Peanut Butter Frosting

I needed to send Logan to daycare with a gluten-free cupcake a couple of weeks back, as they were celebrating our daycare provider's son's birthday.  What better excuse than to make ourselves some cupcakes???  

I cheated and made one of the Betty Crocker gluten-free cake mixes that is new to Canada.  I am definitely not the "make a cake from a box" type.  But I'm cutting what corners I can these days, and this is one of them.  I didn't want to be wasting my time testing gf cakes that ended up not working.  And, as it turns out, these were actually pretty good.

I whipped up some of this delicious frosting to go on top of them.  I've made this with both peanut butter and sunbutter.  And since I'm a bit of a pb-aholic, I have to say that I preferred the peanut butter version.  But the sunbutter ones weren't too shabby either ;)

1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C margarine
2 C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 tbsp. milk

Whisk or blend together all ingredients until smooth and creamy, adding more or less milk to achieve the desired consistency.  

This is super quick to make.  I whipped it up, dug out a bit of the cupcake with an apple corer,

and stuffed it full of this frosting.

Then I just piped some on top.  For instructions on how to pipe the icing, check out my lemon cupcakes here.

Difficulty level:  easy to make the icing, moderate to pipe it

For a dairy-free/vegan version, use Earth balance instead of the margarine and coconut or almond milk for milk.

For a nut-free version, use soy butter or sunbutter instead of the peanut butter.

Lil' Miss Maddykins Turns One!

Remember this post from last year, when I was visiting my teeny, tiny, newborn niece when she was only 5 weeks old? 

Well, lil' Miss Maddykins turns one today.  Can you believe it?? 

 

 
Happy birthday to my favourite niece!!   

I swear, you can tell me all sorts of dirt about your life as you get older and I PROMISE, I won't tell your mom ;)

Maddy's birthday celebration was the weekend before last.  My sister Ashley did a luau theme for her party.

LOVE the colour scheme!

even Chloé got into the leis

best picture of Maddy EVER!

Even Logan got into the grass skirt theme!

Maddy wasn't terribly interested in either the presents or the cake, but she had a blast, playing with her bff Evan.

I undertook the task of putting my newly learned cake decorating skills to use.  We were also celebrating Logan's 2nd birthday at the same time, so I ended up making two cakes. 

I made a quatre-quarts cake for Maddy's cake, which is a bit like a French version of pound cake.  But soooo much better than regular old pound cake.  I'll post the recipe for this shortly.

On a friend's mom's suggestion, I filled the cake using Shirriff brand coconut pudding, which I had never used before.  But it worked quite nicely in this cake.  On her suggestion, I mixed the pudding with 1 C homogenized milk, 1 C evaporated milk and 1 C table cream instead of the suggested 3 C of milk.  I also stirred in 1/2 C of finely shredded, unsweetened coconut while cooking.  She suggested I stir in 1 tsp. of vanilla, but I used pina colada flavouring instead, to stick with the luau theme.  And she stirs in 2 tbsp. of butter once the pudding is cooked, but I didn't, only because I didn't have any.

Here's a peek at Maddy's cake:

all crumb coated and ready to go

sparkly bow

 

didn't get a picture until the very last slice, so it's a bit of a mess...

Despite my best efforts, Maddy didn't seem too impressed with her cake...

For Logan's cake, I used the regular recipe for Katie's chocolate sour cream cake (the one with the baking soda).  I split it between three cake pans and used my chocolate peanut butter (soy butter) ganache to fill them.  And, of course, they needed to be decorated in a Cars theme for Mr. Logan.

a mountain of gooey deliciousness

And, again, despite my best efforts, Logan didn't appear to be overly impressed with his cake either.

C'mon kid!  It's McQueen.  And Mater.  And cake!

One little baking lesson that I learned while making Logan's cake that I feel the need to share:  you should not, ever, try to break an egg into a KitchenAid mixer while it is mixing.  Now, you'd think this should maybe be written somewhere in the instruction manual.  Alas, it is not.  I guess KitchenAid figured that no one would ever be quite stupid enough to attempt such a feat.  They did, however, underestimate just how many corners a mom may try to cut when scrambling to make cakes and pack for a road trip with two little ones.

You guessed it... the whole egg got mixed into the batter.  Shell and all.

But this did not deter me on my birthday cake baking mission!  I just washed my hands and picked that little broken egg shell outta there.  I mean, I had no more butter.  And it was 10pm.  What's a girl to do??  I hope no one noticed that the cake had a little crunch to it!!

Maddy was a trooper through the long day.  And, despite being sick, she even helped clean up after the party:

Some other random photos I wanted to share from our weekend with family:

one of my faves - great-grammy with 2 of the 3 great-grandkids

I also want to wish Ella, Logan's first love, a very special 2nd birthday today.

Super, super long post...  However, last, but not least, I wanted to share a couple of my proud mama moments from that weekend:

- Logan was soooo extremely calm on our way to my sister's (on a 7 hour drive!!).  I couldn't even recognize him as my own child.  On Logan's Occupational Therapist's recommendations, we packed a bag full of sensory tools: relaxing music, both crunchy and chewy snacks, drinks with straws, a vibrating toy, a wide-brimmed sun hat, a weighted toy and a heavy blanket that could be tucked in tight all around him.  Oh - and let's not forget the portable DVD player!  And it worked!!!  He was even quieter than a mouse.  That was not so much the case on the way back, but it was nice that we didn't all have to suffer both ways.

- watching Logan learn to not be afraid of going down Maddy's slide.  We have learned from Logan's Occupational Therapist that he is hyper sensitive to movement.  Which basically means that he is more afraid of movement than most kids and also, that he gets dizzy more quickly than others.  This means that he tends to be quite afraid of heights, slides, swings, etc.  While at my sister's, he climbed up to the top of the slide, but then didn't want to go down.  Advantage of having such a big family?? Everyone started cheering together  "go Logan go" and Logan took a big breath and pushed himself off.  And he looked terrified.  And when he got to the bottom, everyone burst into huge cheers.  And off he went.  

Logan is also a sensory seeker for movement.  Which means that once he's comfortable with a movement, he wants to do it non-stop.  I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how you can be both hyper-sensitive to, and also crave, the same thing.  Yet I can see by observing Logan that this is true.  I was so proud to see my little guy learn to tolerate something he is terrified by.  This encourages me that, over time, and with therapy, he will learn to be able to deal with more and more of the sensations he cannot currently tolerate.

- watching Chloé attempt sitting alone for the first time at Maddy's party.

All in all, it was a great party and was wonderful to see my whole family again.  

Happy Father's Day Cake

Happy Father's Day to all the men in our lives who are a daddy!!!  And a special Happy Father's Day to my own dad.  

And to my husband, Jérôme.  Thanks for being such a wonderful husband and father. 

I made a cake for Jérôme to celebrate the occasion.  

 

It had to be something relatively quick, as we were away last weekend, I had a million and one appointments last week and Logan woke up sick yesterday.  Good thing with fondant is that you can start making many of the decorations far in advance.

I used an altered cake mix recipe for this cake that I got from my cake decorating teacher.  To my recollection, I have never, EVER made a cake from a box before.  But someone in my cake class told me how good this recipe was, so I figured I had to give it a try.  And this was the perfect chance to do so, as I was pressed for time.  She told me that the vanilla version was better than the chocolate, so that's what I chose.  And it turned out to be pretty good.  I still prefer more dense cakes, but if you want to make a boxed cake, I'd recommend this.

1 box cake mix (no pudding in the mix)
1 small box instant pudding in coordinating flavour
1 C sour cream
1 whole large egg
3 large egg whites
1/2 C water
1/3 C oil (add one more tbsp. with chocolate)

Optional:
1 tsp. vanilla flavouring
1 tsp. almond flavouring
1 tsp. butter flavouring

I used a tsp. of pina colada flavouring, which I purchased from my teacher. 

1.  Mix all ingredients in mixer at speed one or two, scraping down sides, until just incorporated.  Batter will be very thick.  Fill pans just a little over half full.

2.  Bake at 325 degrees Fareneheit until centre bounces back and toothpick is clean.  Be careful not to underbake.  This will take longer to bake than an undoctored mix due to the added ingredients.

Note: cheesecake flavoured pudding will keep the batter more white in colour and vanilla will make it more yellow.

Due to my current freezer challenge, I am trying to not only empty the freezer, but also, to not stock it with anything new.  So this was a bit of a cake of leftovers (sorry honey...).  A cake of leftovers right down to using the remaining green buttercream icing from Logan's birthday cake (which I will post shortly).  I used this to crumb coat the cake.  I figured that it was only for us, so it didn't matter and it was better than throwing all of the green stuff in the garbage.

As you can tell from the picture, I found it more difficult to crumb coat this cake than the ones I made for Maddy and Logan's birthday (to come shortly).  Probably partly because this cake wasn't as dense.  And partly because I was in a huge rush.

I used leftover cream cheese icing (from my lemon curd filled lemon cupcakes with lemon icing) as filling.  Not on purpose, as Jérôme doesn't like lemon.  I didn't notice it was lemon until I had it defrosted.  And then I just hoped that he wouldn't notice... And he didn't ;P  

Now you'd think this would not taste good at all with the pina colada flavouring I had put into the cake.  But I just wanted to get rid of everything, so I charged ahead even after I realized the cream cheese icing was lemon.  And you couldn't even tell.  In fact, the whole thing tasted pretty darned good.

the green buttercream makes it look a bit odd, but it was delicious!

 

 

I used a bit of shimmer on the white fondant