4th of July dessert galore

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For a second year in a row, a few local businesses organised a 4th of July party in Gibraltar. And for a second year in a row, Cupcakes & Unicorns had a small dessert stall. Picture plenty of oreos, marshmallows, brownies, NYC style cheesecake. Luckily, this year I was able to spend less time on decorations (since I managed to recycle some from last year, plus the awesome Whitney and Alan just came back from a US trip and brought some fantastic goodies, including my little top hat) and more time on baking. This is what it looked like:

I loved my tiny top hat!

I loved my tiny top hat!

We had following desserts for sale:
– Sugar cookies with a royal icing flad drawn on each
– Lush fudgy chocolate brownie (which also came in a) gluten-free and b) egg- and dairy-free version)
– Vanilla and oreo cake pops
– Red and blue whoopie pies
– NYC style oreo cheesecake (oreo base, as well as crushed oreos in the actual cheesecake)
– Boozy cupcakes (Guinness chocolate cake with Kahlua mascarpone frosting)
– Funky marshmallow skewers

Here are a few more pictures from the stall:

Unfortunately, it turned out the Miss Gibraltar 2015 beauty pageant appealed more to the local audience so not a lot of people came to the event. It was still good fun though, and the local Nazareth House received a donation of brownies, cookies and whoopie pies to give out to the less fortunate amongst ones. Also, mine and G’s colleagues and friends did not mind devouring any left overs.

Here’s to you, America. Hope you all there across the pond had a lovely 4th of July weekend.

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Whoopie pies – whoop whoop!

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Is it a cake? Is it a cookie? Is is a pie? It is all of the above! It’s also pretty close to pure awesomeness.

This weekend I had a play date with a puppy so I simply *had to* bake. Not for the puppy, of course, but for his owners, who refer to my baked goods as (and I quote): ‘little pieces of Heaven’. Looking for something simple, yet effective, I stumbled across Jemma’s newest recipe online – Whoopie Pie Smiles. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! May I say, they came out perfect and took some time to make but were very easy. Have a look yourself:


Personal remarks: I doubled the recipe which produced 36 discs or 18 Whoopie Pies. I think otherwise it produces too little and it’s not worth the effort! My recommendation is to print 2 pages with 6 identical circles and place these underneath your baking parchment in the tin. Then pipe on those circles. Or try and be SuperMan and pipe exactly the same circles without a pattern.

I also used the store-bought Marshmallow Fluff – do not recommend it. I am not sure if it was the heat or the humidity or simply the texture of the fluff, but while it looked perfect for the first 10 minutes or so, some of my smiles ‘drooled’ quite a lot, which is to say the frosting leaked out and also it didn’t hold well enough for me to stack them in a tupperware.

Lessons learned: Next time, I will definitely make the frosting myself. And I am not sure if I will go for marshmallow, I think peanut butter buttercream will taste incredible in those and will also hold better. And I may lose the teeth. While they look pretty awesome, it did take me a while to stick all those tiny mallows on.

I am at the airport travelling to Vienna as I type so there may be a few days of no baking and subsequently no posts, unless I stumble across a bakery worth a report from far lands. Bis bald!

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