chocolate batter and berry frosting... glaze

Chocolate and berries: probably the safest combination when you are baking for many eclectic tastes and/or for people you don't have a dessert flavor profile for.

1. Last day of Stat class.

At Mr. Fitz's request, Megan and I made desserts.  I cheated and used a Betty Crocker 97 cent box cake because I wanted to focus more on decorating (which turned out less than satisfactory).  However, I semi-homemade the frosting by mixing strawberry pie filling with Duff's buttercream frosting to make a strawberry frosting.

The concept: painted black cake with a silver dusted, fondant graduation cap on top (because black and silver are our school colors).

The roadblocks: too hot kitchen made it near impossible to work with fondant, and by the time I was done with that, I didn't have to the patience to dust the cake with silver.

The result:

I had a star shaped cookie cutter that worked a little better than peeling off a graduation cap from the countertop, and if you look closely, you can just barely see the sparkle of silver dust along the edge of the middle star.  Also, the black spray stuff was a tad more purple.  At least the frosting was successful.

But, it was still slowly devoured...

Thank goodness because I hate taking home food.

2. Pato's going away party.

Well, technically, I went with chocolate and berries because Lydia told me it was his favorite.  So it was very convenient that I still had leftover strawberry buttercream frosting, which I added fresh blackberries to for extra flair.  All I had to do was whip up a batter for chocolate cake (because I wasn't going to cheat again).  I still had 12 jumbo sized ice cream cones that I meant to use earlier for cake (I think I got the idea from a children's cook book), and I figured Pato would like the child-like-ness of eating cake out of an ice cream cone (I hate those kinds of cones, by the way, but waffle cones don't stand up on their own so...).  Anyways, I was running late so I had to frost them while they were still steaming, and the frosting resembled melted ice cream... mmm authenticity.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture in all my haste.

3. Mahreed's debt/Niel's get together.

It all began when my conversation with Mahreed turned into a deal involving cupcakes (forget why I owed him but I did)... Lucky for him, I still had leftover batter from Pato's treat and frosting from the Stat party (now with added blackberries). It was during this time that I realized I misplaced my 12 cup muffin/cupcake pan, a great tragedy if you ask me.  What am I supposed to do without a standard 12 cup muffin/cupcake pan?  Usually, in a situation where I find out a treasured possession has gone missing, I would kick and scream and blame, but I settled for using my mini cupcake pan, which left just a tad bit of batter left.  Again, I was in a hurry, so I frosted them while hot, rendering the frosting into a glaze.  Either way, the frosting was becoming a glaze anyways... after going from cold to warm so many times.

You would be happy to know Mahreed approved of my product.  I know I was.

4. Just for fun with Nancy and Lydia.

July 4th was creeping up and I had wanted to make an Independence Day-inspired dessert with red and blue berries and ideally, white frosting, but alas, I still had blackberry-strawberry "frosting" left, so I'd have to nix the white.  Anyways, I bought a jumbo 6-cup muffin/cupcake pan and managed to fill 2 cups with the remaining batter.  I only really needed one, so I let Lydia eat the other less perfect one.

I think she enjoyed it...?

I tried to be all fancy and decorate the plate with berries... and crushed graham crackers (they were just sitting there beside me... I felt the need to use them).

At night, I stuck two sparklers wrapped in plastic wrap (so as not to accidentally poison the cupcake or something) between the berries.

I love sparklers.