Cupcakes: Coco-Nutz!

Okay, so I tried to get all clever and use Photoshop to juice up this post, but I ran out of focus and here we are. :) Plain old boring photos.

Charley and I were bummed to wake up to Thunderstorms today- but not as much as Boyf, who had grand plans to gorf with a pack of dudes. I have also been packing in the golfing opportunities, so I took this mornings storm as a sign that I needed to bake something.

I recently bought a new cookbook, "Hello, Cupcake!" and in the back of the book, they list ways to spice up boxes of cake mix. I happened to have a spare white cake mix handy, so I grabbed that and went to work. They ask you to do the following:

White cake mix (really any cake mix)
1 cup of buttermilk (replaces any water the recipe calls for) vegetable oil (what box tells you to add)
and then one additional egg (usually it's the fourth)

The cake tastes great and baked up really nicely, so I think I will be doing this from now on- unless I am in a buttermilk void. :/

I decided to make...

Coconut Buttercream frosting:
1 Cup of butter
3.5 cups of powdered sugar
2 teaspoons of coconut extract
2 teaspoons of coconut milk
beat in mixer until fluffy

I topped each one of the buggers with a "Coconut Toupee" of pink sweetened coconut. Coloring the shreds was MUCH easier then I thought- as I found some really useful directions on the interwebz:

Grab a small Gladware container
put a few drops of food coloring into the container
shake it up BEFORE adding the coconut
add the coconut and shake it up some more!
Voila! Pink Toupees for my cupcakes. :P

By the time Charley and I were done, the sun was out for a great, hot, Memorial Day 2010!

Charley Ball!

A Herd of Racookies!!!

Okay, so Charley and I had our first gig. Our assignment was to bake 70 Raccookies for a golf outing yesterday (which was canceled due to the weather). I baked my favorite sugar cookie recipe, and changed two things to see if I could improve on something tasty- I sifted the sugar and added Almond Extract in addition to the Vanilla. I read about adding almond on one of my fave blogs, The Decorated Cookie. Let's just say it was a good decision because they smelled and tasted super.
I learned a LOT from this cooking adventure.

• There's gotta be an easier way, and I'm determined to find out what it is.

I was too chicken to try and make these cookies using Royal Icing. I tried a test batch last Sunday, and let's just say the icing looked more like school paste then frosting. I found out that I added too much powdered sugar..but I COULD have corrected it by adding more water. Next time.
For these Racookies, I sketched out the little buggers using a black food writing pen (free hand, using my cardboard cookie template as a guide). I then painstakingly frosted them with black icing, and used a toothpick (yes, I said TOOTHPICK) to paint the icing to match the outline. Last, I fished out all of the white hearts, flowers and stars from my stash of sprinkles and placed each eyeball in it's spot with tweezers. Gah!
All in all, you are looking at about 14 hours of work from start to finish. So when I say there's got to be an easier way- I have to believe that it's true. Charley sat by my stool (as pictured) for pretty much the entire cookie tornado.
I'm adding more pics then usual, because who knows when I'll be making this many cookies again :). Even though the outing was canceled, cookies were delivered and Boyf and I played a round of golf anyhow. It didn't rain on us one bit. :) Yay!