Such exciting events!

One of my favorite websites is Cakewrecks.com It's hilarious. It's a website that tells the stories of cakes-gone-wrong. It's all in good fun and it's an awesome site.

The author/editor of the site, Jen, has gotten a book deal and she is on a book signing tour. This past weekend she and her husband were in Dallas for the signing. Specifically in Plano! Woohoo!

I made plans to attend because that is fun...and I wanted to support the site.

At each stop they hold a cake wreck replica contest, aka wreckplica contest, and I knew I HAD to enter. I went thru the pictures and stories of some of the "classic wrecks" and choose a delightfully horrible CCC.

MY wreckplica turned out very similar (as it was supposed to)


Jen, and some of the professional bakers she had on hand, picked out 3 of the wrecks as the winners. Then the 1st place winner is chosen by popular "clap" vote.

My cake wreckplica was chosen as one of the top 3 winners. Popular vote selected one of the other 3 as the 1st place winner but I was the 1st runner up!

It was fun making such a terrible cake. It was fun winning and I got a hand crafted carrot jockey necklace as my prize!

My cake wreckplica was gluten free and vegan.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/10/day-tour-stood-still.html

burgers

If the people at Kinnikinnick don't already know it, they need to be told: I am their number one fan. Without a doubt.

After years of eating gluten free, I've finally had a gluten free bread that is GOOD!!!

At my local Kroger, I've been eyeballing the Kinnikinnick Tapioca Rice Hamburger buns but have had such a hard time finding gluten free vegetarian burgers that I've not bought them...till now. Amy's has started making a gluten free vegan burger that my local Kroger also started carrying and I bought it along with the Kinnikinnick's hamburger buns.

Got home and heated them both up and made myself an old-fashioned cheese burger!

SO GOOD!!!

The buns come uncut.


But once defrosted and cut open are filled with beautiful air-pockets, often missing from GF bread products. (there's my vegan-patty with cheese and mustard waiting to be placed on the bun).


a cheese burger like none I've ever had! I think it's my FIRST gluten free vegetarian burger and I really liked it!

Vegan cupcakes

For today's festivities (going to a friends house for swimming and fireworks-watching) I decided to bring cupcakes. Big surprise, right?



I used the Vegan recipe I found online a while back and modified it for Gluten Free.

This is the recipe I used:
1 1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour (same amt of regular flour if not GF)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon Xanthan Gum (omit if not GF)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 cup ice cold water (must be ice cold for proper reactions to take place)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons lemon juice (does not taste lemon-y, but gives proper acidity for baking soda to react with)

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Sift flour, sugar, soda, salt and Xanthan Gum together in a bowl until very light and airy..about 3 times.

In a separate container combine oil, cold water and vanilla.

Add wet to dry (except lemon juice) and stir until well mixed.

Then add the lemon juice and stir quickly pour into prepared pan (or muffin cups)

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until cake tests done with toothpick (or 14-17 for cupcakes).

It rises extremely well and is light, fluffy, moist and rich at the same time.

Makes 12-14 cupcakes and they are really really good.

Then I filled them with Chocolate Bavarian Cream and topped them with just a little simple buttercream frosting...just white as I didn't have enough to do red, white & blue.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Elana's Pantry has some amazing gluten free recipes and I recommend people try them!

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Preheat oven to 350.

2 1/2 cups Almond Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla

Mix all dry ingredients together. In separate bowl mix grapeseed oil, agave nectar and vanilla and stir. Pour into dry ingredients and stir until incorporated. Add chocolate chips.

Scoop onto prepared cookie sheet and flatten slightly.

Bake for 8-10 minutes at 350.


I made a couple changes to the cookies I made: 2 cups Almond flour and 1/2 cup white rice flour. Also I pressed the entire batch of cookie dough into an 8" square brownie pan to make a cookie cake...The dough rises a bit, and since I've not cut into the cookie cake yet, I'm not 100% sure the inside is cooked. I probably could have used a larger pan and spread the batter slightly thinner.

It smells wonderful and I love cookie cakes with the shell border. It tastes good, but the almond flour I used (Bob's Redmill Almond Meal/Flour) is definitely more of a MEAL than FLOUR...you can see the grainy almonds in the image and I think I'd prefer a more finely ground flour for this cookie.

60 cupcakes!

Cupcakes!!!

Who doesn't love cupcakes? Little cup sized cakes. So cute! Isn't everything that comes in a miniature cuter than it's larger counterpart?

Anyway, today's post is NOT gluten free, but these adorable cupcakes aren't for me. I accepted a gig baking and decorating cupcakes for someone's 30th birthday party. Which meant I needed to make a bunch of cupcakes and decorate them. 60 cupcakes to be exact.

12 Vegan cupcakes
24 chocolate cupcakes
24 vanilla cupcakes

The birthday girl told me she wanted them frosted with pink frosting and that she wanted to be able to tell the Vegan ones apart from the regular easily. And she said she wanted purple involved in the decorations. Other than that, she didn't care how I decorated them. The vegan ones have those adorable little white flowers on top and the rest have cute little purple flowers on top.

I'm excited to have a decorating gig already. Shh, don't tell her she is my first.