Zucchini Bread

A few days ago while I was making iced pumpkin cookies, my father-in-law suggested that I make zucchini bread with the shredded zucchini in the freezer. If I had known this home-grown zucchini from my grandmother's garden had been in the freezer, I would have made a loaf much sooner. I'm crazy for zucchini bread. I mean crazy. The first time I ever had zucchini bread was when I worked at Starbucks in 2006. A few days a week we would sample out some of our pastries to our customers, and of course we would sneak a few bites. One afternoon we were sampling my soon-to-be fix. After my first bite of zucchini bread I was hooked, and continued to have a slice every morning that I worked. Needless to say, the following week that I had ceased to work there, I naturally dropped five pounds.

So as soon as I had the chance, I took advantage of the lonely shreds of zucchini in our freezer to make my very first loaf of this beautiful concoction of veggies and grain. It is BEYOND delicious. The crumb topping is to die for. The crunchy, buttery sweet topping is mixed with chopped walnuts, adding a nutty flavor that complements the moist bread. I do wish, however, that I added an extra cup of zucchini.

Nonetheless, out of two loaves, only one remains. And to think they just came out of the oven an hour ago. Our household doesn't mess around.

Something New

A few weeks ago, I received an order for a pirate and princess themed birthday party. You wouldn't believe how excited I was to be able to do something different! Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy fulfilling orders for my regular desserts, but doing something new is such a fun breath of fresh air. It keeps me creative and keeps my passion for baking alive. So as you can imagine, I was beyond thrilled to make pirate and princess themed cupcakes.

My customer had sent me a few photos of what she really liked, and I used those as my inspiration. I have to admit, this was my first time working with MMF (marshmallow fondant). I have been wanting to play with MMF for months! But I have always been intimidated by it. Yes, intimidated by sugar.

To say that working with fondant was time consuming would be an understatement. But... it was fun! I felt like Picasso. Although it can be a little difficult to work with tiny pieces, overall it's not as hard as it seems! If you haven't played with MMF, I highly recommend just diving into it. You will mess up, get sugar everywhere and become frustrated. But you will ask yourself in the end why you haven't done it before!

And it tastes good with buttercream, too!

The princess cupcakes were really fun to make. And it was really simple! I piped the chocolate tiaras one by one onto parchment, and wrapped it around an appropriate sized bottle and placed it in the freezer for a few minutes. They came out super cute! Next time I might try royal icing so they don't melt as quickly, although it isn't as tasty. Maybe.

Overall, it was a fun weekend in the kitchen. Especially when it came to eating the left over vanilla bean cupcakes ;)

Tootles <3

Meet Toby

Even though this is a baking blog, I have to share some exciting news with you all.

For the past year, I have literally been begging my father-in-law for a dog. Whenever I had a question, he anticipated it had something to do with a wet nose and fur. I'm not sure why this time was different, but he said yes. Not even 24 hours later, Matt and I found our new fur baby.

This is Toby

 Toby is a 10 week old Yorkie and Maltese mix.

The name "Toby" means "God is good".

Very appropriate indeed.

(he loves frolicking through the grass, hence the hand to keep him still for photos!)

He beyond adorable. Our cats love him, and he loves them. Being  stern with him during training is hard- he runs off like a little fluffy bunny, ears flopping all over the place. Not squeezing him to death is not easy. I want everyone in the world to hug him and feel his cute fuzzy licky love, but I do realize this is probably not likely.