Show your Dog some Homebaked Love

Baking for your dog can be a real treat and your dog will love you even more for it! My dog, Paddington L-O-V-E-D these! This is a great recipe that makes about 30-40 snacks so you won't have to run out to the store for awhile.























Party Hearty Mix-It-Up Mix
from Three Dog Bakery Cookbook

You will need some cookie cutters, any shape and size will do. You will also need a rolling pin or something to roll the dough out.

Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
4 teaspoons skim milk
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Mix together the oil, honey, vanilla, egg and milk in a bowl.
In a sepearte bowl, blend together the flour, baking powder, and ginger.
Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture and stir thoroughly.
Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface, roll out to a 1/4-inch thick and cut into shapes.
Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes.
Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

These cookies lasted for a couple months.

Crumbs, NY

Crumbs
11 Wall Street
Huntington, NY 11743

Cupcakes tried: Elvis, grasshopper, squiggle and chocolate cupcake with peanut butter, white chocolate and chocolate mini chips

Overall Reaction: Let down of Titanic proportions!

















The shop is well designed with a cute logo and definitely has a welcoming, clean atmosphere, I will give it that. It was hard not to have googly eyes while choosing the cupcakes because there were so many amazing looking and interesting flavor options to choose from, not too mention – they are bigger than your average cupcake!

Once again, I had my New York taste testers with me along with my hubby. So thank you Kris, Kim and Steve for your solid input!




































Let's start off with the best one that we tried, the Elvis cupcake, which by the way does not say much. I'm looking online to make sure I have the flavors right and the cupcake we tried was made with different ingredients than what is described online. I guess some worker decided to improvise and switch out peanut butter mini chips for butterscotch ones. Basically the vanilla cake was yummy and the banana cream cheese frosting was great too but the butterscotch chips were so sweet that they overpowered the rest of the cupcake. The taste testers were divided on this one, half liked it and half didn't. I'm pretty sure it would have been better with the peanut butter mini chips instead.

The squiggle (hostess look alike) cupcake was a huge disappointment. The cupcake was bland and didn't taste like chocolate cake at all. The original hostess cupcake beats this one hands down!

I love anything mint so I was really looking forward to the grasshopper cupcake. The mint frosting tasted like mint ice cream which was fantastic but the cake, however moist it was, lacked that really great chocolate flavor. The mini chocolate chips around the edges was too much, they were hard and pretty much a mouth full, it would have been better with chocolate shavings or something like that instead.

The last cupcake we tried was the chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream topped with mini peanut butter chips, chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. This cupcake was a let down too, the icing was too sweet, the cake was a little dry and the chocolate cake was bland.

My words of advice: For a place that seems to pride themselves on that homemade baked goodness, their cupcakes definitely didn't deliver that taste wise. For $3.75-4.50 a pop, I was expecting a little more but then again it's a chain that keeps growing and the cupcakes are baked off site so eventually manufacturing is the name of the game and quality is left behind for quantity. We were all a bit bummed out and quickly lost our high even after all the sugar consumed.

Christmas Goodies

So I realized that it was already February and I never posted anything in December or January for that matter. I was swamped with lots of cupcakes, cake orders and weekends of leaving town while my poor little blog wasted away with the hope that I would return soon.

Here are some of my baking endeavors that I did around christmas time.

Coconut Cake




















Christmas Cupcakes

Cupcake Gourmet, NY

Cupcake Gourmet
46-I Gerard Street
Huntington, NY 11743

Cupcakes tried: german chocolate, funfetti and apple pie

Overall reaction: Gourmet my Butt!















While my husband and I were visiting friends in NY we stumbled upon a this cupcake shop in downtown Huntington. I had 3 other tasters beside myself, so thank you Kris, Kim and Steve for willingly volunteering!


















The German chocolate cupcake was not so good. The cake was super dry and the traditional coconut ooey gooey frosting was dried up too. Everyone knows that that is the best part about german chocolate cakes so this cupcake left us all disappointed.

Funfetti looked really fun but actually wasn't. The cake was dry and the frosting looked and tasted like play-do.

A great idea for a cupcake was the apple pie mini cupcake. The execution of the frosting could have been a little neater but it had a nice cinnamon flavor and tasted like pie. The only bad part was that the cake was dry, which seems to be a reoccurring theme here.

My words of advice: Upon entering store, it seemed like a fun place to host your kid's birthday parties – lots of tables and chairs, bright and eclectic colors, not as neatly designed but perfect for kids. There were all kinds of different flavored cupcakes to choose from but beware because they obviously aren't all good. Mostly I would have to say that they should change the name of the shop to Cupcake Not So Gourmet.

Baking Challenge #9: Pumpkin Cookies

Here's a really simple and fast pumpkin cookie recipe from Better Homes and Gardens: Homemade Cookies Cookbook. The cookies turn out ultra soft and delicious.

Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:
2 cups shortening
2 cups sugar
1 16-ounce can pumpkin
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp salt
2 cups raisins
1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

Preheat oven at 350˚ F.
Cream Shortening and sugar. Add pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla and beat well. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, next 5 ingredients, and salt. Add to batter and mix well. Stir in raisins and pecans. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Makes about 6 dozen or if you make your cookies bigger, it makes about 3 dozen.

Baking Challenge #8: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

WHOOPIE!!! This recipe comes from the book, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. This recipe was OH so yummy! The only snag that I ran into was with the cream cheese filling. It was a bit too runny even after adding some more powdered sugar to thicken it up and being chilled in the fridge. The evidence is in the lovely photo I took. However it still tasted amazing. If you have a cream cheese or vanilla frosting that you like that is thicker, try using that instead.























Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese Filling

Makes about 12 Whoopie Pies

Ingredients for the Pumpkin Whoopie Cookies:
3 cups all- purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs ginger
1 tbs cloves
2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil (I used canola oil)
3 cups chilled pumpkin puree
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients for the cream cheese filling:
3 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves together and set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar and oil together until combined. Add the pumpkin puree and mix to combine thoroughly. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.

Sprinkle the four mixture over the pumpkin mixture and mix until completely combined.

Use a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism to drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. See Ex. 1. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies are just cracking on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cookie comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool.














For the cream cheese filling, sift the confectioner's sugar into a medium bowl and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter until it is completely smooth. Add the cream cheese and beat until combined.

Add the confectioner's sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth. Be careful not to over beat the filling or it will lose structure. Cover the bowl tightly and put in the refrigerator.

To assemble the whoopies, turn half of the cooled cookie upside down and drop a dollop of filling onto the cookie. Then place another cookie on top. Place the whoopies in the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up before serving.

****These are also great as cookies without the filling. Beware, it is mighty hard to eat just one.

Schubert's, San Francisco

Schubert's
521 Clement St.
San Francisco, CA 94118

Cakes tried: Princess and Neopolitan

Overall Reaction: Really hard to pick out a cake because they all look so amazing!

They have been making the Neopolitan cake since 1911! The cake was made up of layers of chocolate cake, white cake, raspberry whipped cream and topped with chocolate ganache. The cake was light, airy and fluffy and the raspberry whipped cream was wonderful. The fancy embellishments on the top made the cake slice extra special.





























I was immediately drawn to the Princess cake with its lime green pistachio marzipan icing. Perfect for a tea party, the cake was layers of white cake, whipped cream and raspberry and kirsch custard filling. All the flavors worked harmoniously together and the textures were lovely throughout. Every bite was delicious!





























My words of advice: If you are looking for a great place to get a cake (besides from me of course), look no further. All the cakes are decorated wonderfully. Also, most of the cakes you can buy just a slice, which is what I did, perfect for the afternoon sweet tooth or take home for later to share with that special someone.