Cake, Cupcakes. Cupcakes, Cupcakes. And Chicken Casserole... Wait, did I say Cupcakes? Yeah, lots of Cupcakes... Long post!

Ok, so life has been pretty busy here lately!  

 Work,
prayer,
talent show practice,
baking,
work,
church,
cooking,
icing cupcakes,
work,
nursery coverage,
work,
talent show practice,
baking,
baking,
icing cupcakes,
birthday party,
ice cake,
ice decor transfer,
  frozen buttercream transfer to iced cake,
TIME CHANGE ~ Fall Back,
church, nap & church...
  whew, I am tired again!
Wait, I don't remember sleeping?!? YIPES!

For our Young Adult Talent Show skit yet again I have been assigned to props, that's fine (I HAVE BEEN TYPE-CAST YET AGAIN!)...

It's all for the best anyway, I am not that great an actress!

Although I will let you in on my most recent debut... 

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60A8B548215BC04C  

can you tell where I am in this one?

So anyway...

So starting Tuesday of last week the majority of my time was spent in the kitchen,
I. LOVED. IT!!

My deacon's wife just had surgery to remove breast cancer,  

so I provided a meal for them last Thursday.

Chicken Casserole, salad and Pumpkin Cupcakes with Vanilla Bean Buttercream Icing.  

The Chicken Casserole is sooooooooooo incredibly easy!

4 cooked chicken breasts (it can be thighs or whatever, but has to be chicken!) shredded or cut into chunks

1 16 oz container of sour cream

1 15.5 oz can of cream of mushroom soup

1 15.5 oz can of chicken broth

1/2 bag of stuffing (I use Pepperidge Farm Seasoned Stuffing Mix, blue label)

Shred chicken and put in the bottom of a casserole dish (9x9 or medium round)

layer on sour cream, mushroom soup and top with stuffing mix.

pour chicken broth over the top

bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees covered with aluminum foil and for 30 minutes uncovered or until hot, bubbly and the stuffing is crispy and golden brown.

The Pumpkin Cupcakes! 

OMGoodness, so moist & delish!

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 large eggs, room temperature

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger (I increased to 1 1/2 tsp & added 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups (1 1/2 cans) pureed pumpkin

for pumpkin cake

combine sugar, vegetable oil & eggs in a large mixing bowl; mix well.  Sift dry ingredients into a separate bowl; stir into oil mixture beating well.  Stir in pumpkin puree.

Pour batter into two, greased & floured 9 inch round cake pans.  Bake at 350 for 35 - 40 minutes.  Turn out onto racks to cool.  

For cupcakes, line two, 12 cup muffin pans with liners and bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Icing:
Make your buttercream as you usually would except in the place of your vanilla extract, use vanilla bean paste.  I use Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Bean Paste

On Monday, I was asked to do cupcakes for a friend's 50th birthday!  No problem, I am already baking a cake for a 2 year old with a theme of Umizoomi (which I have NEVER done before, let alone actually used icing for the decor on a cake)  but I can do it!

So, for the cupcakes I was asked to do a chocolate and a white cake cupcake.

Ok, easy.  I'll use my recipe for the Double Chocolate Cake from my https://www.miette.com/main/ cookbook, it's a LONG recipe so I won't bore you with typing it out and for the white cake I used my ol' stand by cookbook, Better Homes & Garden from sometime in the 80's.

I mean look at this batter for the Double Chocolate Cake:

Thick, chocolaty & dark! So moist too!

oops, forgot to get a final baked picture!

The white cupcakes turned out just as good, but I forgot to get pictures! oops!

So I had NO idea what flavor icing to put on the cupcakes!

I knew that the birthday girl liked chocolate & peanut butter but I asked anyway & was told that she liked the Chocolate Peanut Butter cake at our local pizza shop,  http://www.thedonspizza.com/.  He gets his cakes from Juniors in NYC!

So I made a peanut butter buttercream!

 Finished Double Chocolate Cake Cupcake with Peanut Butter Buttercream

For the white cake cupcakes I asked the birthday girl if she liked Raspberries.  

She said yes, so I made a Raspberry Buttercream!

(boy am I glad that it wasn't a surprise party!) 

Finished White Cake Cupcake with Raspberry Buttercream

To give more variety to flavors, I iced half the chocolate and half the white in vanilla bean buttercream

I was asked back in September to do a birthday cake for my friend's son's 2nd birthday.  He, in his little mind, wanted Umizoomi as the characters on his cake.  And they wanted 1/2 Strawberry flavored & 1/2 Orange flavored cake.  So I found recipes for both, I wasn't very fond of the orange flavor, but it worked!  The Strawberry, I almost didn't want to part with it!

So, like I said before I have NEVER decorated a cake with Icing before, just fondant and ganache.

It wasn't that hard! (although I don't recommend decorating a cake at 2 am!)

I first printed out the picture I was going to use:

Then put it on my cutting board (I recommend taping it down so that it doesn't move)

I then took a piece of waxed paper and put it over top of the picture (tape it down too to keep it from moving)

I then took the icing & used the different colors that are in the picture to "color in" the characters!

I forgot to pick up the skin tone color for the faces of the little boy & little girl I was so mad at myself!

and since I had left over batter from the 2 cakes, I made Strawberry Cupcakes and Orange Cupcakes and brought those to the birthday party as well!  Ending up bringing 68 cupcakes!

I iced the cake and the cupcakes in vanilla bean buttercream.  

Final Strawberry Cake Cupcake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream & edible Red Sparkle Gel 

Final Orange Cake Cupcake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream & edible gold spray dust

So as you can see, I have been busy these last few days!

Have a blessed night!

~a