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!