Test Kitchen: Healthy Cookies

Goodmorning Everyone!!

I hope everyone is doing good. I'm doing great. Why? Because I love it when people give me a baking task and I complete it successfully! One of the girls at work likes to eat healthy. Or I should say healthier than most. She also goes to the gym, so she doesn't want to eat a Chocolate Chip Cookie and have all her work go to waste. So she asked me if I can bake her some low calorie-healthy cookies, because healthy doesn't mean no treats! I went through my books and did some research and then picked out a few recipes, and finally, I baked 2. One close to what the recipe said, and the other I kind of changed some things...many things.

The one I followed closer, came out like this:

These bad boys are only about 50-55 calories. So I named them "Low-Calorie Lemon Cookies." They have 1/2 quantity flour and 1/2 yellow cornmeal (the healthy ingredient, with many benefitial nutrients, which I read all about on this web site.

The other option, were, of course, Oatmeal Cookies. So I took one of my Oatmeal Cookie recipes and played around. This is what I came up with:

I was super excited to tell everyone about this version of my cookies, because they hold many healthy ingredients. Such as:
Whole Wheat flour instead of All-Purpose
Brown Sugar instead of Granulated Sugar
A bit of Honey
Oatmeal: helps lower cholesterol
Cranberries: lower the chance of getting urinary infections, and many other benefits especially in women
Dark Chocolate Chips: helps keep a healthy heart (as good as green tea and blueberries, because it comes from cocoa beans. I read all about it here if you are interested).

I took some of each cookie to my customer and I left them there for her to try. The other girls at the shop tried some, too and also, our neighbor.
Now I am about to bake another dozen of these, reaching the 14th dozen of cookies I baked in the last 7 days. I guess both these cookies should be added to my menu as "The Healthy Choice."

What do you think??

Red Velvet...Anything!

Hi Everyone!!
I hope you're all doing well. I'm doing great. I have a wonderful assignment I'm excited to talk about, but without pictures yet. So I'll just show you some Red Velvet pictures to go with the post :) A post with no pictures is no fun at all!!

So a girlie I know called me and asked if i can bake her some healthy cookies with low calories. So I came up with some ideas, found some recipes from my trusted books, and this weekend I am hitting the kitchen. I have 5 recipes I want to try, but I'm not sure I will bake them all. I mean...I will get stuck with dozens and dozens of cookies. I was thinking of maybe baking 2 of them, see how she likes them, and then try another 2, and then keep the 5th one for later? I guess we'll see :)
But don't you love this whole expiremental thing? I feel so much better if I'm doing it for a customer rather than just baking in the kitchen to try new things on my own (with my fiance as a test subject, who eats everything anyway!)

But anyways, who likes Red Velvet?? I remember the first time I ever say a Red Velvet recipe I was amazed. I mean...a RED CAKE?? I did give it a try.. it seems like forever ago. I wasn't selling my baked goods back then, I was only doing it for special occations. That's when people started telling me that what I baked was too yummy to go to waste.

This is my 25th Birthday Cake. The inside is a Red Velvet, and the frosting is a Marshmallow frosting I found online. Let me tell ya! Even though people loved it, I found that I had over baked the cake so it was a bit on the dry side, and the Marshmallow Frosting wasn't the greatest match. But i had some cousins visiting from England, and they tried this and LOVED IT! They even told me they found a bakery they go to just for this cake. Btw...the flowers are real. I didn't know where I could find sugarpaste to make sugar ones...speaking of, that's a whole different story, but the first thing I ever did in my life that has to do with confectionary, was the sugar paste roses! I must've been 5 or 6 years old.
What do you think? Not too shabby eih? It was the very first time EVER I had frosted anything!

2 Years after the above picture, I decided I wanted to give it a try to go a bit more pro on this whole baking thing. I made a pricelist, added some of my best recipes on there, downloaded a software that helps you price cakes, and started giving out my menus. I had a tasting event (paired with a birthday party) and my 2nd order was a Red Velvet Cake. Remember this one? That was a whole lot of chaos!

Then I baked one for my neighbor, of which a have a picture of what the inside looks like (but during the cutting of the cake, the picture wasn't all that great) Here it is.

And then, I baked some more Red Velvet Cakes :) But it doesn't stop there. We have all heart of Red Velvet Cupcakes (or most of us). I baked some of those, too. One time, I didn't have enough color, so they seemed like they stayed out in the sun and faded out.. I don't think I have a picture for that (like I'd post it!) Then some other time, I baked them...and I photographed them as if they were models on a catwalk!!

Don't they look pretty? I think they do :). And even though you see it's a Red Velvet on the Cupcake Liner, I had to cut it up so you can reeeeally see the inside.

You know what happened next, right? Well I couldn't take it to the customer like this! So I just had to eat it! (I actually only had 1/4 of it, my fiance the other 1/4 and we took the half to my brother-and-sister-in-law to-be (that's a long word!) so they can try it. Well the rest were for the order I had so I couldn't take them a whole one. It's ok, they understand :)

BUT, the most versatile Red Velvet anything I ever baked was...Red Velvet (drum roll please....) BROWNIES!!! I KNOW, RIGHT? So moist with Cream Cheese Frosting on top.. yumm!!! I baked these for my Valentine's Bake Sale, but I hadn't taken a picture before I put them out on the table. My aunt remembered these and ordered them for a meeting she was having, so I took the chance to photograph them. They are how you see them: moist on the inside, crispy on top, covered with Cream Cheese Frosting. AND, they are Brownies! So there's melted chocolate inside there!

This is it you guys. Many pretty pictures for you to look at until next time :)

Don't forget to like Fairy Cakes on Facebook, too.

Have a great day :!) -xoxo-

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Hello everyone!
I woke up this morning and I couldn't wait to tell you about my news!

It's been a while since I last posted any yummy cupcakes, so I decided I will share my NEW flavor with you. I have baked this before, but the thing is I was afraid to put it on the menu. Then a new customer calls, who found me through my Facebook Page, and asked for 3 flavors of Cupcakes, but nothing with chocolate...hm...no problem but most of my Cupcakes have some kind of chocolate something in them..!! Thinking to be done: Vanilla Cupcakes? Sure, a classic, we can put those in. Then no Chocolate Cupcakes, but how about Nutella Cupcakes? Well the cupcake is Chocolate with Nutella filling so again, no. How about Banana Cupcakes?? But I make them with a Chocolate Frosting so ...NO! I did the Red Velvet ones for her because you can barely tell there's cocoa in there. We should have a voting...the cocoa is only there for the color, right? I should do a blog post discussing Red Velvet! Then the other option was Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting but the customer did mention these were going to children in school so not a lot of children care for lemon-anything. So that's out.

You know what comes next...right? I had to put the missing flavor into play. I thought, who doesn't like crumbled cookies? ON TOP of their Frosting? Young ones or old ones? If I could, I'd smash the Cupcake into the Digestive Cookies (I'd use Graham Crackers if I lived in America but *sniff* we don't have those), only if it wasn't for destroying that beautiful swirl of the Frosting. I loooooove crust anything, so you know I love the idea of this Cupcake.

Am I keeping you in suspence? You want to see the picture, right? Ok ok here's the picture, we'll chat more below it.

See the strawberries at the bottom? And the crumbs on top? Ooooh Heaven!!! (...ok just don't tell my nutritionist I had one of these.. I will find a different excuse for not loosing all the weight I was supposed to...like an alien forced me to eat it or something?)

I did 2 Cupcake deliveries right after I finished assembling these...and then went on to a BBQ and took some with me to see what people think. I am getting to the part where I didn't clean the kitchen afterwards and now it's bugging me. So off I go to work, and then straight to the kitchen cleaning..and living room cleaning (that's where the picture taking took place).

Oh oh and one more thing...I had some time on my hands yesterday so I took some really nice pictures of the Cupcakes I baked for my new customer. I will be sharing soon because I am REALLY escited with the result! You'd think a professional photographer took the pictures. Can't wait to share :)