A few of my favorite things...

Today I was at a training for our writing program at school. The presenter asked us if we considered ourselves writers. She gave the examples of keeping a journal or writing a blog. I thought to myself, I guess I am a writer. Then I came home and looked at my blog and realized that I haven't posted anything new since August! I revised my thinking to: I guess I am a delinquent writer.

[To be fair, I did recently lose all of the pictures that were on my phone, including some tasty treats that I wanted to blog about. Lucky me, my dad magically found them on my phone tonight, so I guess I have no more excuses.]

Anyway, here I go, trying to be a real writer, instead of a delinquent one...

A few weeks ago, my friends at school organized a favorite things party - you've probably seen it on Pinterest. Everyone brings 4 of their favorite things to the party. When you get there, you put your name in a bowl 4 times and then you pick out 4 names and give those people your favorite thing.

I had a really hard time deciding what to bring for my favorite thing. Then I looked in my cabinets and found out that, apparently, my favorite things are bowls and sprinkles.

See what I mean?

 

I literally have an entire cabinet in my kitchen full of bowls.

 

Plus 2 containers full of sprinkles.

To combine bowls and sprinkles, I bought 4 of my favorite bowls from anthropologie and filled them up with cake balls decorated with lots of different colored sprinkles!

Definitely two of my favorite things!

A New Kind of Cakeball!

Could cakeballs be...gasp...made a tiny bit healthy(er)?

A flash of cakeball genius hit me as I was making strawberry yogurt filled cupcakes the other day.

I had a bowl full of the insides of vanilla cupcakes and half a carton of yogurt leftover.

Hmm...I thought...yogurt is kind of the same consistency as frosting...I wonder if it would hold cakeballs together?...I wonder if it would taste good?...Let's give it a try...

You can see the little strawberry pieces from the yogurt...it looks a little funny, but it actually turned out pretty great. I put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes, then dipped them in white chocolate almond bark.



My taste testers said that they didn't taste like regular cakeballs, but not in a bad way. They thought the yogurt cakeballs were lighter than the frosting kind and would be perfect for brunch!

Now, if only there was a way to make almond bark healthy(er)...

Cake Balls for the Cure, Part 2

I know, right now you're thinking - Wow! That's a huge bowl of purple cake balls right there. What could they possibly be for? Is she going to eat them all herself?

Well, I wish I could eat them all myself, but these are actually my second batch of Cake Balls for the Cure! This time, I'm participating in my school district's Relay for Life tomorrow night. It's sponsored by the American Cancer Society and all of the money raised goes toward cancer research, etc... The team from my school has raised over $5,000 so far (AMAZING!), but there's always room for more, so I'm bringing these tasty treats to sell at the Relay tomorrow. Makes you wish you were on my team, doesn't it?!

P.S. If you'd like to make a donation, here's my link. I know we've all had experience with cancer, and this is a great way to make a difference and fight back! Thanks!!

P.P.S. Stay tuned for the chocolate Cake Balls for the Cure!

School Year Sweet Treats Club

Everyone knows college kids like to get packages. And everyone knows those packages are even better if they are filled with homemade treats, right? That's where the idea for the School Year Sweet Treats Club came from.

Actually, it was not my idea. My mom came up with the idea, but you know she won't be the one baking all of the treats! Our friend who goes to school in Maryland just had a birthday, so instead of the usual kind of birthday present, we came up with this fun idea to send a package of homemade goodies each month. Here's what the membership card looked like:

The first treat was a box of cake balls delivered at the birthday celebration.

Stay tuned for next month's sweet treat. Any suggestions for what it should be?

Bakery Buzz: Bleeding Heart Bakery

Confession: I have been wanting to go to the Bleeding Heart Bakery in Oak Park for quite a while. It's a pretty tiny bakery in Oak Park. They have kind of a punk/edgy (for a bakery) vibe going on and use a lot of local and organic ingredients. They sell (among other things) lots of gourmet cakeballs.

Then a few things all worked out to make my bakery visiting dream come true:

1. I purchased a Groupon for 1 dozen cakeballs.
2. My brother-in-law got a job at a church in Oak Park.
3. I went to church with my sister at that church in Oak Park.
4. We went to the Bleeding Heart Bakery after church.

We got there and spent a lot of time examining the flavors available that day:

• Pumpkin
• Vanilla
• French Toast
• Chocolate Peanut
• Oaxaca (Spicy Chocolate) 

Hmm...How would we ever decide which ones to taste? Oh that's right, we had a Groupon for 12...we could try them all!

Well...just as we were about to purchase our dozen cakeballs, we were told that they weren't accepting Groupons that day. They just didn't have enough cakeballs. So even though between the 4 of us there, we bought 11 or 12 cakeballs, we couldn't use the Groupon! Ahhh...super frustrating.

But, I did enjoy my cakeball {Oaxaca - and they weren't kidding when they said it was spicy!} and this just means I have to go back another time to use my Groupon. I think I'll try the one in Elmhurst next time - it's a little bigger and maybe they will have enough cakeballs to let me use my Groupon!

If you want to get your punk rock pastry on, visit Bleeding Heart at
1010 North Blvd. Oak Park, IL 60301

Maybe call first to see if they have enough cakeballs: 708.358.0559

Update

Yikes...my poor little blog has really been neglected lately. I blame pinterest and conferences at school for eating up all of my extra time!  But the holidays are coming, and that means plenty of baking and time off from school, so hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon! In the meantime, here's a little update on my Cakeballs for the Cure. Remember these?

Well, between my mom's work and the teachers at my aunt's school, we made almost $50 and all of it went straight to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Yay!

I ran out of time to make them to bring to my school or anywhere else, but I've got a whole plan worked out for next year.  It involves starting way earlier, before the Race for the Cure. I'm going to package the cakeballs in sets of 2 and called them Balls for Boobs!

Clever, right? I'm also open to suggestions for other catchy names...

CakeBalls for the Cure!

October is breast cancer awareness month. Every year, in honor and memory of my good friend's mom, I participate in the in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. After the race this year, I started thinking about other ways to get involved. I came up with...

CakeBalls for the Cure!

They are made with pink vanilla cake and vanilla frosting, then dipped in white chocolate and topped with pink sprinkles. I'm thinking about selling them for $1 each, with the money going to the Susan G. Komen foundation, which raises all kinds of money for breast cancer research. You can find out more here.

So what do you think?

Would you buy one of these tasty treats for a good cause?

Chocolate-Cherry Brownie Balls

A while back, I read (on someone's blog) about chocolate cherry brownies, made with just a cake mix and a can of cherry pie filling. She raved about how moist and delicious the brownies turned out. This got me to thinking...my dad loves cherry desserts, but never gets any because no one else in the family likes them. As a special treat, I decided to make these cherry brownies. So I gathered up my 2 ingredients, mixed them together and threw the mixture into a brownie pan.

35 minutes later, the brownies were not turning out quite like I wanted them to...10 minutes later, not done yet, and 5 minutes after that they still didn't seem all the way cooked, but I had had enough, so I took them out anyway. I let the brownies cool for a little while, then cut in to see what the middle looked like. It was super moist, but also super gummy. That didn't seem quite right to me, and I almost just threw them away. UNTIL...I got the great idea to make them into brownie balls!

They were already so gummy that they didn't need any frosting to hold them together. And, look! You can see the actual pieces of cherry sticking out! Then all I had to do was dip them in some chocolate almond bark, and...

Tah-Dah! Chocolate-Cherry Brownie Balls!

Now I didn't really like these, but my dad ate quite a few of them. He said they were really good mixed into his cherry garcia ice cream!

Birthday Cake CakeBalls

I know, it looks like a typo in the title...but really, these are birthday cake cakeballs. As in, the cakeballs are shaped like little birthday cakes. See what I mean?

I made these for my good friend who teaches in Africa. Her birthday is today, but she had to leave for Africa a few weeks ago. We had a little pre-birthday party for her and celebrated with these birthday cake cakeballs!

To make these cute little things, all I did was scoop out some cake balls, then kind of smoosh them down into a cake shape. After that, I dipped each one into melted white chocolate and covered them with sprinkles and/or stuck a candle in the top!

  

You can even light the candles and sing Happy Birthday with these little guys!

Happy Birthday, Kim!

CakeBall Truffles

Just a quick one to share these fancy truffle cakeballs...To whip these up, just make some regular cakeballs, then drizzle some of the leftover melted chocolate over them with a spoon.

Mmm...wish I was eating some of these right now!

Banana Cake Balls

The other day I found these recipes/ideas in my notebook:

Hmm...cream cheese, bananas, and chocolate in a tasty cake ball bite...sounds good to me!

I gathered up my ingredients, made the cake - which I have to say turned out fabulous - and frosting, then made some delicious cake balls.

I also learned a new trick for making the bottoms of the cake balls smooth and nice-looking, without all the drips around the edges.

While the chocolate is still wet, run a toothpick around the bottom edge. When it dries, pick up the cake ball and the chocolate around the edges will separate and you will have a nice clean edge!

Nice and Neat!

Easter Chicks (Part 2)

While we were making the Easter chick cake pops...

Remember these little cuties we used for the Easter centerpiece?

Well, we had a few leftovers, so we came up with the idea to use them to make place cards.

I have to say, I think it was a pretty good idea - just look how cute they are!

These were also super easy to make.

Ready to hear how?

1. Melt some white almond bark and spread it on some wax paper in whatever shape you want. Make sure the shapes are big enough for whatever names you have to write on them!
2. While the white shapes are hardening, melt some yellow candy melts. Put the melted yellow candy into either a frosting squirter (is that the technical term?) or a plastic baggie with the corner tip cut off.
3. Pipe out the names onto the white pieces. We had to abbreviate a few people's names so that they would fit!
4. Place one with an Easter chick at each person's seat.

Bonus: The placecards look a little bit like a cracked egg!

(Just don't think too much about how the poor baby chick cake ball is sitting on top of a cracked egg!)

Easter Chicks (Part 1)

Happy Easter!

As part of our Easter dinner today, my sister and I made these adorable Easter chick cake pops to share.  I don't want to brag, but they really are super cute. And I can't take all the credit, because our idea came from Bakerella's cake pop recipe book. But still, just look at how sweet they are...

 Aren't they just the sweetest little things?!

I know after seeing how great they are, you'll all be wanting to make them for next year, so here's a quick little lesson on how to make your own...

You will need:



Cookie Dough Balls or Cake Balls
Yellow Candy Melts, Rainbow Chip Sprinkles, Any Size Lollipop Sticks 



 {For a lesson in cake ball making, check here. For cookie dough without eggs, just substitute milk.}

Six Easy Steps:

1. Melt the yellow candy chips, and dip your cake balls.
2. Let them harden all the way.
3. Using a toothpick and a little bit of the melted candy, attach 2 yellow rainbow chips on the sides for the wings.
4. Add an orange rainbow chip for the beak.
5. Choose 2 orange sprinkles (flowers, leaves, stars) and stick them on for the feet.
6. Use an edible marker pen to make the eyes, or put on 2 black rainbow chips.

To make a cute centerpiece, arrange them in a couple of jars and attach some cute Easter signs with ribbon. They will be festive decorations for your Easter table, a tasty dessert, and a good reminder of why we celebrate Easter!