A good friend of mine left for the army yesterday. For the farewell party, I wanted to do something a little special. Originally, I wanted to make a cake, but after looking at ideas, I decided to do a thin mint cupcake. Being short on time, I did what most bakers would call "appalling". I used a box cake. guilty. Basically, I bought some box cakes and added peppermint extract to the batter. How much extract? Oh, I eyeballed maybe 2 teaspoons or so. Add about 2 teaspoons of extract to the frosting as well. If you like a strong flavor, feel free to add more extract.
I also made some red velvet cake pops with 2 different flavored "frostings". One was the normal green candy melt, the other was semi-sweet chocolate. I think I prefer the green candy melt. The recipe is the same as my previous post with cake pops.
Sometimes the cake pops crack on the outside. Remedy: Decorate with chocolate!
Lastly, my friend asked me to make him a pie, but instead of making 1 big pie, I decided to make apple pie empanadas so it's easier to serve and eat. I adapted Emeril's apple pie turnover recipe here. I bought some pie crusts from the market (can you tell how lazy I was today?) and made the filling. 400F for 19 minutes turned out to be a pretty good estimate for these guys.
All in all, it was a pretty successful baking day!