Today at work, we had a food festival and a bake-off contest. Since I've been getting into baking recently, I was, initially, super stoked about entering the contest…at least I was until I wasn't feeling so hot yesterday.
Even though I felt rather unmotivated (read: wanted to lay on the couch all night and cuddle with the puppy), I went ahead and baked another batch of those Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" cupcakes last night. As expected, I made a bit of a mess, but I had some fun, too.
I just love homemade frosting, don't you? I really want to learn and experiment with fancy icing decorations, but for now, the off-set spatula gets the icing on there juuuuust fine.
I wanted to decorate these cupcakes with buttercream frosting and the new decorating bags, tip, and coupler I bought the other day at Michael's, but alas…I ran out of confectioner's sugar. So, I decorated the cupcakes using a sparkly red tube-gel that I had in my pantry. I wrote peace signs, hearts, and a little text based on the team-motto of the program executive director. Sadly, the decorations looked much better in my head. lol. Good-looking or not, the cupcakes tasted great!
There were roughly seven entries and I know you're all disappointed to hear that I didn't win. Poo-ey!
However, I was happy to find out that my sweet teammate, June, won with her Almond Cheese tart – one layer of almond cake on the bottom…one layer of cheesecake on top. I have been trying to talk June into starting a food blog, but we'll just have to wait and see if she does.
As for the Food Festival I mentioned previously, we had quite the festival. Everyone signed up to bring various side dishes, desserts, and drinks. We even had turkey and ham! The turkey was home-cooked by a nice lady at work, and the Ham was from one of those Honey-Baked Ham type stores. Above is the "before"…
…and here is the "after." Can you believe how much food is still here!?
And let's end this post on a sweet note. I present to you the "dessert table" in all its glory. Yum!
What you really need to do is see if June will share her recipe — it looks yummy! We have our big annual potluck pigout in a few weeks — just before Christmas!
whoa!! that IS a ton of food!
Someday I'd like to do a decorating course… to see how it's all done…
wow !! everything looks delicious! what a fun event!
Oh my gosh – this is my kind of table – ALL desserts!! By the way, chocolate cupcakes are one of my favorite desserts and after seeing them a few times on here I have to tell you how delicious & pretty they look. Have you ever tried making them with a white creme filling like those Hostess brand kind? There is nothing like home made cupcakes. Good thing they don't have that contest at my job, I'd pass out from dessert overdose. LOLLL