When I first saw the Babycakes cake pop maker, I was SOOOO excited. I didn’t even think twice about buying it. A super easy way to make cake balls without having to use frosting and basically skipping all the hard steps? Yes please! I was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to make a million cake balls.

Along came Halloween, and the daunting task of baking for 130 coworkers. Sounded like the perfect opportunity to break out the cake pop maker.  Jennie was manning the machine while I mixed batch two of the pumpkin cake mix. The first batch came out perfectly. We filled each slot with 1 tablespoon of batter, and baked for 4 minutes. We got a dozen beautiful little cake balls baked to perfection.

Batch two took a turn for the way worse, and was burned to a crisp in only 1 minute, including enough smoke to set off a detector (thankfully it didn’t). Jennie had decided against re-oiling the pan (for better or worse), and sadly scorched our second dozen. We blamed the instant burning on that, and dived back in.

We re-oiled, let the pan cool a bit, and then attempted batch three. It worked! 4 minutes later, we had cake balls again. Then disaster struck. The cake pop maker wouldn’t turn on anymore! We tried every outlet in the kitchen, we tried letting it cool and then re-plugging it in. Nothing worked. Jennie and I went into panic mode for a second, and then remembered we could still make traditional cake balls. We threw the remaining batter into three pans and stuck them in the oven. Ellen happened to have a mini muffin tin that was similar in shape to the cake pop maker. They came out a bit flat on top, but we just turned those into Frankensteins. Problem solved!

The rest of the batter was baked and mixed with frosting. It all worked out and it all tasted delicious. Sadly, I will be returning the cake pop maker. I like my traditional cake ball method when all is said and done. It may be extra work, but it is well worth it for a tried and true dessert. The cake balls just weren’t quite as tasty without that little bit of frosting, and were harder to get to stick to the lollipop sticks without that extra moisture.

My other new toy is the decorating wizard frosting pen. Jennie was terrified of it, but I loved it. The cream cheese frosting we had made was a bit goopy (but delicious) which I think complicated things slightly for us.

The frosting pen comes with 5 tips and a filler for putting jelly in the center of cupcakes. I’m excited to delve into that, but for this adventure, we really just needed to make some flowers and some leaves. Getting the frosting into the device was the hardest part. I ended up having Jennie hold the frosting cartridge and slowly spooning about three-fourths inside, and about one-fourth on Jennie. There is no way to lock the decorating tip in place, which posed a problem when attaching the tip to the container with the frosting. After a little trial and error, I managed to get it on, but not very securely. As we were frosting, there was a bit of frosting coming thought the cracks. Not enough to be a problem, just a nuisance.

In order to frost, you push a little lever down. It has a slow speed and a fast speed, but the slow speed was so fast, we pretty much stuck to that. Pressing down slightly reverses the frosting back into the cartridge, which was a helpful tip. Everything was coming out fine, perhaps a little fast, but we were working it out. The most challenging part was stopping the flow of frosting when you wanted it to without ruining the design just created. I realized at the very end you had to ease up on the lever about 3 seconds before you wanted to finish, allowing a bit more frosting to come out, but not leaving you with frosting hanging or dripping onto your cake. The process was very messy, especially considering we were using three different colors of frosting, and switching back and forth between them. It takes a bit of practice, but I enjoyed the frosting pen, and was very pleased with how the cake came out. Practice makes better!

This month, Rebecca and I decided we would make pumpkin cake balls for our coworkers and our work Halloween party! Emeril seemed to have a pretty great pumpkin cake recipe, so we used his for the cake:

• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick, or 8 tablespoons, unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

We were going to use Rebecca’s cake ball maker (see her post for why this wasn’t such a great idea) and then it broke, so we ended up going the old fashion way of mixing cake with frosting. Which, in the end, was better because the ones without frosting wouldn’t stick on the lollipop sticks as well. It also should be noted that we did this recipe…multiplied by seven.

Sift your cake flour. Rebecca, Corelyn, and I tend to be against sifting because it takes time and is generally annoying, but there can be something said for doing it, and so Rebecca begrudgingly did so.

Mix together your pumpkin and your spices. Yum. Resist the urge to just eat that alone.

Put your eggs and sugar together. Then add your eggs, and cream (adding one at a time.)

I must say, on the night we made the cakes Rebecca did much of the work while I video chatted with Jeff and Corelyn about the blog. Whoops! But the show must go on, and so Rebecca kept on baking.

Add your pumpkin spice mix to your wet ingredients, alternating with the flour.

Attempt to use your cake ball maker to make said cake balls.

Then it breaks, so you should switch to cake pans.

Follow the baking instructions Emeril sets out.

Now, take a break. Preferably of a few days, like we did. Cake-making multiplied by seven tires you out! Or, you can do it all in one night, but keep in mind decorating can take a bit…if you’re getting creative!

Refreshed from a few nights, we were back at the cake balls. We even invited a bunch of friends over to make sure that we weren’t decorating until three am. Only midnight! Crumble your cake, and add frosting. Mix it well, then form into balls. At this point, you’re going to want to freeze them for about twenty minutes. Then, stick them with a lollipop stick and get decorating!

We used brown, white, purple, green, and orange chocolate melts to decorate our cake balls!

We used cake pens to decorate some of our cake balls, but they didn’t write on the chocolate melts so well.

Mummies, with sprinkles for eyes.

Werewolves. Can you tell what type of sprinkles we had? Moon and stars, and dinosaurs. That’s right.

Mummies. Pirate ghosts. The usual.

Ellen made this Jack cake ball, working off her scarf.

In the fridge, with the purple monsters and pumpkins alike.

This one reminded me immediately of the clown vehicle from Mario.

Anyone? I didn’t even MEAN it.

At the end of a long night. Thanks to Lisa, Ellen, Jen, and Aaron for helping us decorate!

We’re starting a new series here at Garlic, My Soul called Throwback Fridays. We’d like to take this time out of your TGIF happy dance to look back at what the ladies of Garlic, My Soul were doing this time last year. Two years ago. And even further back. Since transitioning to a bi-coastal blogging operation, the truth is we miss each other a lot, and that has us feeling nostalgic.

Jennie and I gazing into the past. Also, the mountains of California.

In that spirit of nostalgia, this is a great time of year to think about where we started. In 2008, three years ago today(ish), Jennie and I were just getting to know each other and starting to realize we just might be each other’s new favorite people. I distinctly remember the first time we met, at a bar trivia night, after which some friends returned to somebody’s apartment to play Rock Band. Unsurprisingly, we bonded over our need to escape to the kitchen.

Fast forward to late October of 2009. Jennie and I were upstairs/downstairs neighbors thoroughly enjoying our new culinary partnership.

On Sunday mornings, we ate a lot of fried egg sandwiches and drank a lot of coffee…

We spent a lot of time at the glorious Hollywood Farmer’s Market.

We ate a LOT of brussel sprouts.

We honestly went a little brussel sprout crazy…

This was an era when we still took a lot of pictures of ourselves in the kitchen. Before we learned to focus on the food, not our mangy mugs.

And in October of 2009, we were taking full advantage of the L.A. weather and hosting barbecues in the park. Here we are burning some marshmallows to gooey perfection.

Fast forward to this time last year. October 2010. This particular week was a busy one in 2010. We’d recently discovered we had 38 Pioneer Woman recipes left in the Pioneer Woman Challenge of 2010, and only 11 weeks left in which to cook. Yikes! We were in lock-down mode, averaging 2.5 (completely made up number) cooking days per week.

Out of this madness came the great Buttermilk Fried Chicken incident. (Step 1. Soak the chicken in buttermilk overnight. Oops.)

Our zealous commitment to the Pioneer Woman Challenge cooking schedule also led us to the discovery that Pioneer Woman breakfasts are all you need to eat. Ever. Especially if you make three breakfasts all at once and serve them to hungry friends.

Especially the Pioneer Woman’s breakfast burritos.

And the French Breakfast Puffs.

Pioneer Woman breakfast. Loved by zombies, the world over.

Of course this week we celebrated Cricket’s birthday with a delicious Milky Way Cake, which means at this time last year we made what kind of the birthday cake for Cricket???

…the PW’s Chocolate Sheet Cake. Naturally. In our frenzied state, Pioneer Woman was the only choice. We don’t think Cricket minded.

There you have it folks. Octobers with Garlic, My Soul over the years. Take a minute to think about what you were cooking and eating on this day one year ago, two years ago, or go even further back! I bet it will get you thinking about food in a whole new way!

Add as many chocolate chips as your heart desires. Mine desired a whole bag of dark chocolate chips.

Drop the cookies into tablespoons on your cookie sheets. I happen to have a wonderful cookie scooper that made these nice little cookie balls. I could have just eaten that and been totally happy, but I sampled, then decided to actually bake them.

Bake cookies for 10 mins. They will be soft, slighly undercooked, and delicious. If you want slightly crispier cookies, you can bake for more like 12 mins. Let cool and enjoy. Or if you can’t wait that long, just enjoy!

Last week we had a baby shower for a coworker that will hopefully be having her baby today! In honor the baby’s arrival, here’s the cake.

It’s a red velvet cake recipe, which Rebecca (in a moment of genius) decided we should dye blue. I must confess I didn’t think it would work, but in the end it was a lovely dark blue(ish green) color!

Recipe, one that Rebecca adapted:

3 1/3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs, 2 egg yolks, at room temperature
6 tablespoons red food coloring (or blue, if that’s what you’re in the mood for!)
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

First, sift your flour.

Take your sugar.

And put it with your buttah.

Cream together. You can let your mixer go for five minutes. It’ll seem like forever, but definitely makes your sugar/butter light and fluffy.

Then add your eggs, one at a time.

Meanwhile stir your salt into your buttermilk.

And whisk it.

Beautiful. Time to get messy. Time to get blue. Time to do the dirty work. Time to…you get the idea.

Put your blue food coloring in a bowl with your cocoa and your vanilla. Whisk it, and add it to your bowl.

Now, this is what you have going on. You’re going to add your flour and your buttermilk, alternating. Don’t worry, the baking soda comes later. You didn’t forget it. Pat yourself on the back for not forgetting.

Blue, blue, blue. Nice work.

Here comes the science experiment. Put the apple cider vinegar and the baking soda in a bowl. Stir. It’ll fizz and make a really satisfying noise. Delightful!

Add it to the batter.

Mix well, and put into your greased, floured, and parchment paper lined cake pans.

Bake for about an hour in the oven at 350, rotating once half way through, checking at 30 minutes and 45 minutes to see if it’s done!

Meanwhile make frosting. No real recipe here – powdered sugar, butter, some vanilla.

After your cakes cool completely, ice away!

Try not to knock part of the cake off, which is what I did. Rebecca had to ice a broken cake, and she did so beautifully, I might add.

Decoration time! Can you tell what these will be? We used food coloring to dye our white frosting into a few colors…

There you have it! A baby shower cake.

Special thanks to Rebecca for providing the recipes, patience, half the photos, half the icing job, most of the flowers, the leaves, the icing gun, and basically living at my house last week.

Over, out.