20 Dozen Were a Success!

Current Mood: Not feelin' too hot this afternoon...
Current Song: 'Round Here - Florida Georgia Line

So remember that HUGE order I had last week of 20 dozen cupcakes!? Yes, I finished it and no, it didn't cause me any problems! Phew!

Before frosting most of them

As a reminder I had 2 orders--one for my mother for a baby shower at her work and one for Kelly for a Greek wedding. My mom needed four dozen, 2 chocolate, 2 vanilla. The chocolate had blue vanilla icing and the vanilla had yummy chocolate butter cream. I LOVE chocolate butter cream. I strongly believe it's my favorite icing EVER. Sometimes I find myself squeezing the extra into my mouth from the pastry bag....

I mean....what??

You'll just have to try it for yourself, huh?

Kelly needed 16 dozen--four chocolate with chocolate icing, four vanilla with vanilla icing, four carrot with Rum Chata icing, and four red velvet with cream cheese icing. Yes...I said Rum Chata.

That is probably my SECOND favorite icing EVER. With a touch of cinnamon, it was pleasing to the eye and pleasing to the pallet. I was worried that having to add a decent amount of alcohol to the icing would make it runny. However, I just had to add a tiny bit more powdered sugar than normal and it was the perfect consistency!

On Thursday, it took me about 9 hours to complete most of the order. I worked from about 9am until 6pm and until I literally couldn't stand on my heels any longer in just socks. I finished all but the frosting on 8 dozen of the cupcakes. This was going to be easy peasy though to finish up Friday night.

Mom's order-it's a boy!

What worked well: Prepping the dry ingredients a few days in advance REALLY cut down the mixing time. It took me half the time to mix up the batter by preparing the large zip lock baggies of dry ingredients. I strongly recommend everyone to do this if you have a large order! Also, having a bowl with a pour spout helped me out a lot. The metal bowl that goes with my Kitchen Aid mixer does not have one of these so I found that it worked well (and saved time) to transfer the batter into one of my plastic bowls that has a pour spout so that I could fill the pans easily and quickly. Now, of course, this works well only for those batters that are super thin. When you have a thicker batter, you should use your ice cream scooper.

My whole dining room table was covered in cupcakes...and I mean covered. But once packed away for delivery in my nifty plastic containers, I was so proud of myself for completing my biggest order ever. It didn't take an ungodly amount of time and I learned a few tips to reduce the time even more in the future.

Go me!!!

Now, I just need to hear how they all tasted from Kelly!

Bring on my next order! Cheers!

Tip of the day: Wear comfortable tennis shoes when baking for more than 6 hours straight. Don't go shoe-less, that's for sure!

Carrot cupcakes with Rum Chata frosting and Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting

Kelly's order all ready to be delivered!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

So today is what I like to call my "special" birthday. 25 on the 25th! It started off great this morning considering I had my very own chauffer :) Thanks to my awesome fiance!

Anywho...

I am getting super excited about my HUGE cupcake order tomorrow! 16 dozen for Kelly and 4 dozen to my mama. I'm using some of my most favorite recipes--carrot cake with Rum Chata frosting, my ultimate vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting, double chocolate with chocolate frosting, and red velvet with cream cheese frosting! I think the carrot cake are going to turn out SUPER--they were extremely moist the last time I made them for my nephew on his 1st birthday. I was trying to keep it healthy, okay???

For my mom tomorrow, I am making just two dozen double chocolate and two dozen vanilla for her coworker's baby shower. The vanilla are going to have chocolate icing and the chocolate will have blue vanilla icing...it's a boy if you couldn't tell :)

I've got everything prepared for my long day of baking tomorrow. I've already gone ahead and prepped the dry ingredients in large plastic bags for each batch. I'm hoping that will cut down a great amount of my time.

I'll let you know how everything turns out! Good thing the 16 dozen aren't due until Saturday morning because I can always finish them up Friday. It will be a long and hopefully successful journey of cupcake making tomorrow!

Tip of the day: I learned the difference between cake flour and all-purpose flour the other night as I stood there in my kitchen hitting myself because the only thing I forgot at the store was FLOUR.

I had cake flour because that's what the vanilla cupcake recipe calls for. I figured you couldn't just simply substitute this for all-purpose though so I decided to look up the difference.

Most of the time, you should use cake flour when you're not expecting (or needing) your product to rise. This explains why my vanilla cupcake recipe calls for a large amount of baking powder and then some baking soda as well. I suppose I could have added more baking powder in the other recipes had I not felt like going out to get more all-purpose flour. But I just didn't want to risk it!

Enjoy that tip!

See, even Shawn wanted more of the carrot cake cupcakes!

Cheers!

New Vanilla Beans!

YAY! I just ordered new vanilla beans to make more extract. I'm almost out of extract (I think I started using it last August??) so that definitely lasted me a good amount of time.

I found out a fun fact today about what KIND of vanilla beans to use for extract.

There are Grade A beans and then there are Grade B beans. Grade A beans are often called gourmet or prime beans which are more oily and they "look better" than Grade B. They also have a 30%-35% moisture content. Grade B beans are BETTER for making extract and they have a 15%-25% moisture content. They are often called extract beans.

Since they have less water weight, less water will end up in the extract. They are also cheaper.

Needless to say, I made sure that I ordered Grade B beans for the purpose of making my second batch of extract. Also, always get the ones that come right from Madagascar!

Half pound for $30 is a GREAT deal. I think I paid $27 for them the first time around. You get almost 50 beans in the vacuum sealed pack and they last A WHILE.

Make sure you keep them in an air tight container and in a dark place if you have left over...which you definitely will after making extract (if you get a 1/2 pound). I made the mistake of leaving my leftovers at the old apartment :( You want to make sure they don't dry out.

Can't wait to get started on a new batch this weekend!!!

Cheers!


Facts and picture: Courtesy of Instructables

Double Chocolate Pretzel Espres...Just Read Below!

I am trying to bake more and more, but it just seems like my newly busy lifestyle doesn't support the baking schedule I used to have! It really blows considering baking is my TRUE passion. So far, September has been yet another busy month on the weekends for us AND it's now football season again. I'm hoping life will slow down in the next month or so so I can get more of my passion in!

Anyways...I decided to make double chocolate pretzel espresso brownies with caramel drizzle for our Labor Day cookout at my parents. Now you know why I left out the rest of the name in the title of this post. It's just too dang long.

I decided to use the brownie recipe that I have used in the past for our "girls night" party back in July. The recipe is from Epicurious, one of my favorite websites! When I made it in July, I followed the recipe and once cooled, I drizzled a homemade raspberry sauce on top of each and added a few raspberries for decoration. They were yummy! However, I don't know that I'd make them again with the raspberry sauce. Very, very sweet.

This time around, I used the same brownie recipe because it was absolutely amazing (All of Epicurious' recipes get GREAT reviews so how could you pass them up??) but I decided to put another twist on it.

I added pretzels and caramel.

Caramel is the best topping on a dessert. Period.

So basically, I laid out mini pretzels in the bottom of a sprayed glass baking dish. I poured the brownie batter on top, and baked for almost 30 minutes. This recipe says 20, but I found that both times more time was needed.

The hardest part of this recipe: Cutting the brownies! The addition of pretzels sure does make these brownies extremely hard to cut and keep pretty. I actually only let them cool for a short amount of time and cut them while they were still a bit warm. I placed them upside down on my dish and used my fingers to re-shape them. This made them pretty :)

HOMEMADE CARAMEL!



Super easy! I don't care what anyone else says! I used a simple recipe that incorporated brown sugar instead of regular, whipping cream, some butter, little bit of salt, and a dash of vanilla. I can't find the recipe that I used, but after bringing everything BUT the cream to a boil, I mixed for 6 minutes, removed it from the stove, and then added the cream. It didn't get thick enough, so I put it back on the stove later on and added some corn starch. This did the trick!

Random Tip: When using corn starch to thicken something, ALWAYS make sure you dissolve the corn starch in water first before adding to the substance. Use the same amount of water as corn starch. Be sure to add the corn starch slowly to the water while stirring.

I drizzled the caramel over each already cut brownie and they were AWESOME! Everyone enjoyed them at the cookout (besides my mother...she said there was too much going on with them!)

I want to try s'mores brownies next! MMMMM

Cheers!