March 2015 Wrap Up

March was another great month in the kitchen! All of my decorating projects were well spaced out, so I had time in between to test out some new recipes. I never get to all the recipes I want to (I think I have enough recipes pinned on Pinterest to last several lifetimes – of mine and my oven’s!), but I did get to try some, including tiramisu, which is something I’ve been hoping to make for a long time!

Brownies & Bars

I have already posted about the recipe for Thin Mint Blondies from Cyndi of My Kitchen Craze and the Thin Mint Brownies that I made early this month in my Baking with Thin Mints blog post. If you haven’t checked them out yet, I highly recommend you do!

Cakes & Cupcakes

Also included in my Baking with Thin Mints blog post is the recipe for Thin Mint cheesecake cupcakes from Tessa at Handle the Heat.

I worked on two sets of cupcakes this month. The first was for Grace, who wanted pink butterfly cupcakes. As her birthday planning evolved, she decided she wanted to give out a butterfly cookie and a rose as her favors, so I suggested we do pink rose and butterfly cupcakes to tie it all together. The second set of cupcakes was a couple of weeks later for Grace,s little sister Lucy’s birthday! She asked for horse cupcakes like the ones I made for Mireille’s birthday last year.

I made three cakes in March. They were a good representation of the change of seasons, as I had the chance to make another Frozen Snowflake Elsa Cake for Sophie and then two cakes to honor the beginning of spring. Linda was excited to celebrate her birthday with the same cake that she tasted at Bryn’s birthday in January, so I made her a Rose and Butterfly Cake with the same recipes to celebrate her birthday falling on the first day of spring! The Spring Flower Twizzler Cake was a fun project, and you can read more about it in this blog post.

Cookies

I made three new drop cookie recipes this month. I tried this recipe for coconut oatmeal cashew cookies when I was headed up to the school one afternoon and wanted to take a little treat to the teachers. I halved the recipe and omitted the white chocolate chips. I made each cookie with 2 Tbsp of dough and got 18 cookies. I baked for some for 14 minutes on a silpat and the rest for 13 minutes on a piece of parchment. They were a big hit, and I’d definitely make them again. Later that afternoon, I tried this recipe for coconut oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I also halved this recipe and got 17 cookies. I used only 2/3 cup of (milk chocolate) chocolate chips because I thought that was plenty, and I would likely use less if I made the recipe again because I thought they were a little too sweet. A couple of days later, the kids had a fun snow slide day at school, so I took some hot chocolate cookies for Leighton’s class to enjoy in the afternoon (I didn’t have enough time to make any for Riley’s class in the morning). I combined two recipes for the cookies. The first was the base I used (but I omitted the chocolate chips), and then I used the idea of mini marshmallows from the second. I decided too late to make the cookies to try the frozen marshmallow idea, but I’d like to see how that works another time.

I decorated some sugar cookies like ones I had made before. Grace wanted pink butterfly cookies for her birthday, and Lucy wanted horse cookies for hers. I had made these pink butterfly cookies last year for a bake sale at the school and these horse cookies last year for Mireille’s birthday. For Reid’s second birthday, there was a train theme, and I got to decorate my first train sugar cookies and railroad crossing sugar cookies. I detailed the inspiration and results in this collection. I had some leftover dough and icing and decided to make some music note cookies with a cookie cutter my mom had given to me shortly before I started making sugar cookies so regularly! Thanks, Mom!

Decorations & Toppers

For Linda’s cake, I made some yellow butterfly toppers. I’ve made lots of pink, purple, and green butterflies before, but I hadn’t made yellow before this.

For Lucy’s cupcakes, I made some brown horse toppers just like these. I also made these pink and white horse toppers with royal icing. I had made one that looked similar out of fondant last year.

Other Goodies

Our friends were coming over for dinner, and I knew I didn’t have time to make the Thai dishes I had hoped to (last time they came we had an Indian food theme and I made the malai kulfi for dessert), so I decided to make some quicker Italian-inspired food instead. I was so excited to take the opportunity to make tiramisu. I had been hoping to make it for a long time, but I was always intimidated to try. I looked through countless recipes online and finally settled on this one by The Pioneer Woman with a small change inspired by this one from epicurious to use instant espresso powder because that’s what I found when I dashed to the store late on a Friday night to get some ingredients. During this same shopping trip, I was annoyed to learn that you can’t purchase anything with an alcohol content over 17% after a certain time in Texas, so I couldn’t buy the dry Marsala wine I wanted to get and had to settle for Marsala cooking wine instead. I was extremely nervous about this, but luckily it worked out! The tiramisu was beyond delicious. We all enjoyed it, and both kids loved the leftovers (I wasn’t sure that Riley would even entertain the idea of tasting it, but she was licking her bowl clean!). It is definitely an expensive dessert to put together and takes a bit of time to get each component prepared, but it is absolutely worth it. I will make this again for sure. And hopefully soon! The only change I will make next time is to use more of the coffee mixture when drizzling it onto the lady fingers because I found some parts of them a little dry. I was just worried they’d get too soggy and that the Marsala cooking wine flavor would be wrong, so I was a little hesitant to use as much as the recipe suggested.