We have moved!

Hello there! Just wanted to give the heads-up that we have moved to www.breannebakes.com.

Check the new site out!

Thanks,
Breanne

Mitosis

I occassionally tutor biology. I can't think of a yummier way to learn the stages of mitosis! Between the cakes and this here song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODwt6OdN-8Y you'll never forget what keeps us alive!

.............as a side note though... I do have a comment on the song, some of the wording is debatable. DNA replicates in S during interphase, so I think they meant divides, and not replicates, in mitosis. But! All is well. I'll still sing the song all day long!

I showed some of my lab-mates these guys and I have been dubbed Breanne, the Bakingtist. Eh... doesn't look so good on paper. But of course this is only inspiring other sciencey baking projects.

By the way, my absolute favorite part in making this was the telophase and cytokinesis stages. This was a technique I picked up from making the barnyard cake.

To attach any of the round cakes together, cut a crescent-moon shape into one of the cakes, stick some toothpicks in, and push together. I am really quite impressed with how well they held together, especially after frosting.


I remain a major fan of the word cytokinesis.

Have a great day!

Barnyard Cake

This may have been one of those middle-of-the-night creations inspired by insomnia. By the end, I was exhausted! The quality isn't quite near where I wanted it to be, but I was pleased to have it completed before a crazy school day.
I got this idea from Family Fun magazine. I absolutely love this magazine. They have the cutest everything!
My favorite parts of this cake are the fence and the roof. The fence is put together using pretzel sticks and melted chocolate chips as glue. You can see it easier in the picture posted below. The melted chocolate was piped out of my favorite kitchen utensil, the Ziploc bag. And then the roof! I used extra Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal that I had as shingles. Frost the top and work from the bottom sticking them on.
The siding on the barn is Twizzler twist-n-peel segments. I wasn't as neat with this as I wanted to be.
The other thing I learned tonight? You can color shredded coconut! This is useful information.

A couple things to notice in this picture! And a couple details to make your cake look way better than this! 1. Don't destroy your birds. Baby chicks are fragile creatures. I have one to the left of my cake here who's missing his eyes and the poor guy on the right.... he's just left behind some feathers and his beak. (Blame some predator). 2. Frost your whole cake. Patience got the best of me here! I basically completed a crumb coat, then gave up on the rest. My edges are bad. (Blame some predator).  3. Pay attention to the heights of licorice siding strips. It's the details that take things to the next level!

And here's the promised image of my pretzel fencing.

Happy baking!

Springtime Cupcakes

Vanilla Frosting

This is the recipe I use to make vanilla frosting. I use it for everything since it's just so simple and so easy to modify if wanted! The flavor is also much better than any vanilla frosting you will get in a can. (Maybe you can tell that I'm still new to this making-things-from-scratch deal.... ha) But still! Try it.

Ingredients-

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2  tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• some milk (amount determines thickness, so add gradually to desired consistency)

Now blend them all together! This is seriously a 30-second process. Amazing. 

Picnic!

Well, apparently in 2008 a man was arrested in Florida after beating his girlfriend with a cheeseburger... multiple times. I'm not sure how this is possible.

This, however, was not inspiration to make these cupcakes. Too bad. I absolutely love these cupcakes. My favorite right now! And surprisingly enough I think they are the easiest so far to make look good.


Here what you will need:

Cheeseburgers-

• Vanilla cupcakes, however many burgers you want
• Chocolate cupcakes
• Frosting (any light color, I used vanilla for ease of whipping up)
• Food coloring- red, yellow
• Orange juice
• Sesame seeds, or granulated sugar if preferred
• (Optional) Sour apple bubble tape (or green frosting)

Corn on the Cob-

• Vanilla cupcakes
• Yellow cupcake liners, or any light color
• Vanilla frosting
• Yellow food coloring
• Yellow and yellow/white speckled jelly beans
• Yellow starburst
• Black decorating sugar
• (Optional) corn holdy thingy with spiky holdy thingies.

Uninvited ants optional of course-

• Black jelly beans
• Any cupcakes, I used leftover chocolate I had from making burger patties.
• Vanilla frosting
• Green food coloring
• Black decorating gel
• (Optional) Shredded coconut

Alrighty then! So let's start with the cheeseburgers. I do suggest cooking all the cupcakes at once though of course to keep your sanity. When doing this I made 7 vanilla cupcakes and 5 chocolate cupcakes. (Always make extra so you have options with shape of the cake or which one for what, etc). Also!! Overfill the chocolate cupcakes that you want to use to make the burger patties. We will be using only the "muffin top" to make those. 

Step 1- Freeze the vanilla cupcakes for a little bit (probably 10-15 minutes) to make it easier to get a clean cut when slicing. Do the same with the chocolate cupcakes you will be using to make the burger patties.

Step 2- Take cupcakes out of the freezer and slice. With the vanilla cupcakes that you will use for the buns, take the liner completely off and slice around the middle of the cupcake.  With the chocolate cupcakes for the patties, peel off the liner only around the top to give you easy access to just the top and make a clean slice across.

Step 3- Prep the buns. To get the sesame seeds (or granulated sugar) to stick onto the top of the cupcake, use a paintbrush, or some similar method, to apply a light coat of orange juice just on the top, and sprinkle the seeds or sugar on. They should stick and dry well. 

Step 4- Now that you have the buns and the burger prepped, it's time to add the condiments and stack it up.  Both the cheese and the ketchup are colored frosting. For the cheese, tint vanilla frosting a darker yellow. Spoon small clumps of the frosting around the edges of the bottom slice of the bun. When you place the burger patty on top of these clumps, they should push down to look like melted cheese coming out of the sides. I am absolutely shocked at how "real-life" my cheese turned out. It was so fun. The ketchup is vanilla frosting tinted red of course. This was piped out of a ziploc bag with the corner cut off. Never underestimate the piping power of a ziploc bag! I wasn't going to have lettuce at first because I wasn't too sure on how to go about it, but when I added it I was happy with it. My lettuce is some sour apple bubble tape I picked up, and used scissors to cut into it. Another option here is to just tint some frosting green and pipe it similarly to the ketchup. And there's your burgers!

Now for the corn on the cob-

I had a blast making this. And it's so simple yet looks so fun!

Step 1- Tint your frosting to a pale yellow. It will help make things look more natural. Then frost your 3 favorite vanilla cupcakes. 

Step 2- Push the yellow and white/yellow jelly beans into the frosting in rows. Alternate and switch colors up every once in a while to look more natural. As far as where to find the jelly beans.... Jelly beans are pretty easy to find right now because all the Easter candy is out right now and stuff. Jelly Belly has the best jelly beans for any sort of jelly bean project in my opinion. And what's really great is that you can get your flavors and however much you want of them at  most party stores! I was able to go to Zurchers and get all the beans in both the yellow and the yellow/white speckled for little more than a dollar. Definitely a better deal than getting the bags and having to sort through other colors. Unless you're a jelly bean fan... which I am not. Ok! So you should have 3 cupcakes covered in the beans.

Step 3- Line up the cakes and detail. I picked up my corn-holdy-display-thing from Honk's, a dollar store... by the way... they have the strangest things! A barbecue knife with a 2 foot handle?? Huh?? Anyway, When the cakes are aligned, you can add the "butter". My butter was a yellow Starburst. I softened it in the microwave for exactly 6.5 seconds. When it's softened you can kinda squish it to make it more realistic. Maybe squish a corner even more to look like it's melting down the side, etc. Then add the "pepper", which is just black decorating sugar sprinkled on. I also sprinkled with white granulated sugar to look like salt if you take a microscope to it, but that's really not necessary. 

You now have your corn!

And finally for the ants-

The ants are really an optional thing. I pretty much just had a couple extra cupcakes and wanted to add some detail to make the pictures I took more interesting. When I thought of the burger idea, I googled to see if other people had done it and found some people had put ants next to it and thought, why not? 

Step 1- Tint vanilla frosting green and frost the cupcakes.

Step 2- Add black jelly beans in the shape of ants. After adding I put in the freezer for a little bit to make it sturdier. My frosting was a little wet.... there's pros and cons to wet or dry frosting. But the frosting just needed to dry quicker so the jelly beans would not slide anywhere.

Step 3- Use black decorating gel to draw the rest of the ants' bodies. Remember that they have 6 legs. Ha.

Step 4- If you want coconut around the outside, you can put that on. I was thinking it might give the idea of looking grassy, but I'm not sure that I accomplished that! So it's very optional. Honestly I probably wouldn't add the coconut next time.  

But there you go! 

Like I said, I found that these cupcakes actually were not difficult and turned out very cute! I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for something fun to make pretty quickly. Enjoy!

Pandacakes!

Here's an interesting fact for you... did you know that a panda's paw actually has 6 digits? Five fingers and an opposable pseudo-thumb. The "thumb" is an adaptation that has come over hundreds of generations. It is actually just an enlarged wrist bone that they now use to help hold the bamboo while they eat it. Amazing stuff huh? This was the prime example of an adaptation that I recently learned about in my Evolution & Ecology class. Yay for science and baking!

Anyway, I actually did these guys on Wednesday.... Wednesdays are always an interesting day for me. I'm at school in the morning and then go to work at 4, but I did manage to find some time in between to whip this up! I did only make 4 though. Quantity makes a huge difference in time when each cake takes individual work. Just something to remember. This is another idea that I got from the "Hello, Cupcake" book, slightly modified. Actually pretty simple to make, yet very cute!

To make these guys, you will need:

• Chocolate cupcakes (however many you want to make)
• Mini chocolate cupcakes (the same number)
• Oreos, I used probably 15
• Vanilla frosting
• Black decorating gel
• Something for ears. I used dipped Froot Loops. 
• Chocolate chips, preferably the mini kind.

Step 1- While the cupcakes are baking, go ahead and crush up some oreos into a bowl (2 oreos will be used for each panda besides the crushed ones, so make sure and save enough). Typically the crushing would be done in a food processor, giving some texture, but my limited resources and college budget did not allow this, so I just used a wooden spoon. I removed the icing on the oreos with a knife scrape prior to crushing. 

Step 2- Frost the normal-sized cupcakes and dip them in the crushed oreos to coat them. You're going to want to use quite a bit of frosting here to make a mounded shape on top of the cupcake to give the pandas their bellies and some height. Another tip, I have found when frosting to not do everything at the same time.... the drier the frosting gets the harder it is for anything to stick to it, so I suggest doing each individually.

Step 3- Frost the little cupcakes and make the faces. There are a bunch of different ways to do the face... In the ingredient list I suggested mini chocolate chips for the eyes. I used regularly-sized chocolate chips on the guys in my picture above. Also, if you can find something a good shape for the nose use it, or you can just use the black decorating gel there too like I did. Chocolate-covered sunflower seeds are the perfect shape and everything for it, but the gel seems to work just fine. Now for the ears..... I started with just sticking Cocoa Puffs on, but I found that those were a little small. I liked the shape and size of froot loops, so I ended up frosting the top face of some and dipping them in the leftover crushed oreos just for the color. I'm not sure if they still make the cereal Oreo O's, but if they do and if you find it those are perfect for the ears. Or, if you think of something else that works well, let me know! This is one of the parts of baking design that I like... the finding random food products to stick on that almost look like something. Haha.

Step 4- Attach the head to the body. At this point the frosting is probably too dry to stick it right on, especially with the crushed oreo attached. I took a knife to scrape a bit of the oreo off,, through a little dollop of frosting on there, and stuck the head right on. I'm actually surprised about how sturdy this was.

Step 5- Attach the arms and legs. Chopping the whole oreos in half is kinda difficult without good knives, so be cautious of that. The arms are poked into the sides of the frosting mounds, and the legs are really just hanging out outside of the liner. Attach with frosting if they plan on travelling. Also, if you want to make the claws on the arm oreos, use a toothpick dipped in the frosting and draw them on. I was running out of time and didn't know if I wanted to draw the claws anyway, so if you notice above I only drew the claws on one of the pandas.

Step 6- There are possibilities for very cute displays here! I only made little placeholders by cutting large star-shaped figures out of construction paper, folding the ends up, and setting the bears on top of them. However, something like a lucky bamboo plant, or some sort of plant or grass or something around to make a sort of jungle setting I think would be so adorable! I was joking around when picking up a couple supplies to make these saying that I was in need of some jungle plants.

And there you have it folks!

Oh yeah, and thanks to Amber for taking these away from me! I've had problems with knowing what to do with my cakes and was happy that I didn't have to throw these away!