Sweet Relief's Back (Alright!)

We need a little BSB to set the tone for this post...

(sorry if you a) weren't a preteen/teenager during the 90s boy band craze or b) have no idea who BSB even is...we grew up on these musical gems, you're gonna have to deal with it)

GUYS, WE'RE BACK!!!!

We had a FANTASTIC vacation with our friends and family.  For those of you who haven't stalked us religiously (we'll forgive you this one time) we headed to Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Wildwood NJ for a nice, relaxing, well-deserved break.  We rocked out to some 90s boy band music (including the gem above), patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell (wait, no, that was Davy Crockett), and relaxed on the wonderful sandy beaches of New Jersey with a book in hand.  Oh yeah, we celebrated our birthday too!  Woot!  Best of all, the ovens stayed off, and we simply recovered from a very busy past few weeks.

Little sister Allison is a really good driver through the streets of Philadelphia

As wonderful as the break was, though, we are happy to get back into the kitchens and to get baking.  What's that saying, absence makes the heart grow fonder?  Well, we definitely missed all the baking, decorating, and designing of all our favorite baked goods.  No matter how crazy everything in the kitchen might get at times, it's a familiar crazy, something we're used to and can manage.  Trying to negotiate the streets of Philadelphia during rush hour...??  Not so easy to deal with.

In the coming two weeks we have two big orders heading out, another cookie cake for a birthday (you guys are really loving your cookie cakes this summer!) and some cute themed cupcakes for a baby shower.  On top of that, we received some new birthday presents that we're eager to try out too...from pans, to cookie cutters, we're going to be playing around with some fun flavors.

Until then, have a great weekend, Pittsburgh!  We are PSYCHED for the beautiful weather that will be rolling through the city this weekend.  Sounds like the perfect pool weekend!

The Case for Buttermilk

Ah buttermilk...what can be said about it that hasn't already been said?

To be fair, has anyone ever written a blog about buttermilk before?  Anyone...anyone...Bueller...??

We're going to be honest with you, for years we've kind of looked at buttermilk as the black sheep of the cooking world.  That random product they still sell at supermarkets that no one ever uses.  Honestly, how many of us can say we've ever had a glass of buttermilk?  Well, besides our grandparents.  Has anyone born since 1980 had a glass of buttermilk?  Honest question here.

Since we don't drink buttermilk, we've never had much reason to buy it.  In our humble opinion, why bother?  It's not that we're lazy bakers, but we're practical with our baking.  Why buy whole milk AND buttermilk when one can pretty much do the job of both.  Remember, this is a start up business...we're not rolling in the funds right now.

So we used regular milk for all of our baking needs.  We figured, hey, this tastes delicious, what could the harm be?

STOP!

If you were thinking the same thing, let us correct you.  There is a huge difference between buttermilk and milk.  If you're a casual baker, or baked good consumer, you may never notice the difference.  Half the time we still don't when we're eating the finished product.  But let us tell you, there's a HUGE difference.

  

What makes buttermilk buttermilk is that it's more acidic than regular whole milk, which gives it its different (and to many Gen Y- and X-ers unusual) taste.  Maybe this doesn't seem to be a deal breaker to you, but remember, baking is all about chemistry.  Ahh, chemistry, one of our least favorite classes in high school.  And chemistry, in baking, is super important.  It's what makes things taste so good.

So the extra acid in the buttermilk actually helps your baked goods.  It helps the milk to react and incorporate itself quicker into your batter (milk is usually one of the last ingredients you add), which leads to fluffier cupcakes, richer cookies, and beautifully dense cakes.  

Is it necessary?  Absolutely not.  But over the past few months as we've experimented with buttermilk more, we've found it's sometimes is exactly what you need to bring that "wow" factor.  Think about it this way...in baseball, a home run is a home run, so long as it leaves the park.  But for all those Pirate fans out there, how many of you remember a home run that just makes it over the fence, and how many of you will always remember the few baseballs that have landed straight into the river?  We want to launch our home run cupcakes into the river each and every time we pull them out of the ovens.

If you don't want to splurge and buy buttermilk (who does?) head over to this site, where you can learn how to make your own buttermilk with things you have around the house.  We usually use lemon juice, but have also used plain yogurt with similar results.

Next time you're baking, we challenge you to try using buttermilk.  Add some lemon juice to your milk, let it sit, and see how much better your baking becomes.  It's gonna be outta the park...and into the river!!

Happy (almost) Friday, friends!

Chocolate Whisky Cupcakes

As you guys have seen in the past 10 months this blog has existed (has it really been that long??), we bake a lot.  Cakes, pies, cookies, cupcakes, we do a lot throughout the year to create some pretty awesome sweet treats.  While we taste test and sample all of our goods before we deliver them, after doing this for so long there's very little we create anymore that completely blows our mind.  This weekend, though, we met our life-ending equivalent.  Game, set, match.  Mind blown.

To back up a little bit, though, last Monday we got a call from a good friend of ours asking if we could make a birthday cake for her husband's 30th birthday.  Oh my word, we're celebrating friends turning 30 already!  Where has our life gone?!?  :-)  Anyway, we bounced around a few ideas until she messaged us and said, "What about some whiskey cupcakes?"

Whoa.  Hold the phone.  Whiskey cupcakes?  This was new, and exciting, and a great idea!  We love making alcohol cupcakes, and have used rum, vodka, beer, wine, and tequila in past cupcake creations.  Whiskey, though...this was a new challenge.

When we're creating new flavor combinations, we like to spend some time on google looking up other similar recipes.  Not so we can rip off other people's ideas (we've had that happen to us before, and we know how awful a feeling that is), but to get some inspiration, and some ideas of where other bakers have gone in the past.  It helps us focus our thoughts and make a nice list of "Where to Start".

The overall theme we kept reading was chocolate and whiskey.  Chocolate, whiskey....hmmm, we had a plan forming.  We messed around with some flavor combinations, trying to find something that really hit the spot.  We added some espresso to the mix, because we liked the acidic with the whiskey, and then went about creating some cupcakes.

When the cakes came out our kitchen smelled like a man cave...strong coffee, whiskey, lots of chocolate.  It was a pretty fantastic smell.  Now we needed a great icing to go with it.

We believe that icings are the best part of any cake/cupcake combo. It's a make or break deal in our opinion.  Icings should not be flat and tasteless, they should be full of flavor, rich and creamy, and make you want to lick the bowl clean.  We hate when a promising looking cake ends up being dull because the icing isn't any good.  It's SUCH a disappointment.

This order was no different, the icing had to be pretty unreal.  So we took some whisky, and some melted dark chocolate, some butter and cream cheese and whipping cream, and set out to create a masterpiece. 

As we said in the beginning of this post, there's very little anymore that absolutely floors us anymore when it comes to baking.  This whisky icing...holy crap was it a show stopper.

The best part about these cupcakes was that they ended up going to a good friend for his 30th birthday.  It doesn't get much better heading to a party with some cupcakes you made knowing they're about to rock everyone's world.  Sharing in the party is half the fun in our opinion!!

So happy 30th to our good friend John.  Nothing says "manly cupcakes to celebrate the last few days in your 20s" like chocolate whiskey cupcakes!

August Living

IT'S AUGUST!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

We're sorry for all you haters out there, but August is our favorite month of the year!  Besides it being our birth month (and who doesn't love their birth month??!!?!) it's also,  in our opinion, the best summer month out there.  It seems like all sorts of fun things happen in August.  Family vacations, bonfires, early football games, pool parties....did we mention vacation??  Because we're going on vacation in less than 2 weeks, and we absolutely cannot wait!

We have one last order this weekend, and then we're peacing out for a 14 day hiatus until we're back with some more orders in late August/early September.  In that two week span we will:

1. Head to the beach with our favorite sister for some sun and surf (and boys!  Lots of boys.)
2. Attend our first ever Backstreet Boys/Jesse McCartney/DJ Pauly D concert in Cleveland.  Don't be jealous, even though we know you are.
3. Head out to a first place Buccos game.  We love baseball games in general, but heading out to a Buccos game right now...it's absolutely electric
4. Try out a few ideas we have for some new cupcake flavors.  Fall is coming...is it too early to start investing in some pumpkin?
5. Watch lots of awful television that we haven't had time to catch up on.

Even though this is a job we love (and we mean LOVE!), we still like to take some time off every once in awhile to sort of relax, refocus, and get all our ducks back in a row.  Whenever we've taken some time off in the past we've come back chomping at the bit to get back in the kitchen...that's always a good sign that you're doing something you love.  Most people don't like returning to their jobs after vacation, and to be honest, if someone wanted to pay us to never work again, we'd be fine with that too.  But coming back from vacation and heading back into the kitchen...we can't wait!

It's been a tremendously busy few weeks, and we've been honored and humbled by all the love, support, and (maybe most importantly) orders you guys have sent our way these past few weeks.  Birthdays (lots of birthdays!) weddings, baby showers, we have seen just about everything under the sun these past few weeks.  And we love it!  It's great to watch as our business slowly starts to grow through recommendations from others who have sampled some of our previous tastes.

Now the only question remains...who's going to bake us a birthday cake??

Have a fabulous weekend, guys.  Let's go Bucs!