Camo Cupcakes

A couple of months ago I rotated out of my old program at work. There were also a few new people who had rotated in, so our team decided to have a celebratory cook out : ).  I’m typically in charge of bringing dessert to our cook outs, so I decided to make cupcakes.  Because I work for the military, I wanted to do something fun and themed, so I decided to make some camo cupcakes!  This was super easy, and looked really neat, let’s begin!

I’m back!

Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I haven’t updated in forever! My apologies, but things have been rather crazy the past few months! I promised myself I’d get around to posting my second NYC post, but since then I’ve actually already been back to Manhattan 2 more times, so I promise to eventually post more on my adventures at some point.

Life has been pretty busy recently, I’ve been traveling a lot, both for work and pleasure, living out of a luggage for a while lol but I finally have some down time, so I hope to post something fun pretty soon. Other than work, some other fun things I’ve been working on is making some Youtube videos to go along with my blog posts, so hopefully I’ll have them posted in the near future : ). Other than that, I’m still recovering from Disney’s 24 hour day of madness, which was quite insane, but tons of fun! I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend : )

– Nikki

Visiting NYC Part 1!

So this is going to be my first non-recipe blog post!  As I’ve mentioned before, I absolutely LOVE to travel.  My first trip was when I was 6 months old (to Italy), and since then I’ve visited 11 different countries and lived in three continents.  And even with all that traveling, some of my favorite spots are right here in the USA : ).  Mainly, my favorite place has now become the lovely city of Manhattan.

The first time I went to Manhattan, I was flying in from Peru, and we stayed for a few weeks in the city.  I was only nine, so I couldn’t truly appreciate the city for what it was, so last summer, when the opportunity presented itself to visit again, I of course took it!

My friends and I used to be quite into the whole Anime/Video Game/Cosplay scene back in the day, but real life (aka college) eventually caused me to move away from a lot of that stuff since let’s face it, studying engineering left me with little amount of time to do much of anything lol.   In any case, as we sorta drifted away from attending anime and comic book conventions as attendees, one of my best friends started her own business selling really cute fleece hats, which she now sells at conventions.  A lot of times she’ll have to go out of town to sell at out of state conventions, and when I have the time to do so, I always like to tag along, and visit new places (+ I get to hang out with one of my bffs, so total win-win for me!).

Last summer, with the ever increasing popularity of the new “My Little Pony” cartoon series, it turned out that a convention named BRONYCON was going to take place right near Manhattan.  This was an excellent opportunity for my friend’s business, and an even better excuse to take a little vacation to NYC.  So if you’re interested, read on to read about our somewhat strange and funny adventures in the city!

Lemon Macarons with Lemon Curd

Hello everyone!

How is everyone’s week going?  I was happy to have Monday off,  I always feel like I accomplish so much more by just having one extra day off.  I was finally able to get my shoe closet project started, but most importantly I had some time to bake : )!

Last week, a coworker of mine who has a lemon tree brought in a bunch of lemons.  I gladly took a few and immediately began to think what I could make.  My mind of course went straight to my favorite dessert:  Lemon macarons.

For those of you who don’t know me, I absolutely love anything lemon flavored.  Lemon cake, lemon tea, lemon cookies, lemon frosting, lemonade, and of course lemon macarons.  Lemon macarons are probably my favorite dessert, ever.   I used to make them with lemon buttercream, but recently I’ve been obsessed with lemon curd, so it’s only natural that I combined lemon macarons with lemon curd.  Additionally, lemon curd is great because it’s a perfect way of using those egg yolks that normally would get discarded while making your macaron shells.

Russian Tea Cakes

Russian tea cakes (also known as Mexican wedding cookies) are absolutely one of my favorite cookies.  If you’ve never had them before, they’re absolutely fabulous.  They’re crumbly, crunchy, soft, and sweet, but not overpoweringly so.  My family does tea time (when our schedules aren’t crazy), and this is a great addition, as it’s a perfect dessert to go with tea.

I surprisingly had never made Russian tea cakes till a few weeks ago when a friend of mine sent me his super secret family recipe.  Funny enough, it turned out this recipe was also the Betty Crocker recipe (we had a good laugh at that)!  In any case, this recipe is fantastic and super easy to make.  Let’s get started!

Pokeball Birthday Cake

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!  December was pretty crazy with all the birthdays and holidays, and January seems to be no different!  One of my new year’s resolution is to blog at least once a week, so we’ll be starting  the new year with a cute Pokemon themed birthday cake!  Brian, who is one of my best friends celebrated his birthday on Sunday January 6th, and as he’s an avid fan of Pokemon, so his wife (also one of my best friends) and I decided we’d make him a Pokeball cake!

Alright, let’s get started!

Chocolate Present Cake

Hello everyone!
Can you believe that Christmas has already passed us by!? I feel like the holidays were a whirlwind this year!  I unfortunately haven’t had any time to do much baking, which was unfortunate, since I love baking during the holidays, but as my brother’s birthday as well as my own + Christmas all happened during this month, there was hardly a free moment!

However, since it was my brother’s birthday as I mentioned earlier, I did make his birthday cake!  I decided to go with a present theme, since I’ve always wanted to make one.  It didn’t come out perfect (my frosting skills aren’t perfected yet), but I did think it came out pretty decent for my first try.  So, during this entry, I’ll be walking you through making a very simple present cake!

Let’s begin!

Festive Fall Cakepops!

Fall has to be my favorite season for baking.  With Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all near each other, the amounts of baking that occurs in my house is endless!  Although I have to admit, I took it easy this year as far as Halloween goes, since we opted to go to Disney instead of really having a party.

Every year at work we have a Thanksgiving luncheon, as well as a charity bake sale.  Cakepops have been such a hit with my friends and coworkers so I usually make those for both our luncheon and the bake sale.  I usually make pumpkin flavored pumpkin cakepops, which I of course did this year, but I also added on some cute turkey cakepops!

The main integral structure of the cakepops remains identical (unless you decide to do something that isn’t spherical), and only differs when it comes to decoration, so once you know the basics, the possibilities are endless : )!

Ok, let’s begin!

Chocolate Macarons filled with Nutella

I was in a Nutella kind of mood one night, so obviously I felt the need to make some chocolate macarons filled with Nutella!

To make these, follow the recipe for my basic macarons (https://scienceandmacarons.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/first-post-macaron-recipe/) and add 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, and remove about 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar to even out the dry ingredients. Then, simply fill with Nutella!

Old fashion Bon Bons

I’m a big fan of any type of Bon Bon, as I love all small cute confectionery goods.  The name Bon Bons come from the french word meaning “good”, literally meaning “good good” and is often synonymous with any type of small sweet (usually coated in chocolate).  As I was spending the evening at one of my best friend’s house, indulging in a great pink moscato wine while watching movies, Bon Bons seemed like an appropriate dessert!

For today, I’m going to do an easy Bon Bon recipe that I’ve been making since I was about 9.  I learned the recipe from a family member, but there weren’t any real measurements, so I decided to go ahead and measure it out, so I could put it into a real recipe!