A Giddy Halloween: 2015

Happy Halloween everybody!

Now, I’m not dressing up this year because a) grad school and deciding to not have a job this semester = not that much time or money to make a costume, b) Halloween falling on a Saturday didn’t give me much of an incentive since I don’t get to wear it all day at school and c) this guy:

This is my first wee nephew! He was born on Oct 21st, 2015 at 6:21 p.m., and thus will remain known as McFly for the rest of his life. But yeah, his due date was Oct. 29th so I didn’t plan much in case he was born then or on Halloween.

NEXT YEAR, however, I plan on throwing a Halloween party at my last semester (I’ve decided to do my MA in 1 1/2 years instead of 1 year, I’ll explain later) and the best Halloween costume ever, especially since I’ve been skimping the last couple of years and literally just throwing something together.

Luckily, I was able to celebrate Halloween a little early with the kids I babysit with the gingerbread graveyard. What is the gingerbread graveyard? Three years ago I found a coffin cookie cutter and for a Halloween craft I made little gingerbread coffins for them to decorate. The following year, I got a cake board, grave stone molds, and a lot more candy to make a gingerbread graveyard. THIS year, since I would be 400 miles away at school, we wouldn’t be able to continue the tradition as usual.

So, taking inspiration from the Gravity Falls‘ episode “Summerween,” I decided to have Summerween with the kids! First, I had them make Jack-o-melons (their first Jack-o-lanterns):

And then we did more than just a gingerbread graveyard, we did a GINGERBREAD HAUNTED HOUSE!

Let me tell you how…fun…it was getting Halloween stuff in early August. Thankfully I still have the headstone and skeleton chocolate molds, as well as leftover Halloween sprinkles from last year. Candy corn is available year round, as well as gummy worms, Reese’s pieces, and black licorice. I went to Party City and picked up electric green suckers and candy sticks, and orange and black gum balls.  The old dirt is made from ground up graham crackers, while the new dirt is made from ground up chocolate Teddy grahams.

Now I don’t have a gingerbread house cutter (which I’m going to buy next time I’m at Michaels, since the Christmas stuff should be out), so I basically eye-balled it when I cut out the house pieces. I filled any gaps with icing and candy. Next time I’ll try to remember the technique of refrigerating the cut cookie dough before baking it to keep it from getting too puffy.

I wish I marked down which royal icing recipe I used, but there’s a bunch on the internet, and the good stuff is the stuff with egg whites in it. I also added some cocoa powder to the mix before adding black food coloring to make it look a nice deep black.

There were two things I needed but were unavailable to me: ghost peeps and candy Jack-o-Lanterns. Since the kids loved these so much, I decided to make my own. The pumpkins are made with Jack-o-lantern chocolate molds, but I was in a bit of a hurry and they didn’t come out as nicely as I wanted. A much bigger hit were the marshmallow ghosts. I used a marshmallow recipe from my Miette cookbook and cut out ghosts with a ghost cookie cutter. Even though they tasted good, they were a bit too floppy, so I’m going to give Alton Brown’s recipe a try to see if it’s a bit firmer.

Anyway, I’ll be baking cookies and cake and doing homework today, so I hope all of you have a happy Halloween!

A Very Giddy Baby Shower

So in the middle of an August heat wave, my mom and I threw a Classic Pooh themed baby shower for my little sister and future nephew. Here’s some pictures from that day!

The Giddy Owl Bakery: The Colin Cupcake

Man, I really dragged my feet with this one.

Ok so today we’re meeting Colin Creevey, the youngest, smallest, and worst dressed of the group. He’s also an asshole.

Everything about this guy screams asshole: from his stupid leather finger-less gloves to his Byte Me shirt to his cartoonishly oversized Hawaiian trunks to his permanent troll sneer. He’s my second favorite character in the game, and it’s hard for me to explain why because I usually don’t like jerk characters. He’s a jerk character done right.

Anyway, onto the cupcake! Know what’s hard-headed, a pain the ass the make, and goes with tropical trunks? Coconut! You can definitely get already prepared coconut, but I just LOVE the smell, taste, and texture of freshly grated coconut. Plus, cracking open a coconut to get its sweet meat sounds like an extended metaphor for romancing Colin!

So we’re making coconut cake for the cake portion, kicking it up a notch with lime curd to reflect Colin’s sourness, and top that off with toasted boiled icing. Yes, I said toasted. No, we’re not putting it in the oven, we’re using a culinary torch, because fire is fun.

A Very Giddy Mother’s Day

Made my mom French toast for breakfast followed by cucumber sandwiches and lemon almond scones (you need to buy this month’s issue for the recipe, sorry! But they came out really good. Just make sure everything is cold and stays cold until you pop it in the oven!) with black raspberry jam. All in all a pretty good Mother’s Day!

The Giddy Owl Bakery: The Randy Cupcake

Last month, I bought a new computer for my birthday present to myself. I downloaded Pango Dango‘s game demo, Lovely Little Thieves. I love it. I love it so much that I played until I got all of the different characters to want to explore the haunted house with me. What makes me even happier is that now I can take screenshots of the game and post them throughout these fan baking posts. So, who’s the next character I’m going to base a cupcake recipe on? Ra-Ra-Ra-Randy!

He’s Russell’s BFF and in the running for World’s Biggest Wastoid. Even though he initially appears as a big dumb stoner, he’s actually extremely empathetic and probably knows everyone better than they know themselves. He’s just so lovable, like a teddy bear–a giant, smelly, bong-toting teddy bear.

Today we’re making a cupcake that is so large that it will end all munchies as well as represent Randy’s favorite hobby. We’re basing the recipe off of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked Ice Cream, which includes the following flavors: vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream, fudge brownies, and cookie dough. So we’re going to make a chocolate cupcake with a chocolate chip cookie in the middle, put vanilla buttercream on top and stud it with brownie bits and homemade hot fudge sauce, and we’ll call it a Full Baked Cupcake!

Full Baked Cupcake!

Full…baked…

Let’s just get started JFC.

Birthday Blog Post

Yesterday was my birthday and I’ve taken the rest of the week off. You know what that means!

 

To celebrate, let’s make some Funfetti cupcakes!

Not from the box. Never from the box. Have you never met me?

The Giddy Owl Bakery: Pango Dango and the Russell Cupcake

Several months ago, a man named Jacob Chapman left Channel Awesome and put up a Kickstarter for the first game that he and his newly formed video game development company created, Pango Dango.

The game was called Lovely Little Thieves.

On that Kickstarter was a 3 hour long demo for the game.

That demo did not work on my laptop because it’s old as shit, so I watched a Let’s Play on youtube instead.

I was enamored.

I donated to the Kickstarter through my credit card but switched credit cards during the donation period and didn’t update my info because I thought my card was already charged but–

The point is that I loved the game, and I needed to make a fan-something of it. Fanfiction? Hell no, I’m bogged down with enough fanfiction. Fanart? Nah, I’ve never been very good at making fanart. Cosplay? I’m too cheap to go to conventions anymore. Still, I had to show my love of this game somehow, someway. Suddenly it hit me as I was watching an episode of Nerdy Nummies: fanbaking.

So welcome to The Giddy Owl Bakery’s first series of fanbaking cupcakes. First up: Russell.

Clearly I am the best at cropping pictures.