Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio

White Chocolate Candy Corn Cookies

September 24, 2014 by Jenn

Target Canada can sometimes be a little slow on distribution of goods, especially when the shopper (me) is looking for Halloween and fall candies at the beginning of September. Wait a second- is that my problem, or Target’s? Sorry Target– I should have known better! It was too soon for shopping for fall things! The only candy that was out on the shelves while I was pre-season shopping was candy corn. I don’t like candy corn, but as you’ve just heard from my ramblings, I had no other choice for a fun cookie add-in. I couldn’t go without some sort of chocolate though, so to match the candy corn, white chocolate was in order. And yes, Target had that in stock.

Candy selection in Canada can sometimes be dismal. It’s not just a problem for one store, it’s a problem for all Canadian stores. I’m not sure if candy corn is available outside of North America, but if you can’t find it in your country, I understand! There are so many types of candies, candy bars, and chocolate bars that we can’t get here in Canada, so I have to travel over the border to get supplies for recipes. Luckily, I’m only an hour away from the nearest border crossing, so I’m able to do that. Unfortunately for some, that’s not an option. I get lots of questions about where to find certain treats or ingredients from countries around the world, and I’m usually not able to help with locating them. If there is a certain candy or ingredient that you need for a recipe, always try Googling it, and seeing if you can get it mailed to you. I also have lots of success with Amazon.

Since candy corn is made entirely of sugar, it is likely to melt in the heat of the oven, so try to keep the corn pieces away from the outside of the balls of cookie dough. You can place some on top of the cookie before putting them into the oven if you want the candy corn to be seen better.

The recipe is after the break! Enjoy!

Skittles Poke Cake with Skittles Buttercream- Collab with MyCupcakeAddiction!

September 20, 2014 by Jenn

I told you a couple of days ago that I had an awesome collab coming up . . . and to announce it properly, this is a Skittles collab with Elise from the YouTube channel My Cupcake Addiction! Whoop! She is a fellow YT baker, and creates amazing recipes for people to follow along with on her channel.

I haven’t had the fortune of getting to meet Elise in person yet, but through our email communications I can tell you that she is a very talented baker and decorator, a mom of two young boys, and is an amazingly hard worker! Her days must be SO busy! I’m so glad that she was able to take the time to work together with us, in order to put my flavoured cake into decorated form.

This cake truly tastes like Skittles. Boiling the Skittles down to a simple syrup preserves the flavour of the candy, but eliminates the chewiness that you might not be accustom to in a cake. I thought about using the syrup in the buttercream as well, but I figured that I would need so much of it to get a strong Skittles flavour that I would be stuck with a super runny icing. So, instead, I used my food processor and blended the Skittles up to a fine powder and substituted a portion of the icing sugar for the Skittles powder. It ended up working out perfectly, and tastes just like a Skittles cake should! Skittles are a fabulous addition to a plain vanilla cake.

Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe

September 17, 2014 by Jenn

Until our videos last fall (2013) I had never baked a real pie before. Sure, I had used a premade pie crust, and premade filling, and called it a pie, but looking back, it really wasn’t. My adventures last year with Apple Pie and Pumpkin Pie had given me the courage to knead more dough and attempt a cherry pie! You can find the pie crust recipe in the Apple Pie video.

The thing about cherry pie is that I don’t (well, didn’t) even like it! I don’t know what came over me when I decided that cherry would be the flavour I would go with this fall. What I soon learned though, is that I had never had good cherry pie. Oh, man, when I had my first bite of this pie, I was in love. I find that artificial cherry flavour is one of the worst flavours there are- it brings be back to cough syrup as a kid (and that is not a good thing). Using real cherries for this recipe is a must in my opinion. If you’re stuck you can use canned cherries in a pinch. but I take no blame for pies made with canned cherries!

The sweetness and tartness of cherries can very greatly, so with this recipe, you can adjust the amounts of lemon juice and sugar accordingly. If your cherries are really ripe and sweet, lessen the amount of sugar. If your cherries are sour, lessen the amount of lemon juice, or add additional sugar. The recipe is pretty flexible that way.

Skittles Cupcakes with Rainbow Icing

September 13, 2014 by Jenn

My kitchen counters have been covered with bags and bags of Skittles for many weeks now. I’ve been working on an upcoming special video with a fellow YouTuber involving Skittles, but that video is not set to go up until next week. I didn’t take the bags of Skittles off the counter after I filmed that video, as I knew I had to make more than ONE Skittles recipe!

So while I wait to show you the original idea for a Skittles recipe, I present to you a Skittles Cupcake recipe! For this recipe I start out with a basic vanilla cake batter and add in whole Skittles. You could also chop the Skittles up into smaller pieces, and that would work for this recipe too, basically it just depends on how much chewiness you want to add to your cupcake. The Skittles flavour is subtle, but you can definitely “taste the rainbow”! Ha, ha, ha . . . I’ve been waiting to use that line.

The rainbow icing is a beautiful way to decorate any flavour of cupcake. I thought the bright, vibrancy of the buttercream would pair perfectly with Skittles, because, as I mentioned already, the Skittles slogan is “Taste the Rainbow.” Striping the bag is the easiest way to achieve this effect. It is simple, and produces a beautiful, rainbow topping. Adding a couple of Skittles to the top for decoration, completes the Skittles theme of the cupcakes.

Pumpkin Spice Latte Cupcakes

September 10, 2014 by Jenn

I love coffee. Strike that- I love good coffee. There is not much worse than a bad cup of coffee. Well, maybe a bad piece of cake, or a bad cupcake- you know what I mean.

I love Starbucks coffee- usually. I can’t stomach the super strong menu options on their own, but when they’re mixed in with all sorts of flavours to make a cup of deliciousness, I’m in love. Starbucks has been an adult acquired taste of mine, but “so much is wasted on the youth”, it’s nice to have something to love as an adult!

The Pumpkin Spice Latte is something that Starbucks chose to release early this year, while it’s still summer, and as much as I tried to resist the pumpkin call until it was truly fall, I couldn’t do it! I’ve had far too many of them already this year.

Since I love PSL so much, I knew I had to make it into cupcake form! I know that not everyone likes coffee flavouring, so with this recipe, you can easily leave the espresso powder out, or if desired, you can add more to make the flavour stronger. The magic is in the pumpkin spice! Combining nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon gives the pumpkin it’s wonderfully fall-like flavouring. They are delicious!

Start out the most beautiful season properly, and get prepared with pumpkin and spices, so when we actually have the equinox, you’ll be ready to bake up a batch of fresh pumpkin spice latte cupcakes!

Rainbow Loom Cake

September 6, 2014 by Jenn

When I made my first rainbow loom bracelet, I proudly posted a picture on Instagram, showing off my ability to rainbow loom. I was quickly put in my place and was told I was not rainbow looming, but in fact was using a Cray-Z loom. I had NO idea what the comment meant. I had to research to learn that I was using a different brand from rainbow loom. How embarrassing! I was called out my a pre-teen.

In order to make this cake, I first had to research what in the world a Rainbow Loom even was. I had heard of it in passing, but in order to FULLY understand what I would be making, I went out and bought one. I was pretty much instantly addicted. Making these bracelets reminded me so much of making friendship bracelets from when I was younger. It took this old bird a while to figure out the directions and how to “pick” the elastics, but once that was out of the way, I was a bracelet making machine.

Once I had established the idea behind how to loom, I was ready to build it into a cake. Or so I thought! I tried a couple different versions of this, like a cupcake cake for example and it just wasn’t working for me. I went back to the drawing board . . . or looming board . . . and started again with a rectangle cake.

Making the elastics from ribbons of sour belts is a little bit time consuming, but easy. The most difficult part was being patient enough to not shove the candy directly into the flame of a candle to speed the process up. Trust me, it doesn’t! It just burns the candy and leaves the ends black. I tried using licorice ropes, and regular licorice to make the elastics, but I didn’t have any luck with them. What I also liked about the sour belts was the fact that they provided a number of different colours to work with.

Can you guess what kind of bracelet I was making?

Crayola Crayon Cake (Back to School) Collab with Socraftastic

September 2, 2014 by Jenn

It’s September 2, and we’re headed back to school! To celebrate, my friend Sarah from Socraftastic, and I decided to make a crayon collab! Over on Socraftastic, Sarah is going to show you how to make Crayon Lipstick! Here, I’m doing a Crayon Cake demonstration.

I got to meet Sarah a year ago when we were both chosen to participate in a creator program that YouTube was running at YouTube Space LA. She is one of the sweetest girls you’ll ever meet, and she is incredibly talented! I’m so lucky she let me join her in this Back To School video! Make sure you head over to her channel and subscriber to her.

The only “challenging” part of making this cake is getting the correct colours, and the piping of straight lines. I had to do a lot of straightening once we were done filming! I have to get better at piping on an angle that the camera demands. That’s a behind the scenes secret you’ve just been told!

To get the correct colours of the Crayola box, I had to go and get a box of crayons to be my subject. You’d think a kindergarten teacher would have crayons in all corners of her house, but not me! In my opinion, there is not a perfect science to matching colours. Along the way, you start to learn what colour makes what, but it’s mostly a lot of experimentation. To match the orangey yellow buttercream of the Crayola box, I used mostly yellow gel paste, and a few drops of orange gel paste until the colour was a match against the box. To make the dark green, I used regular green gel paste, and added drops of black until I had the dark colour. You could get away with making yours with a bit less black than I did though, as it looks really dark against the yellow contrast.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: back to school, back to school cake, bts, crayola cake, crayola crayons, crayon, crayon cake

CONTEST CLOSED 500K Subscriber Contest- Baking Kit Giveaway!

August 31, 2014 by Jenn

We recently passed 500 thousand subscribers on our YouTube channel, and I am completely humbled and honoured that we accomplished this! Paul and I work alone in our kitchen, only a team of two people. We come up with ideas, film, edit, and upload the videos all on our own. Without any help along the way, we have relied on our YouTube subscribers to carry us along and become successful online. It has been an amazing journey, and my sights are set on 500K more!!

To thank our subscribers, I went shopping on a weekend trip to Spokane. I was in my happy place getting to buy all of these fun cake supplies! I chose some of my favourite baking tools that I use everyday while making cakes and cupcakes.

Included in the giveaway are the following prizes:

Round baking pan (set of four pans)
Fondant roller
1M icing tip
24 piping bags
piping bag elastic ties
300 cupcake liners
Cake spatula
Deluxe decorating kit (offset spatula, tips, coupler, icing bags)
8 Americolor gel paste colours
Cake Turntable

This contest is open worldwide to subscribers of Cookies Cupcakes and Cardio’s YouTube channel.

Please leave a comment regarding what you will make first if you win this baking kit.

You must leave a valid email address and the winner will be contacted on September 30, 2014! The winner will have 24 hours to contact us with a mailing address, or we will choose another winner. The winner will be chosen using random draw.

Good luck to all, and THANK YOU for being subscribers!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 500K, baking contest, baking giveaway, contest, giveaway, giveaway contest, subscriber contest, subscriber giveaway, subscribers, thank you, youtube contest, youtube subscribers