Coming Out Day Rainbow Mini Bundt Cakes

October 12th was National Coming Out Day. The Journal was having a bake sale and I wanted to have an item that acknowledged the day. I baked these mini rainbow Bundt cakes, which aren't anything special in terms of taste (they're just made from white cake mix), but they're adorable!

Journal of Gender, Race & Justice Fall Bake Sale

My Journal is having a bake sale this week. Here are the items I've completed for the sale:

 Cheddar Apple Muffins

 Triple Peanut Butter Cereal Bars (Made with Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch, Peanut Butter, and Reese's Pieces)

 Seasonal Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Apple Toffee Blondies with Brown Sugar Frosting

Recipes forthcoming! Could take me a bit though, as life is really crazy right now! Mostly good crazy, but crazy nonetheless!

Hummingbird Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

I don't want to talk about how I somehow misplaced my camera, yet again.

The first time I ever had hummingbird cake was at my office holiday party the year between college and law school. This was no typical office holiday party, however. The business school I worked for had just built a new building and the holiday party was a really fancy affair. There was a huge buffet with tons of cheese, entire fish, and lots of other fantastic food items that I wish I could remember. There was also a coffee bar with fancy liquors to mix in and a wonderful dessert buffet. The dessert buffet had a number of fancy cakes on it, and I went with the hummingbird because I'd never heard of it and it looked good. Oh, it was.

Fast forward to this weekend, when I was trying to come up with something to bake for the Phi Alpha Delta bake sale, whose proceeds were going to benefit Iowa Legal Aid. The theme of the bake sale was "Spring" because next week is spring break, so I wanted to come up with something fruity. I ended up going with a Martha Stewart recipe for hummingbird cupcakes and attemptws to make the pineapple flower garnish. I found the tutorial here really helpful. It took me hours and hours to get the pineapple to dry, so if I ever make these again, I'll be sure to get the pineapple slices even thinner. Mandolin maybe? I don't have one, but it might be a good investment at this point.

Also, I am am a baking grown-up now, because I finally sucked it up and bought some frosting tips and bags. I bought an Ateco set, consisting of 6 large tips, as I think they'll be best for cupcakes and that's primarily what I make.

These cupcakes were delicious and incredibly moist. I highly recommend them, with or without the pineapple garnish. The garnish was impressive for bake sale purposes and really drew people in, but I'm not sure it was worth destroying an entire pineapple over - especially when the end product is basically inedible.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

These look prettier than they taste. I lazily omitted lemon curd from a white cupcake flavored with lemon zest and lemon juice. It was a mistake.

I made these for another impromptu bake sale for the journal. More photos of those cupcakes are coming.

The recipe for these is really unexciting - I just flavored my basic vanilla cupcake recipe with zest of a lemon and 1/4 C of lemon juice. The meringue is 3 egg whites and 7 tablespoons of sugar - just under 1/4 C. I finished baking the cupcakes, flipped the broiler on, slathered on the meringue, and shoved the cupcakes back in the oven until the meringue browned.

I am really sleepy. I had too much caffeine last night and ended up being awake until 4AM. Don't worry, I did really important things like Bluebooking.

Oven S'Mores

I am obsessed with S'mores. I made S'more cupcakes early this summer. Then I revised the recipe into a bundt-style recipe. The batter looked pretty:


Last week, Our Best Bites posted a recipe for oven S'mores. I wish I'd never considered the option of making an actual S'more in the oven. It was way, way too easy. At least with a cupcake, I have to dirty some bowls.

Here's what you do:

1. Turn your oven to broil.

2. Lay out all of your graham crackers on cookie sheets

These graham crackers are upside down! Don't do this!

3. Put your marshmallows on top.


3. Get your chocolates ready! I used Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey Bars. Yum! Once you pull the pan out of the oven, you've got to go go go, so make sure you have all of the candies unwrapped and broken.

4. Put the pan in the oven for 1-2 minutes, whatever your marshmallow preference is. I'm a big fan of burned marshmallows, but I realized this was kind of burning the graham crackers, so be aware of that!


5. Pull them out when you're content with the marshmallows' brownness. Put the chocolates on top as quick as possible!


6. Stick the second graham crackers on top! Done!

I ate one while it was hot and then shoved the rest in the freezer so they'd cool and be easy to stack up in a tupperware. These babies were bake sale bound!

Red Velvet Cookies

I made these cookies for a bake sale this week. They're a really easy recipe, which I've co-opted from the wonderful Bakerella. I didn't use her frosting, but instead used Our Best Bites' awesome frosting and died it pinkish - maybe too pink. This frosting can cause pain and suffering because it doesn't always come together, but oh man, when it works, it's amazing.

Fair warning, this pretty much turned my kitchen reddish pink for a few hours. Do not bake if police are conducting a murder investigation in your building.

Coconut Cupcakes

I made these beauties a month or two ago for one of the bake sales that one of the organizations I'm a part of had. International Law Society, maybe? I can't recall...

Anyway, the recipe is from Simply Recipes but made by Vanilla Garlic. Got it? Vanilla Garlic has a rather extensive cupcakes phase a while ago and has some really interesting and off-beat recipes. Check it out if you enjoy the cupcake medium as I do!

These cupcakes turned out very pretty and I loved the cake. I think I have a stronger sweet tooth than the recipe-writer, so if I made them again, I think I'd go with a different and sweeter cream cheese frosting. All in all, delicious.

Mint Cupcakes

I made these delectable cupcakes for the Phi Alpha Delta bake sale to benefit a family the fraternity is sponsoring for the holidays. I made extra to take to my last day of Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research. Lots of cupcakes...

The cupcake base is an aaammaaazzzinngg devils food recipe from Our Best Bites. It's easily my favorite food blog right now.

The frosting is also from them. Be warned...it's probably the most temperamental thing I've ever made. I've gotten three batches out of six tries, and my learning curve is not really improving. Be sure you've got extra supplies as you'll probably mess up the first time around. I swear, it is worth the pain and suffering. I added mint extract and green gel color to get a nice green minty look and taste.

I piped the frosting on the cupcakes with my Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator. I swear, I'm not being paid by Pampered Chef and actually, the only two PC things I own are this and my fluted stone pan. But seriously, I love this decorator. I've used it 5 times and I've had it for less than 2 weeks.

I topped the cupcakes off with Andes mints chopped in half. Adorable and delicious!