Notebook Experiments: Monster Cupcakes

I haven’t kept up on my Notebook Experiments from MomAdvice over the past two weeks….last week I was at BlogHer MEETING Amy from MomAdvice (yeah!) and the week before we were getting ready and having Brendan’s Half Birthday Party.  I’m going to go ahead and post my marvelous adventure in Monster Cupcake Making under Notebook Experiments because it WAS an experiment…and it IS Notebook worthy!! LOL

We decided when Brendan was born that we would celebrate half birthdays for him.  His birthday is Jan 20 and it sort of seems like a gyp to have to wait an entire year for both Christmas AND your birthday to come around.  Then Lilli came along and her birthday is December 26!!  So cake and special dinner on actual birthdays and parties 6 months later seems like a great idea.

This was Brendan’s 3.5 yr birthday…the first one he can actually remember and was able to really get excited about.  He has been saying for quite some time that he wants cupcakes for his birthday…so I let him pick out what kind he wanted.  My mom always made fabulous cakes for our birthdays and I want to do the same for my kids…but I’m really nervous about it.

Brendan spent literally DAYS looking through my cookbooks and trying to find what he wanted for his birthday and settled on some Monster Cupcakes he found in the Wilton Cupcake Fun book.

I decided to use these really cute Wilton Silly- Feet Silicone Baking Cupsand used a basic Wacky Cake recipe I got from my mom (see bottom of post for recipe).

I used the recipe for Buttercream frosting found in the Wilton book and got a decent sized batch of frosting.  To color my frosting I use a gel color instead of paste or liquid called Americolor Gel Food Coloring.  This is a little easier to color with and doesn’t have any kind of aftertaste that taints your frosting.

The directions in the book were fairly easy to follow.  I have only ever decorated with tips once before and it was a basket weave…so this was a giant first for me.  The biggest “trick” I learned on these cupcakes was using your finger, dipped in cornstarch, to “shape” the frosting.  To flatten the dots for eyes, etc you can pat them into shape.  With your finger dipped in cornstarch it doesn’t stick to the frosting.  I was concerned I was doing it wrong because I had these big white powdery splotches all over…but they absorb into the frosting after a few minutes and virtually disappear.

I only did 8 cupcakes like this as we were only expecting 8 kiddos…and it took me FOUR HOURS.  BUT…it was a lot of fun and totally worth it.

Wacky Cake (One Pan Cake)

3c. unbleached all-purpose flour

2c. sugar

6 tbsp. cocoa

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. vinegar

2 tsp. vanilla

10 tbsp. oil

2c. cold water

Sift together dry ingredients into a pan or bowl.  Scoop out 3 holes in the dry ingredients and liquids in one of each holes.  Pour cold water over entire thing.  Mix together and make sure sides of pan/bowl are scraped.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  **When I make cupcakes I bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Notebook Experiments: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl Sundae

Amy at MomAdvice puts together a notebook entry every Wednesday with fabulous ideas for activities, crafts and recipes you can do with your family…great ideas that she has rounded up around the blogosphere. She invites anyone who wants to try one of the projects out to blog it and link up on Thursday when she posts her own experiment.

I used to do this quite regularly… I enjoyed it so much and found it was a great way to inspire me with new ideas of activities to do with Brendan … I’m not sure why I drifted. With my new plan for blogging in place, I have scheduled this activity for me…and my family. A weekly Notebook Experiment. I hope you enjoy it…I hope you check out MomAdvice and see how absolutely wonderful her site is….and maybe you will join the Notebook Experiments, too!

This week I chose to try out The Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl Sundae from Michael Ruhlman’s blog. His son James inspired him to make these awesome ice cream bowls…and my son thanks him, profusely. This idea was posted in the June 24th edition of Amy’s Notebook.

The idea is simple enough…make cookie dough….mold into cups and bake. I do have fairly decent skills in the kitchen…but I had a little more trouble with this than I anticipated…in fact I don’t think we are quite done experimenting.

Michael Ruhlman gives an adapted cookie recipe that makes for a slightly lighter, crispier cookie…which should hold up well for the bowls. I say “should”.

We thoroughly enjoyed the cookie dough…I think the problem came when I loaded up the bowls…

The directions call for two different sizes of bowls..one slightly bigger than the other. We didn’t have this…all of our little bowls are the same size…so we forged ahead that way. We made one at a time so that we could learn from our mistakes without wasting all of the dough. Here is a Twitpic of Michael and James’ original crafting of the bowl.

Round 1: We put the cookie dough in the cup and squished the other down on top of it. The dough barely moved up the sides of the bowl…so I decided we needed more dough. Took the top bowl up…added more dough and re-squished. Stuck it in the oven, re-read the directions and noticed it said “Until dough begins to creep up the side of the bowl…rising will take care of the rest”…oops. As you can guess….between pulling the bowl out after the first squish…and adding too much dough…this bowl was a flop. (In shape only, hubby devoured it.)

Round 2: Added only 1/3 c. dough as prescribed. Very carefully centered the top bowl and squished it down…then placed it in the oven. This one also failed. It was still way too thin on one side and when I removed the top bowl most of the top part of the cookie bowl came with it on one side. Again, that didn’t prevent it from being eaten.

Round 3: Looked for something else to do the initial squish…wanted to thin out the bottom of the cookie bowl a little more and give us more dough to work with on the sides. Used a drinking glass to pre-squish…the centered the top bowl and gave it a good push. This version seemed to be doing much better…but at the end of the first cooking round was again much larger on one side.

I’m told my husband that I think perhaps our oven is slanted.

Round 4: Proceeded as in Round 3, but half way through first baking time turned the bowl 90 degrees in case my oven is, indeed, slanted. This worked a little better.

That is all I’ve gotten done so far. We had a fair amount of trouble getting the cookie bowls out of the glass bowls…but I attribute that to the top sides being so thin. In the comments on Michael’s original post I saw suggestions to bake the cookie then mold it over a muffin tin when you pull it out of the oven. I may give this version a spin next.

So why am I blogging my failed experiment? Because I believe that when the smile is this big….

You haven’t failed.

I’m going to keep trying at these. I see this as an awesome make ahead dessert for playdates or birthday parties. You can make up the bowls and fill them with ice cream…stick the whole thing in the freezer and pull it out when you are ready for them… you could serve them as is…with chocolate syrup…or make it into a sundae bar (be sure you are sending kids directly home afterwards if you plan to do this! LOL!)