Be My Valentine?

So the weekend before Valentine's day me and my best friend made cupcakes! Yay! What's more fun? On the 14th, the actual Valentines day i spent most of the day sleeping and studying math. I spent the day with my math tutor! haha. Lots of fun learning "functions". Blah.

Anyways i bet you wanna know what i baked! i baked Devil's food cupcake with SMB!

This was the first time i ever made Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I have tried numerous time before. The first time i made it, i started to mix the egg whites and the butter at the same time. Big mistake. It became a white liquid with chunks of butter in it. the second time i attempted it (almost a year later!) a year later, it turned out way too thin. The third time i attempted it was when i made the Red velvet cupcakes for my friend's part, I should have mixed it longer but i didn't, i ended up adding cornstarch and icing sugar to the buttercream to thicken it and spread it.

This was the fourth time and it came out PERFECTLY. I did it the exact same way as "the third try", except this time i just beat it for longer (i have a hand held mixer), and it came out AMAZING. Just GREAT. After making this buttercream i don't think I'm ever going to make my regular ones. Well, maybe.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream is REALLY worth the time and effort. It has a wonderful, creamy, thick, buttery consistency and its not an overly sweet frosting. Really worth trying!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's day! :)

Happy baking!

xxxxx

Happy holidays!!!

this was the gingerbread house that i made for the holidays. However, the only problem was, i didn't cut the sides properly so i couldn't add a roof to my house :(. to make the house hold its shape, i added a marble cake inside (my mom's favorite!). I decorated the house with skittles and frosting. I didn't have any meringue powder to make royal icing with, so i used a basic buttercream frosting.It worked fine for me!

1 stick butter, softened
1 shot (2 tablespoons) Baileys Irish cream
3 cups confectioners sugar (icing/powdered sugar)

Cream butter until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add in confectioners sugar, 1/2 cup at the time until thoroughly combined. Add Baileys. Add food coloring if desired. Use immediately, do NOT refrigerate or it will become to hard to frost, and wont stick the gingerbread to the cake :)

These are my fudge-presents. i decorated squares (rectangles) of fudge and decorated them as gift boxes! i didn't have my decorating bags with me when i made them, so i used a Ziploc bag, cut one of the corners off and used those to decorate them. i used the basic buttercream frosting to frost them.

While i was making the fudge, the chocolate wasn't setting and it was very dripping, so i had to add cornstarch to allow it to set, which turned it crisp on the outside, but still very fudge-y on the inside!

There was a lot of gingerbread cookie dough left over, so i decided to make some Hanukkah gingerbread cookies for my best friends' Hanukkah party! I decorated them with the same frosting, and the same candy as my gingerbread house.

I felt bad that i was only giving them a few cookies, and they had given me SO MUCH during the year, i felt that i HAD to bake them more! so i baked them cupcakes! i made red velvet cupcakes with a failed Swiss meringue buttercream. After adding the butter to the egg whites and sugar, it came out curdled and liquidy even after beating. I added some icing sugar (didn't measure, maybe 2 cups?) and a tablespoon of cornstarch to thicken it so i could spread it on my cupcakes. i served the cupcakes and the gingerbread cookies on a platter i decorated! Here is what it looked like:

Everyone was so pleased with what i made over the holidays! I was also really happy that i could put smiles over everyone's faces with pretty little cakes :')

hope everyone had wonderful holidays!