Cupcake a Week: Neapolitan

Happy Friday! It's been super HOT here in Mobile this week and is only going to get hotter through the weekend. So what is the perfect compliment to hot weather, ICE CREAM of course! The ice cream truck has already been driving through our neighborhood for well over a month now. Everyday I hear the sounds of the truck coming down our street and it reminds me of when I was a kid and so excited to run outside and select an ice cream treat. So to start the weekend off right I thought it would be fun for some ice cream inspired cupcakes!

Pretty much everyone loves Neapolitan ice cream, am I right?
3 simple colors: brown, white & pink
3 traditional flavors: chocolate, vanilla & strawberry
= 1 super yummy ice cream flavor

So here's my spin on taking a classic ice cream flavor and creating a Neapolitan cupcake!

First bake a batch of cupcakes. I decided on yellow buttercake but chocolate or strawberry would be just as yummy. Or what about a combination of all 3 swirled into one...now there's an idea. I'll have to consider that for next time around!

Now for the Neapolitan. Mix up a batch of buttercream icing, then divide it evenly into 3 bowls. Flavor one bowl with cocoa powder for the chocolate, one bowl with vanilla, and one bowl with Strawberry Cream cheese.

Basic Buttercream:
-1 stick butter, softened
-3 tablespoons milk
-3 cups confectioners' sugar

• Beat butter with electric mixer until smooth. Gradually add the confectioners' sugar and milk and beat until desired consistency.
• Divide buttercream into 3 separate bowls (about 3/4 cup each) to create the chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavors.
• For the CHOCOLATE icing: Add 1 tablespoon cocoa powder, stir until combined.
• For the VANILLA icing: Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste, stir until combined.
• For the STRAWBERRY incing: Add 2 tablespoons Strawberry cream cheese and 1 drop of pink food coloring, stir until combined.
  

For the vanilla buttercream I used vanilla bean paste so the look would resemble that of vanilla bean ice cream. Can you see the little black specks of vanilla beans in there...yummy!

Time to add the icing! First add a stripe of vanilla icing down the center of the cupcake to divide the top into 3 pieces.

Then add a stripe of chocolate icing to cover 1/3 of the cupcake.

Then add a final stripe of strawberry icing to cover the remaining 1/3 of the cupcake.

So what do you think? Looks identical to Neapolitan ice cream doesn't it?

I wish I had a scoop of Neapolitan ice cream to go along with these adorable cupcakes. These are definitely one of my favorite cupcake creations to date. I already want to make them again!

Hope you enjoy these fabulously flavorful and colorful little cakes!

John Deere Cake

Let's just say even though I am from KY, I did not grow up on a farm or in the country as most people would guess. I was more of a city girl being 5 minutes outside of Cincinnati. So when asked to do a John Deere themed cake by my friend Traci for her son's birthday I was super excited about the idea, yet really had never been up close to a piece of John Deere equipment.

KY is known for its horse farms and of course the KY Derby so this is kind of what I used to pull some inspiration for this cake idea. If you have never been to KY just imagine rolling hills and hundreds of acres of the most vibrant green grass lined with white fences. It is absolutely beautiful. So to create a farm like atmosphere for the John Deere tractor that was going to be my cake topper, I decided to cover the cake in rolled fondant that I tinted green to resemble a field. Along the edges of the cake I used brown fondant that I cut into strips to create a fence structure. To pull everything together I piped some buttercream grass blades around the base of the cake. All of these elements came together pretty easy.

The John Deere tractor was a different story. Let's just say what I had pictured in my head and what turned out to be the end result are two completely different tractors! My original plan was to sculpt a tractor out of rice cereal treats like they do on Ace of Cakes or the Cake Challenge shows. All I have to say is I've got a lot to learn about this technique. I am not an artist and definitely not a sculptor so trying to carve a 3D shape out of a block of cereal was not such an easy task. After two failed attempts of what turned out to look like an oversized, lopsided and lumpy car I threw in the towel on the rice cereal. So plan 3 or C whichever way you look at it, turned out to be an all fondant tractor which you see in the picture above.

The tractor looked a little lonely on the cake by itself so I thought it would be fun to create a cow to add a little more excitement. Luckily I remembered how to do this from when my friend Evan taught me how to make farm animals. The birthday boy actually thought it was a dog. Either way it's a spotted animal right?

So there you have it, the John Deere tractor and farm cake!

If anyone has tips or tricks for carving elements out of rice cereal treats send them my way! I would love to figure out how to make this work next time!

100

The time has arrived for...drum roll please....my 100th Blog post! Wow has the time flown by since I first started this blog last summer! So to celebrate this exciting occasion I thought it would be fun to bake cupcakes of course. Decorate them in some vibrant colors. And set them up to display the number "1oo". Originally I was thinking about baking 100 cupcakes but quickly eliminated that idea knowing that I would probably be the one having to stuff my face with all 100 of them. So I decided on something where I could still get my point across and not have to consume nearly as many calories to destroy the evidence of this sugar adventure!

I must admit when I first discovered the world of blogging I really had no clue what it was all about. The very first blog I read was Bakerella, aka the cake pop queen! If you have never checked out her site, be prepared to be in sugar heaven for hours! I am still in awe of her latest cake creations...mini hamburgers. Each time I visit her site, I am more impressed than the time before, her creativity just never ends! It is hard to believe that last May I stumbled across her blog and this was really the first time I had ever even heard the word "blog". I can't believe I hadn't discovered this concept sooner! I am still wondering what planet I had been living on that I didn't know what a blog was? So basically after a few months of following Bakerella's site I decided why not create a blog of my own.

So I created a blogger account and the rest is history, Crave. Indulge. Satisfy. was born. 100 posts later I have learned a lot about the blogging world but still have a lot more to discover. I have so many visions and dreams for my site that hopefully one day I will be able to bring to life. For now though I am content in sharing with you my adventures in baking, decorating and cupcaking from my kitchen to yours.

Each day that I bake, photograph, decorate or create a new recipe I am truly happy. Blogging is where I get to be creative and share a piece of myself with all of you. In addition to Bakerella I have been inspired by so many wonderful bloggers: I am Baker, Bake at 350, Joy the Baker, Cheeky Kitchen, My Baking Addiction, and Amy Atlas Events to name a few of my favorites. Everyday I am excited to check out what new creations each of these ladies have come up with, their talent is truly amazing! Thanks ladies for constantly challenging me to take on a new recipe, attempt a new cake decorating technique, providing design inspiration, sharing decorating tips and tricks or simply sharing some of your fabulous recipes that I have enjoyed making and eating throughout my blogging journey!

In the future there are still many more cupcake creations to come. After all the year is only about half over and I promised you all a cupcake a week for 52 weeks! Feel free to send my some cupcake recipes or decorating ideas that you would like for me to incorporate into my cupcake a week posts! I just couldn't resist creating this tiered cupcake cake, pretty darn cute! If you'd like to recreate this it was created with mini cupcakes using the following number on each layer: 19 pink, 12 blue, 6 red, 3 green and 1 orange.

So to all of my loyal readers thanks for checking in on my blog and leaving me comments! And to those of you who may have just recently discovered my blog, I hope you stick around and check out all the exciting and delicious things still to come!

Looking forward to 100 more blog posts!

Cupcake a Week: Brown-Sugar Vanilla

Hope everyone is having a great weekend so far! Here in Mobile, AL it has been a blah weekend...raining and storming! But when the weather is bad and I can't enjoy the sunshine at the beach, my next favorite place to be is in the kitchen baking like crazy! So what better way to brighten up the day than with some cupcakes of course! Today's recipe is for Brown-Sugar Vanilla cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream and a sprinkling of brown sugar on top.

I decided it would be fun to do some mini cupcakes this week. As you know by now typically the cupcakes I make are standard size, but I like to switch things up every now and then. The mini cupcakes are just so cute, you can't eat just one. As a matter of fact I just popped three in my mouth right after dinner a short while ago. Immediately after that I packed up a container full of them and walked directly over to my neighbor's house so I would quit stuffing my face!

I have been wanting to make these Brown-Sugar Vanilla Cupcakes since I first saw them over at Cheeky Kitchen back in December! I have been following Brooke's blog at Cheeky Kitchen for awhile now, and she definitely knows how to whip up a delicious batch of cupcakes. She has so many other recipes I am dying to try from breakfast to dinner entrees and everything else in between. I would love to be a guest at her house for dinner. Not only does she create treats for your sweet tooth but her blog is full of great stories about her family, incredible photography and a wide variety of cuisine that just makes my mouth water every time I see the latest recipes she posts! So if you have never been to Cheeky Kitchen click here and be prepared to look around for hours!

For the Brown-Sugar Vanilla Cupcakes and Buttercream recipes click here. There are only two things I did differently, everything else is exactly the same as Brooke's recipe and extremely YUMMY!

Cupcake Modifications:
#1 - I made them as mini cupcakes (yields 76)
#2 - I sprinkled some brown sugar on top

ENJOY!

"B" is for...baby, boy & Barrett

It's been a super exciting week! On Sunday, May 30th at 4:45PM my friend McKensy gave birth to her first child, a little boy named Barrett! How cute is that name!! Let's just say he made a late arrival. McKensy's original due date was May 20th, but this little guy must have been happy in her belly b/c she had to be induced 10 days later! This would have driven me absolutely crazy to have to keep waiting and waiting. Nine months is long enough...but 10 more days!


Barrett was 7.9 oz and 20.5 inches long. I can't wait to meet this little one! Unfortunately I'm not sure when that will be since they live in Charlotte and I'm in Mobile! Luckily with the wonders of computers these days I have already gotten several email updates and loads of pictures sent my way to see the litte guy! He is adorable and even has a onesie with his name on it...precious!

To celebrate in the festivities of baby Barrett, I made some monogrammed "B" sugar cookies for McKensy's shower back in March. I wasn't able to attend the shower so I packaged them up and shipped them to KY to McKensy's mom as a surprise for her! Let's just say they arrived just in the nick of time. I asked for priority delivery on a Thursday since the shower was on a Saturday afternoon, just to be on the safe side. Well let's just say McKensy's mom and I were emailing each other back and forth for two days straight trying to figure out where the cookies were. Thank goodness they arrived moments before they headed off to the shower!

Congratulations McKensy & Jeremy! I can't wait to meet little Barrett!

Cupcake a Week: Jammin' Strawberry Cream & Chocolate

Happy Friday and Happy Memorial Day weekend! I am super excited to share my featured cupcake a week recipe with you for the upcoming holiday weekend! This is sure to be a crowd pleaser! I tested my latest cupcake creation "Jammin' Strawberry Cream & Chocolate" out with some friends at a crawfish boil the other weekend and they got rave reviews! I'll just go ahead and say it now...these are just too good to eat only one!

Here's the run down on how these cupcakes were created! For the last 8 weeks this competition called the "Real Women of Philadelphia" has been going on which was hosted by Philadelphia Cream Cheese and the queen of Southern Cuisine herself, Miss Paula Deen! Well I absolutely LOVE Paula Deen and have several of her cook books and love trying out her recipes. And who doesn't love Philly Cream Cheese right? So pretty much every night while eating dinner and watching tv with my husband I would see the Real Women of Philadelphia commericals. Every night I would think to myself why don't I enter this competition. So finally I went to the contest website and read over the details! Let's just say there's a lot at stake here and if your recipe is picked this could be life changing!

Here's a quick run down of the competition:

-8 weeks, with each week being a different category to submit a recipe for: side dish, appetizer, entree & dessert

-you must submit a video of yourself preparing the recipe between 1-10 minutes long

-your recipe MUST include Philadelphia Cream Cheese!

-each week 2 finalists are picked from each of the 4 categories for a total of 16 finalists

Now here's where it gets really exciting, if you are picked as one of the 16 finalists you:

-get flown to Savannah to meet Paula Deen and prepare your recipe in front of a live audience

-from there they pick 1 winner for each of the 4 categories

-the 4 winners get to help write a Philadelphia Cream Cheese cookbook, go on tour promoting the book with Paula Deen and get $25,000 plus a bunch of other cool perks!

Talk about one exciting competition! Well after weeks of thinking about it, talking about it, reading about it, watching some of the submission videos of other women's recipes online I finally decided to take my chances and enter a recipe the last week of the competition for the dessert category!

I wish I hadn't waited so long to join the contest but really I was super scared of having to video tape myself! Give me a recipe and I'll bake all day long, but throw a camera in front of my face and it's a whole different story! Finally I decided I would just go for it, you only live once right, and how often do you get a chance to meet the queen of butter Paula Deen!

So I gathered up my Philadelphia Cream Cheese and my secret ingredient homemade strawberry freezer jam and hit the kitchen to start baking...

CUPCAKES of course! I'm sure by now you all know how much I love cupcakes! I have a running head band that says it all "will run for cupcakes" and I post a different cupcake a week on my blog! So I decided to stay true to myself and what brings me joy and create a batch of cupcakes loaded with great flavors: chocolate, cream cheese and strawberries to hopefully impress Paula!

I put on the cutest apron I could find and got to filming! Paula had posted all kinds of "how to" videos on the Real Women of Philadelphia site which came in super handy for for my first video cooking debut! She talked about "how to develop a recipe", "how to shoot your video", "how to plate your dish", "how to set up your lighting" "how to do your hair" and "how to choose your wardrobe".

Paula if you are reading this blog, I want you to know I took all of your video advice into consideratioin when filming my recipe so I hope it pays off when you watch my dessert video submission and see all the careful thought I put into the fine details!

First of all I set up my prep area on our bar countertop. I decided to break down my recipe and talk about in in "3 easy steps" so I had 3 small workstations. I know it all looks like a mess in this picture but everything flowed quite nicely when filming.

Step 1: Prepare chocolate cake batter & cupcake pan

Step 2: Prepare strawberry cream cheese filling

Step 3: Prepare strawberry cream cheese frosting

Here's a picture of the Jammin' Strawberry Cream Cupcakes right before they go into the oven. I love the brown and pink color combination!

And here's the results after baking! YUM!

And with the strawberry cream cheese frosting and a strawberry on top!

Filming is over and it's time to eat some cupcakes!

So do you wanna see my 1st ever cooking video debut? You can find the video and recipe for my Jammin' Strawberry Cream & Chocolate cupcakes here on the Real Women of Philadelphia site!

My friend Renie had a Flip camera so that is what we used to video tape! Thanks Renie for being my videographer and putting up with what seemed like a million do overs whenever I would mess up my words! My final video was done in all 1 shot from start to finish! Now don't get me wrong there were about 21 partial videos that occurred before the final video, but the real deal was done in one shooting! I practiced my intro several times, one of which got interrupted by a knock on the door, one of which I pulled out my running headband with the words being upside down, several with my black lab panting loudly in the background...all had to be scrapped! Then on the first time to go through the recipe live without stopping, as soon as I started to mix the cream cheese filling, one of my beaters fell out and we had to start all over. Let's just say I've got some good bloopers if I can figure out how to edit them into one video!

Oh yeah, and then the last second of the "real deal" video I had some cupcake stuck in the side of my cheek. I had to take a bite on camera you know...that's what Paula does on her shows and talk about how yummy the cupcake tasted! Well as I was talking I just moved the cake to my cheek I guess, and then said goodbye. I thought the filming was done! Well when we played back the video, the camera was definitely still on and you see this awful expression on my face while I am trying to move the cake from my cheek with my tongue. Yeah that's all on camera for the whole world to see! So you'll definitely get a good laugh at the end!

I think the last 2 dessert finalists will be picked sometime next week, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Paula liked my recipe! Even if I don't get chosen as one of the finalists, entering this contest was an amazing experience and it helped me to overcome my fears of being in front of a camera. I was able to step outside of my comfort zone and take a chance and had an entire community of women from the Real Women of Philadelphia site supporting me along the way!

Thanks Paula Deen & Philadelphia Cream Cheese for hosting such an amazing competition! Watching all of the recipe submission videos these last 8 weeks has truly been inspiring! There are really some great cooks and creative personalities out there! All of the women that participated in this competition have really changed my perception of cooking and creating recipes! This competition has really taught me to step outside of the box and take a recipe that you love and mix it up a bit to make it one of your own, or to gather some of your favorite ingredients and see what kind of recipe you can create. Cooking truly is something that everyone can do! The kitchen is truly my favorite room of the house and the place where I feel most creative! Even though this competition is over, I feel like I have gained a new respect of cooking and can't wait to create even more of my own recipes!

So what are you waiting for...go whip up a batch of these today! You will be in strawberry & cream cheese heaven!

Monster Cookie Bars

I'm super excited to share with you all this new recipe! If you've been following my site then you know I love the combination of chocolate and peanut butter and I'm also a fan of oatmeal! So I've created what I consider to be a crossover between a granola bar and chocolate chip cookie all wrapped up in one cookie bar. Of course there are a few other special ingredients like M&Ms and chopped pecans all mixed in for a pop of color and some added texture!

My friend Katie had a fundraiser last weekend with her 3rd grade students and it was all about promoting a healthy lifestyle and teaching them how exercising can be fun while at the same time raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society! I told Katie I would come up with a somewhat "healthy" snack for her to sell at her event's bake sale.

Trail mix seems to be a pretty popular snack for kids these days so I figured I would use some nuts and M&Ms which are commonly found in trail mix and combine it with another kid friendly food peanut butter for some protein! I secretly added some quick oats to the cookie batter for some fiber too...shhh don't tell! The kids are going to be drawn to the colorful M&M's popping out of the cookies they aren't even going to realize what they are eating is good for them! I know, I'm a little sneaky!

These cookie bars turned out super yummy and the peanut butter flavor really came through in every bite! This recipe can be super versatile, so feel free to add in some of your favorite "special" extra ingredients maybe some pumpkin puree instead of peanut butter and some dried cranberries! Or sub out the pecans and add in some walnuts or macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips! Really the possibilities are endless with this cookie bar so just have fun and mix in any great flavor combinations that you love!

Monster Cookie Bars

Ingredients:
-1 cup butter, room temperature
-1 cup peanut butter
-3/4 cup brown sugar
-3/4 cup sugar
-2 eggs
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 tsp vanilla
-1 cup M&Ms
-2 cups quick oats
-1/2 cup chopped pecans
-1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 13 x 9 baking dish.
  
• Cream butter, peanut butter and sugars on medium speed of electric mixer until creamy.
• Add in eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.
• Add in vanilla.
• Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Add dry ingredients to butter and sugar mixture and mix until combined.
• Add M&Ms, quick oats, chopped pecans and semi-sweet chocolate chips to cookie batter and stir until combined.
• Spread batter into prepared baking dish.
• Bake for 30 minutes. Cool for 20 minutes.
• Grab a glass of milk and enjoy!