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!

Better late than never

Over Thanksgiving, I was excited to actually get some time to bake. I have had almost no time to bake throughout this quarter, so I took full advantage of the few days off of school to make some tasty treats. However, I have been so busy with my finals that I have not had time to blog about them until now (and that's just because I'm avoiding my homework). This post is a little late, but I hope you will still enjoy it!

The first dessert that I baked was sweet potato cupcakes with burnt marshmallows on top. This recipe was really easy (surprising, since it was Martha Stewart's recipe) and came out really well.
The sweet potatoes caused the cupcakes to be really moist and the burnt marshmallows provided a really yummy substitute for frosting!

Apparently, the cupcakes were so good that Tucker couldn't resist stealing one for himself!

The second dessert that I made for Thanksgiving actually came from the Cooking Light magazine! It was a cranberry tart with meringue topping. It turned out so rich that it's hard to believe that it could qualify as "light."
The directions had me use shortening in the crust, which I don't usually do. It created a really delicious, flaky crust! The cranberry curd had a very strong taste, so I added a lot of meringue to balance it out. Overall, it was very delicious and [relatively] healthy!
Enjoy!

Cupcakes for kids and grown ups too!

This week I decided to make two different types of cupcakes: one for adults and one for kids (or in this case, my sister).

Adult Cupcake:

For these adult cupcakes, I got to try out two different techniques for the first time: booze-infused cupcakes and two-tone frosting. I wanted to make some kind of fruity cupcakes, and when I remembered that we had some fruity alcohol I decided that I had the perfect idea: pomegranate cosmopolitan cupcakes! Well, I couldn't find a recipe that I was happy with, so I created my own. I knew that I wanted to use pomegranate, lime, and orange flavors, so I decided to do pomegranate cupcakes (infused with smirnoff pomegranate martini and POM juice) topped with limeade and an orange triple sec buttercream frosting.

They didn't come out nearly as boozy as they sound, but they did turn out to be deliciously tart and sweet! For the triple sec frosting, I decided to do a pink-orange swirl to represent the two flavors. Here are some pictures!

Kid Cupcakes:

While these are kid cupcakes, they were actually requested by my sister. These are not my creation, but I was very excited to try out the recipe (not to mention my kitchen torch)! These are smores cupcakes: graham flavored cupcakes filled and topped with chocolate ganache and topped with a marshmallow meringue, lightly browned (in some cases, not so lightly). Well, they turned out pretty well, but Martha Stewart led me to believe that the marshmallow topping would pipe out into graceful swirls. About two minutes after piping, I turned around to find the marshmallow melting all over the cupcake! I don't know if it was the humidity, or if it was the recipe, but something tells me that that marshmallow was never going to stay up... so we got a little creative and made a number of marshmallow variations. I have to say, using the kitchen torch was my favorite part of the whole recipe!

Here's a picture of the torch in action:
...the beautiful marshmallow peak:
Strawberry marshmallow variation:
A variety of smores cupcakes:
Enjoy!