1st Place Trophy Cake

The first thing you need to know about this post is that I wish I had more pictures for it.  But sadly I don't and the pictures I do have aren't very good quality because I took them with my phone.

But I'm still really happy with this cake and how it turned out!

This past weekend, some of my friends decided to have their own unofficial racquetball tournament.  A few weeks ago one of them asked me if I would bake something as the first place prize.

So I said, "Of course!"  And I decided to do something that I've never done before.  All of the cakes and cupcakes that I've made have all looked like regular cakes and cupcakes (which is not at all a bad thing).  But this time I decided I wanted to shape the cake to look like something else.  Like a trophy.

Not the kind that stand up though, I'm not that advanced yet. 

I made a rectangle cake with yellow cake mix and mini chocolate chips because they're delicious.  And mini because the regular sized ones are too heavy and will sink to the bottom of the pan while it's in the oven.

I printed out the shape of a trophy without the "arms".  I laid it on top of the cake and cut out the shape with a sharp knife.  I wanted this to be a two layer cake so I did the exact same thing for the top layer. 

I wish I had pictures of this next part, but sadly I don't.  I got caught up with trying to finish this cake in time and sort of forgot to snap a few pictures along the way. 

But when I cut out the trophy shape, there were some scraps left over.  I took those scraps and cut them into squares.  Then I lined them up on each side to form the arms.  I wanted these to be two layers too, so I covered them in icing and stacked some more on top.

This part was difficult because the squares didn't really stack well.  They kept falling over or leaning in a different direction.  But I filled in all the spaces between them with icing to keep them in place and that worked.

Then I covered the whole thing in yellow frosting.  I didn't use a lot because I knew the inside of the cake was already filled with chocolate chips and I didn't want to go overboard.

Just kidding, you can't go overboard. :)

I used my finger (clean of course) to draw the #1 in the frosting, and then filled it in with white sprinkles!

I was surprised that this turned out so well because I was basically winging it the whole time.  It was time consuming, but definitely worth it!

PS!  I made a new layout for my blog.  I hope you like it!

Whoopie Pie Cupcakes & the BBCC

A few days ago, I decided that I'm going to do something similar to what happens in the movie Julie and Julia.  If you haven't seen it, it's about a woman who goes through a Julia Child cookbook and makes all the recipies while blogging about it.  I think she tries to do it all in a year, but I haven't seen the movie recently so I'm not sure if that's right.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I bought The Big Book of Cupcakes and I've decided that I'm going to make all of them.  I'm not going to try to do in all in a year or anything like that.  But I think it will teach me a lot about baking and, hopefully, make me better.  I'm going to call it The Big Book of Cupcakes Challenge!  Or just BBCC.

So.  Yesterday I made Whoopie Pie cupcakes, which are the first cupcakes in the book.  I probably won't go in order, (because the next cupcakes in the book are dried cherry and pistachio cupcakes and that doesn't sound appetizing to me at all) but I just really wanted to make these.

I like this book because it tells you how to make all the cupcakes from scratch and how to make them from a box mix.  Since my mom likes to buy four cakes mixes at a time when they're on sale, this helps me out a lot. :)  It also tells you how many calories are in each cupcake!  There are 210 calories in one Whoopie Pie (which is a lot more than I thought there'd be, but that's okay).

These cupcakes are so easy to make! 

Instructions:
Bake regular chocolate cupcakes and cut them in half
Filling: mix a cup of whipped white frosting (from the store) and 3/4 cup of marshmallow creme. 
I doubled it to make sure I had enough, but I had some left over.

For football season, I'm definitely going to make these with red velvet cake instead.

Oreo Red Velvet Cupcakes

I know what you're thinking, and yes, I'm going to give Oreos a break after this.  I've realized that a lot of other baking websites and blogs have caught on to this whole cookies+cupcakes thing, so I'm going to have to step it up.

Last week I wanted to bake something because it was my last week at home before moving into my apartment (which is why it's been so long since my last post), and I wanted to use the good oven one more time.  There was a red velvet cake mix in the pantry that taunted me all summer, so I finally decided to use it.  I was thinking about what I could put in these cupcakes and I found a thing of Oreos in the freezer.

So I chopped up some Oreos and put a few in each cupcake liner.

Then I mixed up my cake mix and poured some in.

I love this color red.  It's perfect for football season!  Roll Tide (:

Then I chopped up the remaining Oreos and mixed them in with the frosting.

I will definitely be experimenting with Red Velvet again when football season starts.

I have big plans for Alabama Saturdays. :)