Saturday, April 22, 2006

Jumping on the Bandwagon


As fellow food-bloggers may have noticed, recently there have been quite a few posts about "minis". Or cupcakes, to be exact. While the current food trend of The Cupcake may be fast fleeting, I thought I would take my turn at making a mini. Literally. I wanted to make a little something to take to church tomorrow, and while everyone always brings things like cookies and quickbreads, a paper wrapped delight is seldom seen. Maybe it's frosting all those spongy gems that keeps people from bringing them, but I decided this was the week. I am embarassed to admit that I did, in fact, purchase a cake mix for this adventure. I have been leaning more and more on homemade scratch cakes, but thought that for this mini, a cake mix would be fine. My choice? A lemon cake mix. I did decide to doctor it just a little. I added a drop of lemon oil to try and steer the lemon flavor into a more natural flavor, and I also added a 1/2 cup of strawberry jam to reign in the lemon. I do think my flavor changes made the cake much better. Then I scooped a mere tablespoon of cake mix into each muffin paper. The papers I used were actually labeled "bon-bon wrappers". It took a while to get them all baked up, as I only had one mini muffin pan to put into action.

Tonight I whipped out the pastry bag and tips to pipe the frosting on these little gems, and I am very pleased with the results. Anytime that I can work on my piping is a bonus, and I must admit that I am getting much more steady with my hands. I really think part of the key there is that I bought the large size piping bags, coupler, and tips. They are much easier to work with than those little Wilton starter sets. The larger bag is easier to get a good grip on, I am really enjoying it. I do need to find some more tips though so I can work on more intricate piping sometime. A flower tip and some pink sprinkles were all that these lemon minis needed.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. Today we spent this morning shopping for new clothes for Abigail, and that is always a great time. She loves to try on clothes, and Zander even got into the action by selecting a couple of new shirts for himself. We've started doing some landscaping to our yard, and I'm looking forward to the next few weekends to come as we add a few plants to the landscape. Since the kids don't ever really play in the front yard, we'd like to give it a little curb appeal. The tough part will be coming up with a plan and sticking to it. We'll see how we do.

That's it for today. On tap for tomorrow will be some freshly caught trout on the grill. I can't wait for that one. Hopefully I'll get an opportunity to snap a picture or two before it is all inhaled. Happy weekend everyone!

4 comments:

Alanna Kellogg said...

Very pretty, Erika!

Cookie Madness said...

Erika, cupcakes will never go out of style, but I think you are right in that they are quite trendy now and probably will have to hand over their 15 minutes of fame to some other baked good. I've noticed Rice Krispy Treats trying to gain momentum.

Erika W. said...

Mmmm...nothing like a fresh homemade Rice Krispie Treat.

~Skylark said...

OOOH!!! Add the secret ingredient!!!