Bertie's Bakery

A Cupcake Tasting

2012-02-27T01:38:00.001-05:00

I was given a challenge!

A loyal reader of the blog wrote to me and explained that her soon to be “40-something year old friend” was guilty of decapitating every cupcake that she ever eats. In other words, (as my sister would describe) this Birthday girl has a cupcake eating condition whereby she prefers a higher icing to cupcake ratio.

This reader wanted to know if I could create a batch of cupcake tops (like muffin tops) with various icings piled on top for her friend as a birthday gift.

I accepted the challenge!

Since there were three ladies getting together for the reveal of cupcake icings, I decided to take it a step further! You know the other two ladies weren’t going to love sitting there watching their friend devour the icings and listen to her description of the various tastes and textures; nor were they going to ask the birthday girl to share her favorites either. So I went ahead and made a batch for each of the friends so they could all bite into the different flavors and combinations at the same time and do this “Mmmmmmmmmm”.

Surely, if you’ve done the math you’ll notice that there are sets of four on the table, and I’ve mentioned three ladies. That leaves one extra of each flavor combination. Well, The Boss was kind enough to be my “creative editor” for the day and photographed every single set of cupcakes for me. That saved me a LOT of time; I paid him in treats for his labor!

Here’s a closer look at the line up!

Mexican Chocolate- Spiced Chocolate Buttercream/ Chocolate Cake

Birthday Cake- Birthday Cake Icing / Funfetti Cake

Smores- Toasted Marshmallow & Ganache center / Graham Cake

Bertie’s Lemonade- Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting / Vanilla Cake

Cherry Blossom- Cherry Buttercream / Cherry Chip

Tiramisu- Espresso Cream Cheese Frosting / Vanilla Cake

Peppermint Patty- Peppermint Buttercream & Ganache / Chocolate Cake

The Classic- Chocolate Buttercream / Vanilla Cake

Boston Cream- Ganache with Cream Filling / Vanilla

Peanut Butter Nom- Peanut Buttercream & Ganache / Chocolate Cake

**MIA** The “Vanilla Dream” and “Salted Carmel” were the last icings made, and of course I was running a little tight on time and they unfortunately did not get individual “fashion shots”.

Then they were all packaged up including a tasting menu and a bow!

So what do you think, how did I do? Is this a box of treats up might like to receive for your birthday? More importantly I have to very important questions for you…

1) What would you be willing to pay for a dozen customized cupcakes (or just tops) with your choice of cake and icing combination?? Complete with a menu and bow!

2) Reflecting on the flavors I created for these ladies I think I did a good job varying the icing flavor profiles and textures. What flavor would YOU have liked seen featured in a cupcake tasting?

That’s all for now folks, thanks for stopping by!

Friday Round up: Cool Cookies

2012-02-24T00:43:00.001-05:00

Like most of you, I have several blogs/feeds, Flicker accounts, and Facebook pages that I follow on a regular basis. Some are photography based, and others triathlon and running related, but the bulk are blogs/bakers like me. But out of all of the baking blogs, the gals who really impress me weekly are often the cookie decorators! Who would have thought that cookie decorating could be brought to such a high standard?

So without further ado, here are a handful of The Best of what I Found (this week)!:

These cookies are by a gal who goes by SweetAmbs. I kid you not, her work always looks this good!

Then there is this lady who I stumbled upon while working on my own Facebook page. These Kitchenaid cookies have to be one of the greatest cookie decorating ideas I’ve seen!

These next fishing cookies actually make me kind of jealous. I grew up fishing with my Dad, so camping and fishing is pretty special to the both of us. These are for you Pops… I might just mimic these someday!

And finally to top off the Friday workday, albeit not cookies, I present to you a fabulous after work drink!

Thanks Val So Cal, for the Coconut Margarita recipe! Just what I’ll be looking forwards to this Friday afternoon!

Well that’s all for now, have a great weekend!

Oscar Worthy Dessert

2012-02-23T00:08:00.000-05:00

Is everybody as excited as I am about this weekend’s Academy Awards and Oscar Red Carpet Showdown??

Now I don’t get too revved up about the Grammy, Emmy, or Tony’s Awards, but I sure do love the Oscars! I am a huge movie buff and love seeing all of my favorite peeps get super styled out to celebrate another year of great entertainment (ahem, also their multi-millions of dollars made…).

Now I promise come Monday morning I will not go on a rant about who should have won what, but I might just have to comment about my favorite dress! We’ll see, I hope this year is not a dud for fashion!

Now, getting back to the post; I present to you the Bakery’s take on how to enjoy the show! Since we don’t get to tread the Red Carpet like all of the stars, I figured we should at least be treated to something just as eye catching!

Bertie’s Bakery Red Carpet:

There you have it! Short and sweet. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and it was enough to get you jazzed about the award show this weekend!

If you would like to enjoy some cream cheese frosting the recipe is here.

If you would like to see how I made my totally awesome Red Carpet cupcake wrappers you can find out here.

I am still not totally happy with my Red Velvet cake recipe so I’m holding off on posting that until I create a really good one!

Thanks for stopping by!… who do you think is going to win best movie??

My Pet Shark

2012-02-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

For the past year The Boss and I have had a small “tiff” between us. It all started when I told him that I would like to have a pet Bunny. He simply laughed and said no. Period.

I left it alone for a while, and then eventually asked him again. The response was again a simple “No”. I wasn’t making any headway by myself, so I eventually confided in some family members to get their help and advice. Their response wasn’t much better, they even followed up with gag presents of bunny paraphernalia and the such.

Then, this past fall The Boss thought it would be funny to buy “Me” a pet substitute. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that this “pet” wasn’t really meant for me; it was totally his. He would even taunt me with it in the most of inconvenient times!

This particular incident made it’s way to You Tube.

Anyways, it’s been about a year since I initially voiced my want for a pet bunny, and with no bun-bun in sight I’ve had enough. I work from the house and spend a lot of time here alone, and therefore I would like to have a companion through out the day. So I took back my “gift” that was never really fully handed over to me! Now during the days we’ve been doing all kinds of things together!

Since the weather has been so nice out as well, we spent an entire afternoon hanging out!

First we just hung out in a sunny spot. Turns out Sharky likes to read as much as I do!

Then, since he was so well behaved I agreed to take him to the playground in my Neighborhood. He wasn’t too sure about this whole “slide” action and refused to go down without me!

“Weeeeee”

I was surprised by how often we had to take pit stops. Turns out Sharky likes to mark his territory!

Soon enough it was time to head home! It was lunch time after all!

What do you want for lunch?

I was so impressed with my new friend and how well we got along, I even took him along this past weekend to a local running race. The Boss was running, so we took to the course to ring the cow bell!

I wasn’t sure if we were going to be accepted by other cheering squads so we found a nice quiet spot about a mile into the race course.

We both got a little nervous when the police came by first! But he didn’t give us any trouble.

For the most part all the runners were entertained by our presence. Turns out we were pretty much the only cheering squad along the course with a shark! Go figure.

That’s really it for me and the shark for now. I’ll be sure to keep taking pictures as we find new adventures. Until then, if you want to head over to The Boss’s blog and maybe give him some encouragement to come to a floppy eared agreement, I sure would appreciate that!

I even think I’d be more willing to make more free Bakery Treats as giveaways if I had a pet Bunny! What do you think? Is a bunny a good idea? I would give it such a good home!…Mmmm Carrot Cake for Bunny!

Thanks for stopping by!

Lemon Scones for Breakfast

2012-02-20T01:38:00.000-05:00

It’s a long weekend here in the States, “President’s Day”, and I am thankful for a long weekend! The Hubsters is a work-a-holic and long weekends are always a great for us to unwind.

This morning he is waking up to freshly baked Lemon Scones! But shhhh he doesn’t know this!

This is a very simple recipe, and if you have lemons in your fridge I would be willing to bet you have everything else that you need to go make these right now!

As always the recipe is located at the bottom, skip ahead if you want, otherwise enjoy the picture show!

1) First get out your butter. You don’t want your butter to be too soft, so don’t take out the butter too far in advance. It' needs to be in a state such that it can hold it’s shape without melting into the batter.

2) Put all of your dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and using a pastry cutter or two knives, start cutting the butting into the flour.

***You don’t want your butter mashed into the flour, instead it should look like crumbs. You will see the dough come together when you add the milk. In the meantime, the chunks of butter are what will eventually create a light and fluffy scone. When the scone is put in the oven to bake, the butter melts and leaves a cavity in the dough, thus leaving air pockets for a fluffy end product! Moral of the story, you are NOT trying to mash the butter in to flour to create a batter or dough… the milk will do that.

3) Once finished cutting in the butter, add your lemon zest and gently fork that into the mixture as well.

4) You are going to fold and cut the milk mixture into the flour until just combined. Do no over mix. Remember we are trying to save our butter chunks!

5) Then pour the batter out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and shape into a circle.

6) For the sake of ease, make a pile of flour and dip your pie cutter into the flour before making each slice. Just trust me on this!

8) Last step, lightly brush the tops of the scone slices with an egg wash. This is an important step because the proteins in the wash help the scone develop a nice golden crust on top.

***Optional, I also shake out a little extra white sugar on top of scone after the egg wash.

Bake at 400* for 20 minutes and devour!

Yum!

Don’t hesitate to leave a message if you love scones, have a question, or a flavor suggestion!

Friday Freebie!

2012-02-17T01:48:00.001-05:00

This is the first installment of Friday Freebies, and it came after a long debate! The Boss and I have very different interpretations on what a “Freebie” is, and therefore it is highly possible that you and I could also have a different understanding. So I hear by declare this explanation as how its going to work for Bertie’s Bakery Freebies!

*I consider the Freebie Friday section a place where people can come to download or copy something useful for FREE, or, sign up for something and receive it in the mail for FREE.

*Freebies are guaranteed, and again… FREE! Therefore you don’t have to do one of those internet scavenger hunts, in-depth linking festivals, or forced comment to get what you came for. Just take it and run :)

*I will try my very very best to make these interesting and useful! However, since they are free, please don’t yell too loudly at me if you don’t like. Pretty please.

Okay, there’s the explanation, and without further ado, here are the goods!

What is that you say? Free Cupcakes? No… but a free template to print to make your very own cupcake wrappers! I have made my own cupcake wrappers on several batches of cupcakes lately, and with such great feedback I thought this was the perfect project to start off the Freebies!

Let us start with WHY would a person go through the effort of making their own cupcake wrapper? Well I think it’s quite obvious (as per the photo above). I have spent more ol’ time and money searching for the “perfect” cupcake wrapper for a specific occasion and then after the cupcake is baked you can’t see the color or pattern anymore!!

So for my last two batches of cupcakes I decided I had had enough and I was taking charge of the wrapper design! Now you can too!

Above is the PDF template that you can download, print, and cut out; just click the picture! This allows you to have a pattern to trace onto a card stock or design paper of your choice! Here are the easy steps to go with!

1) First step is to trace!

Trace out the template on to the back of your printed images of colored cardstock.

***Tip: if you are trying to fit 5 wrappers onto one page, start tracing from the top down. It is okay to slightly overlap the very bottom edges to make it all fit because the bottoms will be folded under later!

2) Then Cut!

As a time saver, carefully cut out the same sides of each wrapper and the top edge! Then you will stack them together so the top and (one) side match up perfectly. Now you can cut 3-5 wrappers at one time!

3) Snip some more. Still holding your wrappers 3-5 thick, go ahead and make slits on the bottom half of the wrapper so you can seamlessly fold the bottom in! (Exact slit markings are on the template)

4) Fit wrapper to the cupcake.

Now wrap your paper wrapper around the base of the cupcake, tape it in place and fold in the individual pieces on the bottom!

5) Take lots of pictures of your creation!!

That’s all! Four very quick and easy steps! It will take you more time to pick out the perfect cardstock a Michaels than it will to make these!

Well that’s all for this Freebie Friday! Now get away from your computer and go bake some pretty cupcakes!!

********House Keeping Note********

The winner of the SmartBar giveaway was lucky commenter #21:

Unfortunately “gajkelley” doesn’t have an e-mail address attached to their Blogger profile. If this is you “gajkelley” shoot me an e-mail with your info and you’ll be enjoying a fresh batch of SmartBars next week!

Happy Friday!

Chocolate Chip Cookies: A Household Favorite

2012-02-16T01:02:00.001-05:00

I have actually posted this cookie recipe before. However, this cookie is such an overwhelming favorite that I couldn’t let the recipe from the original post get buried into the blog afterworld where nobody would ever see it again! Thus I bring you the glamor shots and recipe (with one tiny update) from my most recent Chocolate Chip Cookie rendezvous!

The most important part of making chocolate chip cookies is baking with GOOD chocolate! And in this case, when cooking for the Boss, one of his favorite chocolates is good ol’ Hershey’s!

(My Instagram Photo, I was juggling two cameras!)

While Hershey’s Milk chocolate bars don’t quite rank up there with Ghirardelli chocolate, that is what the man likes in his cookies, so that’s what he gets! Also, large chunks of chocolate. None of this chocolate chip non-sense!

And that’s really all there is! If you want to read a little more detail about these cookies, or you just want to see how the recipe unfolds in pictures click HERE to link to the original Chocolate Chip Cookies blog post. Otherwise just below is the recipe all ready for your kitchen!

Thanks for stopping by!

***Give away entries are now closed, and the winner will be announced Friday morning! Check back to see if it’s YOU!

Happy valentine’s Day

2012-02-14T02:20:00.001-05:00

Isn’t it crazy how on Holidays or special occasions you realize how fast time has gone by?? Honestly, weren’t we just shopping for Christmas presents and picking out cute outfits for New Year’s Eve? Where did the month of January go? It sure is hard to believe that we are now half way through February!

For many reasons the month of February has not gone as I had hoped. I’m staring at you Home Depot! What should have been a quick 2 day install of our kitchen floors, actually took closer to 2 weeks! They had ordered the wrong color for our ceramic tiles and figured that out AFTER they had finished demolishing the entire original kitchen floor! While waiting for the new special order tiles to arrive, the entirety of our kitchen was sitting in our living room (yes, stove as well! Sniff). Some people might have rejoiced in having an excuse to avoid cooking and order take out for two weeks, but for me, this was torture! What was I suppose to do in terms of “baking” without a kitchen?

Finally, my kitchen has been reinstalled and I was back at it again! For you on Valentine’s Day, I present a new Bertie’s Bakery Staple, a feather light, meringue based, no butter, icing! I think I shall call it Light as a Bertie’s Feather Icing! … or not, that’s kind of long.

As always the recipe is listed below. Before that, I’m posting the obligatory glamor shots of the icing!

You know you want to try it! It’s actually one of the easiest icings I’ve created to date, and yet one of the best!

*Quick note, if you haven’t checked out yesterday’s post on my new blog Re-Design, head over and leave a comment to enter my Smart Bar giveaway!

Happy Valentine’s Day, and thanks for stopping by!

Presenting the new Bertie’s Bakery blog design!!!

2012-02-13T02:24:00.001-05:00

Wow! I cannot tell you how excited I am to FINALLY be done reading, writing, and editing computer code! I am SUPER grateful to be looking ahead at a future with Baking and Cake Decorating and NOT computer design! While I learned a lot, I would MUCH rather be baking!

So why the change? I gave the old blog design a good hard look, and realized it just wasn’t going to cut it in the competitive baking world! I think the design and content presentation of the blog should reflect the same level of quality as my product. In case you forgot already what she used to look like, don’t worry I saved a few screen shots!

Let’s start off with a little tour. One really fun page that I think you might enjoy is the new “About Me”. Look to the right of this page and you’ll see this little picture staring at you!

Click it! Go ahead… it’s tells you all about who and why I am who I am, and about my vision for the future Bertie’s Bakery. Also, this is where you have to click to get my e-mail… you know, incase you are interested in ordering a cake or batch of cookies!

I had a lot of fun creating the new blog design, so much so I even let the Boss take a few new snaps of me. Apparently I needed a new profile picture! We made a faux photo shoot out of it! In the end it came down to these six shots. What do you think, did I make the right choice?

Pretty sure I could have gotten away with the Moose picture (IMG_3729), but it lacked my colorful spatulas!

Oh yeah…. Hi Mom, I got my haircut! You like?

Moving on to the front page (pictured above). Just above the “Meet the Baker” blurb, you’ll see four vintage polaroid buttons containing different ways you can follow me! Facebook is fairly new, so I’m just getting into the swing of things there, and Instagram is quickly becoming my new favorite thing! Either way, follow me on any or all of these outlets, I love knowing who’s out there!

You will also notice there are five new buttons to the right of the “Home” button.

Cake, Cupcake, and Cookie Galleries are fairly self explanatory, none the less they are new. Before they were all piled into one gallery and it was overwhelming to find things! So I broke up the party. To the right of them are two very new buttons. “The Bird House” and “DIY & Freebies”. The Bird House is simply everything that’s happening outside of baking. Travel, racing, and “house life” are all featured here.

DIY & Freebies came about because while analyzing my Google Analytics (blog stats) I realized how much my readers enjoyed and “pinned” (thanks to Pinterest) my crafty posts. While these were mostly my wedding “Do It Yourself” ramblings, I have always wanted to feature more of my craft and sewing projects on the blog, and the DIY stats have encouraged me to post more projects here! Keep an eye out for “freebie” ideas and downloads starting on Fridays here!

Finally, you’ve probably noticed the new sidebar of “Cake Favorites” These will be updated as new cakes come in and you guys continue to click and share the links with others. As the Stats change, the pictures will too!

Well I think that’s the main overview of the new look! What do you think? Is the page more user friendly now? More visual?

Well here’s the deal! I’m going to do my first Bakery Give Away! I’m going to give my readers until the end of Wednesday to leave a comment with their thoughts on Bertie’s Bakery new make-over! Or simply, if you’d rather, let me know if you think I made the right choice in profile pictures?

One entry per person, and the winner will receive a bakers dozen of my famous (okay, mostly famous) Smart Bars! They were a big hit with the ANT+ at CES 2012 in January, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like them too! Doesn’t matter where you live, just leave a comment! Spread the word!

Thanks for reading – and hope you enjoy the new look!

A Cake of Pink and Pearls

2012-02-08T02:24:00.001-05:00

I realize that a lot of my readers’ favorite cakes are the cakes that have been very animated, themed, and even mind boggling. I love that you guys are up for entertaining my imagination for what I can create out of a cake, but there is very girly side to me as well and I really really want to improve on my more elegant and pretty cakes. So with valentines around the bend I thought it would be a good time to break out the pink, and practice flower making and other techniques. This cake is the end result of me just practicing different techniques and flowers! What do you think?

Imagine if I actually had a cake in the plans while making this!

Here’s the up close of a few details.

And finally, my Instragram shot! Do you have Instragram? It’s my new addiction!

Thanks for reading, and be sure to leave a message if you liked the cake (or didn't like the cake), let me know your thoughts!

Super Bowl Cupcakes: New York Giants

2012-02-06T01:15:00.001-05:00

Now, before anyone gets too excited or too annoyed that I made New York Giants cupcakes last night, let me get one thing straight. I was very happy that the Giants won, but that was only because the house party I went to was a VERY animated NY Giants fan club. Had the Giants lost, heads would have rolled. That was the extent of my loyalty to the Giants, before Wednesday of last week, I would not have bet $5 on who was even playing on Sunday. I love sports, but I don’t really hold too many allegiances in terms of sport dynasties.

Anyways, later the week I’m actually going to go a little deeper into how I made the custom NY Giants cupcake wrappers, but for now I’m just going to let you peek at the end product. At the bottom I left the recipe for a slight alteration to a buttercream favorite of mine!

A pet peeve of mine is that I spend all kinds of time and money poking around craft and bakery shops looking for great cupcake wrappers, and in the end they fade away in the oven before anyone really gets to appreciate them! So for last nights game I thought I’d give in and try making my own cupcake wrapper “covers”!

It was pretty simple! I simply found the logo that I wanted and copied and pasted it into MS Word, and printed 5 sheets. I figured I could get about 5 wrappers out of each sheet, so that gave me two dozen and one extra for good measure!

Cut out the shapes,

Cut off several pieces of tape so I would be scrambling one handed for a piece!

Wrapped my cupcake, taped it,

Finally folded in the bottom tabs! Voila, my own custom Giants Wrappers! (Later the week I’m going to post more in depth with a pattern for the cut outs and Valentine Papers!)

And that’s it! Now I have cupcake wrappers that people can ACTUALLY tell what the theme of the cupcake is!

What did you do for the Super Bowl? Any favorite commercials? Hands down, my favorite was the Milk Chocolate M&M commercial!

Butter Cream Recipe:

1.5 Cups Granulated Sugar

6 Egg Whites

2tsp Cream of Tatar

2 cups Unsalted Butter (4sticks) cut into 1tbsp pieces

Pinch of salt

2tsp Vanilla Extract

Whisk egg whites and sugar in double boiler set over simmering water. Make sure the water in the bottom pot is not touching bottom of pot with eggs and sugar. Whisk continuously until candy thermometer reaches 160. Remove from heat and pour into electric mixer (avoid allowing condensation from bottom of pot to drip into bowl). Whisk on medium high. Once whisking add Cream of Tartar. Continue to whisk until bowl and mixture is at room temperature and stiff peaks form. Add salt and flavoring. Whisk on low until combined. While mixer is still going and on low setting add butter a few pieces at a time. Once all butter and flavorings have been added turn mixer back onto high setting or about 1 minute until mixture has come back together and has a thick, smooth consistency.

Enjoy!

Sweet Cream Risotto Pudding

2012-02-01T11:11:00.001-05:00

Since I LOVE risotto and I foster a love for dessert I thought I could be on to something! So off I went yesterday on a quest to create a recipe for Risotto Rice Pudding! One thing that I can say is that this stuff tasted so good! The flavor was there but the consistency was not; still really soupy, and I wanted it more like a pudding. So, with that, I am going to taunt you with my pretty picture as I am still working out some kinks of the recipe.

What do you think? Is a risotto pudding something that might interest you? Or should I stop while I’m ahead?

In Other news, it’s FEBRUARY! Yea! The month of Romance, flowers, chocolates, and sweet treats for your sweetheart! I am hoping to have something Valentines for you each weekday so if you happen to get the idea to do something nice for someone in your life you’ll have all the ideas and “how-tos” right here!

Thanks for reading! and remember to flip your Calendar!

There’s A New Sheriff in Town: Birthday Cake!

2012-01-30T01:11:00.001-05:00

This weekend marked the 1st Birthday of a very special young man! One of my best friend’s little boy was anointed the New Sheriff at his birthday party this weekend, and I had the honor of baking his first Birthday Cake!

Because we had dueling parties over what flavor cake would be best, I made both Vanilla Vanilla AND Chocolate Chocolate!

Then I went straight to decorating! My favorite part! Here is a closer look at some of my wild western details:

And this last photo is thanks to the work of my handy dandy cell phone! If you are a Twitter follower you have already seen this picture and would have had a sneak peek at this cake on Saturday!

So what do think? Anyone want to head to the rodeo? Yeehaw!

Chocolate Martini Mousse

2012-01-27T01:38:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday everyone! I thought I would take this Friday morning and get you excited about your weekend; how about a REAL chocolate martini? This is a super easy, SUPER delicious dessert that you can make for that special someone! Might also be an idea to tuck this recipe away for the big V-Day coming up! I promised I wouldn’t even say the word until February, but if you’re having troubles figuring out what I mean- it’s on February 14th!

So here are the picture steps to the recipe, the ingredient list is below! Go forth and keep your fingers out of the mixerer!!

Weigh out your three chocolates of choice…

Chop the chocolate starting with the lightest color first…

Once chocolate is chopped, boil the heavy cream and divide evenly among the three chocolates. Let the hot cream sit on top of the chocolate for two minutes and then whisk together (by hand) the chocolate cream sauce until a smooth liquid. Allow the three chocolate mixtures to cool to room temperature and then refrigerate for at least one hour or until ready to serve.

Once the chocolates are cooled and ready to be plated, remove from refrigerator and one by one whisk the mixtures with an electric mixer on high. Whisk until stiff peaks form.

Go ahead and scrape the whipped mixture back into it’s refrigerated bowl while whisking the others. Also in the same manner as chopping, whisk the chocolates in order of the lightest color first. This way you don’t have to use three whisks!

Once finished whipping up the different chocolate mousses, spoon in the martini layers and garnish with any leftover mousse on top! I happened to have a few cherries on hand and thought they also looked the part! Have fun with the decorating, and most importantly, enjoy!

Mousse Martini Ingredients

5oz Semi Sweet Chocolate

4oz Milk Chocolate

3oz White Chocolate

2 Cups Heavy Whipping Cream

No Frills, Just Goodness, Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

2012-01-25T01:09:00.001-05:00

Sometimes you just have to have comfort food! Sure, it’s nice to have fancy cookies for special occasions once in a while, but there are other times that traditional recipes are what’s best!

Here’s the recipe to my no frills, won’t spread all over your cookie sheet, made in no time, best oatmeal raisin cookies!

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies:

3/4 Cup soft butter

3/4 Cup Packed brown sugar

1/2 Cup Granulated sugar

1 Large Egg

1 1/3 Cup Flour

2 Tbsp water

1 tsp Cinnamon

3/4 Baking soda

2 tsp Vanilla

1 1/2 Cups Raisins

1/2 Cup Walnuts (Chopped)

1/4 Cup Sunflower seeds (toasted)

3 Cups Oats

1) Beat butter until light and fluffy. Add sugars and egg and continue to beat on medium high. The mixture might seem to separate at first, but just scrape down the sides and beat until fluffy again. Add water and vanilla and beat.

2) Add flour, soda, and cinnamon to the top of butter mixture. Fork together until dry ingredients are combined. Now, combine the dry ingredients with the butter mixture on low speed of your mixer. Scrape down sides as needed.

3) Fold in raisins and nuts.

4) Spoon cookies out onto non-stick cookie sheet or onto parchment lined cookie sheet; 9-12 per sheet. Bake at 350 for 8-12 minutes.

5) *** if you wait until the cookies feel firm or develop a golden brown bottom to take them out of the over you will end up with a crispy cookie. I personally prefer a chewy cookie so I tend to take them out closer to the 8 minutes.

These cookies are perfect with a morning coffee, so go ahead, give them a try!

Happy Birthday Sugar Cookies

2012-01-23T01:51:00.001-05:00

As you might have read on Friday, I am currently traveling around Colorado visiting an on slot of friends who have recently moved out here! More excitingly, one of the girls who fall into this relocation category is celebrating her birthday today!

Lauren is the birthday girl and is an awesome girl that I have been fortunate to meet through blogging and triathlon. She has also been a big supporter of my Bertie’s Bakery dream! What better way could I say thank you for your support and happy birthday than to dedicate a baked good to her on her big day!

And what big birthday might she be celebrating this year??

Well, not all ladies like to tell their age, so I wasn’t about to do it for her! Instead, I came up with this question mark strategy! I thought it was super cute, but apparently others thought that she was pregnant! Yikes, maybe next time I’ll save the question marks for baby showers where the parents don’t yet know the gender of the baby! My bad!

Happy Birthday Lauren, I hope you enjoy every last bite! For the rest of my readers, Happy Monday! I am sending you subliminal Monday cookies!

*** If you are interested in birthday (or baby) cookies like these for someone you know, contact me and maybe cookies will show up at your house too!***

Air Plane Shortbread Cookies

2012-01-20T00:20:00.000-05:00

♪♪ “I’m leaving on a jet plane, I don’t know when I’ll be back again….”♪♪

Yup, you heard right, I’m back on the road! This time I’m heading off to Denver, CO to hang out with some of my favorite ladies. And since I’ve been hanging out with royal icing a lot lately, I thought these royal icing flooded cookies were a perfect send off! Here’s a few more pictures up close…

I have to say, I thought these came out pretty cute and I hope my friend feels the same! One of the girls who I’m visiting just celebrated her little boy’s first birthday and I can’t wait to surprise the little guy with them!

On a totally different note, I thought I would bring up a running injury issue I’ve been dealing with :( A long story short I was getting A.R.T. treatment all fall on my IT Band/knee before the Philadelphia Marathon (Race Report here if you missed it!). Then, after recovering from the marathon and beginning a regular running routine again I started having the exact same problem in the opposite knee???? Whaaaaaat? How is this possible?

Back to the Doc I go!

Well, here’s the thing… I think someone got a little carried away with the Torture Tools!

I know the picture isn’t the greatest… cell phone shot. But I think you get the point! Have you ever had A.R.T. therapy before? Did it turnout anything like this? Needless to say, ice has been my new best friend!

That’s all! Have a great weekend!

A Chocolate Bird Bath

2012-01-19T00:14:00.000-05:00

I have spent the last day or two playing around with royal icing. If you’ve ever worked with Royal icing you know that there is a huge learning curve. You can watch as many demonstrations as you want, but it is when you start making, mixing, thinning, piping, and flooding your own you figures and designs you start to really learn! Today I had some fun with different shapes, and turned out to be a silly and yet really rewarding project!

This is how it all started:

(Birds piped on to parchment paper)

The original plan was to practice creating royal icing decorations on parchment paper and then transfer them on to a fondant or butter cream cake. The only problem is that I really started to like these little guys and and wanted to create something that gave them more character than just sitting them on the side of a cake.

This is what I came up with…

I hope you enjoyed the playfulness of the royal icing… there is plenty more where that came from as I have three more royal icing project coming up over the next week and a half (only these ones involve cookies!)

Do you have any icing design requests? Let me know, and you might just see your idea posted right here on the blog!

Cheese Cake Layered Chocolate Cupcakes

2012-01-18T01:35:00.001-05:00

Watch out for this triple threat! Chocolate, Cheese Cake, and Chocolate liqueur, oh and lets not forget… dipped in chocolate ganache! I apologize to those on a New Years resolution to cut back on sweets; I am not on such a resolution :)

Here’s how the story goes of how I managed to put cheesecake inside a chocolate cupcake!

I had originally started off with a new recipe that I had thought up while traveling abroad over Christmas. How could I make a saturated fat and egg free cupcake? There are many reasons I would want to play in the world of recipe alterations; mostly because I would like to offer different options to customers with dietary needs. So onward with the experimentation!

Whisk together all of the dry ingredients and dig a hole in the sand. I guess I really did have my mind on the beach when creating this recipe!

Then I gathered all of the liquid ingredients into a cup with a spout! Please note that the ingredient list says “Boiling Water” please follow that direction. Since there are no eggs in the batch you need the hot water to react with the baking soda to create a rise in the batter! Thanks :)

I think that the last 4 pictures speak for themselves in “what to do next”.

It was at this stage that I thought that this recipe was missing something. Was this just going to be another batch of chocolate cupcakes? Hmmmm. Then, with not a lot of searching I found an unopened package of cream cheese in the fridge. I think we can safely say that the idea of an egg and saturated fat free recipe just went out the window…

Basically I made a small batch of cheese cake batter and spooned about 1 tbsp of cheese cake batter into the 1/3 filled cupcake batter and then covered the cheese cake with the rest of the chocolate batter!

They baked up just fine!

Once they finished cooling off, I dipped them in a chocolate ganache… well, actually, I double dipped them in the chocolate.

Anxious to see what it would look like on the inside I cut one open and was pleasantly surprised. I really had no idea what it would turn out like. Next time I might do two layers of cheese cake!

The recipe is below, enjoy!

Chocolate Cupcake Batter

1 1/2 Cups All Purpose flour

3/4 Cups Brown Sugar

1/4 Cups Granulated Sugar

1tsp Baking Soda

1/4tsp Salt

1/3 Cup Vegetable Oil

1 Cup Boiling water

2Tbsp Chocolate Liqueur (optional, but so good!)

1/2tsp Vanilla

1. Whisk all dry ingredients together in bowl and create well large enough for liquid ingredients to be poured into. Gently, while turning the bowl, fold the dry ingredients into the liquid. Continue to fold until all is incorporated.

2. Fill the bottom of cupcake pan with approx. 1/4 batter. Add a heaping tablespoon of cheese cake filling into the cupcake batter and then cover the rest with more chocolate batter. Do not try to stir the batters together.

3. Bake for 25-28 minutes at 350*F.

4. Let cupcakes cool to room temperature before attempting the chocolate dip. A warm cupcake will lead to runny chocolate and a big mess!

Cheese Cake Filling

4oz Cream Cheese

1/4 Cup Confectioners Sugar (sift after measuring)

1/8tsp salt (two good pinches)

1/2tsp vanilla

1 egg

1. Beat all ingredients together in electric mixer on medium until the cream cheese is smooth. Scrape down sides of bowl and beat for another 40 seconds just to be sure!

Chocolate Ganache Topping

3/4cups Semisweet Chocolate

1/2Cup Unsalted Butter

1/4cup Light Corn Syrup

1. Combine all ingredients in a microwave safe container and slowly bring the chocolate and butter to a liquid state. Stir the ingredients every 15 seconds. You could also do this step in a double boiler, but unless I’m making meringue I would honestly rather use the microwave. Just be sure not to burn the chocolate, hence the stiffing every 15 seconds.

2. Hold cupcake upside down and plunge directly into the chocolate goodness. Pull cupcake straight back up and let it drip for a second; make a twisting motion to scoop the cupcake around and back up right. Set the cupcake down on cooling racks.

3. If the chocolate is too runny try two things (in this order). Let the chocolate cool for about 2 minutes at room temperature and try again. If it is still a dripping mess, add a small handful of chocolate chips to the batch and melt them in, this should add a little more density. However, I have never had a problem with this specific ganache recipe for dipping, so do worry and give it a shot!

Enjoy!

Chocolate Bottom Toffee

2012-01-16T00:07:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite treats to have around the house is toffee! Chocolate bottom toffee to be exact! So I’m going to give you a quick tutorial to make this sweet and salty treat at home for yourself.

First you’re going to melt your butter, brown sugar, and light corn syrup in a sauce pan. I like to whisk the mixture the entire time while waiting for it to boil. Gradually bring it to a SLOW boil. When the little bubbles form and begin to break on the surface, add your baking powder. Continue whisking, and bring the entire mixture to a faster boil.

In total the toffee mixture should be boiling for around 5 minutes. Keep whisking!

When you are complete with the boiling/whisking process pour it out onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (not wax paper).

If when the mixture hits the parchment paper it spreads rapidly and it is not keeping it’s shape just use a rubber scraper and keep pushing the edges back towards the center. If after 30 seconds to a minute the mixture is still spreading, you haven’t boiled the mixture long enough. No problemo! Just let it cool enough so you can peel it off the parchment paper and drop it back in the sauce pan. Bring it back to a boil and give it another 2 minutes!

Re-pour the toffee; if it sticks you’re golden. Now for the secret ingredient! Salt. Lightly sprinkle the top layer with a flake salt (regular salt will work too, just looks prettier with the flake salt).

Once you are satisfied with the toffee, pop it in the freezer and let it get really crisp! You an see in the picture above the swirls and marbling in the hard toffee! Yum!

The next step is to melt about 1/2 cup of semi sweet chocolate and spread it out to the size (I eyeballed it) an lay your toffee on top. Lightly press the toffee down so it adheres to the chocolate. If you over estimated the size of the toffee as I did, just scrape it away before it cools too hard.

Back into the freezer it goes to expedite the process. Once the chocolate is hard, peel your parchment paper back to reveal your smooth bottom.

Here I simply put one hand under the chocolate and toffee, and gave the top layer a good pop with my other hand to try to evenly break up the pieces.

That’s all that’s to it! Now eat, or give as a present, it looks pretty in the glass jar.

Toffee Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Light Corn Syrup

1 Cup Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter

1tsp Baking Soda

Salt for Sprinkling

Chocolate Bottom:

1/2 Cup Semi Sweet Chocolate

The Smart Bar

2012-01-10T00:33:00.001-05:00

Earlier in the fall I did a small project called “Business Cookies” Overall I thought that the project went well and I had received lots of great feedback from the guests who received and inevitably ate the cookies. However it wasn’t until this November that I received the biggest compliment I could receive regarding my work; the company had come back for more!! Only this time they asked “Can you make a healthy snack bar?”

Yes… yes I can!

The request was for a large order of healthy snack bars that would fit with their Tag line “Live Smart”. The bar also had to be peanut and nut free. Personally I LOVE peanuts, almonds, and cashews in my granola bars, so now that all nuts were out of the realm of possible I had to do some research on what were good healthy, and perhaps most important: tasty alternatives!

Flaxseed!

Oh flaxseed how we have become such great friends! I did my research and this stuff (flaxseed) is the best of the best! Flaxseed is PACKED with great nutritional value, but flaxseed also came with some initial problems. It was nearly impossible to find ANY producer who was willing and able to state their product was produced 100% peanut and ANY other nut free! So back to researching I went.

A lot research and searching on the interwebs led to Ellie! www.gotflax.com Ellie sells 100% nut free flax products and Ellie is the nicest lady I have ever encountered! She gave me a lot of advice (do’s and don’t) of flaxseed, and how best to prepare the flax seed for my bars. I had initially thought that I should toast the whole seed for a better crunch! Wooaaao that is not a good idea, in fact toasting the flaxseed destroys all the goodness the oils in flaxseed naturally provides! When Ellie noticed I was purchasing the whole seed she asked if I was going to grind the seed myself? I said “No, I would use the whole seed in the bar” she continued with her wealth of flaxseed knowledge and convinced me to purchase a slightly different product than I originally planned. “Cold Milled Flakes of Flaxseed”. See her supplier (aka, the local farmer down the road) created his own milling machinery that keeps from heating up during the process, thus preserving even more goodness than what other manufactures and at home grinders can throughout the grinding process! She said “you can go ahead and put the whole seed in the bar if you wish, but unless each individual seed gets chewed up, the stomach will not be able to digest the nutrients from the seed and it will just end up going out as more fiber for their diet… if you know what I mean” hahaha she was too sweet!

I think I am going to do another post soon on flaxseed specifically, so I’ll stop my rambling now. But I want you to know that I went the distance to make sure GREAT ingredients such as this flaxseed went into these “Smart Bars”.

Other ingredients were:

Quaker Old Fashion Oats

Sunflower Seeds (also another “nut free challenge”, needless to say I discovered another amazing supplier there too! Another story, another day.)

Flaxseed Flakes & Whole Flaxseed

Rice Cereal

Cranberries (Craisins)

Raisins

Chocolate Chips (Yes, it had to be done. Dark Chocolate. Don’t fret, for every 80 bars there is only two tablespoons of chocolate chips, just enough for a light taste!)

100% Pure Clover Honey

Pure Vanilla

Brown Sugar

Salt

Then I mixed it all together!

Spread it out, rolled it tight, and cut it into bar size servings!

Now for the tedious part! Bagging the bars!

Bagging the bars took hours upon hours; a fair bit more time than I had allotted for.

Since the bars took so much extra time to bag, I would like to take this moment extend a big thanks to a few of my “helpers” who spent several hours twist-tying the tops and applying the stickers to the packaging with me!

….They were paid handsomely with steak and beer!

And that’s how it was done! I packed up my 100+ lbs of “Live Smart Snack Bar”, braved the US Post Office during the busy holiday season, and shipped them off to be eaten by many CES Health and Fitness attendees!

I’m sorry not to post the recipe, but I have a feeling these are going to be a top seller for the bakery, and a girl has to have some secrets up her sleeve!

Would you like a Bertie’s Bakery Smart Bar? Be the first to order as the bakery is soon to be open! And for all of you in Vegas at CES – hope your enjoying them!

Holiday Carmel Popcorn

2012-01-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

****Please Note that to my surprise (and MAJOR Irritation) realized this post never posted :( , it was set to post on Christmas Day so you could whip up the recipe and enjoy throughout the holidays… sorry. But you can still enjoy Carmel Popcorn anytime of the year! Go forth!

I won’t say too much about this popcorn because if you are reading this I urge you to buy a bag of popcorn on your way home today and make it for yourself! Believe me, the end product is going to do all the talking for itself!

So let’s get down to business!

You first need to set your oven to 150*F and pop your plain popcorn as normal in the microwave. 2 Bags. However depending on how you like your caramel popcorn (totally covered vs. lightly covered) you may not need the entire second bad. We’ll get back to that later.

Then you really have to get yourself set up in the kitchen before you start the caramel process. Once the caramel gets going you do not have time to run around and find something you need.

Find the 2 biggest mixing bowls that you have! If you do not have 2 large mixing bowls, 5 quarts or so, then find three of the largest bowls that you have! Get them ready on the counter.

Dump out your popcorn onto two parchment papered cookie sheets. Spread all popcorn out evenly and then lightly shake/tap the pans onto the counter. You are trying to get any un-popped kernels to fall to the bottom. Pile the popcorn back evenly into your bowls and be careful not to take any of those kernels with you! Nobody likes crunching into one of those things.

Now get your caramel ingredients ready in the pan. Do NOT put the baking soda in yet! Wait for the below step… very important!

Once you have your butter, corn syrup, and brown sugar measured out turn your burner on medium heat. Be patient, high heat will cause burned sugar! Not desirable. Now look closely at the picture above. Once you have melted all of your initial ingredient keep whisking to keep from any hot spots from burning your caramel. When you start to see tiny bubbles starting to form and come to the top drop in your soda and keep whisking! You’ll quickly get to the state of below picture.

From here remove from heat and pour about a quarter of the caramel on to the first bowl. Quickly stir the the popcorn around and get all of the globs spread among the corn. Pour on about another quarter or “glob” of caramel until you are happy with the level of caramel to popcorn ratio. This is totally up to you! Rinse and repeat for the next bowl(s). You do not have to do this at such a rate of speed that caramel and popcorn are flying around your kitchen like crazy, but you do have to work quickly. And thus why I don’t actually have any pictures of the mixing bowl steps. Sorry…

Once you’re all mixed up and coated in caramel go ahead and dump the now “caramel corn” back onto those parchment paper covered sheets. Spread the popcorn out into a single layer of corn and then place them into your oven and wait. Wait a long time.

The original recipe said to bake overnight for 8 hours! Yikes… I take them out sooner than that and it is still delicious!

Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes. Then eat. Eat. Eat! The light and crispiness of this popcorn is going to blow your mind. And if you have family over during the holidays for a few “honest and fair” rounds of cards or board games, this is the ultimate snack food to have on the table!

Or, if you want to save yourself from a new addiction, just let the popcorn cool and then bag it up and give it away as a gift. People will be glad to receive this home baked good!

Happy Holidays!

Caramel Popcorn

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1 tsp baking soda

2 cookie sheets lined in parchment paper

2-3 large mixing bowls

Candy Cane Cupcakes

2012-01-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

So you’re standing around with your hands on your hips wondering how the holidays have taken you by storm and left you with all of the mess to clean up… again. Yup it happens every year. With tomorrow (January 6th) being the last of the 12 Days of Christmas, I figured you could use one more recipe to use up the last of your Christmas goods. Candy Canes.

Start off with any vanilla cupcake recipe that you like. If you even have a box of Betty C. in the cupboard and you are that tired from baking, go ahead and use that up too!

Then grab all of the candy canes off of your Christmas tree, 1 or 2 will actually be plenty. Unwrap them, crack them in half or into thirds and stick them in a sandwich bag. Now go find the meat tenderizer, a small sauce pan, or if you’re really struggling a soup can. Put the sandwich bag of candy canes in between a kitchen towel and go ahead and let out any residual holiday stress!

Please remember that although it seems like a small step, it is an important step to put the bag in between a towel. This helps keep the noise down, saves your counter top, and also keeps the candy canes from bursting through the bag and making a bigger mess than you need to deal with right now!

Next… whip up the candy cane filling (Recipe below).

Once your cupcakes are cool, go ahead and start hollowing them out like a pumpkin. Please only do this step once BOTH the cupcakes are cooled and you are ready to stuff with your filling. If you cut the cupcake open while they are still warm they will loose a lot of their moisture, the same goes for if you cut them open and leave them sitting there for long time; you will end up with a dry cupcake.

Hollow them to allow for the amount of filling you prefer. The more filling you like, the bigger you make the space.

Fill the cupcakes and then trim the tops so the excess portion of cupcake tops is off and they are flat. This does two things. Allows you to eat some of your cupcake! As well if allows for you to have a cupcake surface to apply the icing to. I find this makes my life easier!

Then ice your cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream and garnish with left over candy cane sprinkles. I do this part with the cupcakes on a cooling rack inside a cake pan for easy cleaning!

Cream Cheese Candy Cane Filling:

8oz Light Cream Cheese Softened

1 tsp Peppermint Extract

1 tbsp Crushed Candy Cane

1/2 Cup Confectioners Sugar

2 tbsp Milk

1) Using electric mixer beat cream cheese for 3 on medium low minutes to soften.

2) Add Peppermint and continue to beat until incorporated

3) Add both the confectioners sugar and milk and continue to beat on medium low until the mixture is smooth; be sure to scrape the sides.

4) Depending on how you measured the sugar you might find the mixture too thick or to thin. You want the mixture to be creamy and smooth, but you don’t want it to be runny. If is too runny, when a guest bites into the cupcake it is going to run down their hand! Play with it until you like the consistency… there really isn’t a right or wrong here!

5) Add the crushed candy cane last so the color from the candy cane doesn’t run and turn your filling pink. Fold the candy cane in with a flat spatula and stop once combined.

6) Use right away or refrigerate!

DIY Chocolate Cups

2012-01-02T12:01:00.000-05:00

One of my new favorite treats to make in the kitchen! I had a blast making these super cute and stylish dishes, and I highly recommend you taking it on before your next dinner party!

Basically these chocolate cups couldn’t get any easier in terms of prep work, ingredients, and procedure. You can do this alone or have even more fun by making it a project for two (I had my big Brother in town at the time, so he was my helper!). Lastly, and most importantly you can put whatever you want inside the chocolate cups when they are set… we all know everything goes well with chocolate, so pick your fancy!

You’ll need 1 bag of chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet, but you can use milk chocolate if you prefer), 12 balloons, 1 quart size heat proof bowl, cooking spray, parchment paper, a spoon, and anything edible you might like for decorating (optional).

Step 1:

Blow up, wash, and DRY your balloons. I made my brother do this part… he was entertained and yet still demanded chocolate samples for his efforts! I suppose that was expected!

The balloons should be inflated to approx. 4 inch balloons. This is the beginning of your discrepancy- picture the size chocolate cups you would like and inflate to size!

Be sure the balloons are completely dry, water droplets are not your friend when it comes to trying to control melted chocolate!

Step 2:

Once you have your balloons set, get everything else ready (chop chocolate, grab spoons and paper towel, decide on sprinkles or other decorations). When you have your chocolate melted and hot, you are not going to have time to run around setting things right. Here an important step is to trim your parchment paper to sit inside your pans; your balloons are not very heavy so unleveled parchment paper hanging out over the sides can cause your balloons to tip over- painfully annoying!

Step 3:

Melt your chocolate (just chocolate, don’t put ANYTHING else in the bowl) you can do this either via a heat proof bowl over a simmering pot of water and now you don’t have to keep running back and forth to the microwave (and reduces possibility of burning the chocolate) OR you can simply do this cautiously in the microwave! I picked the microwave this particular time just to see what might happen!

Now take a spoonful of chocolate and make a chocolate circle on the parchment paper. This is your chocolate base.

Step 4:

Give the bottom of the balloon a quick blast of cooking spray. Using a paper towel lightly spread the spry evenly around the bottom of the balloon, basically to the size/perimeter of what you want you chocolate bowl to look like.

Step 5:

With even pressure dunk the balloon into the chocolate, lift and let any access drip off, and then swoop it around so the chocolate can settle evenly onto the balloon.

Now is the perfect time to add decorations as desired onto the warm chocolate. If you were really organized or had a second person helping, they could have been attending melting white chocolates or other candy melts to drizzle over the chocolate to add color, contrast, and texture to the chocolate coating.

For me however, I had bored my brother by now and was working solo. Therefore these candy pearls did the trick!

Step 6:

Plunge your decorated balloon down on top of the circle chocolate base. Hold for 10 seconds and then let go and allow to stand by itself. Leave it alone.

Step 7:

When you have filled up an entire sheet of balloons place them in the refrigerator to set. PLEASE put them in the refrigerator. I actually do not know why, but if you don’t refrigerate then you’ll get funky cups that are spotted and break… pictured below! Like I said, put these in the refrigerator until you are going to fill the cups and serve them.

Balloons Gone Bad!

Step 8:

After a minimum 2 hours in the fridge, remove the tray and grab a knife. You want to pierce the balloon at the top by the knot and slowly let the air come out. Then lightly start to pull the balloon away from the surface of the chocolate.

Step 9:

Fill the cups with whatever you choose. You could do anything from ice cream, to fresh fruit, to a mousse or pudding of your liking. Here I simply used chocolate pudding. A better picture probably would have come from butterscotch or something, but this will do for now!

Step 10:

You should know me well enough by now… Eat :)

I hope you enjoyed this post; I look forward to hearing what you filled your chocolate cups with!

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

Another great year has passed, and I truly believe an even better year is ahead! Hopefully 2012 will be the official birth year of the Bakery, and even more of Bertie’s loyal followers can enjoy cakes and confections from my kitchen!

The above cake is just a little something I put together to celebrate the coming of the New Year, I hope you have a star studded golden year whoever and wherever you are!

~Happy New Year~

Oh… for those anxiously awaiting the rest of the 12 Days of Christmas, those posts are coming! There was a slight mishap with the auto publishing and I thought posts were up when they weren’t :( Now we’ll be ~~celebrating~~ baking holiday goods all the way up to the “Old Christmas Day”!