Aggies Do It Better

Okay! If you're a chocolate person, this is gonna rock your world. It is exactly like the "restaurant stuff", and is not even comparable to the Hershey's syrup, oddly enough. It's great for chocolate milk, desserts, and coffee. The ingredients for this are crazy simple....the only thing you may have to run and get is some unsweetened cocoa powder. I use Hershey's, but you can use some fancier stuff if you have it (i.e. dutch process or whatever). I like Hershey's, it tastes great, is versatile, and you can get a monster thing of it at Sam's. :) The only other thing you need is sugar, water, and vanilla. Pretty sure everyone has those! I'll give the amounts at the end. Step 1: Combine the sugar and water on the stove and bring to low boil over medium high heat, very much like making the simple syrup we made for the Pumpkin Spice Syrup . Step 2: add the cocoa power and salt and whisk to combine....let it boil for about another minute while ...

(apologies for the terrible picture quality. I'm thinking even my camera was salivating over these) Peanut Butter cup mini chocolate cupcakes! Wait until you see what's inside.... Can we just get a moment of silence? These are from one of my food network mag's from a while ago. There was a whole section on cupcakes imitating candy bars. These were made for some birthdays at my husband's work...he did a secret poll to see which of the candy bars was the favorite (among nestle crunch, butterfinger, snickers, almond joy, etc) and Reese's was the winner by a landslide! These are chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter topping made from peanut butter chips and milk chocolate candy shell. They taste exactly like the real thing. Can I getta AMEN?!?! The sad part is, my husband doesn't even like Reeses cups....and I still married him!

This was for a little girl having her party at one of those salons for young girls...something I know nothing about so I had to do a little homework! They have different themes they can choose from....like sock hop, princess, and "glamour girl" like this one. The girls dress up and get their hair in "up do's" and then have a little fashion show on a runway. Fun!

Now that we have a child in "big boy school", aka Kindergarten, we are being introduced to school fairs and festivals (again). Tonight my son, who's school mascot is the "Lizards" is having their fall festival. They are having a "cake walk", and asked for donations of baked goods. So I figured I'd make a cake! This is smaller, 6inches round. The main dilemma I had was deciding on what type of lizard to use. They use 3 different kinds that I've seen so far! The one on the logo looks, to me, like a friendly version of the dinosaur from Jurassic Park that flares out his neck thingy. The car stickers I've seen have gecko shapes on them. And they have horned lizards in tanks in the school! How am I supposed to know what to use??? Haha. Quite the dilemma. And of course, I don't have cookie cutters for ANY of those types of animals. Nor could I get my hands on one in time. I was all set to start hand cutting out some geckos, and I thought I...

This is something I've been wanting to make since last year, but finally now have the motivation to do it. Most people have probably heard of "apple butter", but really there's a whole slew of fruits you can make "butters" out of. It's not really like actual butter, it's more like a really thick applesauce consistency. And very sweet! As I'm going through the jars of jam I made, I am planning on making batches of this over the winter. First up? Apple-pear butter. This is from Martha's Everyday Food from Dec 2010. The recipe is on her website. 2.5 pounds each apples and pears. Each peeled, cored, and cut up. You bet I used my food processor for this! Fast forward 20 minutes to this.....apples on the bottom, pears on the top, some dark brown sugar, and a cinnamon stick. Stir it all up and cook in the crock pot for 4 hours. After 4 hours, it looks like this: YUM already. Take out the cinnamon stick and blend it up in food processor and return ...

This was for one of my neighbors. I was really happy with the way it came out, especially for a non-fondant covered cake. (Well, the deco's are fondant, but, you know) I am getting much better at getting a smooth frosting coat! It takes alot of practice! Also, for the record, I watched two whole episodes of iCarly for homework on this cake. It reminded me of my Saved by the Bell days! For those other "grown ups" who don't know....iCarly is on Nickelodian, and it's basically about a couple young (9-10th grade?) girls who film a web tv show in their loft. I think they live with the older brother? A little confused on that. :) They have a remote that controls applause and laughter sounds that one of the girls always holds, that's what is on top of this cake. Did I get it right?

I am definitely deep into my "busy" season! This was for a combo father-daughter birthday. It was also a surprise for the daughter, which I didn't realize until her mom came to pick it up! I love surprises (and surprise cakes). I wish I could set up a hidden camera to see them! The daughter likes the Paul Frank monkey, and the dad is a drummer, so I put little drumsticks and music notes around the side for him. Here's a better view of the "front" with his name on it too!

This is yet another recipe that suffers from "MQS". I decided early on to divide it into 2 lasagnas, partly because I started with slightly more beef than the recipe calls for, and partly to make the portions smaller and more calorie-conscious (for lasagna, really). I've made lasagna many times before, I've never really used a recipe. But I'll give hers a go! Here she is, my trusty smallish stockpot. How many times have I been in this situation? LOL! I used a ton of ground beef AND sausage (new to lasagna for me). And then 2 HUGE cans of tomatoes. And paste. Who wants to bet how much of this will wind up on the stovetop when I'm stirring it together? Not too shabby. Now it has to cook for a while. Here we go, got everything all set out for assembly. Meat/tomato mixture, lasagna noodles, egg/cheese mixture, and shredded cheese. No, I didn't shred my own this time. Forgive me, PW. With 2 dishes...one's going straight into the freezer. Here they are as...

Okay. Yall. This is gonna change your life :) Anyone addicted to Pumpkin Spice Latte's? (those of us who are refer to them as PSL's. we're hip like that.) Who's addicted to paying $4.50 for a small PSL? Not me! Often times if I get a little free time it is usually spent perusing the internets for recipes. I love me some Google! On a whim I googled "Pumpkin spice syrup recipes". I only came across a couple, and they seemed endlessly complicated. So many ingredients! Tiny bit of this, tiny bit of that. I thought, surely there's an easier way! Also, turns out, the PSL syrup uses pumpkin "flavoring", not actual pumpkin. And they don't sell it, so no chance for direct comparison. I figured, I could get pretty close to the real thing, no? Here we go: This only requires 4 ingredients: Water, sugar, canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix), and pumpkin pie spice . Well, maybe that's 3, some people don't really count water as an ingredient. ...

Cupcakes for the husbands work...These are chocolate cupcakes with caramel filling and vanilla buttercream with a salted caramel drizzle. Actually, the drizzle is caramel and they have sea salt sprinkled on top. If you've never had anything that falls into the "salted caramel" category, go find some now. Run, don't walk! Here they are after the toppers I made.....these are sayings they have at work I gather.

Since today is the official "First Day of Fall", and therefore summer is officially over (booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo) I wanted to get these I made earlier in the summer up here to remind us all just how awesome summer is. Root Beer Float Cupcakes! Root Beer/Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla cream filling and Triple-Vanilla Buttercream frosting. These were really good, despite not being able to taste the root beer in the cupcake much!

Remember my neighbor that I made this cake for last year? Well, they moved a few months ago, far far away :( BUT, they were in town for her daughter to see Taylor Swift for her birthday, and she asked me to make her a surprise cake for her 14th! YAY! I love surprises! This was a 4 layer vanilla cake with 2 layers of vanilla buttercream and raspberry filling in the middle. Apparently it was a hit!! I even have 2 more orders for more girly cakes ***yay*** that came out of it....and they want the same filling. I guess I have a new top seller! I admit, it is pretty darn good. I also just have to say...I LOVE the look of multiple shades of the same color. It's modern without being deco, and very pleasing to the eye I think!