Valentine's Party and Cherry Chocolate Cake!

1. Valentine's Party

Two weekends ago, my roommates and I decided to throw a party for Valentine's day. We had Valentine's drinks and Valentine's decorations, so I decided to make Valentine's cupcakes. I wanted something that would embrace the pink and red of the holiday, so I whipped up some strawberry cupcakes. These cupcakes are a basic white cake filled with strawberry compote and topped with the best strawberry frosting.

Here's a close-up of the filling:
I did two designs for the frosting: Candy hearts...

...And Heart Tattoos

2. Cherry Chocolate Cake

Last weekend I was home relaxing and realized that I haven't made an actual cake in a while, so I decided to make one! I have been trying to find a really good chocolate cake recipe for a long time, and I've heard that beets make chocolate cake really moist and rich, so I tried out a chocolate beet cake recipe. I wanted to mimic a black forest cake, so I did a dark chocolate beet cake with cherry filling and whipped cream cheese frosting. While the cake did turn out to be really yummy, I am most impressed with how pretty it looked! Here are the layers:

Cake and Cherry Filling:

Second Layer of Cake:

Frosting and Maraschino Cherries:

Enjoy!

Marshmallow Mermaid Pie

The other day, I was watching the movie Waitress. Throughout the movie, the main character, Jenna, makes a bunch of really creative, delicious looking pies. The one that always sounds the most amazing to me is her Marshmallow Mermaid Pie. Well, I haven't baked in a while, so I decided that that pie would be the perfect recipe to try out. However, when I looked it up, I couldn't find a recipe that really seemed as amazing as the one in the movie, so I came up with my own. The end result has to be one of the sweetest things I have ever tasted!

1. Crust- vanilla Oreo (creams in!)

2. Filling #1- crushed pineapple and maraschino cherries

3. Filling #2- a combination of a lot of different sweet ingredients, but the end result is really creamy with a cream cheese-marshmallow flavor

4. Multi-colored/flavored mini marshmallows

This ended up being one of my favorite things that I have ever made, and is definitely the sweetest!

Enjoy!

Christmas Surprise

For Christmas this year, I decided to go with a Christmas classic: red velvet cake. To put a fun spin on the classic, I decided to make the cake into red and green cake balls. Half were white chocolate and the other half (because I ran out of white chocolate) were bittersweet chocolate.

For my big present this year, my parents got me a KITCHENAID MIXER!! It is adorable! I can't wait to bake with it! No more hand mixing for me!

Enjoy!