Cooks Cakes

I'm teaching a few of my favorite "Gourmet Cupcakes Made Easy" classes this month, and while we use cake mix for the base of the cupcakes in class, I wanted to share my scratch recipes for those awesome cupcakes here for my students to try.

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Caramel Apple Cupcakes with Caramel Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Homemade Caramel Sauce (soooo good!)

S'Mores Cupcakes from Scratch

Click the Links Below to See:

Baking and Decorating Classes in the St. Paul Area

Wilton Cake Decorating Classes in the Twin Cities

Private Parties and Workshops for Cupcake and Cake Decorating

I'm not ashamed to admit that I readily bribe my children's teachers from the very first day of school... This year will be no different. Below are a few of my previous years' bribes and treats for teachers.

Back-To-School Cookies for the Teacher

Simple ABC & 123 Cookies

Pencil Cookies

Easy Crayon Cookies

Apple Cookies for Teacher

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

Apple Cake Pops

Apple-Flavored Cut-Out Cookies

Marshmallow Flower Cupcakes

This chocolate cake received rave reviews from our entire Fourth of July party. It was so rich, so tasty, and best-of-all... It's flourless, so our friends with dietary restrictions were as happy with it as we sugary gluten eaters!
It did taste more like a brownie than cake, but it was still very good. My favorite thing is that it is adapted, ironically, from This recipe found on the King Arthur Flour website. And it is so easy that my eight-year-old did most of the work making it.

What You Need:

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter

1 1/2 cup sugar*

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. finely ground coffee or espresso powder

1 Tbsp. vanilla

6 eggs (at room temperature)

1 cup cocoa powder

* Note: I am going to test this with just 1 cup sugar next time to lower the carb count even more, I'll let you know how that goes.

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This treat is perfect if you love pie, but don't want to heat up the kitchen for hours. You still have to bake some of the crust, but it only takes five minutes, not an hour, in the oven.

What You Need
Pie Crust
   You can use store-bought or one of my Two Favorite Pie Crust Recipes
   (Flaky Pie Crust or Rich Pie Crust).
Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce
   Or you can use store-bought pie filling. Cherry & Blueberry would make a cool red, white and blue pie.
Vanilla Ice Cream

Pretty simple instructions here...

Make the crust.
For mine, I used my Flaky Pie Crust Recipe, and cut it into stars (or even just cut into strips if you want to make it even easier). Be sure to prick it with a fork before you cut it so that the crust doesn't get funky air bubbles. Bake at 425-degrees for just 5-7 minutes.
I only used 1/4 of the dough, and it made about six to eight "pies."

Make the filling.
The Recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce is here.

Assemble them in cute cups or mugs, and top with ice cream.

Yum!

We have rhubarb and strawberries galore in our backyard garden right now.
So, I decided to make this very easy cake for my boys to welcome them home from Cub Scout camp.
*Note: My husband took my camera with them to camp, which is why the photos here are a little -- ish.

What You Need:
For the Cake:
1 box white cake mix
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1-2 cups chopped strawberries
1-2 cups chopped rhubarb

For the Frosting:
1/2 cup (4 oz.) cream cheese (at room temperature)
1 cup heavy whipping cream (very cold)
1/4-1/2 cup powdered sugar

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