Playing Catch Up

Hi All!

First off, I haven't blogged in a while but I've still been busy baking.

Recently, I've been using Instagram as more of a platform to share my baking, however, it was hacked... by a Russian porn girl.... how lovely (eyeroll!). So, tonight with the reinvention of my instagram, I decided to refresh my blog and share some work I've completed recently! I hope to keep up with it more, as I am a bit more settled in work these days and have more free time to bake, create and blog!

Please make sure to follow me on Instagram @onesweetbiteatatime -- my page may be a bit sparse now but I am going to work to rebuild it ASAP!

Cookie dough crumble cake!

Cupcakes for a 30th birthday party!

A tribal "Wild One" cake for a 1st birthday party with cake pops!

 

Princess cake pops for a 1st birthday girl!

Lots of babyshower cakes!!

Harry Potter cake pops for an adorable HP themed baby shower.  Aren't the baby Harry's so cute!?

 These were pearl cake pops in their shells for a nautical themed bridal shower.

 

A fall cake with rose gold cake stand made the perfect housewarming gift for a friend!

 

Rudolph was the perfect addition to our Christmas table this year!

And let's not forget the best team in the NFL!!! 

Fling into Spring Watercolor Cake

Christos Anesti! Today was Greek Easter (I like to call it Greekster), and oh my god was it good to stuff my face and then sit in the sun! Everyone was just basking in it.... We literally haven't seen it in six months.. so glorious!!

I love Greek Easter because I love food.  Our table consisted of juicy lamb with garlic cloves, grilled chicken, spinach rice, corn, pastitiso (cheesy Greek lasagna), lemon oregano potatoes, Greek-style green beans, Greek sweet bread, salad with kalamata olives and feta, and wine of course!

We cracked eggs and laughed, as usual.. I love seeing my cousins who are like my siblings and reminiscing of our childhoods.. so much fun!

Then, we ate cake! 

Recently I found a blog post that showed how to watercolor fondant to use for cake stripes!  I thought it was really neat looking and so spring-like so I wanted to give it a try! I used gel-based food colors mixed with vodka as paints and just haphazardly painted all over rolled out fondant!  Then it took some measuring and cutting to make the strips which I then attached to the cake with a bit more vodka as glue.  You don't taste the vodka.. it dries odorless and tasteless!

I also created some of my own fondant flowers to add something special to the finished product! A ribbon around the bottom edges tied in all the colors.   This was a strawberry vanilla swirl cake with bourbon vanilla butter cream.

I really love the delicacy of this cake. The watercolor look is so different, and looks complicated even though this cake wasn't too hard to complete.  It definitely took some time though!

Cutting it is always the hardest part!!!! So happy everyone enjoyed it though!

I hope everyone enjoyed this beautiful weekend!! Tomorrow is going to be 70 degrees -- time for skirts and dresses at work! So excited! 

-Elena

Basket of Flowers Cake

The sun was finally out this weekend! It's a pretty big deal... It was also around 45 degrees.. Also a pretty big deal these days..

I had Friday off so it was a nice, relaxing three-day-weekend spent with the windows open, airing out the apartment from it's winter slumber.  It's amazing how having the heat on makes so much more dust accumulate... Spring cleaning felt good! 

Lou and I also took a drive to the NY border on Friday and enjoyed a delicious meal at The White Horse Tavern in New Preston.  I love the New England charm that Western CT has.. Even in the rain, the day was beautiful and the tavern was nice and cozy with a fire roaring and a mix of Jeff Buckley and the Beatles softly playing in the background. I ordered a Shepherds Pie... Yes it was Good Friday... Yes I ate a meat dish.... Yes the waitress gave me a slight look when I ordered it... It was so delicious I am not the least bit concerned ;)

Easter Sunday was an enjoyable day spent with family.  Louis and I always split Easter up, early afternoon with my family and late afternoon with his family.  Which means I ate double dessert.. obviously.. which means I'll be kicking my own butt in the gym today.. OH well, it was worth it!  I ate snickerdoodle cookies, a mini strawberry shortcake tart, heath bar truffle, couple bits of apple pie, a scoop of butter pecan ice cream, and a piece of my "Basket of Flowers" cake. 

No this wasn't the most original cake design, I've seen it done many times.. But I wanted to take my own stab at it! Plus I haven't piped a basket weave in a while so I figured this would be a good time to brush up on that skill! 

This was a gluten free, chocolate and vanilla marble cake, since my Grandmother's friend was joining us for Easter and often can't indulge in any of the sweets due to her gluten sensitivity, but no one could even tell the difference.  I topped the cake with a bourbon vanilla buttercream.. It was quite decadent! 

I did a variety of piped flowers, including romantic roses, standard roses, hydrangeas and leaves.  I just haphazardly placed them all over.. no rhyme or reason.. was just sort of jamming out to HAIM in the kitchen and doing my thing! 

I'm happy with the results! And the cake was devoured :)

This week I am working on a 21st birthday cake which is very exciting! I'll also be doing another cake for Orthodox Easter which is next Sunday with my Greek side of the fam... So basically my week will be work, gym, cakes every single day, but I'm not complaining :)

-Elena

Boozy Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

I am not Irish.. at all.. 

I did grow up celebrating St. Paddy's however with my best friend Maureen and her very Irish family.  In 6th grade I went to her house after school on St. Patrick's Day, and when I opened the fridge at her house, her Mom had dyed the milk green.. and I remember freaking out, being so confused! What was all this green stuff? Such a funny memory :) 

St. Paddy's was a blast in college.. from what I can remember..... Blarney Blowout at UMass was a religion, back when it was just drunken fun and there weren't cops with bullets and student arrests plastered on the front of Yahoo.com... Happy to see that didn't happen again this year!

I guess I am super off topic here.. What I am trying to say is that St. Patrick's Day has always been a fun one to celebrate! This year we won't be doing any drinking or partying, but I did whip up some of the best cupcakes I've ever made, complete with three kinds of booze... and brought them to work! HA! 

Guinness & Butter

These are Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Irish whiskey ganache filling topped with Bailey's butter cream.. Holy heart attack but SO worth it. Yes I had one for breakfast. Yes I'll be running three miles on the treadmill and doing HEAVY dead lifts tonight... Life's about balance, right? ;)

The best thing about these cupcakes is the balance of flavors. This is not a sugary sweet chocolate cake like you'd have for a birthday cake. The sugar content is much lower, and there is a higher amount of unsweetened cocoa powder for a more muted sugar flavor. The beer just mutes it even more.. The ganache definitely has a bite (I used more unsweetened chocolate) and the whiskey adds a tart flavor.  All is balanced with the butter cream, which is very sweet and creamy! 

These aren't hard to make! Three separate ingredients from scratch can be daunting.. If you are afraid to attempt, just skip out on the ganache and go for regular cupcakes! Still just as tasty! 

 

For the Guinness chocolate cupcakes:

1 stick of butter, room temp

1/2 cup Guinness beer

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup flour

3/8 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup dutch processed cocoa powder

pinch of salt

1 egg

1/3 cup sour cream

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. On the stovetop, melt butter and Guinness over medium heat until simmering.

3. Whisk together sugar, flour, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt. 

4. In a seperate bowl, mix egg and sour cream until combined.

5. Once the butter/Guinness mixture is simmering, remove from stove and pour into the egg/sour cream mixture. Mix until combined. 

6. Add the sugar/flour mixture and mix just until combined! Do not over mix!

7. Put into cupcake wrappers and bake for 17 minutes. 

Let cupcakes cool, then dig out little center holes for the ganache filling. 

For the Irish whiskey ganache:

4oz unsweetened dark chocolate

1/3 cup heavy cream

1 tbsp butter

1 tsp Jameson Irish whiskey 

1. Finely chop chocolate into small pieces and place into a heatproof bowl.

2. Heat heavy cream on stove top over medium heat until simmering. Pour simmering cream over chocolate. Let stand for 1 minute.

3. Whisk the chocolate and cream mixture until combined.

4. Add butter and whiskey. Mix again until combined.

5. Let it cool but it must still be warm enough to pipe. Pipe into the centers of the cupcakes. 

For the Bailey's Buttercream:

1/4 cup Bailey's Irish Creme (I used two nips)

2.5 cups of confectioners sugar

1/2 cup butter (1 stick) at room temp

1. In a stand mixer, cream butter until it if white and fluffy, about 5 minutes. 

2. Add in sugar and Bailey's, alternating and mixing in between additions until all is combined. 

3. Whip for 6-8 minutes until soft and creamy. Pipe onto cupcakes.

Finally, DEVOUR! .. for breakfast if you want ;) 

St. Paddys baking is always a favorite of mine!! Here are some pot O' gold cake pops from two years ago.. These were so adorable and fun to present, people loved them!

OH something else fun happened today -- I purchased my own domain! Now you can visit me directly at www.onesweetbiteatatime.com ! Woo Hoo!

-Elena 

My Rosette Birthday Cake

What a weekend!  

I started the weekend by finishing up some Valentine's Day orders! Cupcakes and cake pops for people who love other people and what better way to show it!

My good friends Kyla and Danny came for the long weekend and stayed with Louis and I! We got snowed in and spent Valentine's Day together and had a blast! The guys played video games, and Kyla and I just snuggled on the couch, chatting and drinking wine and reminisced about college. It was so nice to have them here to do nothing but relax!

Sunday we celebrated me turning 26. I am officially closer to 30 than 20 now.. But I am not scared! The amount of fun things happening in my life right now, and the amount of even more amazing things to come make me so truly excited for this age! I really can't complain.

To celebrate, a bunch of people I love came over and we made our way to my favorite chinese restaurant where we drank and ate.. Then went back to the apartment where the drinking and eating continued mixed with some dancing and a ton of laughing.  It was a blast! 

I celebrated by making my own birthday cake. Odd I know.. But I really wanted a delicious cake and the best way to get that is to make it myself. 

Holy hell, was it good! I took some maraschino cherries and chopped them up and along with their juice I mixed them into a 3 layer chocolate cake. YUM! Topped that off with cinnamon butter cream and it was truly heaven.  I had been wanting to do a rosette cake for a while! The difference with this style of piping is I used a closed star tip as opposed to an open star tip like I did with my original rose cake. The result was a more romantic rose with more whimsy. I like whimsy! 

I think these fun party plates and tablecloth from Target was the perfect addition to the cake! 

All in all it was a beautiful weekend! Louis completed it for me by having me open my gifts which were a gorgeous pair of  6-diamond stud earrings, and a new UE portable blue tooth speaker for my private dance parties! 

26 is so much fun already!  

-Elena