Easter fun!

I had the best time on Saturday putting together an afternoon of decorating (...and eating!) cupcakes for Easter with the women and kids at church. What I loved the most was seeing the creativity that comes from having a bunch of people all with different ideas and talents in one room. The women got their hands dirty with some spring gardens, thanks to a great link I found on Woman's Day. The kids were wishing veggies always tasted that good!

I thought the kids would quickly get bored and eat up the cupcakes in five seconds but they got right into decorating and made the most precious Easter baskets. Thanks to a post by Bakerella I got the idea to use Sour Punch straws as the handles for the baskets which worked perfectly.

"lots of chocolate for me to eat..."

I found this delicious Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe over at Epicurious and have made it twice already in two weeks! As a chocoholic, this cake definitely meets my criteria for good chocolatey taste but the best thing about it is how easy it is to make, everything mixed in one bowl and popped in the oven. Here's the low down:

4 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened)

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder plus additional for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 375°F and butter an 8-inch round baking pan. Line bottom with a round of wax paper and butter paper.

2. Chop chocolate into small pieces. In a double boiler or metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate with butter, stirring, until smooth.

3. Remove top of double boiler or bowl from heat and whisk sugar into chocolate mixture. Add eggs and whisk well. Sift 1/2 cup cocoa powder over chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined.

4. Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven 25 minutes, or until top has formed a thin crust. Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes and invert onto a serving plate. Dust cake with additional cocoa powder and serve with sorbet if desired. (Cake keeps, after being cooled completely, in an airtight container, 1 week.) (Recipe courtesy of Epicurious.com)

cupcakes and pirates

-- I figured that's what it would take to keep the attention of five boisterous boys in my kids club class this morning. Never mind that this was a Sunday school and here I was encouraging them to draw their best skull and cross bones... but they didn't need much encouragement, it was a pretty gnarly line-up:
With some equally gnarly pirate grins to boot!

Of course, the best part was getting to frost and eat their checkers at the end :)

chocolate coconut clusters

I was inspired by my blogger friend at wee treats by tammy and decided to give these a try. They reminded me a lot of Romany Creams, a childhood favorite of mine in South Africa, which I have long wondered how to make, so I set to work. Once they came out the oven and surpassed an initial taste test or three, I used chocolate buttercream icing to stick some of them together. But even though my husband gave me the thumbs up it wasn't quite what I had remembered as a child. And then it dawned on me... melted chocolate, of course! That's what they used to stick the Romany Creams together. I can't wait to try that out!

Here's the recipe from Tammy's blog, which I encourage you to check out, for both baking and cooking inspiration -- she has some great easy dinner ideas which I've also been glad to find.

Chocolate Coconut Clusters (adapted from the old Edmonds cook book)

75g butter
75g sugar
1 egg
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 c coconut
2 tbsp cocoa
1 tbsp milk

· Cream the sugar and butter and then beat in the egg.
· Stir in the dry ingredients and lastly the milk.
· Roll into balls and flatten with a fork.
· Bake at 180c (350F) for 15 minutes.
Once cold join together with chocolate butter cream icing.

6 out of fourteen...

Sounds like a bad test score, but at least this one had a delicious result :) I was inspired by Bakerella's fourteen-layer cake and couldn't resist using up the rest of a batch of batter to make a mini version of it. I tried to go for the fourteen layers but I suppose being mini sized it couldn't handle the height so I just went as high as it would let me go without feeling like it was about to tip over.

Being an experiment I tried doing the layers two ways, though I wish I had kept to just one way, upon opening up the cake later. In any event, it was a very fun and tasty experiment and I can't wait to try it again!

be my cupcake valentine

Yay for long weekends and for Valentine's Day! I was finally able to do some baking this weekend and boy have I missed it. I shared the love, with some Valentine's cupcakes for the moms at Toddler Corner on Friday. To my surprise it was not the moms but the tots who fell head over heels in love with them and were able to each fit a whole cupcake, icing and all, inside their tiny little tummies!

new year cake balls

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this candy-coating. I made these for a New Year's Eve dinner with friends and I was pretty happy with how they turned out. The candy coating came out smoother by resting the cake ball on a teaspoon, and with another spoon pouring the melted chocolate on top. Tapping the teaspoon on the side of a bowl, the candy became coated evenly on all sides. I ended up coating the last few balls in cocoa because I ran out of time, but I think I like the contrast.