Whoopie Pies

 

About a month or so ago Lillie and Lola had their first whoopie pie. I will eat one if it's offered to me but I am not an enormous fan of them so I was surprised at how much they LOVED them! The ones they first had were from Fresh Market so I thought it would be fun to make some homemade ones with them later that week. Over the last few weeks we have tried a few different recipes and here is what they've liked best (it's a mix of two different recipes with some minor alterations to each).

For the cookie part we used a recipe from Cookies and Cups and very slightly altered it. She has a recipe for cake batter filling and cookie dough filling both of which I cannot wait to try!

• 1 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 5 Tbsp butter – room temp
• 3 Tbsp vegetable shortening
• 1 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup buttermilk

For directions on mixing them up and baking them up you can click here. 

And now for the filling:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened but still cool
• 1½ cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 7 oz jar of marshmallow creme (we used a tiny bit less than a full jar)

Beat together the butter and confectioners' sugar on medium speed and then add in the vanilla, salt and marshmallow creme. After that it helps to put it in the fridge for about half an hour or so and then you just dallop a nice sized scoop onto each cookie and then place another one on top!

 I scooped my filling into a large ziplock bag and cut a little hole in one of the corners and squirted it out into nice neat little dallops...or at least that was my plan - haha! Lillie and Lola helped me so I didn't end up with a single one that was as "pretty" looking as I had hoped for photographing, but oh well, they had fun!

the bottle and straw are from The TomKat Studio

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend! I will hopefully be back later this weekend with our first of two Easter chalkboards and then after that will show you my Easter tablescape as part of a Spring Thing I'm joining along with some other wonderful bloggers!

Mini Valentine's Cake Tutorial with Love Template

Lillie, Lola and I had some fun making some mini valentine's cakes last week. They make a fun little dessert so I thought I would share how we did it in case anyone wanted to make some. I had seen several ombre cakes on pinterest and thought it would be fun to try! I had planned on making this a four layer cake so we made four different shades of pink but I didn't make them thin enough so we ended up just doing two layers on each cake and ended up making eight two-layer cakes instead of four four-layer cakes. Here's what they looked like when you cut into them:

So, the first thing we did was make the cakes. I love homemade frosting but have to admit I find cake mixes to be better than homemade cake! For this we just used a Betty Crocker yellow cake mix and we added graduation amounts of pink food coloring. We used two cakes mixes so we could make four 9" round cakes, but if I were to do it again I would definitely just use one cake mix and make the layers thinner and maybe make just three 9" round cakes. 

For the icing we used my favorite cream cheese frosting that I got from my mom - when we were little this was the frosting she always put in her homemade carrot cake. My parents and sisters loved carrot cake but I was not a fan. I would just eat off the delicious icing and not touch my cake. =) Anyway here is the recipe:

Cream Cheese Frosting:

3 Tbsp. butter

4 to 5 oz. cream cheese

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 Tbsp. maple syrup (I sometimes do a full tablespoon)

 3 cups confectioners sugar

Soften butter and cream cheese then add the rest of the ingredients until they are nice and smooth. Depending on how much icing you like you might want to make a little extra frosting. We like a lot of icing on our cakes. For the two cake mixes we made we doubled the above recipe and it wasn't quite enough. It might have been enough if it weren't for the fact that my helpers and I really like to "sneak" licks of the frosting while we are working. If you just like a light coating of icing and you are making one cake mix for a total of four mini cakes I think the above recipe would be enough. If you like a heavier coating of icing I would recommend doing about one and a half times the above ingredients.

Next I took a the top of a clothing gift box and cut out four circles. I used the circular cookie cutter I was going to use on my cakes to trace and make sure they were the right size:

Now I put one of the cardboard circles on top of an upside down vase so that I would be able to twist around it to frost the cakes (I am sure there are more professional things out there made for this, but I always just use whatever I can find on hand). Then used a knife to trim off the top of my cake a bit so it would be a little flatter and I used my little circular cookie cutter and cut out my first layer. I had two little helpers so this part was a bit messy. =)

I put the first layer on and then added some frosting and then put on the second layer.

Then I just frosted the whole thing with a yummy cream cheese frosting (recipe above) and added a cutout that said love. We added some glittery sprinkles to the cake and some silver glitter to the word love because toddler sized girls LOVE glitter! =) Frosting the cake was a bit difficult partly because I had two little helpers and partly because I probably should have refrigerated the cakes a bit so they didn't crumble so much. I had planned on doing something fancier for the frosting but in the end it was just easier to do a very basic frosting job on these. And yes, I know they are a little on the messy side. =)

If you want to make your own love toppers here is a template for the one we made.

We made four cakes that looked like the one above and then we made a few more layered ones and then Lillie and Lola also did some one layer ones and had lots of fun adding all the sprinkles they wanted on those one.

When we were done we added the four cakes to the four place settings on our table.

I hope you are having a great Sunday! I'll be back tomorrow to show you the rest of our Valentine's decorating.

An Easy Chocolate Rosette Cake

I had seen this rosette style cake on Pinterest a while back and finally gave it a try! I wanted to make it using chocolate icing though and a yellow cake. Seeing how it was my first time ever using any actual cake decorating tools I didn't really know what I was doing, but I have to say it turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. Mine looks a little messier than I would like and I definitely need to practice more doing the filler swirls between the rosettes but all in all for a first try I was quite happy with it and it really was so easy!

I didn't take step by step photos but I can pretty easily explain the steps. First I just used a Betty Crocker Super Moist cake yellow cake mix and filled two circular 9" cake pans.

Here is the recipe for the frosting:

3 sticks butter

2 cups Hershey's Cocoa 

9 cups powdered sugar

1/3 milk

1 tablespoon vanilla

Melt the butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk and beat on medium speed. Add more milk if needed (I don't even think I used quite 1/3 cup). Stir in Vanilla. Makes about 6 cups of frosting.

YOU WANT IT TO BE KIND OF STIFF SO IT HOLDS THE SHAPE OF THE ROSETTE.

I have to say I ended up with a little extra frosting but that was better than not having enough and although I had a little extra it wasn't a ton extra.

First I placed the bottom round cake layer down and frosted the top of it. Then I placed the second layer on top of it. I normally like to make three layer cakes but for this one I decided to go ahead with just two to make it easier to do the rosettes on the side. Once I placed the second tier on I just iced the top of it and then the sides in a very basic not so pretty manner.

This is what it should look like before you start working on your rosettes:

I went to Michael's and purchased these three items so I could ice the cake:

(I have to say I feel quite fancy now being the owner of some cake decorating tools, even if they are just super basic ones!) =) 

Then I followed this fabulous tutorial from "i am baker". The instructions were so easy and hers looks awesome (way better than mine!)

 

And there you have it, a super easy chocolate rosette cake!

 I also wanted to let you know our "Love Is..." pillow cover sets are back in stock!

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend!

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever (With An Accidental Secret Ingredient)

It has been quite a while since we've had a babysitter come over during the day so that I could get some work done. Well, it's been over three weeks since I have been to bed before 3 AM (and most days lately it's been right around 4) so last week we had a sweet girl named Sarah came over two afternoons. We had met Sarah before, but got to really know her at Quinn and Lindsey's wedding where she was a junior bridesmaid. She attempted to help Lillie get over her pre-game jitters over walking down the isle although I have to say that was not much of a success, seeing how Lillie ended up being carried down the isle on another bridesmaid's hip! I don't think Lillie will be getting any more invitations to be a flower girl any time soon - haha! Anyway, as soon as Sarah arrived last week she and Lillie quickly bonded over their love of baking (or maybe more their love of "sneaking" licks from the bowl, which Lillie inherited from me, of course).

I don't know about you all, but we really use Pinterest! We have tried quite a few of the recipes we've discovered on there. In fact, I hope to do a post at some point with links to my favorite ones. Anyway, although I love trying new things, Lillie's favorite is just regular ol' chocolate chip cookies. Last week she and Sarah experimented with some brownies with oreos in them, but this week they decided to just make some basic cookies. Well, I got the stuff out for Sarah and then told her that we generally just use the ingredients on the back of the Toll House package and add a little more brown sugar, and vanilla and then at the end we add in some oatmeal and a big scoop of peanut butter. My computer is set up on our kitchen island so I got to work editing some photos while they started baking. When it came time for the peanut butter we realized that both of our jars were empty - ahhh! I was looking through the cupboards hunting for a full jar that I could have sworn we had (although it still hasn't turned up so maybe I am going crazy) and came across a jar of nutella. Well, we figured it couldn't hurt to try that, right? So we scooped a big hunk in and gave it a try. OH MY GOODNESS! It was divine! In fact I think we ate more than half the batter before we even got to making the cookies. And I am embarrassed to say that we ate all but one cookie before dinner time! Ugh! (In our defense we made a half batch and Jon contributed to some of the nibbling before dinner too). 

Now, I know that everyone has a different opinion on food, so some people may not think it's that great, or some may not think it tastes all that different from a regular cookie but I have to say everyone in our house has officially claimed it our FAVORITE cookie! By Far! They were so good that we made them again the next day and I took photos and noted exactly how much we used of everything so we could write the recipe up. I will say they were a little fluffier the first day versus the day that we took pictures, but I think that may have had to do with the heat.

My little piglet Lillie eating one...

So here's the recipe. We always start with the basic Toll House recipe but add a little more brown sugar and vanilla. And then the ingredients we added that are not on the package are oatmeal, nutella, chocolate chunks, and milk chocolate shavings (that's optional). Seeing how there is nothing new under the sun, I am sure someone out there has tried nutella in a chocolate chip cookie before, but seeing how it is new to us and I haven't seen it on Pinterest or anywhere else yet, thought we would share it all with you!

If you click on the picture is should open larger and you can save it to your desktop and print it out!
(And if you don't have or like nutella just substitute it with peanut butter - that's how we normally make them and they are delicious!)

And here some pictures of our cute little bakers:

Here they are enjoying a warm cookie fresh out of the oven:

And enjoying another one a few hours later...

If you like to bake here are a few other recipes here on our blog:

Easy S'more Cookies

Easy Hot Fudge Sauce

Peanut Butter Chocolate Balls

Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake

Chocolate Chip Pound Cake (Patty Cake)

I hope you all have a fabulous Thursday!