26th 52! My mom's snowman birthday cake!!!

First off I would like to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! For her birthday my mom asked me to make a snowman cake. She wanted the bottom tier cake with homemade icing and the top two tiers rice krispy treats covered in fondant. I made the rice krispy treats two days befor ei needed them thinking I could shape them later. I couldn't; they were hard and brittle. So my mom suggested I warm them up in the microwave so I did and they- thankfully- got soft enough for me to shape them! I made the cake in the shape of a ball using a special cake pan my sister got me for Christmas. So I iced that and put the top two layers of rice krispy treat covered fondant on top of the cake put a dowel in and started decorating. I noticed it was tipping so I jammed some fondant in between the bottom layer of rice krispy treat and the cake layer. it stopped tipping but about a half-hour late when I finished his scarf I noticed that the cake part was starting to cave. It was because the top two layers of rice krispy treat were too much weight for the poor cake to hold up. so I took the top layers off and stuffed the part where the cake cracked with more fondant (fondant fixes everything ;)). Then about half an hour before we ate  dinner the next day I put the cake back together and took pictures. It tasted pretty good and at the end of the day when it's all cut up it doesn't matter what it looked like before just what it tastes like!!

Ingredients:

• One cake shaped in a sphere
• Two rice krispy treat spheres  (One smaller than the other)
• White fondant- 24 oz
• Peanut M&M's
• Food dye- Royal blue and Orange
• Long thick pretzel sticks
• Fudge covered graham crackers
• Fudge stripe circle cookies (don't think that's their real name but you get what I mean.)
• White Icing
• Red/Yellow fruit roll-ups
• Optional- Mini marshmallows to decorate the edge of dish

 Directions:
Cover the two rice krispy treat spheres in fondant, you may need to ice in cracks or ice to get the fondant to stick, and set aside. Ice the cake part. To make the face attach five brown M&M's to make a smile and attach to to make eyes on the smallest rice krispy treat tier with icing. Take some fondant and dye it orange and shape for the carrot nose. Dye some fondant royal blue and roll out thinly for the scarf, if you want you can cut the ends to make fringe. attach the top two tiers with a dowel and put the scarf on. Attach buttons onto the bottom two tiers. To make the the hat attach four of the graham crackers together with Nutella or chocolate icing and attach one of the fudge stripe cookies with more Nutella. Put a strip of red fruit roll-up around the base. Attach the hat to the top tier. To make the broom take three yellow fruit roll-ups and put them around a pretzel stick. texture them and then cut the ends with scissors or a knife. Put a strip of red fruit roll-up around the edge to make it look like a broom. To make arms break a pretzel stick in half and dye a little fondant royal blue. Make the fondant into two mittens and attach to each half of the preztel stick with icing. Attach the arms with icing, sticking it into the fondant pretty deep. Attach all three layers with the dowel, and sprinkle mini marshmallows on the plate! And enjoy! (Sorry if I missed anything! It's a lot to write about!)

25th 52! Nutella Marscapone Calzone!

This was different. Very glad I made it though! A comment was left by Sun & Snow Ski Team saying that I should make cal-zones. I looked it up and found a recipe that used just regular pizza dough, but I wanted to make sweetened pizza dough so I made that from scratch. I was nervous because I put it in the microwave to rise (supposedly makes it rise faster) and I checked after 45 minutes and it didn't look liked it had changed at all. So I stuck a glass of really hot water in the microwave (another way to make it rise faster) and checked another half hour later, it looked a little bigger but not big enough. I tested to see if it was ready to roll out by sticking my thumb in and seeing if the indent stayed. It did so I rolled it out and filled it. I cooked it and then it was almost time for me to leave to go to a swim meet. I had to see if it tasted good and take pictures while it was still light out, so I cut a little bit of the end off and ate it and it was really good!

Sweetened dough recipe:
Ingredients:

• 2 Cups Bread Flour
• 1 Tsp Active Dry Yeast 
• 1/4 Tsp Salt
• 2 Tbs Sugar 
• 2 Tbs Vegetable Oil 
• 1 Egg 
• 1/2 Cup Milk, lukewarm 

Directions:
Mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients. Mix the dough, loosely combining. Turn dough out on floured surface and knead. Allow dough to rise in a covered bowl in the microwave for about an hour and 45 minutes. To speed up rising place a glass of hot water in the corner of the microwave.
Recipe From Homemade Pizza Made Easy
Cal-zone recipe:
Ingredients:

• Pizza Dough (see recipe above)
• 3/4 cup Nutella
• 3/4 cup Marscapone
• A few pinches of sugar and cocoa powder
• Butter

Optional:

• A good amount of chopped almonds
• A good amount of sweetened coconut
• A good amount of mini marshmallows

Directions:
Roll out dough to be maybe 1/4 inch thick (it will puff up in the oven!)
Spread Nutella on one half of the dough and marscapone cheese on the other half. Sprinkle the optional ingredients on one side of the dough. Fold over the pizza dough and pinch edges together
Brush with butter and the sugar and cocoa powder
Bake on a cookie sheet in a preheated oven at 400°F for about 13 minutes.
Recipe adapted from The Sandwich Press

24th 52, Sweet-heart cupcakes!

I think these are some of the best cupcakes I've ever made. My sister, Mads, said that it was the best icing shes ever had. I liked the cupcakes a lot too. I made them from scratch but it was so easy, there was nothing fancy to it. They aren't as dark a store bought mix but they taste even better. The assembly of them was a little difficult because the cupcakes had a kind of brownie crunch top so they didn't cut very nicely. I think they turned out pretty well and they tasted great so I can't complain!

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 8 oz chocolate chips (dark or milk chocolate)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and line 18 cupcake cups. Combine flour, sugar, paking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add oil, milk, eggs, and vanilla. Beat with mixer on medium speed for 2 min. While beating melt the chocolate chips in the microwave in 30 sec. intervals on 50% power until melted (about 2 minutes). Beat in chocolate until well blended. Fill up cupcake tins to about 1/2 inch below the edge. Bake 25-30 minutes until toothpick comes out mostly clean.

Ingredients:

•  1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 6 Tablespoons maraschino cherry juice
• 1/2 cup finely chopped maraschino cherries

Directions:

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer beat butter until smooth.
2. With the mixer running, Add 2 cups of powdered sugar, one cup at a time.
3. Add 4 tablespoons maraschino cherry juice, one tablespoon at a time.
4. Continue beating, and add the remaining 2 cups powdered sugar, chopped maraschino cherries, and remaining maraschino cherry juice. If desired, add a drop of pink food coloring.
5. Beat until fully combined. Refrigerate until ready to use. Icing recipe from Glorious Treats

To assemble:
Cut the top of the cupcake (the part above the liner) off and ice the cupcake. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter cut out a heart shape in the center of the top of the cupcake. Dust powdered sugar on top and place the top of the cupcake back on the iced cupcake. You can put the heart cut-out on another iced cupcake.
Idea also from Glorious Treats   

                        

 

 

23rd 52, Mint Chocolate Buttercreams

All you do is mix the ingredients together, roll them into balls and refrigerate. It can't get much simpler than that! Plus, these are delicious! They have a fudgey, truffley consistency. Since I used mint hot chocolate mix they tasted slightly minty. Yum.


Ingredients:

• 8 oz. powdered sugar
• 8 oz. Mint hot chocolate mix
• About 3/4 of a 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
• 5 tbsp butter (softened)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup mint chocolate chips (optional)

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together with a spoon or hands. Refrigerate mixture, roll into shape. Melt chocolate chips and drizzle over buttercreams with a spoon. Serve chilled.
Makes about 21 buttercreams.