Oreo cupcakes and cookies and cream brownies

Ok, so bad news bears. I've been so busy, that I've hardly baked or cooked anything. I've hardly done any tri training either. Basically, I've been a huge failure while I'm working my little booty off. However, I did quit one of my jobs!! Yay! No more coffee discounts tho :-(   It's probably for the best.

I also got to ride my BRAND NEW tri bike. Actually, its old, but its new to me. And its FRICKIN SWEET! And crazy fast. Basically, I love it. Except the seat, which clearly was chosen for lightness, not comfort (my poor tush!). So I took it out for a couple of spins Friday and Saturday with some non-Race team Fraser friends. It was great! A little tip tho: 1. Tandem bikes are GREAT for drafting, but 2. they can really haul on flats and downhills, so be prepared to grind some gears.

I did squeak out a batch of really really good oreo cupcakes.They are basically crunched up oreos held together by a minimal amount of cupcake, and some really great frosting. Lifeguards and bike mechanics really enjoyed them. However, I did not get any pictures, so I have to refer you to the website I got them. Oreo cupcakes  This recipe requires a whole package of regular stuffed oreos. I made the cupcakes, then crushed up all the cookies left over (which didn't have frosting on them) and mixed them into the frosting recipe to make cookies 'n cream frosting. Basically wonderful.

My basically wonderful cookies 'n cream frosting left me with a whole lot of leftover frosting. So, since I didn't get any pictures of my cupcakes, and since I was pretty much eating frosting out of the fridge and getting fat, I decided to make some yummy yummy cookies 'n cream brownies for my lifeguards, again. I know, I know, you're thinking I'm gonna make the lifeguards fat. In actuality, the club severely cut down on what and how much the guards can eat, so they're pretty much starving.

 They were truly glorious brownies. I used this brownie recipe from my baking Yoda, Smitten Kitchen. Then I added some chopped up cookies 'n cream Hershey's bars instead of the nuts. I don't like white chocolate, but I like nuts in my desserts even less. Man, was this brownie recipe good. I think it's my all time fav homemade brownies recipe. The brownies had a little bit of cakeyness to them, but were so very fudgy in the centers, with a light flakey crust. Sooooo good. Then of course I frosted them with my cookies 'n cream frosting, which was still insanely delicious. The result: Mind Blowing Cookies 'n Cream Brownies. Watch out, these brownies are very bad for you, unless of course you eat one after a run or bike :-)

Brownie Cupcakes

So, I had some frosting left over from Liz's funfetti birthday cupcakes. And I put it all in a ziplock bag, but it was taking up all this space in the fridge. So I needed to use it. But on what? I decided to use it up on a weekday night, so I had like 2 minutes to make something, and didn't want to have to go buy ingredients. So I made....drumroll please....BROWNIE CUPCAKES!!!

They were so delicious. And all it takes is a box of brownie mix. I used Duncan Hines, and made them with an extra egg to achieve the "cake like" brownies as instructed by the box. I also made them in cupcake tins, because really, cutting up brownies is a big pain in the keester, and I usually end up eating too many cause I goofed on the cutting, and then I get a tummy ache. So cupcake pans were the way to go.

However, I have clearly not mastered the piping icing from a ziplock bag technique. Or really any piping technique, but no one needs to know that. So my brownies were somewhat hideously looking. My lack of piping skillz was also exacerbated by the fact that the frosting was all weird leftover colors like pink, orange, green, blue and white. Which isn't a color palate I would have picked on purpose. Oh well. They still tasted ridiculously delicious. And I pawned them off on lifeguards and swimmers, so I didn't end up eating all of them. Hoo ray!

Ooo. This pink one is pretty good. Very impressed with myself.

Hmmm. This multicolored one is a little melty, but not the worst. The frosting started getting pretty heterogeneous, because some of it was melting from the heat from my hands, while the icing in the middle of the bag was still pretty stiff from being in the fridge.

This blue, green and white one is very manly, but still a weird color mix. And not the best piping job. Maybe if the shades of blue and green were different. 

Oh well. So my piping skillz suck, so what? They were still ridiculously delicious and you know you are jealous of everyone who got to eat one. And, if you're somewhere that is gray and cold all day like where I live, you'll probably whip these up right now. I say GOOD. DO IT. Because they're delicious.

Memorial Day Weekend, Part I

Alright! I'm finally sitting still for a hot minute, so I can expand on this blog entry. Basically, it is part one of my crazy memorial day weekend. Part I involved driving to Lansing for my BFF from HS's birthday!! Yay! When I asked her what kind of cake she like, she said her favorite was funfetti, but it was up to me. Well. Clearly I couldn't just bake up a box of funfetti, that's no fun!

So I made myself some funfetti frozen yogurt. And contemplated my plan of attack. It was tricky because my yogurt was so pretty and yummy. But also it was very inspiring, so it worked out.

So. I made up some of Matha Stewart's vanilla cupcakes and I added some confetti sprinkles. Look at how beautifully they turned out!!

So pretty. They were a little dry. I like really moist cupcakes, but these were definitely more muffin-y.

Ooooo. Glamour shot.

And of course they needed frosting! So I made some of Martha's Buttercream frosting which was just heavenly. I'll probably use it for everything now.

Ta Da! Furthering the colorful, festive, funfetti theme, I did each cupcake a different color. I gradually tinted the buttercream, which I had divided, using gel colors. They really turned out beautiful.

I really liked this technique. It was somewhat tedious, but it really turned out a beautiful batch of cupcakes.


Then there's Liz! They sang a very, very inappropriate song to her for her birthday. But it was a great night!!!

What I like to bake

To prove that I don't spend all my time training for triathlons and eating granola and yogurt, I decided to post some photos of my historical baking exploits i.e. the only photos I have of my baking. Don't get too excited, theses are just camera phone pictures.

The above picture is of a pie I made. This past fall, I went to the apple orchard with some friends. I got WAY too excited, which is a typical problem of mine with apple orchards, and ended up with 14 lbs of apples. So I ate some, but baked most of them into 7 apple desserts. Good thing I have a swim team of boys to eat them. The above pie is a Paula Deen recipe, very delicious. My friend Fonzi told me it looked like a pie from a magazine, the proceeded to call me Grandma for the rest of the night.


This past December, I was having a rough time, life wise, and appointed myself chief in charge of the family Christmas cookies. The above is one of the resulting batches. They're cookie cutter sugar cookies, recipe from thejoyofbaking.com with royal icing I painted on, and some sprinkles here and there. Very delicious and festive.
This cake is an apple cake, I think from cookinglight.com, again part of the aftermath of the overenthusiastic apple orchard adventure.
This was my attempt at apple crostada, again after the infamous apple orchard visit. I learned the very important lesson that margarine is not as good as butter for pastry. Obvi. So this first attempt was a big fail. I eventually conquered it though! It was really tricky, so you have to really want some crostada.
Awwww. Red velvet heart cake!! I want to say this was the cake for my boyfriend's birthday this past year. Just regular red velvet cake in heart pans. They got stacked and frosted of course. I like to make really ridiculous cakes for my boyfriend's birthday, because he doesn't get nearly excited enough for birthdays. I FLIP OUT for my birthday. I love it. And I think everyone else should too. So, he gets crazy cakes. Which usually results in him sharing really large cakes with his dad, who LOVES cake.
Hahahahaha. Another really ridiculous boyfriend birthday cake. This had to have been like two years ago. It's six layers, three different flavors: chocolate, funfetti, and vanilla. I was really proud of this cake, even if it leaned a little. You had to make really tall, thin slices, or you ended up with WAY too much cake and frosting :-) And I did frost the outside, it just wasn't my best frost job so I didn't post it.
Aliens invade!!! These little cuties are alien cupcakes. I had a whole neon green invasion lined up on my counter. Chocolate cupcakes with a toothpick sticking up out of the middle, then you skewer on a giant marshmallow, and top it with a cake donut. The tricky part is the frosting. You gotta dip 'em in the green frosting. That's tricky because you have to get the perfect consistency so the frosting doesn't melt off, but it also doesn't suck the marshmallow and donut hole of the toothpick.
The first cheesecake I ever made!! Obviously before I learned about water baths. I also learned that you can't beat anything in nonstick pans, cause you'll chew up the pan (hey, I was in college, cooking supplies were limited). I bribed a friend of mine to read over my senior project and edit my footnotes with this cheesecake. He then hoarded it and guarded it with his life and did not share.
Sushi Rice Krispy treats!! This photo looks like shockingly good photography for me, but the sushi technique is all me. They were very tasty. I couldn't find green fruit roll ups, which saddened me, but they were delicious all the same.
Monkeys and Cookie Monsters!! These guys I made, along with the following rainbow cupcakes, for a bake sale recently at my grandparents church. The monkeys are vanilla cake with chocolate frosting and regular and mini (THEY MAKE MINI NILLA WAFERS!!!! YAY!!!!) Nilla Wafers. The cookie monsters are chocolate with blue frosting, marshmallows and half oreos.
I love these cupcakes. They turned out so beautiful. I'm a suck for brightly colored things. I made these using white cake from a box and gel food colors. The gel food coloring also colored Cookie Monster's fur. I ended up frosting some with chocolate jiffy and some with vanilla jiffy, then sprinkling them with rainbow dot sprinkles. The vanilla looked prettier, but I like my cupcakes and frostings to be different flavors. Not that I ate any of these...