round numero dos for Liv's "Hazelnut Coffee Lovers" cupcakes. Except this time, I wanted to use my brand new, Wilton mini cupcake pan! Thanks Mom and Dad :)

I've never baked minis before so it was definitely going to be a challenge. Or was it? Basically, I knew ya had to bake the cupcakes for less time, so how hard could it be? That was really the only difference...

I had some tweaking to do on my recipe and it still is going to need round 3 and probably round 4 and/or 5. I now realize how writing a recipe can take lots of effort and perseverance. I am determined to perfect my very first recipe! 


This is how I modified my first draft of my recipe (in italic):

1 cup sifted cake flour—sift first then measure

¾ tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. salt

1/3 cup softened butter

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tbsp. canola oil (or full fat sour cream)

¾ tsp. pure coffee extract

2 tbsp. milk

I didn't have anymore sour cream so I decided to use canola oil (which essentially works the same and I'm not so sure which is better for you). I thought it had to be a TAD more moist so I decided to add some milk. Then, I balanced it out a bit with a little more cake flour. They STILL could have been more moist when they came out of the oven! I guess it does make sense now since I still kept the flour/oil/milk amounts balanced...should have just kept it with more wet ingredients. Oh well! That's why there is always round 3. I also added a quarter cup more of coffee extract which didn't really add much more flavor after all, unfortunately. They could still be more coffee-y! 

I baked the minis for 12 minutes and they came out perfect.

I whipped up the same hazelnut butter cream that I made last night and plopped a little on top! They are so cute, I love 'em! So quick and easy to ice and make a great picture. Going to take these to work tomorrow so I can get more feedback.