Mimosas!

Its officially crazy weather season. May always brings crazy thunderstorms and tornadoes, which in turn usually brings some power outages. Luckily, the power was still fine at my house when LaMona called me and said she was bored in her dark hot apartment, so she came over for a night of baking! She has been asking me for awhile if I could help her learn how to bake, and it seemed like the perfect night to watch a movie and bake some cupcakes! We flipped through some cookbooks and came across a simple recipe for a Mimosa cupcake that involved a Betty Crocker cake mix as the base! After a run to Kroger to pick up some cheap champagne (we are still broke "college students" after all...) we got started on a baking lesson! The recipe was really simple, it just included the cake mix, orange juice and zest, champagne, egg whites, and oil.
After LaMona got the hang of the mixer, I showed her the trick of using an ice cream scoop to get consistent sized cupcakes!

Then these lightly orange scented cupcakes were ready to be baked!
After just 15 minutes at 350 degrees, they came out perfectly airy! You cant really taste the champagne in them, but it allowed for light fluffy cake for sure!

Then we got started on the butter cream with more orange juice and champagne.
The butter cream was alright, but not too flavorful, so we got some extra orange zest and coated it in orange colored sugar to sprinkle on top for color and more flavor!
Then I set up an assembly line and showed LaMona how to pipe frosting! (Which let's be honest is the most fun! It's like you are five again and get to play with your food!)
She was a pro right away! I just piped a few to show her the technique and she took off from there!


They turned out great! I wish the flavors would have been a little stronger, but the sugared orange zest helped out! Stay safe in this crazy weather!

Graduation!

I can't believe I'm actually done with school! This weekend we had our graduation ceremony Friday night followed by champagne and cake with the roommates and our families. Then Saturday we had a little get together at the big red house to celebrate more!

Red Raspberry cake from Cecilia's!

So for our party Saturday I decided to try out a new recipe for lime cupcakes.You start by zesting and juicing 4 limes (this is more work than it sounds, but its worth it!)
I skipped pictures on some of the steps because we were rushing around to finish everything Sat morning before the party, but it is a pretty simple buttermilk batter, but with 2 tablespoons lime zest and 4 tablespoons lime juice for the perfect light lime flavor! They baked up perfect, light and airy but still moist! And a sweet lime green color that I knew would go perfect (flavor and color-wise) with raspberry buttercream! I topped them off with a little extra lime zest and they were perfect bite sized sweets for the party! With the help of all the roommates and our families the party came together quite nicely! We had a great time eating drinking and visiting with friends, a perfect way to end our college years! Here's to the next chapter!

Happy Easter!

So it's been awhile since my last post. This semester has flown by and with class and work and senior stuff there has been no time to bake! Luckily I had the opportunity to bake some cupcakes for Easter brunch at Uncle David's.

I decided to make lemon cupcakes because they are just so springy!

I started by grating up a lot of lemon zest, about 2 lemons worth. This is a little more than my recipe called for, but I like a really lemony cake so I added in an extra teaspoon. I also saved some extra zest to make the lemon butter cream later.

Then was ready to cut and juice the lemons! Sorry for the dark pictures, the only time I had to bake was the night before Easter!

I had some pretty pink liners that were the perfect pale shade to complement the lemony cakes!

Then I poured in the batter and baked them up! For some reason the centers sunk in some after I took them out to cool...

But this was easily fixed with a thick smooth layer of lemon butter cream that I made the next morning!

These cupcakes smelled heavenly, but needed something a little special for Easter!

So they each got a sweet yellow rose on top!

They were packed up and ready to go to brunch after church!

There were a few extra bare cupcakes and some of the green butter cream so I decided to make some "grass" with eggs

to keep at the house for the roommates!

Kellye and Kristina were able to come to church and brunch with me

And it was good to spend time with Uncle Dave and Aunt Lisa!

Hope everyone had a great Easter with family and friends!