Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Well, pumpkin whoopie pies definitely wasn't our original intention this past Sunday when we got together for a little baking extravaganza! For months we have been talking about how we want to try flooding cut-out cookies with royal icing. We figured halloween was the perfect opportunity! Especially being that we have many cute and fun halloween cookie cutters!

We browsed through many magazines and cookbooks looking for the perfect sugar cookie recipe. We thought we had found just the right one until we were halfway through mixing the ingredients and realized it was meant more as a drop-cookie than a roll-out cookie. Guess this is the reason why you should read ALL the way through a recipe being starting. Oops!

We then tried to transition the half mixed ingredients into a different recipe. We mixed it, chilled it, and attempted to roll it. Well, needless to say the dough was extremely sticky and impossible to roll out. And my short temper that day caused me to become extremely frustrated real fast. By this point we were 0-2. And things were not going very smooth.

We didn't want to throw away the dough and waste the ingredients so we just started playing around! This is where the fun finally started. We added half a can of pumpkin and threw in some brown sugar. And then started adding spices until our taste buds were satisfied! Just don't ask us for the recipe. We have no clue what we added or how much.

We threw a scoop of the dough on the cookie sheet as a test. When we took it out of the oven it had baked into a perfect fluffy circle. At this point we both knew they were the ultimate whoopie pie cookie! Amazing how we went from flooding sugar cookies with royal icing to making pumpkin whoopie pies. Definitely an interesting string of events that lead to the final result!

We filled the whoopie pies with a brown sugar cinnamon cream cheese frosting. The recipe is from a post on cupcakestakethecake.com. If you can believe it, I actually haven't tasted the finished product. I know, kind of weird considering my love for sweets. But I am trying this new thing called self-control. We will just have to wait and see what the reviews are from the taste testers at the halloween party tomorrow night!



Another Sweet Escape!
-Jess

Hummingbird Cupcakes

Made these a while ago, but apparently I forgot to blog about them. I know, can you believe I would forget such a thing? I was a little iffy about trying these cupcakes being that there was banana, pineapple, and pecans. Just seemed like a weird combination with the pineapple. But the online reviews were very high so I had to give them a try. And I am very glad that I did! They are actually probably in the top five for the ones we have made so far! Of course it helps that they were topped with my favorite cream cheese frosting :)


Hummingbird Cupcakes
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla
8 ounces sour cream
1 cup mashed bananas
1 cup drained crushed pineapple
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In mixer on medium speed, beat eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, approximately two minutes. On low, mix in oil and vanilla. Then mix in sour cream until just incorporated. Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Stir until just incorporated. Then fold in bananas, pineapples, and pecans. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake 20-23 minutes.

Wishing you a Sweet Escape
-Jess

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

Over the past few months I have made lists upon lists of flavors and combinations I want to someday try. I have checked out many cookbooks from the library, bookmarked way too many recipes online, and have torn out numerous recipes from magazines. Needless to say, I have recipes everywhere.

One of the flavors that has been at the top of the many lists I have laying around and I have been dying to try is cookies and cream! The perfect opportunity presented itself this past week when we had some of the oreo cream cheese filling leftover from the pirate cake. I just had to do something with it since it is way too good to dump down the garbage disposal.

I wanted a recipe that had half of an oreo cookie on the bottom as a little extra surprise. And I happened to stumble upon one during one of the sleepless nights that I couldn't stop looking at baking blogs.

So hard to resist the temptation of siting down with a spoon and this bowl in my lap! But don't let me fool you, of course I had a taste of the batter and dang was it tasty!

Another successful recipe where the cupcakes rose nicely! Finished these off by using my pastry bag fitted with a star tip and placing a nice fancy little dollop of the oreo cream cheese frosting. They looked so cute!

And the final verdict from the taste testers: Of course everyone loved the frosting, which we already knew was an amazing recipe! The cupcake part was good, but definitely not a five-star recipe. Seemed a little dry to me. If I were to make them again I would probably just add less flour.

Until we meet again for our next sweet escape!
-Jess

Pirate Cake! Argh

This cake may just be our proudest Sweet Escape finished project to date! When we were done we both pretty much just stood there and smiled at it. Hard to believe that we created it! And especially since we have never even taken any sort of baking or cake class! A little trial and error has been our preferred method of learning so far!

The cake was a layered eight inch yellow cake with oreo cream cheese filling. Both recipes that we have previously used. Kind of nice finally having recipes that we know will produce good results! This way we don't have to stress so much about the actual cake and can spend more time having fun with the decorations!

Okay, so on to the fun part! The amazing decorations! Before starting the project we googled images of "pirate cakes" to get the creative juices flowing. We got inspiration from one of the cakes that had a treasure map around the sides of the cake. We covered with cake with a marbelized light brown marshmallow fondant. We weren't too concerned about getting the fondant completely smooth because we figured the imperfections would add to the character of an old, worn map.

Michele was the fondant girl for this project. She found a skeleton with cross bones image on the internet and used it as a stencil for the cake topper. She took it to the next step and cut out individual teeth for the little guy. Very good touch! To finish it off she made it look rustic by rubbing on a little black and yellow color around the edges. Here he is...


She then made a few other little trinkets for the cake. A compass and red "X"



Seeing Katrina's face when she picked up the cake made all of the hard work well worth it! This is probably my favorite part of the whole process!

The big test is whether or not the cake makes it to its destination in one piece. It has to travel in a jeep for over two hours. Sure hope we pass the test!

Truly A Sweet Escape,
-Jess

Who knew you could make pumpkin cream cheese cupcakes better!

This cupcake is a member of the variety pack that Jess most recently blogged about. I used the pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting recipe that she had blogged about this summer. To the recipe of cream cheese frosting I added 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg and 1/4 tsp ground cloves. I then ran some cinnamon through my sifter for a nice cinnamon dusting (though my picture above does not reflect this step). The spice additions were more subtle than I thought they were going to be. I was afraid the frosting was going to compete with the cupcake but they were a nice marriage of flavor. I know they gals on the night shift thought they were a tasty treat!
Another Sweet Escape success!

Bake on!
-M

Variety Pack!

One of our co-workers was hosting a baby shower and asked us to make a little variety of cupcakes for the party!

We chose to do pumpkin with a spiced cream cheese, banana chocolate chip dipped in chocolate ganache, and chocolate with a raspberry filling and chocolate cool whip topping.

Pumpkin was a must given the time of year. And this is one of the recipes we just can't get enough of! In fact, this recipe has been filed in the "Sweet Escape G0-To Folder." Michele gave a little twist to the cream cheese frosting by adding some spices! Very, very yummy!!!

The banana chocolate chip cupcake had very good flavor, but was pretty much banana bread in a cupcake liner. More of a bread texture than cupcake. The chocolate ganache worked well on these cupcakes being that they domed up nicely! We are definitely ganache lovers! Makes every thing look so pretty with its smooth and shiny finish!

Chocolate and raspberry is one of my absolute favorite combinations! And we finally found a chocolate cupcake recipe that isn't dry and will rise nicely!! Woohoo!! The chocolate cool whip was a nice light topping for a cupcake that already was bursting with flavor.

Princess Cupcakes

One of our coworkers was having a birthday party for her daughter and asked us to make some princess cupcakes. We also topped half of them with swords and shields for the little boys at the party. Figured they probably wouldn't get too excited about pink crowns and purple wands. All of the decorations were made out of marshmallow fondant. Embellishing the toppers with luster dust, sprinkles, and edible pearls made them so much cuter! It is amazing how something so simple can make such a difference!