So you may or may not recall that a while ago I made a post about pocket pies. I said I had gone and got one of the molds from Williams-Sonoma, and would be trying it out soon. Apparently by “soon” I meant five and a half months.. since I finally got around to doing it yesterday!
Now I’m not going to lie; I cheated. I bought Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust and a can of cherry pie filling. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never made my own crust, and I know that some recipes can be really tricky and hard to work with. And for a weeknight spur of the moment baking adventure, “can be really tricky” isn’t really my idea of a good time. Stop judging me.
So here’s what I was working with:

Apparently the can of filling wasn’t worth including here. Or I forgot.
And.. well instead of giving every picture an intro, I’ll just put them all up, and caption them as necessary. So here we go:

Cutting out the shapes. That little leaf comes out to be a vent for the top crust! Smart!

Filling. The box for the molds says 1-2tbsp. I say NOT ENOUGH. I’d add AT LEAST 3 next time. Or more. Mmmm pie!

So the crust didn’t want to stick to itself, but DID want to stick to the molds.. you’ll see what happened to the first one in a second. But if you ever try these.. flour in the bottom mold, a bit of water around the edge of the bottom crust before closing.

See the one on the left? That’s the first one. See the nice one on the right? Number 2. Much nicer!

Don’t worry, number one still turned out okay! Just a bit leaky around the edges!
So there you have it, pocket pies. Super easy too! I can’t wait to do it again, with more filling, and no repeats of pie #1.
Tags: pie
Posted in Baking Adventures | 4 Comments »
We had Matt‘s family over for dinner yesterday (because we have a table to eat at for the first time in 3-4 years!), so I made some Easter themed cupcakes to serve for dessert. Matt’s mom got me some Wilton Silly-Critters! Silicone Baking Cups for Christmas that I’ve been looking for an excuse to use, so I figured why not make bunny cupcakes, with feet!?

As you can see, there were a few issues with getting the ears to stay on…

Side view so you can see the construction: Mini cupcake for the head, regular cupcake in special cupcake liner for body, and a mini-marshmallow tail! Plus icing all over the place for a bonus.
But since I only had four of the footed liners, and there were seven of us for dinner, I decided to make some “nests” on the other cupcakes.
The “nests” were supposed to be made from pieces of a Flake bar, but I couldn’t find one, so I just used chocolate sprinkles instead. Not the same effect, but it got the point across pretty well, I thought. And of course the eggs were the best Easter (and as of this year, year-round) chocolate ever, Mini Eggs (which appear to only be available in Canada.. I feel sorry for the rest of the world if you really can’t get them anywhere else)!
And the main display:

We put the rest of the Mini Eggs and some regular chocolate eggs on the middle tier to fill it out since the supposedly adjustable tiers got screwed together too tight and we can’t take it apart to take out the middle.
Did you make any fun Easter treats?
Tags: animals, cupcakes, Easter, seasonal
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So now that it’s almost April and I’m planning Easter cupcakes, I decided I should finally get around to posting the Valentine’s Day cupcakes I made. Admittedly, I wasn’t originally going to post these. I feel like they’re a little on the sloppy side. But hey, I made’em so I’ll post’em – I feel like otherwise this blog is sort of just “cute” stuff (which I missed last week.. again).
Valentine’s day fell on a long weekend (Family day), so Matt and I went Stateside to go snowboarding with our friends Lyndsey and Dave at Kissing Bridge and Holiday Valley. Since it was Valentine’s day and we were two couples, I figured I’d make us some lovey dovey cupcakes!
They’re my standard vegan vanilla cupcakes with vegan vanilla buttercream.
Tags: cupcakes, seasonal, valentine's, vegan
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Alright, so I didn’t post last week. I’m dumb and half forgot, and half didn’t feel like it… I’m the worst. BUT I’m posting this week, so we’re cool, right? Right.
So here’s what’s cute this week (and it was last week too.. but I forgot about it because I’m apparently very forgetful): M-Cups – measuring cups that are also matryoshka dolls (aka Russian nesting dolls). I loved them so much that I bought them from Urban Outfitters last weekend! Each half of each doll is a different measurement (1 cup, 3/4 cup, 2/3 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup and 1/4 cup). See the cuteness for yourself:
I just LOVE them!!
Tags: cute, porducts
Posted in How cute is this?! | 1 Comment »
I saw this on All Cupcakes All the Time (aka Only Cupcakes) a little while ago. It’s so awesome!
It was made by Treat NYC. It’s so perfect! I love it!
Tags: cupcakes, cute
Posted in How cute is this?! | 1 Comment »
Look at this cute idea for seating cards. So cute for a wedding, or any other dinner/party that you need to have place cards.

via Once Wed.
It’s such a simple idea that you can do yourself, and I think it looks really elegant (and cute! haha).
Tags: cute, wedding
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If you happen to follow me on twitter, then you may have seen me mention making maple cupcakes for a party to welcome our friend’s new wife to Canada. Get it? Maple cupcakes.. Canada.. yeah, you get it.
I’d never made any recipes using anything other than sugar for sweetness, so this was a change. Not so much for the cupcakes as for the icing; I never really realized, but icing made with icing sugar has a bit of a crystally texture to it – you can kind of feel the sugar when chewing it. But since there was no sugar, the icing was super smooth and silky.
I also thought it would be neat to make maple candies to top the cupcakes with. I bought maple leaf molds to keep with the theme. Unfortunately it didn’t work out exactly as planned – I’d never made candy before and don’t know my stove too well yet (boiling water is one thing, but I haven’t used it much besides on the high setting), so I think I had the element too hot and ended up rushing it a little. The syrup ended up getting a little crystallized once it cooled (although maybe that’s what it was supposed to do..), and on top of that, it wouldn’t come out the molds. I only managed to get one out intact. But it still tasted good and I figured chunks of it would still work on top!
With the maple leaf shaped maple candy:
And with a non-leaf-shaped chunk of maple candy:
I wasn’t thrilled with the taste of the batter or even the icing when I first made them, but once the cupcakes were baked with the toasted walnuts added, and I guess after the icing sat overnight, they turned out to be pretty tasty! Which was a good thing, because real maple syrup costs A LOT, so it would have been sad if I’d wasted it all!
Tags: cupcakes, vegan
Posted in Baking Adventures | 1 Comment »
Look how super cute these kawaii bear cupcakes made by flickr user paperlilies are! And not only are they super cute on the outside, but they’re rainbow-y on the inside! I’ve done something similar to this in cake form, but my colours were nowhere near as bright as these.
These two are my favourites (especially the green one!!), but there are a ton more here.
Oh my goodness, it’s almost too much cuteness for me!!!
And in this shot (coincidentally of the green one again…) you can see the colours of the cake:
And a cross section for an even better look:
Tags: animals, cupcakes, cute
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Not much time for a post tonight – the season premiere for LOST is starting right now! (Thank goodness for PVRs.. and 1 hour recaps).
So here’s what’s cute this week – a tattoo of a bird with a cupcake on its head! If you didn’t guess it from naming the company “Little Bird Bakery”, I love birds (and happen to have a bird tattoo of my own!), and I think it goes without saying that I love cupcakes!
Soooo cute! I’m super jealous!!
Now stop reading this and go watch LOST already!!!!
Tags: cupcakes, cute, tattoo
Posted in How cute is this?! | 1 Comment »
I still subscribe to some wedding blogs (although not nearly as many as when I was planning our wedding!!) and I love ring shots! I unfortunately forgot to tell our wedding photographer this, so we don’t have any (YET! I plan to take a few for fun.. one day).
I saw this one today, and thought it was such a cute idea for a ring shot!

Photo via Style Me Pretty
Of course I guess the bride & groom had a bit of a sticky situation on their hands after this (HA!), but totally worth it, and it’s nothing a little soap and water couldn’t fix!
Tags: cupcakes, cute, wedding
Posted in How cute is this?! | 2 Comments »