Getting Fancy With My First Wilton Decorating Tip

It's my brother's birthday today and the family is getting together tomorrow for a Mom-made turkey dinner to celebrate. I was tasked with dessert and at first I was going to make a cake, but then it turned into cupcakes, and now it's fancy cupcakes. I have been reading a tonne of new blogs lately and have been feeling really inspired to try new recipes and new techniques. Birthdays are a great excuse to learn some new baking skills.

After researching how fancy cupcakes are decorated at Wilton, I made a list and headed to the Bulk Barn so I could add some cake decorating tools to my collection.

I love Bulk barn when I'm trying something new. You can buy as much or as little as you want, which means you don't have spend a lot to try something out. I spent around $5 today and bought the bare minimum to decorate my cupcakes. I got one decorating tip, the 1M star shape, which the internet says is great for cupcakes. I also picked up a "large tip" coupler, which helps secure the decorating tip to the icing bag. Lastly I bought two disposable icing bags, which were sold in bulk. I loved that I was able to buy bulk icing bags! They also carried a box of 12 bags, but this is my first time fancy decorating, maybe I will hate doing it! Then I would have 11 useless bags lying around. I went with the safe option of 2/$0.99 (they are the faint triangles in the photo).

My cupcakes are already baked, but I'm holding off icing them until tomorrow. I hope it is fun!

Do you use cake decorating tips? What is the most fun or elaborate thing you have decorated?

I Love Leftovers - Especially Turkey!

Everything we ate for dinner tonight was entirely John's fault! :)

It's the first of the month, which is often when I think about going for more walks and exercising a little more portion control at meal time. I had to put those thoughts on hold though, as we had turkey leftovers in the house and John excitedly announced that we should make awesome club sandwiches. How could I disagree?

This is only one sandwich, you guys!

So we had triple-decker club sandwiches full of turkey, bacon, cheese, and mayo. Apparently others put lettuce and tomato in theirs, but we forgot about vegetables! Whoops! We fried up some mashed potatoes and had some leftover sweet potatoes, so our meal wasn't completely vegetable free, right?

We followed that up with some cake John's grandma made.

It was a yellow cake but she told us: "It's a chocolate cake, I just didn't add the cocoa". Adorable.

I am very full and very happy right now. Hope you are too!

Anniversary Card - 1 Year Smoke Free

A friend of mine is marking one year free of cigarettes today and is having a get together to celebrate. According to her count, over the past year she did not smoke 9500 cigarettes! That is amazing! I bet her lungs feel great!

A congratulatory card was needed to commemorate her achievement. Over the past few months I have gotten out of the habit of making my own cards, but I've been socializing with quite a few card making bloggers recently and it has inspired me to get back into it.

For this card I did a spin on the saying 'quitters never win', changing it up to 'quitters always win", as they always do when they quit smoking!

When I first looked at the finished card I thought the design looked like a quilting square. I quickly read over the words and it looked like it said 'quilters always win'.  It is true that quilters always win. The way the card turned out may mean that I'm subconsciously into quilters, but I accept that.

So a big congratulations to my friend celebrating her 1st year smoke free! And many more to come!

Spring Oreo Truffles

I have been itching to make some Oreo Truffles, which are the amazing combination of a bag of crushed Oreos, a package of cream cheese, and some chocolate coating [find the recipe here]. For some spring flare, I used white chocolate coating that I dyed pastel colours. I have made these truffles before, but they were trickier this time around, probably because I gave myself the added pressure of wanting the colours to look good (normally I just cover everything in milk chocolate, which hides any imperfections).

Good Looking Spring Oreo Truffles

Not pictured (love editorial control!) are the truffles where the coating was too thin, or where the truffle part got mixed into the coating, giving them a dirty snow kind of look. I had made these before so I only skimmed the recipe, but it turned out I skimmed the part about using two forks to help coat the truffles evenly. Oops. So these ended up being a little harder to make than I thought, but the amazing thing about baking is that even if the end result doesn't look like it's supposed to, it still tastes pretty good!

Tasty Spring Oreo Truffle

Cinnamon Sticky Buns - Can't Have Just One

Cinnamon Sticky Buns: a time intensive but oh so satisfying treat that I love to bake. My new rule when making them is that they must be taken to an event of some kind, as having 20+ sticky buns in my house is very dangerous.

I would like this and seven more please.

I use my bread maker to make the cinnamon bun dough, using a recipe taken from the book that came with my late '80s machine. I adapted the original recipe to enhance yumminess (sugar, butter, and cinnamon need not be restricted by measurements!). My bread maker has passed through three generations in my family, from my dad's mother, to my mother, and now to me. Sometimes we talk about getting a new one, but honestly, this one still works great!

Late '80s bread maker - still working hard!

Cinnamon Bun Dough (adapted from Sanyo's The Home Bakery Book, 1988):

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
   1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
   1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
   2 eggs
   1 cup lukewarm water
   1 package active dry yeast

Add ingredients to bread maker and let stand 5 minutes. Use Dough setting and press start. This takes 1 hour and 15 minutes on my machine. When dough is finished, remove dough from bread maker and place in a greased bowl, turning to coat evenly. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.

Punch down dough and divide in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each half into a large rectangle.

Spread melted butter or margarine over entire rectangle so that it is completely covered. I don't measure, I just keep covering it until it looks adequately drenched. Next sprinkle with enough brown sugar to completely cover. I spread it out with my hands to make sure it is even. Finally, sprinkle with cinnamon.

Roll up the dough lengthwise.

 

Cut into buns. Put buns onto baking sheet, cover, and let rise for 1 hour. I normally get around 10 buns per rolled up rectangle (about 20 buns total).

Now for the "Sticky" part.

Heat 1/2 cup of butter or margarine, 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and 1/2 cup corn syrup in a small saucepan. Heat until combined. Pour mixture into baking pan (I use multiple 9x13 glass baking dishes). Place risen cinnamon rolls into the sugar mixture.  Bake in 350 oven for 20 minutes.

When rolls have finished baking, spoon sticky sugar mixture from bottom of the pan onto the rolls so they are sticky all over. This makes them extra delicious.

Enjoy!