Super Bowl Cupcakes

These cupcakes speak for themselves...touchdown in the sugar zone!

While most people count down for the Super Bowl with six packs and a bowl of wings, KelseyKakes hits the kitchen loaded with football fueled inspiration. Now I must admit, I am no expert in the sporting arena, but I am an expert of my oven and when Haydn and I decided to throw a Super Bowl party I knew exactly where I would be useful...in the kitchen! With the seven layer dip down and some pizza on order, I set to the bigger task at hand - cupcakes themed to match the biggest day of football all year. 

Seeing as we were not rooting for a particular team this year, I decided that these cute little cakes would get some masculine love with frosting colored like grass and yard lines thinly piped with white buttercream frosting. But what would a Super Bowl cupcake be without the footballs?! These small pieces were made by hand rolling chocolate and adding laces stitched with frosting. Stick them on the 40 yard line and you've got yourself a first down!

So go ahead and get baking, there is no event to big or too small, too girly or too manly, cupcakes take the cake no matter what the occasion!

*TIP - to pipe on the frosting evenly and thinly, simply cut a small hole in the bottom tip of a Ziploc bag filled with frosting and pipe away!*

She's One Tough Cookie!

There really is some goodness in giving, and I don't mean the confectionery kind. As you know, each month I work with Operation Baking Gals to organize women from all over the country who fire up their ovens to bake, pack and ship goodies to our troops overseas. I have found unbelievable joy in this process and each month it gets even bigger and better with January increasing the momentum. That's because this month I had the utter joy of being honored by my company (Grey New York) as Giver of the Month for my baking effort with OBG. But the true icing on the cake was the full size posters were hung on every one of our 38 floors raising awareness and praise for the great work we do.

WOW, what an honor.

You see, December was our holiday round of baking so I knew we had to go above and beyond our own personal call of duty to really make this holiday away from home as comforting as we could for our soldiers...this meant more cookies than we ever thought possible! When faced with this mission I knew I had to recruit even more than my current on-line network of chefs, so I set out to transform my companies annual cookie exchange into a major bake session for the troops. And boy did they bake. In total Team KelseyKakes sent a whopping 85 pounds of cookies, bars and treats all the way across the world and into the hands of the men and women who we should thank most during the holidays. They work to keep us safe and in turn its our job to keep them well loved, plenty fed, and endlessly supported.

I feel so blessed to be recognized by my company for our efforts on behalf of Operation Baking Gals and a BIG thanks goes out to all the bakers who make Team KelseyKakes such a sweet success each and every month, it is truly humbling.

*To find out how to get involved in Operation Baking Gals please visit www.bakinggals.com or feel free to email me and join team KelseyKakes at kelseypm@hotmail.com*

Sweetness Down Under

The cupcake craze has headed down south...to Australia that is!

I recently had the luxury of heading to the magical world of Sydney to spend the holidays with my fiances family and soak up a little summertime Christmas. But I knew that this was going to be so much more than a vacation, I was going to use this trip to dig into the sugar coated culinary scene of the Southern Hemisphere.

Packed and ready to go, I armed myself with the best research on cookies, rolls and cupcakes - Australian style - and boy was I in for a journey. The biggest surprise of all was that the now famous little New York cupcake had made its mark on the downtown Sydney landscape. Amped with anticipation to study, critique and taste every cupcake I could get my hand on, I set off with an empty stomach and an open wallet.

Cupcakes on Pitt...

Now I have to admit, I was really looking forward to digging into the frosting coated world of Cupcakes on Pitt. I had read about the famous little treats all over the Australian blogosphere and I was counting down the days until one of them hit my taste buds. Walking with anticipation, I knew when we were close by the familiar 'cupcake line-up' of people. Growing more eager by the second we rounded the corner and in the front door...and what did I see? No wait...this cant actually be the bakery and these can't actually be the size of the cupcakes?! The interior was less of a cozy bakery and more of a sweatshop for sweet treats, with no oven in sight (unless you count the microwave in the back left corner). It was cold, and rushed, and very mass produced. I was losing hope for my Australian cupcake shop, though I kept the faith as I purchased a tiny little vanilla cupcake...surely they would make up for their lack of bakery charm and micro-cupcakes with flavor, pure flavor. Nope. The cake was dry and the frosting tasted like pure butter. It might have been a waste of one cupcake, but not to fear! We were on to the next bakery in 10 minutes flat!

The Cupcake Bakery...
Now this is a cupcake shop! I walked in to The Cupcake Bakery and immediately felt the familiar cozy feeling of light pinks, chocolate browns and the sweet sight of big, fluffy, delicious, pastel colored cupcakes. YUM. I ran to the counter anxious to clear my memory of the previous cupcake let down and I could feel it, I just knew, that this was going to be one amazingly tasty cupcake. Sometimes sweets are funny like that, you can tell just by looking at them. Sure enough, my eyes were as right as my stomach...these were good, really good. And best of all they were cute, and isn't that why we all love a cupcake?

The Neighborhood Bakery...

We cannot leave Australia without a special mention of a little local bakery in Manly that cooks all kinds of baked goods daily. We walked by this shop many times during our visit but this day was different. This day just happened to be my birthday and it also happened to be the day that a distant phone call came through the line telling me my grandmother had just passed away. I was sad. I hurt. I did know what to do, or how to feel.

As we walked passed the very traditional bakery window, Haydn's hand holding tightly to my smaller and far more fragile one, I spotted an incredibly homemade looking cupcake. It wasn't fancy, it didn't even have fluffy frosting, but it made me smile. Cupcakes do that, they add a little bit of light and laughter in even the darkest tunnel. I stood staring in the window and suddenly I knew this would be my special birthday cake...tiny, imperfect and yet completely wonderful. We bought two, one for each of us and strolled the short walk back home. Sitting down we took them out of their crinkled paper wrapper, one by one, and toasted...to the future, to us, to births and to deaths, to the cycle of life and to little cupcakes who's only gift is to keep on giving.

**A little bite of sweetness in memory of Goose**

Gluten-Free Cookies and Cream Cupcakes!

About once a month I am graced with the presence of my gluten-free goddess Sarah and each of these visits always includes a little bit of wheat-free wonderful. This trip was nothing different and before she even arrived we had decided that the whole day would be spent in my kitchen dawning aprons and oven mitts. As we already knew, the task would have to include some creativity as "gluten-free" is never an easy task to perfect on those pallets that crave the flour packed sweets that are usually generated from my kitchen (that would be our toughest critic and dessert lover, my fiance Haydn). We knew if we could get him to love our baked goods sans gluten, then we had perfected a job well done.

Off we went, armed with tapioca flour and xanthum gum, to my mixing bowl where we decided to go wild and create our own version of a cookies and cream cupcake. Using the basic gluten-free chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, we got the idea to throw in some crushed GF chocolate sandwich cookies that we found at Whole Foods into the batter for that extra sweet cocoa crunch. These baked up perfectly, but they were definitely missing the "cream" element that would seal the deal and kick up all the sweet flavor the batter had lost from lacking the gluten that a normal cupcake would have offered.

Thinking fast we knew we needed to work on the cream topping to pass our taste test. Using the same idea we had for the base, we got to crushing more cookies while mixing them into my basic buttercream frosting recipe and viola, we had the tastiest cookies and cream topping! It was only seconds before the icing was perfectly placed with an offset spatula and heading right into our hungry little tummies. Of course my gluten-free goddess loved them as we had just re-created a favorite that had been missing ever since her diagnosis with Celiac...but what about our toughest critic...did he think they were just as good as the original? Did they pass the test?

As they say, silence is golden...

Cookies & Buttercream Frosting Recipe

1 cup butter (softened to room temp)

3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

1 tsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract 1/8 tsp salt

1 cup crushed chocolate sandwich cookies (Oreos or a gluten free variety) 

1. In a bowl combine softened butter and salt. Beat until blended, light and fluffy using the whisk attachment on your mixer

2. Gradually add sugar until incorporated (stopping occasionally to scrap the sides of the bowl) - you may need a little more or a little less depending on you desired frosting thickness

3. Add milk, vanilla and beat for an additional 3-5 minutes or until smooth and creamy (don't over mix and add too much air...frosting should be thick and creamy)

4. Using a spatula mix in crushed cookies

5. Spread on cooled cupcakes and top with whole cookies for decoration!

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Who doesn't love to start their morning off with cake? I still applaud the woman (or man!) who decided to put the word 'coffee' in front of 'cake' so that everyone could feel good about eating dessert for, well, breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast...my wonderful sister was throwing me an engagement brunch the other weekend and knowing my sister (who's KitchenAid mixer is for decoration purposes only and has no measuring cups...yes I know, I don't know how either), I knew I was on call for a delicious treat that was both sweet and rich as it was breakfast. Since the little things in life excite me, I set running with joy to the dessert/breakfast section of my cookbook. A few swift page turns later I landed on what I knew would not only fill our bellies, but would give us an excuse to eat dessert at 10 a.m - Sour Cream Coffee Cake.

Now, this coffee cake is not for the faint of heart. It is rich, dense and oh so filled with sugared topping that swirls magically throughout the center. This cake...I mean breakfast...will keep you going all day, if not make you go back for seconds at lunch time. Dig in with a fork, spoon or just pick it up and gobble it down. Either way you slice it, this coffee cake is down right delish!

Ingredients

BATTER:

1 cup butter

1 3 /4 cups white sugar

2 eggs
1 cup sour cream (I use reduced fat, but whole works fine too...just not non-fat!)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

TOPPING & FILLING:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup packed brown sugar

4 tablespoons melter butter

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Recipe

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13 inch baking pan

TOPPING & FILLING:

2. In a medium bowl prepare the filling and set aside: mix 2/3 cups flour, brown sugar, melted butter and cinnamon

BATTER:

3. In a small bowl combine 2 cups flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt - set aside

4. In another separate large bowl (or mixer), cream together butter and white sugar until light and fluffy (apx. 1-2 minutes)

5. Add in eggs, one at a time

6. Mix in sour cream and vanilla

7. Slowly add flour mixture until just combined

ASSEMBLY:

8. Pour half the batter into prepared pan

9. Sprinkle half of the topping mixture onto the cake batter

10. Spread the remaining batter over the filling and sprinkle with the rest of the topping mixture

11. Bake 35-40 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean (tip: tent the cake with foil for the last 20 minutes, it will keep the sugar topping from over browning)

**Make it your own: the center can be filled with whatever you crave...blueberries, apples, nuts, raisins, anything!

Operation Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

Operation Baking Gals round five was a November sensation. Woman from all over the US joined my team and came together, whisks in hand, to warm up their ovens in honor of our troop this month, Kevin Callen. Kevin is currently on his second service of duty in Iraq and was deployed on a few short days after his baby girl was born on September 15th. We were not only touched by Kevin's service in the marines, but by his endless dedication to his family and to the country we can all call home. In the Operation Baking Gals world, that is what we call a true hero.

It is needless say that we were truly inspired by Kevin this round and Team KelseyKakes really took off baking! We gathered around our cookbooks to make sure we sent over only the most heartfilled, home-inspired sweets that we could offer to our brave soldiers...and that counted for over 55 pounds of cookies this round! Wow.

Here is my personal batch of Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies:

Ingredients

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temp

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour (I like to use 1/2 whole wheat flour)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups of rolled oats (not the instant kind)

1 2/3 cup of butterscotch chips

Recipe

1. Heat over to 375 degrees

2. In a large bowl (or standing mixer), beat butter, sugar and brown sugar together until light and fluffy (apx. 2 minutes)

3. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well

4. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt

5. Slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture, stir until blended

6. Stir in oats and butterscotch chips by hand

7. Drop by tablespoons about 2 inches apart onto ungreased or parchment lined cookie sheets

8. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes

9. Transfer to a wire rack to cool

It is an honor to host Operation Baking Gals each month, and it is even more awe inspiring to find myself increasingly touched and humbled by every round. My bakers out there are truley selfless women and each new month seems to bring on more team members, more cookies and more love and support that we then get to send across the ocean to our troops in Iraq.

I decided to be a part of Operation Baking Gals as a way to heal, gain strength and deal with the heartache of losing a best friend who lost his own life while stationed in Iraq...in turn I have found so much more than I could have ever asked for. I have found a therapy in people, in my oven and in friendships that exisit so selflessly in the support of others. I have found troops, from all over our country, that I get to share my love for baking along with the love for my country all in the same box. I have found hope, strength and frosting covered happiness. But most of all, I have found that if we can make one solider feel our support, our love and a little closer to home...if only for a day...then we have succeeded in a job well done.

As we enter round five, the Holiday Baking Round, I hope I get to share these feelings and simple joys with all of you. If you would like to join Team KelseyKakes in my surgar coated quest to support our troops, feel free to join my team here, or email me at kelseypm@hotmail.com.

Likety-Split Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin fest 2009 has come and gone leaving in its tracks a few pieces of pumpkin sage butter ravioli, an unopened Smuttynose Octoberfest and a half eaten pan of the easiest, most scrumptious, fresh from the oven, pumpkin pie.

I must say that I am not a pie person. There is just too much at stake with a pie crust...cutting the butter into the flour, rolling the dough to the perfect thickness and the expectations of a crust so flaky, you must have recived the recipe from your great grandmother. Pie crust falls under the pastry column and pastries leave little room for a KelseyKakes like kitchen error. Now with that said, I don't bake pies...but I do eat them! So when I found this recipe for an easy (and fast!) pumpkin pie on the Pillsbury website using a store bought pie shell, I was hooked and ready to complete my entire pumpkiny inspired menu. Enjoy and bake up!