Truffles 2.0

I got this great book from my mom and thought I would try one the their cute designs with a twist. Instead of using their recipe for cake pops, I decided to use my cake batter truffle recipe. As you can see mine is no where nearly as cute as the book but It worked. The decorating was much harder than I anticipated. I think maybe because I used almond bark instead of candy melts? I may try again eventually. I only made 5 of the cupcake shaped truffles before I gave up and made the rest into balls. 

See the original post about no bake cake batter truffles here

Happy Birthday Heather!

Cake Batter Truffles for Teresa

In honor of my 100th blog post and my friend Teresa's birthday yesterday I made these yummy treats.

I found this no-bake recipe on Pinterest and decided to give it a try. The recipe comes from  The Girl Who Ate Everything Blog but I modified it just a little. 

1 ½ cups flour

1 cup white cake mix

½ cup unsalted butter, softened

½ cup white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

3-4 Tablespoons milk

2 Tablespoons sprinkles

Truffle Coating:

(6 squares) almond bark (or white candy melts)

1 Tbsp Crisco 

Non-Preils

Beat together butter and sugar using an electric mixer until combined. Add cake mix, flour, salt, and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add 3 Tablespoons of milk or more if needed to make a dough consistency. Mix in sprinkles by hand. Roll dough into one inch balls and place on a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet. Chill balls in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to firm up.

 

While dough balls are chilling, melt almond bark in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. Stir between intervals. Once melted, quickly stir in the Crisco until incorporated completely. Using a fork, dip truffles into almond bark and shake of excess bark by tapping the bottom of the fork on the side of your bowl. Place truffle back on the cookie sheet and top with sprinkles. Repeat with remaining balls until finished.

I found that dipping the balls was by far the hardest part. Make sure you chill them. I didn't see that part of the recipe when I was making them. I think that would have helped a lot. 

Chill cake batter truffles in the refrigerator until serving. Makes around 24-30 truffles.

Happy Birthday LeAnn! (sugar cookies)

Yesterday was my best friend and former room-mate LeAnn's birthday so to celebrate we made her sugar cookies. I had a lot going on and I totally cheated and made it from a  mix, so you don't get my  sugar cookie recipe just yet. Someday I will post it, I promise. Little h was super excited to help decorate the cookies which I'm sure you can tell. I think her favorite part was cleaning up all the extra icing and sugar that dripped off the cookies with her fingers and licking them off. 

She even let me do a few.

Somehow after you have kids, even incredibly ugly sugar cookies become cute.

Happy Birthday LeAnn!!! I miss you!

Happy 29th Birthday Cathy

Today is my friend Cathy's birthday :) I got to thinking about how we had a birthday party for my mom who we couldn't be with this year. What if we had birthday parties for ALL our friends that are far away? An excuse to make cake? How could this be a bad idea? 


My husband used the new stand mixer I got for my birthday for the very first time and he whipped up a German chocolate cake with coconut pecan frosting. He's helped me out this week while I've been sick; cooking supper, letting me sleep late. He pretty much rocks. 

Here's the proof:

Happy Birthday Cathy!!!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my mother's birthday and since we couldn't be there, we had a birthday party for her here. We made the ugliest cupcakes ever, little h drew her a birthday card, we made a pennant banner, blew up some balloons and donned our party hats. My four year old loved it!

Happy Birthday! We love and miss you!

21-ish

My friends told me that I could be 21-ish forever, but I think there comes a time when you just can't pass for 21-ish anymore....no matter how much make-up you have on....

...or how good your disguise is...

...those birthdays just keep finding you!

Where we get our mail...

The CMR was the busiest I have ever seen tonight! I don't know if all the backed up Christmas mail finally burst through but there was a line all the way from the pick up window around the corner. By the time I made it half way to the pick up window, that many more people had joined the line and it was still going around the corner our of sight! Crazy! We check our mail everyday (except Sunday when they are closed for pick ups) and we had 3 packages today! YAY! I absolutely love getting packages. How often do you check you mail? 

(I love her outfit btw!)

Happy (early) birthday to me

Since my birthday is this week, today I made my first fondant covered cake. I have had visions of decorating cakes before (maybe I've been watching too much TLC) but I NO longer have any desire to bake or decorate cakes. This project took me about 4 hours. (I even cheated by using a box cake mix and pre-made icing!!)


I started out with my cake mix (strawberry because I wanted the inside to be pink.)

I greased and floured the pans and then baked it according to the directions. They looked great when they came out of the oven. I set them aside to cool while I worked on the fondant.

For my first try I wanted to make things as easy as possible. I planned to buy a tub of pre-made fondant from the store...until I found out it cost $20. Instead I bought a bottle of glycerin for $2.60 (which has enough to make several batches) and used the fondant recipe on this page. (p.s. this is NOT marshmallow fondant and it tastes amazing. you can substitute any flavor you want for the almond flavor.) It was pretty easy to make. I colored it a pale aqua. I do wish I had gone a bit darker but this is OK I guess. I almost forgot to save a little out to color pink for the flowers. I managed to save a bit just in time before I got the blue all mixed in. (There are also directions for coloring the fondant on her site, or you can click here.) 

After the cake had cooled the amount of time recommended I tried to flip the pans over and remove the cakes but nothing happened. I cut around the edges with a knife. Still nothing! I had my husband come bang on the bottom of one pan and HALF the cake fell out. He managed to get the other half out in one piece so the bottom layer of my cake is broken :( On the other pan he used a spatula and loosened up the other layer and got that one out intact. 


I used my new Wilton cake leveler and cut the raised part off both layers (I don't think I took enough off as I found out when I tried to stack them...oops) frosted in between and then dirty iced them all around. 

Then I tried to roll out my fondant. This is when I started sweating. Literally! I had it all rolled out nice and thin but it was glued to the mat. I tried rolling it out on wax paper with some powdered sugar. Same thing. I tried again on the counter. I used the rest of my powdered sugar. I was able to roll it up on the rolling pin this time and transfer it to the cake (barely.)

(see how it was sticking?) 

 I covered the cake but ended up with a wrinkle that I couldn't figure out how to smooth out. I ended up covering it with the flowers. The flowers would have been really easy if the fondant hadn't been sticking to the surface so badly. I cut them out with a tiny cookie cutter & shaped them by hand. I used the end of a paint brush to push in the middles. I painted a tiny bit of water on the back and stuck it to the cake. Then I put some candy beads in the center of each flower. I wanted to use some pearl colored beads I had seen but this worked out alright. 
Oh yeah, and there are the same number of flowers as the age I'm going to be this year! Figure that one out... 

 I would say it's OK for my first attempt but I think this may be a first and last attempt. (Unless someone can teach me the trick to getting it to stop sticking!!!) Little h will have to work on me pretty hard if she wants me to make her birthday cake this year! 

I kinda can't wait to cut it open so you can see the pink inside!! 

Happy (early) Birthday to Me!!