I’m excited to announce that I’m a finalist in the Cakespy contest!

Please vote for my SmoresTroopers cupcakes by either commenting on the blog post, ‘like’ing on facebook or commenting on flickr! Thanks for your support!

Today is National Bundt Day, aka the day of rest for The Food Librarian who has been posting a bundt a day for 30 days leading up to this point. I helped her with one of them and inspired, I decided to participate by baking one today! That and you get a special limited edition “I Like Big Bundts” 2011 baker pin! Er, I designed it. But still! Free pin!

So I made a Banana Nutella Bundt. The main ingredient in this cake is irony since I can’t stand bananas (but they’ve been rotting on the counter since the kids didn’t eat them) and turns out, the Kid is now allergic to Hazelnuts. Insert sadtrombone here.

Still this bundt came out good and there is something lovely about a traditional no nonsense bundt pan. Lots of childhood memories of bundt cake. Happy National Bundt Day!

ingredients:
2-1/4 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, melted
4 mashed bananas
3 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/3 cup nutella

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep a bundt pan by greasing it with melted butter.

In a large bowl whisk the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Add the butter, mashed bananas, eggs and vanilla. Pour into the prepped bundt pan.

Right on top, add the Nutella in the center of the batter.

Using a butter knife pull and swirl the nutella into the bundt.

Bake for 45-50 minutes depending on your oven. Let cool for 30 minutes in the pan, then invert onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

When you cut in you will get a nice swirl, except for this part that I cut into and the swirl was not so swirly. But you get the idea! It was still deelish – nothing like a hint of Nutella to make sweets even sweeter!

Ahh, the king of comfort foods, wrapped up in a sweet cookie.

ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup peanut butter
1-1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3-1/2 cups all purpose flour
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
peanut butter
jelly

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep baking sheets with silpats.

In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and peanut butter until combined. Add the sugars – then the eggs and vanilla.

In a bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking soda – add that to the mixture until fully combined. It will almost start to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Take a Tablespoonful of dough and flatten it out in your hand. Add a small spoonful of jelly.

Ok, ok – I used jam – not the same as jelly but fresh off the local strawberry tour, so I couldn’t resist. Also Peanut Butter + Jam doesn’t have the same ring to it. Pinch the edges together, fully closing up around the jelly.

Place on the prepped pan and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on the pan – if you move them when they are warm, they may break. Once they’ve set, let them cool on a wire rack.

A sandwich in a cookie. I suppose you could eat these for lunch. Tho I wouldn’t advise it…

Happy Halloween!

Random Integer selector (and Batman) tells me that the big winner is…

Tara, email me with your mailing address and the prize will be mailed out.
Thanks to everyone for reading!

I know I said there wouldn’t be any more giveaways this year but I thought this was a good one. I absolutely love this Hello Kitty for Japan tote and the money goes to a great cause. Japan still needs a lot of help, so what better way to support than with something TOTALLY adorable. This bag is sold out in a lot of places, so get it here for FREE while you can!

But what will it be filled with?

Hello Kitty Macaroni, Hello Kitty Baking Cups and Hello Kitty Pocky. These items are rare and hard to find in stores. If you don’t like Hello Kitty…well, I think you’ve come to the wrong blog, honestly. But what else do I love just as much as Hello Kitty?

That’s right. Star Wars. These stencils would have been a great addition to my Ultimate Star Wars Party! Minimal work in the kitchen?! Count me in! These stencils just came out and are super fun, imagine the possibilities!

TO WIN: tell me what recipe you’ve made from this blog that you’ve tried or want to try (list of recipes here). You have from now until July 24! Winner to be announced on Tuesday the 26. (Note: All prizes were purchased by ME with my own money.)

And don’t forget to stop by Small Press if you’re down at Comic Con. Good luck and thanks for reading!

Wilton is the baking company who makes all those wonderful cake pans, decorating supplies and accessories. Last week I was invited to go to their headquarters in Chicago for the Wilton Food Blogger Workshop and take a tour, learn some decorating tips and even compete in a cake competition!

They have a great facility filled with talented people who work hard making all the props for those treat ideas you see in stores year ’round’.

As with most companies, Christmas product is worked on in the early summer, so the rooms were filled with gingerbread and holiday decor.

The prop room was awesome, I need alllll those plates in my house.

Lots of fondant, frosting and so many beautiful gumpaste flowers. There were also lots of decorated faux cakes – the decorations were real, but underneath was a hard shell. Not so yummy, but very sturdy.

We got a tour of the test kitchen, a Wilton history lesson and even got to see the one and only Colette Peters in action.

During the workshop we learned the basics of cake decorating. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert there’s always room to learn more tips and techinques. I love working with fondant and it was nice to get a lesson from an expert in the basics.

We made lots of fondant roses, which was so much easier than I thought it would be! I loved how fun these were to make.

We also learned about a lot of new product such as Punch! Cut! Decorate! which is a cool, different way to decorate your treats.

My favorite part of the day was the buttercream lesson. For years my mom took cake decorating classes (probably from Wilton) and she always made our birthday cakes. I always marveled at how she worked with the bags and piping tips. It was a big influence on me because I just taught myself from watching her and never had any formal training.

It was exciting to finally learn some new techiniques AND I was thrilled that I learned a proper basketweave!

After that I guess they thought we could handle a little friendly cake competition. It was stressful, let me tell you. To come up with a concept as a team and then decorate it all in under an hour…now I know how those tv competitors feel cause t was a lot of pressure.

They gave us faux cakes covered in buttercream, basically blank canvases. My team of Jennie from In Jennie’s Kitchen and Julie from Mommie Cooks! were a perfect match. We all seemed to have the same aesthetic sensibilities and we all knew we wanted a simple, modern, elegant design.

We talked about doing a cake that incorporated what we learned in the workshop and that was simple enough to do in our limited time. I drew up a quick sketch based off of all of our ideas…

…then we all went to town.

Flowers, buttercream, tinting, piping, pearls. Whew! In the end we finished our cake right when time ran out.

Every team had a unique design – so many techniques and colors. It was awesome to see what everyone came up with in just an hour.

At the end of the day we had an awards dinner, where yes, everyone was a winner!

And we won ‘Best Design!’ Yay, us! That is another mini faux cake, but the frosting is allll real and man did it smell great!

While all that was fun and games, let’s get down to business. Once a year Wilton holds Tent Sale where they have over 3000 items all 75% off. Basically, a baker’s heaven. The only thing holding me back was my small suitcase. How was I ever going to take it all home??

With $5 cake pans and all other supplies hovering around $1, it was tough let me tell you. I got some very cool things that I can’t wait to use! This sale is worth flying to Chicago once a year, believe me!

The trip was amazing and it was so nice to be with people who have the same love of baking and blogging. Big thanks to all the other bloggers and especially to Wilton for all their generosity!

I have a friend who I miss dearly. We’ve known each other for years, but you know how things go – kids, work, life – there’s no time to catch up. We’ve gone months, sometimes years without talking or seeing each other. But let’s face it, I’m not leaving the house while Oprah’s counting down to her last show. All joking aside, time flies faster than you can keep track.

I think about her all the time though, and she once joked that I should have a take out service where I deliver home cooked meals to friends. I took that ‘joke’ to heart and since her office is on one of my many daily routes, I carved out a bit of time to drop off some things I know would make her happy – because really all you need is carbs + sugar to make your life better, right…?

First I made some mac n cheese (keep the ‘pot’, hold the ‘pie’) in ramekins (recipe here) and wrapped them in plastic and froze them. I printed out reheating directions in a fun little card and attached it to the pot pies.

I then pre-packaged DIY Smores, a pack of marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolates. Again with instructions for whenever she felt like making up a quick dessert.

This was a fun way to show my friend how much I care and heck, we could all use a little help with simple meals now and again. I know I often (A LOT) feel unappreciated or forgotten, and sometimes it’s nice to remind people that you are thinking of them, even if you don’t see them as often as you’d like.

Well – this is as close as it’s going to get for now…

Yep, that is the cover for the new comic book/cookbook of O.G.’s favorite recipes. This is a big deal because many of the recipes she’s been making over the years and she’s never really written them down properly. And getting them out of her was NOT EASY. Some are secret recipes and it was like pulling teeth, frankly. However – O.G. was behind this 100% and was very involved in everything from the recipes to the design.

Home cooking was a big influence on me early on, and helped establish my love of cooking and eating easy and delicious meals. I’m pretty proud of this one, to get O.G. to give her blessing on anything is amazing, so the fact that she was so behind this is a shocker.

Not your typical cookbook, it is short and sweet, full of recipes, anecdotes and as usual, our very frank conversations. This will be out in limited release for Mother’s Day and available for purchase in July at the San Diego Comic Con. Self published, 28 pages, full color – all for you to enjoy. More info to come.