So I've done something new... something that matters.

Of course... everything that matters is in here. As the end of the year rolls around, I look back and realize that it sure does seem like food matters a lot... But I've joined a group called Daring Bakers and each month, there is a recipe intended to challenge you and make you bake outside your normal box of comfort.

So without further interuption.... I bring you my first ever completed Daring Baker's Challenge...

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

That is my completed log... well... mostly. I had icing issues... And it all slid off of the "log" which looks suspiciously like a cake. LOL

My favorite layer by far was my crisp layer... I made it with melted sugar free dark chocolate, frosted flakes and crushed candy canes.

Oh my goodness this part was wonderful and even though I am trying... !! very hard... to follow an Atkins lifestyle, I would certainly blow a few carbs on frosted flakes so that I could make and eat this again.

So the "log" consisted of a thin spongy cake layer, a mousse layer, the crisp, a creme brulee layer and the icing.

I had issues with my creme brulee layer when I didn't put enough of it into the "mold" ie: pie plate... so when I unmolded it to put into the final product, it split up and was a very thin layer. Fortunately, I had more of the brulee that I had put into another bowl so I was able to fit that in for an even cover.

I made the cake as a chocolate cake, white chocolate peppermint mousse, a dark chocolate peppermint ganache, the peppermint crisp, chocolate creme brulee and chocolate icing.

It was quite yummy and a very worth while experience to attempt making this dessert.

My icing issues were solved with a very nice spray of whipped cream and crushed candy canes.

More cupcake bites!

Okay... so cupcake bites... Pumpkin Spice Version....

Take that left over half pumpkin spice cake... or in this case a little more than half... and crumb it up...

And then... add 1/2 a can of Cream Cheese Frosting... maybe a little less because that pumpkin cake was quite moist already.

Mix up and chill... roll into balls and treat them the same way - White coating into Peanut Butter cup mold, chill and dip again.

I wanted these to be a little different as well as the fact that pink jelly bean halves wouldn't have worked on pink coating... so pumpkin spice are topped with 1/2 of a cream soda jelly belly and I think they're just adorable and you know what? they were yummy too!

Baby Shower cupcake bites

Start with one chocolate cake...
Cake mix is fine....

Crumb it up once it's completely cooled.....

Add one container of frosting - this was yummy... the little chocolate chips in it were soooo good for the texture. Chill...

Roll into balls.......

Use White chocolate candy melts and your handy dandy peanut butter cup mold... put the chocolate in the bottom and put a cake ball in it and stick in freezer.

Once chilled... dip into various pastel tops... I used a cut in half jelly bean for the top... and just little round sprinkles for them.

The pink jelly beans were for the chocolate ones...

As you can see from the platter there were some with a cream jelly bean on top... I'll blog about those with the next post.

Oh... and the cupcake in the middle was purchased at the bakery... after making so many cupcakes... LOL I couldn't begin to make one that was a regular cupcake. And I certainly don't have the frosting skills to turn out one of those roses! But doesn't it match wonderfully?

Pumpkin Trifle

So my super secret pumpkin trifle... is yummy.



First up... cake.

Make 1 pkg spice cake according to directions, only cut back a little on the oil and water. Because you're going to add 1/2 a 15 oz can of pumpkin puree to it.

Bake according to directions and cut part of it into cubes once cooled.



Second.... it's a little washed out in this picture but the mixture in the measuring cup is our pumpkin mousse....

1/2 of a 15 oz can of pumpkin puree... (admit it... you were wondering what we were going to do with the other 1/2 of the can. ... )

1 1 oz pkg sugar free butterscotch pudding mix

1 C milk or half ~n~ half

3 tsp pumpkin pie spice.

1/2 of an 8oz container of cool whip.

Mix your choice of milk with the pudding mix and chill for 5 minutes. When thickened, stir with wire whisk to work out any lumps. Stir in pumpkin and spice. Once mixed, fold in the cool whip. Chill until ready to assemble.

To assemble....

start with a layer of cake cubes... top with pumpkin mousse and a layer of cool whip. Top with some sliced almonds or chopped pecans.

Repeat.

Repeat as often as your bowl... trifle dish.... crystal ice bucket from your grandma... will allow.

And.... Enjoy!

So I made some yummy cookies.... low carb cookies.... Pumpkin cookies.

And here's the recipe...

Pumpkin Cookies

1 ½ C low carb baking mix

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

2 TBSP cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground fresh nutmeg

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

½ C splenda

½ C splenda brown sugar mix

½ C canola oil

1 ½ cup pumpkin

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spices. Set aside.In a separate bowl, whisk to sugars and oil together. Add the pumpkin puree and whisk to combine thoroughly. Add the eggs and vanilla and whisk until combined.Sprinkle the flour mixture over the pumpkin mixture and whisk until completely combined.Use a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism to drop healing TBSP of the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart.Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cookie comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool completely on the pan. They will look more like mini cakes then cookies, so don’t panic about that.


So they're just yummy! Even with being low carb.

The original recipe is for them as whoopie pies... with a cream filling. But... I have discovered a much more lovely use for them.

Start by cutting them in half.... because mine are a little thick. LOL

And then.....

Because a very lovely person sent you some Sugar Free Caramel sauce from Harry and David... and it's a lovely thick Caramel.... oooh so yummy!

Place a teaspoon of caramel sauce on the cookie and put the top back on it......

OOOOOH yum....

Pssst! They're even better chilled.....

Cupcake Truffles

Okay... so I made these a while ago and took them to work...

I got the idea from Bakerella's blog, to make the cake truffles into little cupcakes. We had a work party - like we do every month, and in July, I made these to take because our theme was BBQ. Every BBQ ends fantastically when there's cupcakes involved....

You start by baking a 9x13 pan of cake and mixing in a container of frosting and then chilling it when it looks like this...:



I used vanilla cake with vanilla frosting for this batch since I was testing it on other people.







After rollling them into little balls... and testing them along the way ~ I have to admit that I was a bit worried. Chilled, they didn't really taste like much and they made me worried about other people liking them.




I used a Wilton's candy melt peanut butter cup mold to make them... and melted Dark Cocoa candy melts in a squeeze bottle.

It was quite a bit of experimentation to figure out just how much melted chocolate needed to go in the bottoms of the mold to cover everything.






So here are the cute little things in the mold after chilling to set the chocolate. I have to be nicer to my next mold - my last batch that came out broke my mold. :o(



And then I dipped them. .....

The tops were dipped in Blue, Yellow and Orange candy melts, topped with a mini M&M and sprinkles.

They were a HUGE hit...

And at room temperature...? They were fantastic and I don't think any of them actually made it to lunchtime.



I made the rest of the mixture up into truffle balls, dipped them later and just did sprinkles on top and took them to work a few days later.

The great part about this is that my friends on my team at work have asked me to make the cupcake truffles again for a baby shower on the 25th... so I will definitely take better pictures then to blog about. ;o)

The Sweet 100

Even though I'm now attempting successful mastery of the Atkins Diet... **rolls eyes** I figure a to-do list for those rare... extremely rare... occasions to splurge and try something would be a good idea.

I got this idea from cakespy's blog and here it is on my blog too... lol (links may or may not go to something on her site... I am going to edit later...)

1) Copy this list into your site, including the instructions!2) Bold all of the sweets you've eaten!3) Cross out any of them that you'd never ever eat.
4) Consider anything that is not bold or crossed out your "To Do" List.5) Optional: Post a comment here linking to your results--or just post a comment letting us know how many you've tried, or what you're going to try next!

Red Velvet Cake
Princess Torte
Whoopie Pie
Apple Pie either topped or baked with sharp cheddar
Beignet
Baklava
Black and white cookie
Seven Layer Bar (also known as the Magic Bar or Hello Dolly bars)
Fried Fruit pie (sometimes called hand pies)
Kringle
Just-fried (still hot) doughnut
Scone with clotted cream
Betty, Grunt, Slump, Buckle or Pandowdy
Halvah
Macarons
Banana pudding with nilla wafers
Bubble tea (with tapioca "pearls")
Dixie Cup
Rice Krispie treats
Alfajores
Blondies
Croquembouche
Girl Scout cookies
Moon cake
Candy Apple
Baked Alaska
Brooklyn Egg Cream
Nanaimo bar
Baba au rhum
King Cake
Sachertorte
Pavlova
Tres Leches Cake
Trifle
Shoofly Pie
Key Lime Pie (made with real key lime)
Panna Cotta
New York Cheesecake
Napoleon / mille-fueille
Russian Tea Cake / Mexican Wedding Cake
Anzac biscuits
Pizzelle
Kolache
Buckeyes
Malasadas
Moon Pie
Dutch baby
Boston Cream Pie
Homemade chocolate chip cookies
Pralines
Gooey butter cake
Rusks
Daifuku
Green tea cake or cookies
Cupcakes from a cupcake shop
Crème brûlée
Some sort of deep fried fair food (twinkie, candy bar, cupcake)
Yellow cake with chocolate frosting
Jelly Roll
Pop Tarts
Charlotte Russe
An "upside down" dessert (Pineapple upside down cake or Tarte Tatin)
Hummingbird Cake
Jell-O from a mold
Black forest cake
Mock Apple Pie (Ritz Cracker Pie)
Kulfi
Linzer torte
Churro
Stollen
Angel Food Cake
Mincemeat pie
Concha
Opera Cake
Sfogliatelle / Lobster tail
Pain au chocolat
A piece of Gingerbread House
Cassata
Cannoli
Rainbow cookies
Religieuse
Petits fours
Chocolate Souffle
Bienenstich (Bee Sting Cake)
Rugelach
Hamenstashen
Homemade marshmallows
Rigo Janci
Pie or cake made with candy bar flavors (Snickers pie, Reeses pie, etc)
Divinity
Coke or Cola cake
Gateau Basque
S'mores
Figgy Pudding
Bananas foster or other flaming dessert
Joe Froggers
Sables
Millionaire's Shortbread
Animal crackers
Basbousa

No bake cheesecake...

So... Originally I made a Cherry topped no bake cheese cake...

1 pkg fat free cream cheese
1 container sugar free cool whip
1/3 c splenda
1 graham cracker crust

And it was YUMMY!!!












and then I decided to try Strawberry...




8 oz strawberry low fat cream cheese
1 container strawberry cool whip
1/3 cup splenda

Only instead of putting it in a crust... I put it into my ramikins and would top it with graham cracker crumbs as needed when eating it....


**makes face** It was Toooooooo! Strawberry... I think that plain cool whip would have been good... or plain cream cheese... but not both!














And then I thought ... chocolate!





Ah.... perfection again....

1 8oz fat free cream cheese
1 container chocolate cool whip
1/3 cup splenda

1 chocolate crust.

Topped with fat free cool whip and fresh raspberries....

A yummy treat ... even for breakfast!

Garlic Fries...

So it's been a while, but things have been crazy... I do actually have a lot of pictures to post... so we'll start with what I ate at the Mariner's game when my friend Treenie was visiting from Canada...

GARLIC FRIES!!!

Don't they look great?

Do you suppose that I should be worried that at the end of it .... there's way more garlic than fries?

I've never had them put so much garlic on them before...

But boy! Were they good!!!

Your own personal beach...

So... on to the next part of my contribution to the work party...

Beach cupcakes...!

So here they are all together after baking...

These are just German Chocolate cake mix cupcakes. I filled them very full because I wanted a nice rounded top on the cupcake so that I'd have some room to work with them.

Then I frosted them with cream cheese frosting and rolled the tops in graham cracker crumbs.

Unfortunately... I did not have the foresight to take the left over frosting with me... it would have come in handy for attaching the 'accessories' to the cupcake.

Accessories, you ask?

That's right...

Accessories!

Melted Wilton candy melts were used to make little beach towels and the straps on 'mini' flipflops.

Which were made out of 100 calorie packs of peanut butter cookies and a mini M&M.

Each cupcake was garnished with a towel and a pair of flipflops ... and a paper beach umbrella.

Flip Flops.

Yes... that's right. Today... I have flipflops on the brain. LOL

I realize it's been almost forever since I blogged and I will show you why...

Our theme for our work party was beach picnic and I expect to be able to get about 3 blogs out of my baking project for the week. So the idea was flip flops. Today's topic.

These flipflops are made out of Nutter Butter cookies.

And the original idea... while extremely yummy... is extremely messy so I was very happy to have purchased 2 packages of Nutter Butters. Otherwise... I might not have been as successful. Oh yes... I had fun last night dipping 'flipflops' in melted white chocolate chips and dark chocolate chips. But it dawned on me that as I was dipping... they were melting all over me. And that would mean they would be messy.

But aren't they pretty? **rolls eyes** Other than they do actually look like I put the chocolate on them with my fingers... And you can tell that the dark ones were in the fridge - they're 'blooming'... as in they have white spots starting to form on them.

So that is NOT how to make flip flops out of Nutter Butters.

This however.... is....

Take one package of Nutter Butters... melt up some Wilton Candy melts ...

Draw the little straps and put an M&M where the 'strap' would connect with the sole of the flip flop.

Chill for 15 minutes and you're good to go... nice, pretty... NON MESSY... flip flops.

They look lovely on a plate...

Everyone really loved them and I got several compliments on them.

More tomorrow on the baking project this week... if I have all that melted chocolate cleaned up from my kitchen, that is. LOL

And if I can manage to not attempt eating my own flipflops.