Baking for Pleasure

Inspired by Bakerella's awesome blog and her cake pops, this was Sunday's adventure:

Cake balls (cake mixed with frosting, formed into little balls, dipped in chocolate, topped with sprinkles. Whew!)

Looking super cute in their little to-go boxes (one for the babysitter, the other for the dogwalker who let Dina & Wendy in when Dina locked herself out of the house!).

The only thing is that the cake balls are pretty sweet. After all, it's cake, mixed with frosting, then dipped in chocolate! As Dina's husband said "Don't let the kids have too many of those. They're like speed balls."

So the kids actually didn't get any (yet). But they did get some whole wheat banana muffins!

Baking for Pleasure

Another kookie-decorating bash the other day, and another need for some reprieve. So Dina baked Blueberry Muffins, and not only are they Blueberry Muffins, but according to Cook's Illustrated, they are the BEST Blueberry Muffins! Not sure why they are the "best," but they did call for making a little blueberry jam to swirl into the the muffins so you get some blueberry goodness in every bite.

The jam (and no, I don't mean jam as in an 8th grade slow dance song):

The batter-in-waiting:

Jammy goodness dolloped!

Swirl, or attempted swirl (only a misdemeanor here in California):

End product.

Seriously, though, these were so good that for a bit, Dina said forget kookies, I'm baking muffins now (or should she call them kuffins?).

Baking for Pleasure

The hard thing about when you make something you love (like baking cookies) into a job is that it becomes exactly that -- a job. So every once in awhile, it makes sense to go back and remember why you love what you do so much that you do what you (a doo doo doo, a da da da, is all I want to say to you -- woops, sorry, couldn't resist).

So Dina, after baking cookies and icing them, found her zen moment baking some Apricot Muffins. She got a pound of organic apricots in her produce box, and since her boys don't love the tart taste of apricots, decided to bake something that would be a little easier on their newby palates.

Here's the final product.

P.S. The sad part of all of this is that although baking muffins was a nice reprieve from cookies, her boys still didn't want them!!!