Archive for the ‘Baking Adventures’ Category
I finally made pocket pies!
Friday, April 23rd, 2010So 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!
Top crust!
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
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Easter Cupcakes
Sunday, April 4th, 2010We 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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Valentine’s Day Cupcakes
Monday, March 29th, 2010So 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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Maple Walnut Cupcakes
Thursday, February 11th, 2010If 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
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Shortbread Type Cookies – A Childhood Favourite!
Monday, January 18th, 2010I finally got a chance to do some baking over the weekend – we had a lazy Sunday so I whipped up a batch of “shortbread type cookies”, which was a Christmas favourite in my house growing up. My mom would make them other times of the year too, because they’re both simple and delicious! And they can easily be made vegan too! (I didn’t make this batch vegan just because I didn’t think of it).
I actually prefer these cookies to shortbread – they’re sweet and flaky and buttery. I find they have more flavour to them than shortbread. They’re a staple if you want to make cutouts, and since I recently bought some cookie cutters from IKEA, and had some little tiny ones I got from Williams-Sonoma a year or so ago that I’d only used once, this was a perfect time to use this tried and tested recipe!
So here they are!
(I need better lighting in my kitchen or a bigger flash for my camera that the lens doesn’t block for close ups)
Isn’t that moose one HUGE?! And then there’s the little tiny ones in contrast.. fun!
Tags: cookies, vegan
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Mini Cupcakes – Chai Latte & Chocolate Mint
Sunday, December 6th, 2009I’ve finally been able to do a bit of baking again now that we’re getting a bit more settled in our new condo. First, I made my first-ever batch of mini cupcakes for a co-worker’s birthday. I made him Chai Latte cupcakes, and decided to use my mini pans that I got for shower and wedding gifts. Instead of plain black tea that was called for in the recipe, I thought it would be even better to use my favourite tea, pumpkin chai from David’s Tea. I topped them with icing sugar and a cinnamon-nutmeg-chocolate mix. They were delicious!
My least favourite part of making them was when I dropped the bag of icing sugar on the floor…
Thankfully the bag was almost empty so it didn’t make TOO much of a mess!
Yesterday was our sailing club’s Christmas party, so naturally I brought cupcakes! I made chocolate mint cupcakes, in full size and mini. A side note to these cupcakes: I tried to make chocolate mint cupcakes to bring to our families’ houses last Christmas and NO stores had any mint extract! So I bought some after Christmas and have been waiting to use it since..
So I made these ones vegan, since there is a vegan at our sailing club. The icing turned out to be a bit runny, and didn’t turn out looking very pretty on the full sized cupcakes, so I only took pictures of the minis, which turned out looking really cute despite the less than solid frosting!
Tags: cupcakes, mini, vegan
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The Wedding Cupcakes!
Sunday, November 8th, 2009So we’re back from the honeymoon, and it’s back to business! Well, we’re also now in the process of moving into our condo, so I don’t promise that I’ll be posting a lot yet. But I digress..
So, the wedding cupcakes. I’m going to tell you the whole process.
Steps #1 + 2 – Batter & Icing + Freezing
Thanksgiving weekend was the week before the wedding so I used that extra time to eat turkey. And make the batter and icing for the wedding cupcakes to be frozen. The plan was that I was going to make it all on the Saturday, but we got stuck in ridiculous traffic when we went for what was supposed to be a short trip to a mall. So I ended up doing it in a few goes over the next couple of days (in between going to two Thanksgiving dinners). I made batter for 6 dozen vegan vanilla cupcakes, and two batches of vegan fluffy vanilla buttercream (my recipe makes A LOT – I even had some left over!). Then I put it all into some airtight containers and popped them into the freezer for the week.
Step #3 – Baking
On the Thursday morning before our wedding, I took all of the batter & icing containers out of the freezer and put them in the fridge to start thawing out. We had our rehearsal dinner that night, and then after we got home I got to baking, then let the cupcakes cool overnight.
Step #4 – Icing
My boss thankfully let me take the day before the wedding off work. So that morning I got to icing! I bought some plastic cupcake containers (the kind you get at the grocery store etc) from McCall’s so that we’d be able to easily transport all 6 doz cupcakes to the venue in one shot.
Finished Product!
Here they are at the wedding (this photo is by Brooks Reynolds, who is amazing and I would highly recommend to anyone.)
And remember how our friend Lisa was making our cake topper? Look how amazing it is!
(First photo by Roman Kliotzkin, Lisa’s boyfriend, second by Brooks Reynolds)
Tags: cupcakes, vegan, wedding
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Fall Cupcakes
Friday, October 9th, 2009Two years ago a friend hosted a bake-a-thon at her house – a bunch of friends get together and bake all day, based on a theme. This was the first one I participated in, and the theme was cupcakes. It was this that started my love for making cupcakes!
Because it was in the fall, I decided I wanted to make pumpkin cupcakes. I searched the net and found a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing, which ended up being delicious (unfortunately I didn’t save the link so I can’t link it here). One day (before the bake-a-thon), I saw a magazine with a picture of cupcakes decorated to look like owls. I thought that it looked like a super cute but easy idea, so I decided that this is what I would do with my pumpkin cupcakes!
I used shaved almonds for feathers, Werther’s Originals with icing & chocolate chips for eyes, and cashews for beaks.
Here’s how they turned out:
They didn’t look exactly like in the picture on the magazine. I blame that on not being able to find butterscotch lifesavers and having to use Werther’s Originals instead – I think having the eyes round would have looked better. I should try these again some day (I may try the vegan chocolate chip pumpkin recipe I have.. but maybe not) and see if they look any better now (hopefully I can find the lifesavers this time!)
Tags: animals, cupcakes, fall
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Surprise Cupcake Project #1 (and 1.5)
Saturday, September 26th, 2009So the first surprise project I had to work on (as per my first post) was for my maid of honour’s 30th birthday. I made her cupcakes, naturally! I had frozen some batter and icing a while ago, to make sure freezing would work for the wedding – I used a friend’s 30th birthday to test that out. I’m nice like that. It turned out that it was also my co-worker’s last day on the same day as I was giving my friend her birthday cupcakes.. enter project 1.5. So half the dozen went to her, and the other half went to the co-worker (we have… had… six people in our group.. worked out perfectly except the part where his fiancée was there so I didn’t get to try one before giving them as a 30th birthday gift later that night to make sure they didn’t taste like freezer burn or garbage).
So on top of testing to see how freezing the batter would work, I also decided I should try something new with the icing – let’s be honest, if I’m not trying new things, I’m just making plain vegan vanilla cupcakes. And as awesome as that is, why not try to expand horizons, right? I try to make sure that each batch I make (without being ordered) that I try a new style or a new flavour. Or both. So I decided I’d try multi-coloured piped icing. I went with pink & yellow since that’s an awesome colour combo, and if it didn’t work out, orange icing’s fine by me! Here’s the result:
Turns out I got to eat one of the ones I gave to my maid of honour (I’m so generous.. giving people gifts that I can eat), and thankfully they tasted the same way as “fresh”.
Tags: cupcakes
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Here we go!
Monday, September 14th, 2009Welcome to my first blog post on Little Bird Bakery! I’m going to use this blog to tell you about my adventures in baking, as well as any other baking related things I may come across on the internet. And anything else that may strike my fancy!
Since I’m getting ready for my wedding, I haven’t been able to bake anything in the past little while (due to time and waistline constraints). My last venture was 7 dozen cupcakes for our buck & doe mid-August – and I didn’t even get any pictures of them because I ran out of time! Thankfully my fiancé Matt got one shot of them for me..
That’s a lot of cupcakes! I have a few smaller projects coming up for some friends – no details yet since they’re going to (hopefully) be surprises!
My next big project is going to be making the cupcakes for our wedding. People think I’m crazy, but I have a plan: make the batter & icing the Monday before (which just happens to be Thanksgiving Monday – I’m lucky to have an extra day off right before the wedding!), freeze those, then bake Thursday night, decorate Friday morning, and they’ll be ready to go for Saturday! Sure, they won’t be day-of fresh, but they’re vegan, so they keep pretty well. I think splitting it up into three steps will make for a less stressful time than people are imagining.. hopefully!
Here’s a peek at what they’re going to look like. The colours will be brighter – at the time that I made the trial batch, I only had liquid food colouring so I couldn’t add too much or the icing would have got runny. Now I have gel colours so that’s not a concern. I’ll have purple and green ones.
Our friend Lisa is making the cake topper for us. She wants to make the top tier of this:
I think she’s crazy for doing it for us, but we’re super excited about it, and really touched that she offered!
Well that’s it for now – I’ll post about my upcoming small projects once they’re done and delivered!
Tags: cake, cupcakes, wedding
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