Fondant or Buttercream?

It's definitely a question that bakers all over fight over. While each medium has its benefits both have definite drawbacks too. Personally, as far as eating cake goes, I prefer buttercream 10 times out of 10. To me, fondant tastes like a cross between flavorless bubble gum and those little orange circus peanuts and I peel it off the cake. Not exactly what I want to eat. Both fondant and buttercream can be flavored though, but the texture really does stay the same. For sculpting, fondant wins hands down. Making detailed 3D figures is truly what fondant/gumpaste is made for. They hold up well, are easy to mold, and work well as smaller accent pieces.

Let's compare the taste issue by looking at what exactly goes into each one:
Fondant: glucose (corn syrup), powdered sugar, and water.
Gumpaste: glucose (corn syrup), powdered sugar, gumtex, and water.
Buttercream: butter, shortening, cream, and powdered sugar.

You can see why the fondant and gumpaste alone wouldn't have a great taste. Adding extracts (vanilla, almond, lemon, etc.) can greatly improve that issue. The texture though is inherent to the medium, just no changing that. Buttercream too can be a bit plain without extracts, maybe a little too sweet, but there's no beating the texture of a silky smooth frosting.

Each baker has their own style and will prefer to work with a specific medium, whether it's fondant, buttercream, or even those crazy Europeans and their marzipan, but a great baker will know when to make use of or limit each to best highlight the flavor of the cake, as well as the taste of the consumer. Cause some crazy people actually like the taste of fondant.

As you can see, buttercream frosting with a fondant ACCENT piece. :D Still yummy

I "Mustache" You a Question

How do you feel about the current mustache craze? It's not as overtly delicious as the bacon craze (mmmm...bacon) but there are definitely ways to make mustaches edible!

A Cupcakery customer recently had a 'daddy shower' for her husband and his friends and she requested a number of masculine cookies including mustaches on a stick! I found the cookie cutter at Cheap Cookie Cutters (where they have thousands of fabulous cookie cutters!) and even though it was smaller than I thought it would be they turned out really well.

I made a batch of my sugar cookies, recipe here, and before they went in the oven I added a small lollipop stick. I gently pushed them into the back (not all the way through) and added a little extra dough over the back of the stick. Five minutes in the oven and the sticks stayed in! Because of the extra dough on the back I had to decorate what was the back of the cookie with brown, black, and gray royal icing. YUM!

Note: if the stick starts to slide out, take it out, dip the end in a little royal icing and gently slide it back in. Royal icing is an awesome 'glue' to fix mistakes and oopsies since it dries so hard.

I Have "Fall"-en in Love with this Muffin!

Fall is my favorite season, or would be if it didn't mean that winter and snow were coming... But I try to enjoy the crispy cool nights, changing colors, and delightful flavors regardless of the impending frigid weather. Some of my favorite fall flavors are maple, nuts, and chocolate, so why not combine those flavors into one delicious muffin?! Thanks to my bestie who made cookies with these ingredients! You go MO! These are wonderful with a little melted butter on top, a streusel topping, or even just cinnamon sugar!



Maple Walnut White Chocolate Chip Muffins
2 C flour
3 1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/2 C sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
2 eggs
1/2 C melted butter
1/2 C maple syrup
1 C white chocolate chips
1 C chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400. Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Create a well in the center and add eggs, melted butter and syrup. Stir until just combined and add chips and nuts. Spoon into a papered muffin tin (about 3 T per paper) and bake for about 18-20 minutes.

If Life Hands You Flat Cookies, Make Cookie Bites!

Do your cookies ever turn out looking like this? Well, it's not your oven, it's you.

Oh, sad cookie :(

Don't be ashamed, it happens to all of us. It even happened to me last week. (GASP! I know!) I was in a hurry and didn't let the butter come all the way to room temperature. That resulted in butter that wouldn't cream with the sugar. This is a super necessary step because the sugar crystals are cutting holes into the butter and those holes are what fill up with gases made by the baking powder/soda, which gives cookies their lift. Cold butter = no holes = flat cookies. Sad day. Even sadder is that there really isn't a fix that you can go back and do after the fact.
But wait! Don't throw all that dough into the trash! (or eat it all raw) Make cookie dough bites! You know, like those ones you can buy at the store? But these are even better because you can make them as big as you want!

What you need:
Cookie dough (I like using chocolate chip cookie dough)
1 pound (at least) Chocolate (the good stuff, none of that quik candy)
Double boiler
Candy thermometer


You're going to get a quick lesson on tempering chocolate. Tempering is an important step in the candy making process and if you skip it or do it improperly it will result in dull, streaky, chalky, or crystallized chocolate. Lucky for us it's pretty easy if you have the right tools! (I have a tempering unit, but if I'm doing lots of chocolate I use the stove method).

My tempering unit, it's idiot proof!

1. Simmer water (not boiling) in a saucepan and place 2/3 of your chocolate in the double boiler. Attach your candy thermometer and get to stirring with a rubber spatula (not a metal/wood spoon).
2. You want dark chocolate to reach 115 degrees and milk/white chocolate to reach 110 degrees, and NO HIGHER! Once it hits that temperature (and you've been stirring all this time, right?), remove the double boiler, wipe off the bottom and set it on a heat proof surface.
3. Add the remaining 1/3 of your chocolate. Stir it in. The residual heat will melt most if not all of this. If you have any chunks left over once it cools to 84 degrees you can just remove them.
4. Replace the bowl over the saucepan until the chocolate reaches 89 (dark) or 87 (milk/white). Do not let it go over 91.
Yay! You have tempered chocolate! This chocolate will make a shiny candy with a great 'snap'. Keep it warm while you are working with it (86 for milk/white, and 88 for dark).

These are about 1 1/2 T sized

Now that you have tempered chocolate, form little balls of cookie dough and refrigerate. Dip the firm balls of dough into the chocolate. With the hand that is not holding the dipping utensil, tap the wrist of the hand that is holding it to shake off the excess chocolate. Place the dipped cookie dough on wax paper or a SilPat mat and let cool.

Dark chocolate covered cookie dough bites!

Mmmmmm! No more wasted cookie dough, ever!

Did You Know?

Did you know you can freeze cake? It freezes really well actually, sheet cakes, cupcakes, cake balls, even cake crumbs. And you know what else? Those big box grocery stores do it all the time. In fact, a cake made in your own house and frozen for a week or two is probably going to be fresher than those you get from the store. Frosted or unfrosted, it really doesn't make a difference. Did you make a whole batch of cupcakes and only needed half? Freeze the rest. Really. They defrost in about 30 minutes, which coincidentally is about the time it takes to whip up a batch of frosting, ice them, and get them to where they're going. Bingo, ready made cupcakes, you're now everyone's favorite person.
You know what else I have frozen? Cookie dough. I usually have logs of cookie dough in the freezer, ready to cut off a few for when those unexpected people show up. (Perfect since my cookie recipe takes up to 48 hours!!!) And you know what? Those big box stores get those in frozen too, and they can sit for weeks to months in the freezers there. How do I know this? I worked there. Don't get me wrong, those grocery store goodies taste darn good, but not quite the same as customizing them to your personal taste and getting them fresh from the oven.
Plus, you know exactly what went into your goodies, who touched them, and how long ago they were made. That's a win in my book over the grocery stores any day! So if you're one of those super people who take a day to cook for the whole week, try baking some goodies ahead too. I swear they keep in the freezer just fine for up to month! Perfect for the average busy family with no time whip up a batch of something every time one of the kids/husband/neighbor needs something.