It seems like the most popular desert that girls like to bake at my school are cupcakes. They are at every bake sale, and people make them for their friends' birthdays all the time. The cupcakes shown above are a batch of vanilla cupcakes that I made a few weeks ago for a "fete". I used this recipe for the cupcake batter and this recipe for the frosting. The first time that I made these recipes, I followed them almost exactly. However, I tinkered with the recipe a bit this time. For the cupcake batter, I substituted the shortening for butter and added only a cup of sugar. For the frosting, I only made half the batch because I learned that you only need the full batch if you are piping the frosting. If you are planning to frost using a knife, make only half the batch. I also chose to add about a fourth teaspoon of vanilla rather than a full one seeing how the cupcakes were already vanilla flavored. These actually turned out quite well, and I liked them because they were not too sweet as many cupcakes are.
Butter cookies were the first things that I baked on my own. I made them the first time towards the end of the first semester during freshmen year. My sister was there to supervise my that time, but the batch shown above was one that I made on my own during Christmas time using this recipe. I recall making these as part of a gift to a friend. These butter cookies can be made in two ways after the dough is mixed. You can either roll the dough up into a log and slice it, or you can roll out the dough on a flat surface and use cookie cutters. As you can see, I used a tree cookie cutter for the batch above. I used the extra dough that was left at the end to make a star. It looks nice considering that I made that by hand. These cookies turned out a little crisper than I would have liked, but it was more of an issue that I with my oven than the recipe.
I remember making these brownies because there was nothing tasty to snack on at home, so I decided to make myself a little treat. Although I don't recall brownies being made from scratch at my house, it wasn't too far from dumping some powders and liquids into a bowl and mixing them together. I used this recipe since it seemed to be getting pretty good reviews. They were called "Whatever Floats Your Boat Brownies", but I decided to stick to a plain brownie mixture. I actually really enjoyed these brownies since they turned out moist and fudgey at the end and stayed that way for several days afterward.
This is the point where I would have created a collage featuring the cream puffs that I made, but I unfortunately did not take any pictures because I was preoccupied at the time. I used this recipe because I happened to already have all the ingredients at home. However, I did choose not to make the chocolate glaze in this recipe. Making the batter for this recipe was fairly quick and simple, but dropping the right amount of batter onto the baking sheet was not nearly as simple. Since this was my first time making it, I had no idea how this was supposed to be done. The recipe said to use a fourth cup of batter for each puff at least three inches apart from each other. I really should have used a measuring cup, but instead, I tried to estimate it using a spoon. Because of that, I ended up with some large cream puffs. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I wish that they were smaller. It would have made the next step in the recipe much easier. While the puffs were cooling, I started to make the cream which basically involved me standing there for ten minutes, beating heavy whipping cream. After the puffs were done cooling, it was time to pipe the cream into them. The cream can actually be inserted into the puff in two different ways. You can either slice the puff in half and put the cream in between the two halves, or you can create a small hole at the bottom of the cream puff and pipe the cream in through there. I felt ambitious that night, so I decided to try piping the cream in at the bottom. The way to tell that the cream puff is full is when you start to see the cream bursting out of the puff. This was not an easy task, and by the end of the night, I never wanted to see cream again. I actually ended up with a tub of extra cream after I was finished, but I think it was due to the fact that my cream puffs were too big, thus using less of the cream as there were fewer cream puffs to distribute it through. Except for the fact that I made them too big, they turned out quite well. I might even consider making them again.
The next things on my list of things to bake include Oreo cupcakes, tarts, and peach cobbler.
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