Wednesday, August 12, 2009

EatSmart Kitchen Scales


Sometimes it really pays to visit other people's blogs. This was the case a few days ago when I commented on a post made by Julia at Dozen Flours. It was the last day of her giveaway, but I wanted to comment anyway on her Upside Down Sweet Cherry Cake, because I am insanely attracted to cherry desserts. She was also giving away the cookbook that contains the recipe, Rustic Fruit Desserts, and kitchen scales from EatSmart Products. So I commented and promptly forgot about it. The next day she notified me that I had won the kitchen scales!

Later I was contacted by EatSmart's Vice President, William Geronimo, who congratulated me and asked me which color I wanted! So not only did I win, but I also got to choose the color--and naturally I chose red to go with my other kitchen appliances.


I bookmarked EatSmart's website, which features high quality digital kitchen and bathroom scales and a digital food and nutrient calculator with a database of the nutrional values of over 1000 foods! EatSmart is very high on customer service, and that always gets my attention.

In my business it is important to bake products that are consistent in size and weight. To accomplish this I weigh cupcakes and muffins prior to baking them. I had been weighing my jumbo muffins on our postal scale, and this involved lugging it out of the drawer, plugging it in, and having it take up space on my counter.


My new red kitchen scales arrived yesterday by priority mail, and batteries were included! YAY! I used them right away, since I was baking muffins. It was so convenient and so precise that adding or subtracting a blueberry made a difference! The scales were easy to clean of the dabs of batter I dropped, and even though I forgot to turn them off, the scales went off after 3 minutes.


These scales are the perfect size to leave on my countertop, are easy to use, featuring measurement modes of grams, kilograms, ounces, and pounds, and will weigh up to 11 pounds. And besides all that, they are pretty!

Thank you Julia and EatSmart!

Sunday, August 02, 2009

More Birthday Cupcakes!


When a friend asked me to make cupcakes for her beautiful step-daughter, Laurel, I was inspired by a forum friend, Emily, and by Annie of Annie's Eats to try butterfly cupcakes as part of the order. Annie has an excellent step-by-step, and although my efforts did not match either Emily's or Annie's, I was pleasantly surprised by the results.


The flavors requested were filled strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla. For the chocolate I made Chocolate Bliss cupcakes with Sour Cream Fudge Buttercream and vanilla mascarpone filling.


Some of the chocolate cupcakes were topped with a molded pink candy rose.



The Vanilla Bean Cream cupcakes were made using my favorite Magnolia Bakery recipe, filled with vanilla mascarpone filling, and topped with Vanilla Bean Buttercream.

Strawberry Bliss cupcakes (Candace Nelson's recipe) were filled with Strawberry Cream filling and topped with Fresh Strawberry Buttercream.


A few of the strawberry cupcakes were adorned with butterflies.



Happy Birthday, Laurel!