Texas Sheet Cake!

Here is a quick, delicious cake that you can make tonight.  It is so yummy and super easy.  One of my favorite Cooking Light recipes ever!

Combine your dry ingredients.

Then combine butter, water and cocoa in a saucepan until bubbly.

Pour the chocolate mixture into the flour mixture.

Mix.

Add buttermilk, vanilla and eggs and beat well.

While the cake is baking, toast up some chopped pecans if you are using them (I usually do them on just part of the cake).

Make up your delicious frosting of butter, milk, cocoa, vanilla and powdered sugar.  Spread it over your hot cake and sprinkle with the chopped pecans (I usually mix the pecans into the frosting).

Dig in!

Texas Sheet Cake Recipe (adapted from Cooking Light)

Baking spray
2C. flour
2C. sugar
1t. baking soda
1t. cinnamon
1/4t. salt
3/4C. water
1/2C. butter
1/2C. unsweetened cocoa, divided
1/2C. low fat buttermilk
1T. vanilla, divided
2 large eggs

6T. butter
1/3C. skim milk
3C. powdered sugar
1/4C. chopped pecans, toasted (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Coat a 13x9 inch pan with baking spray.
 
Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl and whisk together.

Combine water, 1/2C. of butter and 1/4C. of cocoa in a small saucepan; bring to a boil, stirring frequently.  Add to flour mixture and beat until well blended.

Add buttermilk, 1t. vanilla and eggs.  Beat well.

Pour into prepared pan and bake at 375 for 22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
 
For the frosting:  combine 6T. of butter, skim milk and 1/4C. of cocoa in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and gradually stir in powdered sugar and 2t. vanilla.  Spread over hot cake and sprinkle with pecans.  Cool completely.

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Super cute and easy for little hands to hold! 

My 5 year old took these to camp on his birthday and they were a huge hit!   A perfect summery posting for this dreary, rainy day we are having in Houston!

First, take either regular or mini ice cream cones...

Fill the cones ONLY about 1/2 full - any more and they will overflow and ruin the cones.  I used my handy dandy pancake squeezer-outer.

Voila! 

Top with a dollop of frosting and sprinkles!

Matthew's Camouflage Cake

Matthew's 4th Birthday Camouflage Cake!

Um, hi, remember me?  I took the summer off from blogging (although not from baking) and all of a sudden realized that it's already the beginning of October and I haven't posted anything yet!  Sorry!  I've got a ton of things to put up, but here is a neat one.  My sweet Matthew turned 4 in June and couldn't decide between camouflage and Star Wars.

So we set the cake on the Forest Moon of Endor (home of the Ewoks), where Han, Leia and the team go to disable the shield protecting the Death Star.  Oh, how we love you, Return of the Jedi.  (Yes, I have three boys.) 

The cool part about this cake is that it's camo on the outside AND on the inside!

To make a camo cake, start with your batter.  For this I used white cake batter (half white and half dyed green) and chocolate cake batter. 

Then drop your batter into your cake pan in these unattractive little blobs.

More blobs.

Bake and voila!

Layer, frost and, of course, adorn with Star Wars Legos.

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

Happy Summer Snow Cones!

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend!

I got the idea for these from Bakerella (she makes the coolest stuff!).  They look like Snow Cones but are actually cupcakes.  A super fun dessert to kick off summer!

Here's how you make them:

Make your white cake batter and divide into thirds.  Use food coloring to make one bowl red and one bowl blue.

Spoon batter into decorating bags.

 
Use twist ties to secure the tops.

Tape the bags together at the bottom with masking tape.

These are served in little candy cups.  I couldn't find any without a wax lining, so I just baked mine in regular muffin liners and then, when cool, removed the liners and plopped them into the candy cups.

Take a deep breath and cross your fingers.  Now you need to snip off the ends and squeeze gently using a back and forth motion to fill your muffin cups.  By some miracle, it actually worked.

Voila!  Tri-color cupcakes!

Peel off the cupcake liners and drop the cupcakes into the candy cups.

Sorry no pics of the icing process for some reason, even though there were 200 of the previous steps.  Divide your white vanilla frosting into thirds and again dye some red and blue.  Pipe the white frosting onto the middle and top with white sugar crystals.  Then do the same for the red and blue frosting with red and blue sugar crystals. Sprinkle a few extra white sugar crystals on top of the entire thing to make it look extra icy.  Garnish with a little wooden ice cream spoon and you're done!

Happy Memorial Day!

Chocolate cake with whipped cream and berries

Broncos v. Colts

Happy 8th Birthday, Hudson!

Here's a man who knows what he wants - Hudson gave me very specific details on how he wanted his cake! :)
And cake pop favors to match...

Peace Baby!

Happy 6th Birthday, Charlie Grace!

With pink cake pop favors to match...