Hey Canada, It's Voting Day!

Dear Canada,

Today is very important! Please make sure you get to your polling station at some point between 9:30am-9:30pm. Make sure you vote! Also, please vote for hope and not fear. Please vote for something we can wake up tomorrow and feel happy about. And no, you cannot vote for the Toronto Blue Jays!

Your polling station should be listed on your Voter Information Card, but if you didn't get one, check out Elections Canada to find out where to vote.

Thank you!

Jen B. 

Hot Turkey Sandwich #FoodPicFriday

We had Thanksgiving last weekend and the best part of a big turkey dinner is all the leftovers. I reheated some turkey in the leftover gravy (just like Mom used to make) and poured it over a soft white roll. So good!

Chocolate Cupcake Toppers (Blue Jays Design)

I first got excited about chocolate cupcake toppers while reading Sugar Swings, and seeing her amazing superhero toppers. With the Blue Jays winning the American League East, I was encouraged to try making some of my own, choosing the Jays logo (and their maple leaf logo) as my toppers.

Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio has an amazing tutorial on how to pipe chocolate (candy melts) onto a design for cupcake toppers and watching this video gave me the confidence to go for it.

When piping chocolate designs, make sure you have an image that looks the same when reversed, or make sure you reverse your image so the design is backwards. You want the design backwards because the finished topper is flipped over, as the flip side is flat and looks a lot nicer than the piped chocolate side. I previously made numbers for a birthday cake, and you can see that example here. For the Blue Jays logo, I googled an image of it and then flipped it horizontally before printing it out. The maple leaf logo looks the same on the reverse side, so I didn't need to flip it.

To start, I printed out a number of pages of designs and taped them to the table.

Then I covered the pages with parchment paper and taped it to the table too.

Using piping bags filled with the four colours of the logo, I piped one colour at a time, waiting about ten minutes for each colour to dry. First I did the white outline of the logo, then the red maple leaf, then the light blue, and finally the dark blue. I didn't take photos of the process, because I always forget to capture what I'm doing while I'm doing it. #bloggerproblems

Here are all the chocolate colours piped onto the design.

Next, I very gently flipped them to the reverse, flat side.

Finally I piped some buttercream onto cooled cupcakes and placed my toppers on top.

Go Jays Go!

Blue Jays Cupcakes!

As a Toronto Blue Jays fan, this has been quite the season to watch. They won the American League East title, and are now playing in the postseason for a chance at the American League Championship. It's been stressful, fun, heartbreaking, and exciting to watch. No matter how far they make it in the postseason, I love this team. Go Jays Go!

To celebrate the Jays making it to the playoffs for the first time in 22 years, I decided to make some cupcakes. I have wanted to try making chocolate cupcake toppers using candy melts, and making a Blue Jays logo seemed like a good way to try them out. As is often the case with my baking projects, I started with something really challenging (a design that used four colours and had a maple leaf in it!), instead of perhaps practicing with something a little simpler. It all worked out and the toppers look as good as I hoped, but I'm going to try and remember that baby steps can be a welcome part of the process.

I will do a follow up post showing how I made the cupcake toppers, but for today I am showcasing pretty photos of cupcakes. I also made baseball themed cupcakes, for which there is a great tutorial on the Worth Pinning blog.

Soon-To-Be Jack-O'-Lantern

At the grocery store last week I found this adorable pumpkin for $1.50. I haven't carved a pumpkin in probably ten years, but the $1.50 price encouraged me to want to do it. I'm going to Google different designs I could try, but will probably go with triangle eyes and toothy mouth. Classic.

Do you carve a pumpkin for Halloween? How elaborate do you get?

First Pumpkin Spice of the Season

We had a beautiful roast chicken dinner yesterday, which was followed up with some sweet potato pie. The recipe I use for sweet potato pie is just the recipe for pumpkin pie, using fresh sweet potato puree instead of canned pumpkin. I made two pies on the weekend because this pie is soooooooo good. I love love love it. Mmmmm.

Dark Ginger Ale

I don't drink pop very often, but when I do, my favourite kind is ginger ale.

Recently there was a coupon for a new type of ginger ale, Dark Ginger Ale. The deal was, buy two 2L bottles of the new ginger ale, and get $2 off. Name brand pop is often around $2 for 2L, so I waited for a sale. A $1 sale, to be exact. So for just $0.25 ($0.13 tax on each bottle, rounded down to just a quarter because we don't use the penny anymore), I got two bottles of pop. Deal!

Pretty near free pop is good enough on its own, but the best part is that this Dark Ginger Ale actually tastes amazing. With my first sip I wasn't quite sure, but then I drank one of the 2L bottles waaaaayyyy too fast. It is a wonderful mixture of spicy and sweet. I love it.