Baking fool

I've been baking quite a bit lately (I know - when have I not, right?) and I thought I'd share some of the results.

I got the chocolate letter idea from Pinterest.  Amazing!  An idea from Pinterest that I actually used!  Pinterest as something other than a giant Time Suck - that's a novel concept.

I melted some chocolate chips in a little ziploc bag, snipped the corner off and piped the chocolate on to a piece of parchment paper (I'm sure tin foil or plastic wrap would work as well).  I actually printed out a few fonts really large and put them under the parchment paper to use as a sort of template.  Put them in the fridge for a bit so they harden.

The letter cupcakes were made from leftover batter, frosting and chocolate letters I didn't end up using when I was making THIS cake.
 

It's another Congrats on Being a Doctor cake for Katie.  We had it two weekends ago when we had a big party for Dad's 65th birthday and Katie's graduation.

This is the cake I made for Dad's birthday - his request was for carrot cake with walnuts and raisins.

I also made carrot cupcakes without nuts and raisins.

I KNOW.  Cute, huh?  Thanks, Martha Stewart, for the marzipan carrot idea (buy premade marzipan at the store, tint it orange with Wilton gel food coloring, dill for the green tops, crushed chocolate cookies for the "dirt") and thanks to Jenni for helping frost the cupcakes and make the carrots.

But NO THANKS, Martha, for your carrot cake recipe.  Kind of bland.  I'm going back to my old tried and true, Gracia's carrot cake recipe.  It's primo.  I'll post it sometime.

 Last thought:  Parchment cupcake/muffin papers.  YES.  Wonderful invention.  I got mine at Hannaford - no more losing half your cupcake to the paper, then debating doing the classy scrape-the-rest-off-with-your-teeth move.