Oreo Pops > Cake Pops

I have come to the conclusion I like Oreo pops much better than cake pops. Maybe it's because they're easier to make (less prep to do)? And maybe because I'm just not really down with the soggy texture of a cake pop when I bite into it. Not trying to knock the cake pops or anything - I still do love Bakerella! ;-)


Here are some Oreo pops I make for one of my best friend's wedding shower this weekend. The Oreo pops were just one of many sweets I made for the occasion.


When making them I switched it up with Golden Oreos and Peanut Butter Chocolate Oreos. Double stuff is the way to go with these! So much easier inserting the stick with out breaking it. But.... if you have to have a regular size Oreo, I found that if you insert the stick carefully, put a little of the chocolate around the base of the cookie and stick and chill it for a few minutes. It kinda glues it in place. Now your ready to dip the whole thing :)


Here's a few more of the sweet's I made for my friend's shower:

~Homemade marshmallows dipped in chocolate w/ graham crackers or toasted coconut
~Semi-homemade lemon tarts with fresh berries (I may put the recipe up later)
~ Coconut macaroons
~Key lime pie cupcakes
~Banana, nutella and coconut cupcakes

Nom Nom Nom....

Vineyard Wedding

This past weekend I had the honor of making the wedding cake for one of my best friend's brother's wedding. When it came to the cake, the bride was very laid back and open to all ideas when we were discussing decor. The colors of the wedding were purple and green and It was going to be held at a local winery. So, when I think of a vineyard, I think rustic.

One of the farms near the winery

Entrance to the winery

With all that in mind, this is the cake I came up with. It's quite simple but elegant at the same time. Thank you to Tim, the bride's friend who supplied all the flowers for the wedding and had extra for the cake. I put hydrangea and roses.

I love this pic of the cake on the wine barrel

...and a close up shot of the cake

I love the rustic look. I also love how much less stress it is to put together this kind of cake. The stress came in when I got the weather report for the weekend: 90 degrees with humidity. Did I mention it was an outdoor wedding? We had to keep the cake inside until the cake cutting. Since I was attending the wedding as well it was no problem to help set up everything right before hand. I forgot to mention, the cake was a lemon cake with lemon curd filling and white chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. Yummy! For the guests we set up a cupcake table with assorted cupcakes.

To go with the rustic look, I decided to display the cupcakes on different stands and cake plates. This gave it depth and added to the rustic feel of the wedding.

The flavors were lemon raspberry, chocolate salted caramel, and carrot cake.

It was a beautiful wedding! Congrats Jon & Angela! Thanks for letting me be apart of your special day :)

Salted Caramel

Preparing ingredients for a wedding cake and cupcakes this weekend. One of the flavors the bride and groom chose was chocolate and salted caramel. I'm a bit obsessed with salted caramel, even though some may say "it was so last year" but I don't care! Something about that sweet and salty combo.... It's great for fillings (which I will be doing for the cupcakes this weekend); a topping on chocolate ice cream; or just eating by the spoonful ;-) Here is the recipe which is pretty easy to follow. The site I got the recipe from has good pics for those first time caramel sauce makers (I will admit, I burnt my caramel sauce the first time I tried to make it).


Salted Caramel Sauce
Modified from Simply Recipes

Ingredients

• 1 cup of sugar
• 6 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• Kosher Salt
  

Method

1 First, before you begin, make sure you have everything ready to go - the cream and the butter next to the pan, ready to put in. Making caramel is a fast process that cannot wait for hunting around for ingredients. If you don't work fast, the sugar will burn. Safety first - make sure there are no children under foot and you may want to wear oven mitts; the caramelized sugar will be much hotter than boiling water.

2 Heat sugar on moderately high heat in a heavy-bottomed 2-quart or 3-quart saucepan. As the sugar begins to melt, stir vigorously with a whisk or wooden spoon. As soon as the sugar comes to a boil, stop stirring. You can swirl the pan a bit if you want, from this point on. Note that this recipe works best if you are using a thick-bottomed pan. If you find that you end up burning some of the sugar before the rest of it is melted, the next time you attempt it, add a half cup of water to the sugar at the beginning of the process, this will help the sugar to cook more evenly, though it will take longer as the water will need to evaporate before the sugar will caramelize.

3 As soon as all of the sugar crystals have melted (the liquid sugar should be dark amber in color), immediately add the butter to the pan. Whisk until the butter has melted.

4 Once the butter has melted, take the pan off the heat. Count to three, then slowly add the cream to the pan and continue to whisk to incorporate. Note than when you add the butter and the cream, the mixture will foam up considerably. This is why you must use a pan that is at least 2-quarts (preferably 3-quarts) big.

5 Whisk until caramel sauce is smooth. Add kosher salt to taste. Let cool in the pan for a couple minutes, then pour into a glass mason jar and let sit to cool to room temperature. (Sauce will thicken as it cools). Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Warm before serving.

Makes a little over one cup of sauce.

Ashley's Shower: Part II

Here are more details from the baby shower this past weekend. In the previous post I put all the food. Here in this post, is the decor, activities and games that we did for the shower.

Banner created by Erika. She hung it on twine to give it a rustic, natural feel.

Plain wooden frames I painted for decor. I did a bird ABC theme. You know it's hard to find birds that start with A! Albatross was the only decent bird I could find lol. These can be incorporated into the baby's room if they want :)

Bird house I painted. The tree was another theme of the shower inspired by the invitation.

Center pieces created by Heather using mason jars, rocks, moss, manazita branches, nests and eggs.

Bird themed library using books from the actual library and left over branches.

On of the activities was for each guest to leave a finger print on a tree of life canvas so the baby will know what great friends and family he will be supported by. The canvas was designed and painted by Erika.

View of the canvas which will be hung up in the baby's nursery.

Baby shower games. A shower isn't complete without cheesey games. We did the "mystery baby food tasting" and of course the candy bar diaper game.

And for our last activity we had guest decorate all different sized onesies for the baby to grow into.

Here is my onesie I created... of course!

It was such a great shower. The first one that I've actually helped to plan. We got such nice compliments from the guests and of course the mommy to be LOVED it too :) Congrats to Ashley, the momma to be! And thanks to Erika and Heather, we made a great team and it was a success ;-)

Now, as Jay-Z says.... on to the next one! June is booked for a friends wedding and a friend's bridal shower.

Ashley's Baby Shower: Part I

This weekend I helped host my friend Ashley's baby shower! The two other girls (Erika and Heather) who helped put the shower together, have design experience and I love putting together these kind of events, so we made a great team :) We have been planning for the past few months now and it all came together this past Sunday. The inspiration was drawn from the beautiful invitation our friend Erika designed:I love it! How cute is the bird family?! The theme for the shower was birds with the color palate of green, blue and orange with hints of brown and yellow here and there. Our friend Ashley does eco-friendly fashion so we wanted it to be very natural and "naturey" as well. In this first post, I will post all the food from the shower.

Our menu and the frame I painted to match the shower theme.

Close up of the menu. We had sweet and savory items.

Cucumber and radish open faced sandwiches made by Erika. I also made the plate stand. I will post how I did that later :)

Desserts included: lemon blueberry cupcakes, chocolate orange cupcakes, a small lemon blue berry cake, bird's nest treats, coconut macaroons and fruit salad served in sugar cones.


So many pics, so little space... click to see these larger :)


6 inch mini lemon blueberry cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream for the mommy to be. Notice the birds match the birds on the invite :)


Everyone loves these homemade coconut macaroons! They have become a staple any time I do an event for my friends lately. They're so easy to make too!

For favors we ordered swirl lollipops and personalized them with our own sticker to match the shower as well a simple bow.

So you can't eat it, but a shower is not complete these days without a diaper cake! I like to keep mine simple, so I made a basket to hold a majority of the contents. Products included all natural baby products from my friend's website Mom To Mom Health!

Gotta wash it all down with personalized water bottles! Label designed by our friend Heather.

Stay tuned for the next post for part II.

strawberry shortcake

Whipped up some easy strawberry shortcakes the other day for dessert. Still waiting for the strawberries to come in to season (definitely had to sugar them up a bit), but the cake part was super easy and tasted so good! Especially when served right out of the oven ;-) I added a touch of lemon zest to the biscuits and vanilla bean to the homemade whipped cream. The following recipe that I used is from Baking Bites. I cut it in half so I'd have just enough and not many leftovers.


Strawberry Buttermilk Shortcakes
Recipe adapted from Baking Bites
Makes just about 5 servings (depending on how big or small you prepare the biscuits)

1 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
3 1/2 tbls butter, chilled and cut into pieces
3/8 cup buttermilk (that's half of 3/4 cup ;-)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract Fresh lemon zest (about a half lemon)
Fresh, ripe strawberries
Homemade whipped cream

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

3. Rub in butter with your finger tips until mixture resembles coarse crumbs (or pulse a few times in a food processor).

4. Stir in buttermilk, vanilla extract and lemon zest until the dough comes together. Add an additional tablespoon of buttermilk if the dough is slightly dry.

5. Drop by 1/4 cups (use a measuring cup) onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Or, I gently spread out the dough to around a 1/2 inch thickness and cut out the short cakes with a heart shaped cookie cutter (or use a small biscuit cutter). I got about 10 heart shaped biscuits with the size cutter I used.

6. Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden.

I like to serve them immediately out of the oven. Slice in half, put in fresh strawberries, homemade whipped cream, and enjoy ;-) I'm definitely ready for summer and strawberry season! ~Cara Lee

may = baby showers

I'm just about finished my spring semester and looking forward to blogging once again this summer! I've been able to bake a bit more, a few cupcakes here and there for friends, but I'm itching to make a cake. It's been awhile since I've done one!

In the mean time I have 3 baby showers this month! One was this weekend that I had to miss :( But I sent over some cupcakes of course ;-)

Red velvet with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting
and homemade cupcake toppers

Next weekend I'm helping host my girlfriend Ashley's baby shower. I'm sooo excited! Here's a little sneak peek at the invitation our friend designed. The theme of the whole shower is inspired by her wonderful art work!

Beautiful invite designed by our friend Erika

We have been preparing for Ashley's baby shower for a few months now. I can't wait to unveil all our hard work next weekend! Until then...

M.I.A.

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post! I've been crazy busy with grad school, homework, work, and somehow I try to fit a social life in there somewhere. I really have not been in the kitchen to bake anything since my last post, but yesterday I finally got to whip up some cupcakes for my friends Stella & Dot jewelry show.

How cute is my new cupcake stand?! Goes perfect with the Jewelry.

Cupcake flavors were chocolate orange, chocolate peanut butter, gluten free lemon, gluten free coconut and to top it all off I made coconut macaroons too. I made the sweets to entice people to come look at the jewelry ;-) ....Well a few more weeks of school and a condensed summer course to go and I will be free! I also have a few friends weddings this summer and will be making cakes for them, so I'm excited about that!

Butterfly Bridal Shower

I had the honor of putting together one of my closest friend's bridal shower together this weekend. I was excited to be able to choose the theme and everything.

I knew I wanted something with butterflies and the color purple since that is her wedding theme. I went to one of my favorite sites for inspiration: etsy. I truly admire the talent so many people have on that site. In my search for all things butterflies and purple, I came across the Frog Prince Paperie. Paula, of the Frog Prince Paperie was so kind and personalized what was originally a birthday party idea into a bridal shower theme for me. Here's how the party turned out...

The decor/theme: butterflies, purple with green accents. I loved Paula's simple butterfly theme. She made water bottle labels, cupcake topper (I couldn't find the right size scalloped punch to make them as pretty as I wanted); bag labels; and banner (and more but I just didn't have time to use all the materials she created). The guests loved the personal touches it added to the party :)

The main table: I was excited the bride's mom had an area to set up the cupcake tower and cookie favors (made by the bride's mom too). I hung up the banner over it - looking back, maybe I should have hung the banner over the mirror, but ah well. I also added some flowers on each side.

The food table: Thanks to the lovely bridesmaids who helped put together the main food which included brie with hot pepper jam, spanikopita, mini quiche, hummus and veggies, fruit and more. I love the center piece I came up with the day of - green and purple vases .99 cents each at the thrift store; the L and B initials $1.00 each at Michael's; LOVE sign the bride's mom already had; flowers from the local grocery store for around $20 total. Not bad!

Desserts I made: As you know from my blog I love dessert :) I made lemon blackberry cupcakes, coconut macaroons and white chocolate dipped oreos. The cupcakes made a great center piece on the main table.

I was so happy with the final result! This was only the second party I've gotten to really put together. There was a lot more detail I wanted to add, but time constraints (grad school, work, etc.) but I'm happy with what we ended up with. I'm ready to start planning the next party! Thanks to the bridesmaids for all the help; to the bride's mom for letting us use her house and making the sugar cookie favors; and the Frog Prince Paperie for the designs.