IF LIFE WERE PERFECT...

• I'd wake up to a cup of Starbucks' Awake tea latte--grande and half sweet, of course.

• I'd never have another migraine.

• I'd be living in a cool apartment downtown with the Mr.--though that's his unofficial title.

• I'd own a bakery somewhere in the 'burbs.

• I'd have a dog...ah heck, three dogs: a Shiba Inu, a Chow Chow and a whatever-Sean-wants, which changes weekly. Right now we're thinking Tibetan Mastiff.

• I wouldn't eat mini Reese's peanut butter cups with the lining still on.

• I wouldn't crave chocolate as much as I do now.

• Someone would make me brownies instead of me having to make them for myself.

• Sigh...since life is not perfect, I am now off to make coconut swirl brownies (recipe courtesy of Martha).

*an hour later*

Here's my chocolate craving come to life:Excuse the lighting as I typically bake at night, usually starting around 8 or 9. Anyway, these brownies weren't all that great. Yes, they contained copious amounts of chocolate and yes, they included coconut too (which I am all "balls to the wall" about, but they just weren't chewy! They're your classic cakey brownies, which, if I were a fan of cakes, I'd be all over. But I'm not so I wasn't.

The search for chocolate brownies continues...

WEDDING CUPCAKE PHOTO SHOOT

And just because they took forever to make, here's way more shots than you probably ever expected.

The casualties that never made it to the wedding (there were more but these ones made it out for the shoot):I kind of love the aerial shots (if you haven't noticed already).

And a shoot with flowers...the strawberry and toasted coconut with vanilla bean and coconut rum buttercream:
The double fudge chocolate filled with dulce de leche with whipped dark chocolate Kahlua ganache:
And a couple sans flowers. The double chocolate fudge:and strawberry and toasted coconut:I have to admit that I totally stole the two best cupcakes from the cupcakes boxes as I was piping them. As I was piping, I pointed and told Sean that I wanted to keep those ones but he was all "keep piping!" Then when he wasn't looking, I swiped the two best-looking piped ones and kept them to photograph later, mwuahaha.

WEDDING CUPCAKE RECAP

It was a long 12 hours. Yep, that's right, 12 freakin' hours. There weren't many meltdowns--maybe just one and a minor one at that. It was really just a lot of waiting around for cupcakes to bake and then washing dishes.

The setbacks? There were a few. The first was running out of strawberries and then vanilla extract. Luckily Sean was around to lend some moral support and make a late-night run to the grocery store to pick up said items, as well as extra heavy cream, which came in handy. Another setback? Forgetting to measure out the right amount of chocolate for the whipped chocolate ganache frosting and then doing it midway while the heavy cream was cooling down. My initial ganache recipe was therefore f'ed so I had to improvise and am happy to say that it turned out marvelously, despite the clumps of chocolate stuck in the frosting tip. Thanks to Sean and his days at the Sobey's bakery, he was able to let me in on his "frosting tip under running hot water" trick.

Let's back up to the process a bit though. I was kind of given free reign with the wedding cupcakes, which initially made me really nervous. The bride's comments were something along the lines of "whatever they are, I know they're be great" which made me feel good that she had so much faith in me, but also made me nervous because I knew the cupcakes had to be spectacular. I think that's why I pulled out all the stops. The cupcakes chosen (or suggested by me and approved by her) were a strawberry and toasted coconut cupcake with vanilla bean and coconut rum buttercream as well as a double chocolate fudge cupcake filled with dulce de leche and topped with a whipped dark chocolate Kahlua ganache. Initially the toppers were supposed to be chocolate shortbread cookies with embossed initials of the newly married couple. I did a test run about a month back but in all honesty, the photographed cupcakes didn't look spectacular. They tasted great but they didn't look very awesome. Who really wants a miniature cookie sticking out of a cupcake? I decided to go with dainty little sugar flowers instead and I'm glad I did because it really suited the classy black and white theme of the wedding. I made the sugar flowers a week in advance and am really glad that I did. Putting on the silver dragees took three hours alone because it involved piping the royal icing with my left hand while placing the dragee with my right hand with a pair of tweezers. Insane work, I tell ya! It is not for the faint of heart. It was tedious and time consuming and certainly fiddly. But the flowers looked so cute and perfect afterwards.

The majority of the cupcakes were made the night before, finishing up the last batch 12 hours before they were due. I then woke up five hours later and made the last batch of cupcakes--making extras for any mishaps--and then began frosting. Surprisingly, I didn't feel tired, but there was a LOT of yawning later in the day and perhaps a little bit of a nap at Corey and Bryanne's place. In total there were 144 cupcakes. I planned on making extras as "back-ups" for the car ride to Oshawa. I wanted to be able to swap out the "casualties" that didn't make the car ride over for the "good" ones. I didn't really plan on making THAT many but because of the two different recipes I was using, it just happened to make that many. It was okay; I didn't hear my co-workers complaining.

Piping the cupcakes wasn't too hard. I had piped cupcakes several dozen times before and have pretty much perfected my piping skills. There were a few that didn't look so hot and those are the ones I asked Sean to scrape the frosting off so I could re-pipe them. Thank goodness for the extra set of hands because I really needed them. As I piped, Sean placed the sugar flowers on top of the cupcakes. (FYI: I used my trusty 1M tip for the piping.)

I was done at 12:58pm, two minutes before my self-imposed 1pm deadline. Sean and I packed the car in about 30 minutes and made our way to Oshawa. The traffic, for the most part, was non-existent, so the car ride took about 45 minutes and the entire way there I was internally fretting about what would happen should we get into a fender bender. How would I salvage the cupcakes? Could they even be salvaged? What if the accident was so bad that Sean and I couldn't make it out right away? What if the "jaws of life" had to come get us out? All kinds of crazy thoughts were running through my head and at one point, when we hit a blip of traffic, I'm pretty sure I was about to have a panic attack. my heart started racing and my palms were getting sweaty and I was worried that we wouldn't make it to the reception hall in time for our 3pm deadline; I still needed time to set up the cupcakes! But we made it there in time, accident free, with plenty of time for me to van-vaner with the cupcakes on the cupcake stands made by the bride and her bridesmaids. It took about 30 minutes to set up the cupcakes (deciding whether to alternate the cupcakes on the same tier or whether to separate them was a bit of a pickle that Sean didn't understand) but afterwards, they looked marvelous. And I have to admit, I was a proud Cupcake Mama.

I set up all 102 cupcakes, took a few pics for the memories and then sadly, said goodbye to my babies:Stay tuned for part two...featuring more photos!

REVIEW: KIND BARS

After seeing Elina of Healthy and Sane's posts featuring Kind Bars so often, I just knew I had to have them. I'm pretty much a sucker for trying anything once (that'll probably get me into some trouble sooner or later--actually it has). I found a good variety of these at Whole Foods when Sean and I visited last week just before the Vivian Girls concert but because so many of them were drizzled with yogurt and the ingredients contained soy--something I'm trying to stay away from being of IBS--I went with the Almond & Coconut and Nut Delight options instead. They did have other non-yogurt options but those all contained ingredients I'm not fond of (walnuts/sesame/dried apricots).

Anyway, as I like to eat in the car, I decided to enjoy the Kind Bars while on the way to the mall. First up...Almond & Coconut:Here's a lookie at the ingredients:Notice the glucose listed as the fifth product? Well I sure didn't. I tend to shy away from products manufactured with glucose/fructose (those that aren't naturally present like in fruits) so I was a little hesitant to eat this but I was hungry and it was the only thing in my purse and I was more willing to eat the Kind Bar than picking up something from the mall food court.

Next up, the nutritionals:
200 calories...crud. A little more than I had first thought. I like to keep my bars under 200 calories since I tend to use them as snacks rather than energy boosters. Oh well, at least there isn't a lot of sodium so my dad can't berate me for that.

Here's a lookie at the bar itself after unwrapping:And here's a cross-section:So the first thing you'll notice with the Almond & Coconut Kind Bar, besides the ginormous whole almonds and shredded coconut is the overwhelming scent of coconut. No wait, scratch that. Or wait, I would if I could so just forget it instead...there is no such thing as the overwhelming scent of coconut. Intoxicating, that's more like it. If everything smelled like coconut--ooh, toasted coconut--this world would be a happy place.

How much: $2.39 (ouch!)
Purchased where: Whole Foods
Verdict: Two thumbs up!

===

And now onto the next Kind Bar...and sadly, the last one...Nut Delight! Again, eaten in the car. Here is the packaging.And here's a photo of the bar itself:That's pretty much all you're getting because I forgot to the ingredients and nutritional list. The big difference with this bar is that it was really hard. Like corn nuts hard. Possibly even harder. I actually thought I was going to break a tooth in the fridge aisle as my parents and I browsed for fridges. I didn't like it as much as I liked the Almond & Coconut variety but then anything with coconut gets a huge thumbs-up from me. The Nut Delight version contained whole almonds, peanuts (which I'm not a huge fan of), brazil nuts (which I hardly noticed) and walnuts (which I also don't like unless they're in a chewy brownie). So while I wasn't crazy about this one, I ate it anyway--I was starving! Just not crazy about the peanuts and corn-nut texture. Maybe it was old stock.

Cost: $2.39
Purchased at: Whole Foods
Would I purchase again? Despite my claims, yes...but I'd make sure I got a fresh one.

Note: I only got two bars just in case I didn't like them. Almond & Coconut though--who was I trying to kid?!

REVIEW: KASHI DARK CHOCOLATE COCONUT

Kashi and I have a love-hate relationship. I was ecstatic when the store I used to work at started carrying Kashi products. We carried their granola bars (Peanut Peanut Butter, Seven Whole Grains and Almonds and Cherry Dark Chocolate) and cereals (a whole bunch I can't remember). I loved the idea of

And so this post brings you a review of Kashi's Dark Choconut, er, Chocolate Coconut granola bars. It bills itself as a "fruit and grain" granola bar. I was excited to see the coconut flakes on top of the bar and honestly, that's pretty much what sold me. Coconut will always have a place in my heart. Damn the following photo though:Seriously, ugh! At least you'll be giving your neck a workout while looking at the above photo.

The ingredient list looks decent, if not a little long:It starts off with their grain blend then includes dates, dark chocolate, brown rice syrup and so on. A short list of soy is just what I like since soy in any form tends to give my stomach the heebie-geebies (aka IBS).

Here's the nutritionals in case you're interested:Don't mind the washed out bit because those amounts are all zero. Hey, at least you get some iron! So yeah, 3.5g of fat and 50mg of sodium...not too bad. But what does it taste like? Well, let's get to that, shall we?

Here's the bar:Do you like Hurley in the background? That's me catching up with season 5. I know, I know...I'm SO behind! Sean's now beating me; he caught up to me all the way from season two.

Here's the bar unwrapped:What happened to all the walnuts you ask? Well, I don't even care because I don't like walnuts but yeah, that photo on the box is quite deceiving.

To preface my review a little bit, I don't eat granola bars all that often; I actually quite detest them. Even when I was a kid I wasn't a huge fan except for the Chewy bars Rocky Road flavour but now I find them incredibly sweet and can't even take a bite out of one without causing searing pain to my tooth.

Anyway, this bar is actually really good. The chocolate flavour is hardly noticeable, which is great because we must all know by now that I'm not a huge choco fan. It tastes predominantly of dates which is a-ok in my books and the coconut, well you can't really taste it, so it could go. Then again, my throat is on the fritz (AGAIN!) so this review may be a little skewed because my throat isn't having a good time of things.

I would totally buy these again. I'm actually contemplating eating another bar but considering how much other food I just ate, I really shouldn't. Self-restraint dammit!

Cost: $3.99
Purchased at: Sobey's
Purchased again: Definitely

BAKING UPDATES!

I've done a lot of baking in the past month but haven't had a chance to post about it yet. There's been much Olympic-watching going on and a lot of sickness, plus I decided to take Wednesday off blogging (not one food photo!). Here's a recap of recent baking:

BAKERELLA CAKE POPS:
I made these for a work bake sale last Thursday with the proceeds benefiting the Hospital for Sick Kids. I followed Bakerella's recipe but halved everything as I was feeling under the weather and wasn't really in the mood to be baking. I honestly wouldn't have followed through with this recipe had I not already signed myself up for the bake sale early last week. Because I just really wanted to go to bed rather than create these things, I only made a dozen. Here's the process and the reveal at the end. There's so many final end product photos because it took so long because I was sick.

So first thing's first...you have to bake an entire sheet cake and crumble it. Again, I halved the recipe and since I wanted to keep the rest of the cake as cupcakes, I used a cupcake box mix and made 24 cupcakes. Thank goodness Sean's food processor started working again that night because there's no way I would have gotten this fine crumb without the use of a food processor:

After that I added in the cream cheese and then mixed it all together until it stuck together and was sweet enough. I ended up using about half a can of cream cheese frosting:

After that was complete I rolled the mixture into 15gram balls. Yes, I actually weighed each ball. I think I ended up with around 30-something...I think 34 or 36 to be exact. Then I started dunking and decorating.

Here are my final dozen:I completely forgot to pick up a big block of styrofoam so I made do with some styrofoam I found in the basement, cut it to size and then wrapped it up in some festive tissue paper. It did the trick. It was now nearing 1am so I just wanted these cake pops to be over with. Here's a few more pics:
I like the way the sprinkles come together in a circle in the white one above. It was completely unintentional as I was dipping the pops in a bowl of heart-shaped quins. It kind of reminds me of a Valentine's Day baseball.

===

MERINGUE COOKIES:

I went a little bit nuts making meringue cookies last week. I made two batches on the 12th and then another batch the next day. The first batch I made I split into two and flavoured as follows:

Above are chocolate with chocolate chips and I also made a batch of chocolate with dried cherries:

My second batch made the next day were vanilla meringue cookies with dried cherries. As I was packing the cookies into an air-tight container, I had to flip a few upside-down in order to make them all fit. That's when I stumbled upon this one and decided to keep it for Sean:

Cute huh? I think he liked it. He's Sean so he probably thought it was corny and cheesy and silly but I liked it. I mean, how the heck do hearts just appear on the bottom of meringue cookies? It did all the work for me.

My second batch of meringue cookies were vanilla with dried cherries but I forgot to take photos of them. They were incredibly sweet though. I followed the recipe to a T but found them to be ridiculously sweet (hence the use of fruit sherbet served to Sean and his parents but the sherbet was ridiculously sweet anyway). By the way, you can find the recipe here but if you do plan on using the recipe, I'd cut the sugar down by at least 1/4. I also piped my cookies with a pastry bag instead of spooning them onto a cookie sheet. It saved time and effort. Oh and cream of tartar is key to keeping your meringue stable...very key!

===
STRAWBERRY COCONUT CUPCAKES WITH VANILLA BEAN AND MALIBU COCO FROSTING:
I wanted to make cupcakes for dessert for dinner at Sean's. I wanted these to have a Valentine's Day theme and was going to make red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting but wanted to include coconut since I love coconut. I couldn't find a coconut cupcake recipe that I was happy with so I decided to stick with a favourite but had to include some kind of fruit puree. I decided to go with strawberry for a strawberry coconut cupcake--yum! After piping with vanilla bean and Malibu Coco-flavoured frosting and decorating half with toasted coconut and the other half with heart-shaped quins, this is what I've got:

Here's a couple close-ups of each. First up the toasted coconut (my fave):

And the heart-shaped quins:

And that's all the baking I've been up to lately. I have wanted to bake some more but there aren't enough taste-testers in my household--boo!