Baking for an Impending Vacation

This is the 5th year my friends and I have gone to Cape Hatteras together to spend a week on the beach.  In the past, I have brought a few baked goods, usually a dozen cupcakes, maybe cookies or a key lime pie.  Also, in the past, those goodies were gone within the first couple of days.  Well not this year!

BAM!

I made quite the spread.

Chocolate chip cookies as well as chocolate peanut butter cup cookies.

Homemade oreos.

Banana Bread

And key lime pie.

The key lime pie is intended as a gift for my friend's family who will also be staying in Hatteras, but in a different house.  Hopefully these goodies will last the week in a house with 6 other people.  

Have a great week!

The Unveiling of the KitchenAid, and Homemade Oreos

Last month, I received quite a few lovely gifts at my bridal shower.  One of these lovely gifts was something I have coveted for quite some time.

This is a professional grade KitchenAid standing mixer, capable of holding up to 14 cups of flour.  My bridesmaids as well as my mom and future mother in law got this for me, and I am in love.

I've used it a few times already, and it makes my baking adventures so much easier!

I made some white chocolate butter cream for a batch of cupcakes and I decided to use the leftovers as the cream in some homemade oreos!

I combined 1 1/4 cups of flour

with 1/2 cup of cocoa powder

1 cup of white sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

and 1/4 tsp salt.

I added 1 1/4 sticks of butter to the dry mix

and 1 egg until they were fully incorporated.

After using my cookie scoop to lay out my batch, I used my fingers to flatten the cookies.

I baked them for 9 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

They came out rather nicely, although the dough only produced enough cookies for 17 sandwiches.

In fact, the only problem with these was that there wasn't nearly enough.  They tasted so good!

Enjoy!

Pineapple Upside-down Cup Cakes

I like to make birthday cake for my friends.  A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine had his birthday, but the weekend we usually go to play Pathfinder (D&D) was my bridal shower weekend.  I will go over the awesome baking swag I received that weekend in a later blog post.

My friend, requested that I make pineapple upside-down cake, but as cupcakes.  It seemed pretty easy to do, so I did some searching on the interwebs and there are so many recipes that suggest using a box mix.  No way.  I would not, so I continued the search.  I ended up finding a great recipe at spoonful.com, and it can be found here.

First I lined a cupcake pan and put 1 tsp of butter with 1 tsp of brown sugar in each liner and baked it for 3 minutes in a 350 degree oven to create a nice syrup.

I set 1/2 cup of milk and 3/4 stick of butter on the stove over medium heat until the butter melted.  Once it was melted I removed it from the heat and set it aside.

Meanwhile in a large bowl, I combined 1 cup of flour with 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt.

I mixed 2 eggs, 3/4 cup of white sugar and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract in a smaller bowl.

I combined both mixtures and set aside while I dealt with the pineapple topping of these confections.

There are two ingredients that are iconic to this dessert.  Maraschino cherries and canned pineapple.

 I anticipated a problem right away with the pineapple, I had to cut it up i order for it to fit in the cupcake liners.  Thankfully the cherries were already halved.

Once the design was in place, I added the last of the wet into the the batter, and poured on top of the fruit.  I baked these in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

I let these cool for quite a while before I removed the liners.

They look flippin' perfect!  And the syrup is caramelized so perfectly, the smell was heavenly.

I hope you enjoyed this retro baking adventure, and I promise I'll show off all of the awesome loot I received at my bridal shower.

Enjoy!