Halloween

Time flies! Halloween has already come and gone, and before you know it Christmas lights will be shining all along the streets.

These past couple weeks have been really busy with school/work and extra-curricular activities (I sound like I'm in grade school!) I managed to bake a couple things to keep myself sane, but I haven't had much opportunity to write up posts. So I thought I'd give a little summary of the things I've baked over the past week or two.  

As I mentioned above, Halloween was this past Monday. I love Halloween! It's my favourite holiday (if it event counts as one). My favourite thing is decorating my house to look as creepy as possible and see how many kids I can scare! There is nothing more rewarding than hearing from a parent their child was too scared to come up to my house!

Patience is not my virtue

Technically, what I made this week doesn't count as a "baked good" (there is absolutely no baking involved). I know this is a blog about baking so these might seem out of place, but they are so delicious, I had to share them! Also these count as one of my "Super Awesome Ideas" - I actually said those words out loud - so to continue with the trend from my last post, here they are! Chocolate Dipped Candy Apples.

A couple weekends ago, I went apple picking and brought home 4 pounds of crisp, juicy, fresh empire apples. Even though I'd been eating them almost every day since then, I still had an outrageous number of apples left! So, before they went bad, I decided to make something with them.

I could have made a crumble, a pie, or even applesauce (which is on my list of things to make), but I wanted something different. That's when I got the idea to dip them in chocolate (the chocolate I didn't use for the espresso cups) and roll them in candy! They would be the perfect fall treat, and get you in the mood for Halloween!

 

Super Awesome Ideas

Sometimes, when I'm just sitting around or chatting with friends, these dessert ideas pop into my head. Usually, these ideas are what I like to call 'Super Awesome Ideas' - because if I were to see them in front of me, I would probably say "These are super awesome!" Ok, maybe not, but I would at least be thinking it!

This past Thanksgiving, another idea popped into my head. Recreate a cup of espresso in dessert form! The way I envisioned it was to make an espresso cup out of chocolate, then fill it with an espresso mousse, and top it with a little white chocolate mousse (to recreate the foam!) How super awesome would that be? You get your espresso, but you can eat the cup too!

Before I go any further, I should probably mention something. These Super Awesome Ideas are usually a lot more difficult to execute than I imagine. That's the case with these espresso mousse cups! Here's the recipe for the mousse, cause at least that worked out:

When did "grown up" start meaning "booze-filled"?

This seems to be the time of year when people have birthdays. I don’t know what was happening in January and February (oh wait, Valentine’s… makes sense), but birthday’s have been popping up all over the place! So this past week a friend of mine celebrated his and I wanted to bake him birthday cupcakes. Since we are (unfortunately) all getting a little older, I decided to make a grown up cupcakes. And what was my first thought for a “grown up” cupcake? Let’s put booze in them!

Now, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it works for this story. I decided to try making a stout and Irish cream cupcake. This idea had been floating around in my head for a while, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity! I found a recipe from the Cupcake Wars website and decided to use Guinness and Bailey’s as my alcohols of choice.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Bailey’s; it’s perfect in hot chocolate, coffee, milk, cheesecake – anything really. Guinness on the other hand, I’m iffy about. I find it tastes a little too bitter, so I was worried the cupcakes would turn out that way too. And who wants a bitter cupcake? Here’s the recipe: