Owl cake

My friend, Jin, had a birthday in December. Now that it is February, I thought it was an appropriate time to post a photo of the mini-cake I made for her. Jin loves two things: me and owls. I can't tell which one she adores more just yet, but I'm thinking it's me.

H.B. WCG! (Happy birthday WCG!)

Not my best piping work, but I was pretty pleased with the owl itself. I found the idea here, but used a 4 in. brownie rather than a cupcake, and also split a non-creamed half of an Oreo to make little ears. I think the original tutorial calls for ganache, but chocolate frosting worked fine.

I wanted to write an owl joke, or maybe an owl-related pun here, but I just couldn't do it. I would have to punch myself in the face if I did.

Chocolate cake x 2

I recently posted about a chocolate cake recipe that I modified to be butter/oil free. I frosted with an easy peanut butter frosting that I found on allrecipes.com. It was a nice cake, but it wasn't *bam-doodily* fantastic, so I'm not sharing that recipe. (Although it had a dark chocolate flavor, it was kind of dry.) Do check out the pb frosting recipe though!

Later that week, I made some chocolate cupcakes for a friend's birthday, and used PIONEER WOMAN'S CHOCOLATE SHEET CAKE recipe. Instead of making it fully free of butter, I substituted half of the fat for mashed bananas, and the result was moist, chocolate-y, and bladow, ALL up in your face.* Please please please try this recipe today. My family and friends loved it at half fat level, so I'm guessing that a full butter batch can only be abso-freaking-lutely incredible.

  I love you too, my little lovecakes.

I did not use PW's frosting, but half ass(embl)ed my own. Combine: 1 can cream cheese frosting, softened cream cheese (I used neufchatel), baker's cocoa, confectioner's sugar, room temp. milk, vanilla extract, and dash of cinnamon. All of those amounts will vary by your taste and texture preferences, so just add a little bit at a time, and then whip it until light and fluffy.

Found these little star shaped sprinkles at Fred Meyer.

 Candy letters also from Freddie's.

* Translation: It was delicious.