Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2009

As a belated follow-up to the Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2010 post, I’m dedicating this entry to the fruits of my labor circa December 2009.

To date, the Penguin Cupcakes I made last Christmas have been my favorite baking project, albeit the most laborious.  That means blog content will probably go downhill from here, but I promise to try my best not to let my readers down… all three of you.

The penguins themselves are Jordan Almonds strategically dipped in chocolate.  It was particularly difficult to get them dipped evenly because A) I had trouble finding the right balance of butter and chocolate to give the coating a thick and even consistency, and B) the almonds are ridiculously slippery so I kept dropping whole almonds in chocolate.  A full bag of chocolate chips, two sticks of butter, and two hours later, I caved and bought some Wilton melting chocolate which worked perfectly.  See penguin carnage in below photo.  If you look closely, you might be able to spot the one with the accidental chocolate pompadour.

Next, I made the beaks from tiny pieces of orange Swedish Fish and frosted them onto the face of the penguin.  My little flightless friends sat on a bank of white frosting topped with coconut “snow”, all on top of a homemade chocolate cupcake.  A miniature candy cane “North Pole” sign was posted behind them.  I got the recipe for the chocolate cupcakes as well as the inspiration for the decorations from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes.

In addition to the aforementioned fowl armada, I also made a plethora of cookies… specifically, one batch each of cranberry orange oatmeal, peanut butter kiss cookies, chocolate chip oatmeal, and pumpkin spice.  My girl, Martha, put out some nifty treat boxes that year that I picked up at Michael’s.