Great Pancakes and Zesting Fun

At our house we eat pancakes! We eat pancakes at least twice a week. I make them from scratch trying out all sorts of recipes that I come across. I make pancakes with box mixes I add water, or milk. I add all sorts of yummies to the pancakes. I make them with blueberries, with strawberries, with bananas, or chocolate chips. BUT, these pancakes are the best I've made in a while. All thanks to my friend Jen!

The trick is buttermilk and lemon zest. I used regular pancake mix and to it I added buttermilk and lemon zest. The buttermilk is added in place of the water (as needed) and lemon zest, the more the better.

Seriously you can not screw this up just don't be cheep with the lemon zest! Now in case your not familiar with lemon zest, what it is, how to find it, let me assist you. Lemon zest is made using a zester and a lemon, get it. (See my zester in the picture) The key is the actual zester which is a really simple tool that just scrapes off the skin of citrus fruits. So if you don't have a zester do your self a favor and grab one. Adding the zest of a lemon or lime or orange to any recipes can really take your cooking and baking to the next level.

Great Summer Harvest

Well now the summer is over and I would like to take the time to say....
This summer rocked! Especially when it came to all the really great fresh produce I scored. From the very best heirloom tomatoes to these gigantic okra courtesy of the PPL Grower's Mkt. Or super sweet blueberries and black berries picked at Schmidts farm. This was a really fruitful summer!!

Making Sesame Street's Grover into a Cookie

My friend Jen who is a scientist and a baker at heart asked me for advise about making candy Grover lolly- pops. I of course immediately thought of making Grover Cookies. So I asked her if I could make them for her daughter Cece's 2nd birthday party, she said yes.

I started by using a basic butter cookie recipe (I prefer butter cookies to sugar) and a round cookie cutter. Place the cookies on a baking sheet then insert a lolly-pop stick into each cookie before baking. If the sticks come through you can reinforce that area with extra cookie dough. Not to worry you won't see it once the cookies have icing.

To Ice the cookies I use a standard Royal Icing Recipe.

3 Tablespoons Meringue Powder
4 cups (about 1 lb.) confectioners sugar
6 tablespoons warm water

Mix all ingredients together and separate into 5 zip-loc bags. Add the specified colors to each bag. The Blue bag should be the bag with the most icing. You will need Blue (Grover's Body), White (Grover's eye's), Pink (Grover's nose), Black (Grover's eyes), and Red (Grover's mouth).

Okay so once the icing is tinted I like using the bags as piping tools, I just cut a tiny piece of the end of the bag. I just found these tiny bottles which work well also. Once the cookies are baked and cool you will pipe the royal icing out in the same pattern as shown in the photo above. While the icing is still wet you sprinkle matching color jimmies (sprinkles). The Jimmies look like fur.
Once Grover is furry let the cookies dry for about 20 minutes.

Once the fur is dry you fill the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. Then let the cookie dry for 15-20 more minute. Do the black of the eyes last. Let the cookies dry for a few hours before packaging. The royal icing will be hard to the touch when it's completely dry.

I use the same technique to make the other Sesame Street characters.

http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Royal-Icing

Eating Cupcakes in the Rain

So while the rain has been getting a lot of people down, I have the perfect trick to keep us all happy no matter the weather. I took the Cupcakes and Cookies to the 6th Annual Allentown Street Festival, Despite all of our wishes it rained...again! But we got lucky an Sharon the event organizer put us under a gazebo so we stayed dry. I set up our table and waited.

Even in the rain, they came! And they wanted cupcakes!

(Artist Kerri Stevens enjoying a Chocolate Cupcake with Chocolate butter cream, she makes the most amazing things out of recycled things. Like wallets out of milk cartons....amazing!)


(Community organizer, Artist, Puppeteer & Chef extraordinaire Yodi enjoying a vanilla cupcake with vanilla butter cream. Yodi is the go to man of Allentown, he organizers these really cool gorilla style art exhibits, makes bigger than life puppets and I just found out he's also a Chef.)

I tried some new ideas for the cookies. Sesame Street and Sponge Bob! There was Grover (my friend Jen gave me that idea), Oscar the Grouch, (was Veronica and Blair's idea) Elmo, some stars for Father's Day and Sponge Bob. The cookies just flew off the table, because what kid can resist these character cookie!

So now we know the secret to beating the "rainy day blues".....Lehigh Valley Cupcakes!!!!!

Great for eating in the rain!

Artist, Melissa Reinbold and her guy eating cupcakes under umbrella. Melissa makes beautiful new pieces of jewelry from found objects and old broken jewelry. She's also a talented graphics designer and helping me with a new logo for Lehigh Valley Cupcakes. They thought the icing "tastes like ice cream"...I LOVE IT!!!!!

Stay tuned and stay dry..... I'm going to show you how I made those cute Grover cookies.

Aneley's Birthday Party Invites

Aneley's last day of preschool happened to also be her turn to bring snack for the class. So since we were inviting the whole class, we decided to make these cookie which accompanied invitations to Aneley's 4th Birthday Party. What better attention grabber then bright colored cookies. I picked the cutter and Aneley choose the icing colors.

I think these are the craziest colored cookies I have ever done. That's what happens when a 3 almost 4 year old is calling the shots. I love the little candles on each cookie that was my favorite part!

Aneley loved how they turned out! Except the part about not eating them until the friends at school got their invitations. Mommy baking cookies and cupcakes all the time and not getting to eat them all is very confusing! Once the cookies were packaged, I attached them to the invites in the teal envelopes. This is how the invites and finished cookies looked. I thought this ribbon made them look like little presents.

They were a huge hit at school...of course!!! What kid doesn't like cookies? I think I like doing cookie favors the best!

Dinner Upgrade....Thanks to a Fabulous Secret Ingredients!

I know I have been only posting sweets lately so here is a great dinner idea that I made the other night and everyone just loved it. Plus I got a little help with this dinner that gave it that extra burst of, "kiss the cook" flavor!

It all started the night before, my wonderful husband took his girls Aneley, Amaya and myself to dinner at a great family restaurant chain, I'm sure everyone has heard of. We had a nice meal and packed all of our leftover to go...including the the bread, olive oil and herb paste. (Please focus your attention on the herb paste.) We ate the leftovers the next day for lunch and...realizing the potential of the herb paste decided to marinate a small pack of boneless skinless chicken breasts (which I cut into small pieces) with the robust really aromatic herb paste that is a mixture of rosemary, time, basil, and blah blah blah the recipe is coming.

Okay so I marinated the chicken in the herb paste and extra virgin olive oil and add a small amount of kosher salt and white pepper. The chicken marinated for about two hours, you could definetly marinate for longer, but no more than over night. I just happened to have some great sundried tomatos in the fridge so I julienned those. But first the big reveal...scroll down

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Yup...Carrabas provided my kick butt marinade herb paste. (Knock off Recipe is at the bottom.)

So thanks to Carrabas! Yes, Carrabas Italian Grill helped me make a fabulous dinner! Carrabas serve's their guests warm bread and extra virgin olive oil for dipping. They make this very distinct and fabulous herb paste that you mix in with the olive oil. We love it and the waitress was nice enough to pack it for me to take home. She had no idea the hook up she was giving me.
Okay the recipe:

• 2 cloves of garlic minced
• 1 pack boneless skinless chicken breast (marinated as I said above)
• 1 cup julienne sundried tomato
• 1 1/2 cup white wine (picture below, this is definetly a really great bottle of wine, if you can find this buy lots of it AMZING!!!!!)
• 1/2 cup sour cream ( I used sour cream because I didn't have heavy cream, you can use either or get facny with ricotta the results are the same.)
• 1/4 cup parmesan
• S&P TT (salt & Pepper, season To your Taste or liking)
• 2 tablespoons of butter

Ready, we're going to saute... In a sauté, all the ingredients are heated at once, and cooked quickly. To facilitate this, the ingredients are rapidly moved around in the pan, either by the use of a spatula, or by repeatedly jerking the pan itself (sauté literally means "jump", a description of the motion of the ingredients as they are being cooked).

In a nice size saute pan on med/med high heat -add butter and garlic first, then chicken and sundried tomatos a minute later.

Now saute.....Next we are going to create the sauce right in the pan. Once the chicken is browned add the remaining ingredients, this is called deglazing. (Deglazing is a cooking technique for removing bits of food from a pan in order to make a sauce with them.) You will notice the wine and sour cream will cool the pan down. Stir pan until pan returns to a simmer. Cover turn heat to low. Cook for 10-15 minutes or until chicken is well done, and sauce has thickened. If you think you don't have enough sauce repeat the above steps add more wine and sour cream.

SIDE CONVERSATION--Definetly have more of this Wine! It's a French Vouvray (grape variety) from the Domaine de Vaufuget vineyards in France, but it's imported by Monsieur Touton Selection out of NY. I'm not remembering the year right now, but no matter. It is such a great tasting medium body very flavorful easy glass of white wine. A little fruity, perfect with chicken. But check the alcohol 11.5 %, which doesn't over power the great flavor. This is a wonderful white wine, like I said if you see this in the store buy lots of it, a great one to "show off" with, everyone will love this wine!!!!! (LINK TO BUY BELOW)

I served this yummy creation with steammed broccoli. (Amaya, and Aneley's favorite!)


And.... Roasted Red Potatos a really simple recipe. I started byusing a lined cookie sheet with foil to make clean up easy.

• Cut into medium pieces, washed unpeeled red potatos
• Cut 1/2 red onion into medium pieces
• Toss all with olive oil. (I like extra virgin or canola, your choice, any will do. This is done to keep potatos from sticking to foil.)
• Season with fresh or dried herbs and S &P-TT (any herb or combination will do depends on your mood)

You could add red or green peppers to this as well. I really like the flexablity of this recipe, you might try pasta instead of the potatoes just pour the chicken over pasta. What is super cool to me is taking something that has tons of flavor (Carraba's Herb Paste) and using in your own recipes. SOoooooo here it is the knock off recipe I found to make your own herb paste.

Carrabba's® Bread Dipping Spice
Ingredients:
1 T minced fresh basil
1 T chopped fresh parsley
1 T minced fresh garlic
1 t dried thyme
1 t dried oregano
1 t ground black pepper
½ t minced fresh rosemary
½ t kosher salt or ground sea salt
¼ t crushed red pepper
½ t olive oil
1/8 t fresh lemon juice
Combine all the ingredients, except oil and lemon juice in a small food
processor or coffee bean grinder. Chop briefly until all ingredients are about
the same size.
Stir in oil and lemon juice.
To serve, combine about 1 ½ t spice blend to 3 to 4 T olive oil on a small
dish. Dip sliced bread in mixture.

Well I hope you enjoy! Stay tuned for more sweets....that's my thing! But I will try and throw in some more entree ideas, I know my peeps like those! Don't forget to try the recipe and post your feed back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deglazing_(cooking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saut%C3%A9ing
http://www.empirewine.com/wine/domaine-de-vaufuget-vouvray-2006/

Eating Cupcakes in the Street

Wwwooohhhooooo! You should have seen them eating cupcakes in the street!!
So I put myself out there and signed up to sell Cupcakes and Cookies at the Allentown Flea and Flower Market, sponsored by the Old Allentown Preservation Association. It was a shining success!

I tried to keep it simple this time around so I only baked Chocolate cupcakes with Almond Chocolate Butter cream and Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Butter cream. The Chocolate Cupcakes were baked from a new recipe I developed and made for the first time. The new Chocolate cupcake is super moist and has very rich chocolate flavor. The Vanilla Cupcakes were adorned with there new accessories...pearl jimmy sprinkles, which I was able to color myself using my new favorite thing "Edible Luster Dust." I also made these little flags out of card stock and tooth picks. In total I was able to bake 2 dozen Vanilla and 4 dozen chocolate cupcakes, plus 2 dozen mini chocolate cupcakes, and about 30 designed cookies.
I drew this sign the morning of the market at about 6:00am. For some reason Dogwood Blossoms are becoming my favorite. I have to thank my husband for helping me finally get all the pricing together, and for helping to bag all the cookies....at 1:00am.

Here's my little humble table! I took this shot early in the morning before I had my first customer. I have to thank my friend Tamara for hanging with me that day and being my cashier. It was a beautiful day for an outside Flea Market.

So here is the small detail I've left out. We sold almost all of the 6 dozen cupcakes, all of the mini cupcakes and all but 6 of the cookies. We were a huge hit in Allentown! Most importantly I made a lot of great connections, and networked my butt off, special thanks to Matthew Teurk for introducing me to everyone! I'm hoping my new connections can help expedite the process and get Lehigh Valley Cupcakes and Cookies into our own shop.

The lesson of the day is get out of your own way! Step out of your box and put yourself out there. Good people will line up to help you and be of service to you. Stay open to what dreams may come.

Second lesson, never underestimate the power of cupcakes!

Oldie & Goodies!

So my favorite arcade game was always Pac-man...anyone else? Sooooo......... voila!

I just love old school flash backs, and these are extra sweet!

The Chocolate Romance Begins!

I'm in heaven with theses Chocolate Cupcakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Imagine soft fluffy, rich chocolate Cake with a perfect swirl of Chocolate Icing. Well that's just what these little doses of heaven are. The cake is so delicate and the icing smooth....I'm not at all a chocolate cake fan, but I'm addicted to these babies!

I just love this shot, they look so romantic there together. Sweet Love! The Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream is really outstanding too, so sophisticated. The only thing missing is a glass of milk...organic of course.

Even without the icing they're gorogoeus!

.....with pearls!

Chocolate Chocolate....!

Spring Cookies

SPRING COOKIES
Spring is in the air. Even as I drove my daughter to preschool and delivered these festive Spring cookies mother nature was laughing it up, by delivering heavy snow flurries in the morning and blue skies by the afternoon...this weather is making me CRAZY! I refuse to withdraw my claim! SPRING IS HERE!!!!! With that said here are my spring madness cookies.

Side note...I love putting the cookies on sticks.

Hey Chics..... All foods served on a stick taste good! ....."of course cheep cheep!"

Aneley thought these were funny! Especially the one in the pink basket, they all look so surprised..."?how did I get here?.....cheep cheep?"

What's Easter with out the Easter Bunny....."hippiddy hop, hippidy hop...!"

I love the heart nose.

And of course the Easter Bunny would bring Easter Eggs!

Back to my chanting.....SPRING IS HERE, SPRING IS HERE!! The flowers are blooming.....dahdahdahdada!!!!!

More crazy chics breaking out of their shell. Did I mention how good these vanilla cookies tasted? I've been so focused on SPRING, and CRAZY CHICS, I forgot to sing about how good these cookies were....yes were. Aneley's preschool class gobbled them all up! Then Aneley, Amaya and me shared one on the way home for the eye doctors.....aaaaaaaawwwww YUM!!!

Soft, not chewy, Cookie that crumbles into your mouth zinging you with sparks of sweet vanilla, and warm buttery notes. After you take first bite you decide, "oh I'm gonna eat this whole cookie, and that's OKAY!!!" Anything that tastes this good has got to be good for me emotionally, physically, spiritually and any other kind of way!!

And for all of you out there reading this you too can have your own cookies, just email me at yelenaj77@gmail.com. I'm working on the details to ship these pretty little things, you could be one of my trial run orders. Stay tuned for my next batch.

Order your own Designer Cookies!

These designer cookies make great party favors! You can have any of these sweets recreated for your next special occasion, Wedding Shower, Baby Shower,Wedding, Birthday Parties or Holiday, or create your own designer cookies. I can ship cookies of any shape or design, and cake pops. Please email yelenaj@gmail.com with questions or orders.

Cookies are made with the finest ingredients, and come in vanilla, chocolate, or almond. Cookie art work is done in vanilla or almond royal icing.

The Butterflies were for a baby shower.

Butterfly Cookies

These were lots of fun!

These cookies were supposed to be for a baby shower, but they decided they wanted cupcakes instead. (Butterfly Cupcakes coming soon!), So I decided to make these cookies anyway. I love Butterflies!

I started with a few sketches just to get an idea of how I wanted the butterflies to look. This is one of my favorite parts.


So here is the finished product all ready to be gifted. Thanks to my friend Jen who helped entertain the girls while I made the cookies. Sorry no pictures of the cut out process, batteries in my camera died. FYI these cookies are actually purple but they shower up blue instead.
Hope you like these designer cookies please leave your feedback or subscribe to my blog for lots more sweets. These and any other shape cookie, or Cake Pop are available for order, and can be delivered to you by mail.

Spring is Here...according to me!!

So I've decided the winter is over and it's time to start getting ready for warm weather. I thought these sweet spring mini cucpcakes would do the trick and set the mood! Yeah Spring!!!

I just love the lovely minis, really how cute are they? Even naked, they are super cute!

This was my big Easter idea. Mini Cupcake in an easter egg...Adorable!

We should all hope to get one of these from the easter bunny!

Cupcakes in Review

These are Vanilla Cake w/ Vanilla Buttercream. A little something for spring. I made these especially for my sister who loves purple.

This is also a vanilla cake w/ vanilla buttercream. I love to make the icing look like a rose. I think i'll call this cupcake "The White Rose."
Now this is a recipe I made by chance when I was suppost to be making chocolate cupcakes but didn't have enough chocolate. So I made these Coca Cola Cupcakes which taste nothing like the drink, but are still heaven!!!

I recipe calls not just for Cola but also marshmellows, sugar and coco powder...what a combo! But they made the softest, tender rich kind of chocolate, kind of cola-ish cupcakes.

More cupcake updates coming soon.