Bailey's Bear Truffles

I'm sure you've noticed the lack of posts these past 2 months, all due to computer woes and the lack of a decent kitchen. But no worries, I was recently home for spring break, and I finally had the time to create some desserts!

Actually, I've made these Bailey's Truffles a few times already, with rave reviews. The great thing about truffles is that they don't require a lot of ingredients and are rather easy to make, yet everyone always thinks they took more work than they did ;). Being without a kitchen has made it hard to get any baking done this year, but with a microwave and a mini fridge, these truffles were definitely doable.

Usually truffles are just rolled into balls and either dusted with cocoa powder or dipped in chocolate, but I wanted to play around with the shape of my truffles just to see if it could be done (without any molds or any fancy equipment)... and somehow I ended up with truffle bears. But then I figured, everyone likes bears, what with teddy bears being so popular, so why not?

To give them a pop of color and to spiffy them up, I gave my bear truffles bow ties (plus I just really like bow ties). The ties also allow for a bit of customization. The first time I made these bears, I gave them green bow ties for St. Patrick's Day, while for this blog entry, I gave them classic red ones. But of course, these truffles don't have to be shaped into bears. Rolled into balls, dipped into chocolate, and topped with whatever you want: sprinkles, a white chocolate design, or even left plain, they're still equally delicious!

Graduation Bears

I'm back (after a busy month of no blogging)! And I'm now officially a college graduate! I just graduated last Tuesday morning in the pouring rain... Seriously, it was the only rainy day of the week. What is up with that? Well, at least it was a super memorable experience.

Nonetheless, it's big milestones in life, like graduation, that make me realize just how quickly the years pass. To think, just four years ago I was still in high school with pretty much no idea how to bake. Now, four years later, after teaching myself to bake and realizing how awesome it is, here I am with my own baking blog. It's interesting to see just where life takes us. For my graduation, I decided that it'd be nice to bake a bunch of Cal themed cookies to pass out to friends at the reception. The key was that I didn't want the designs to be too complicated, so that it'd be easy to make them in bulk. In the end it all worked out, and I ended up with two designs: a blue and yellow Cal heart (much love for Berkeley) and graduation bears (Go Bears!).