AIDS Walk Bake Sale

I was asked to make a couple of things for the upcoming bake sale at Collin's sister's office (NBBJ)  for the AIDS walk in Seattle so I made some vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with a kind of mint colored buttercream (I wanted it to be more grayish blue) but it turned out mint....still looked pretty, but don't know how that happened (used blue food coloring). I also made some brownies with a semisweet chocolate ganache. I tasted the brownies and they were pretty good (really chewy and with frosting, my favorite kind). 

The vanilla cupcakes turned out really well (looks wise, I didn't taste) and puffed up nicely, but the chocolate however, seemed to condense rather than rise. They shrunk away from their paper liners and became small little cupcakes. Seemed fine but looked a little messy with the papers hanging off. The chocolate cupcakes called for a chocolate fudge frosting but I had so much vanilla buttercream that I decided to just frost them all with it and it looked rather pretty against the chocolate color. 

All of the recipes I really liked; the batters were thick and smooth, especially the vanilla. The brownies, like I said were really chewy and moist so I might have to make those again for myself. I usually am not a brownie person because they are more often than not hard and crispy. Not a fan. 

All in all, I'm glad I contributed. I work in an HIV research lab and should have participated in the walk to do my part but perhaps baking for a cause is good enough? I guess it's better than nothing! 

I was planning initially to make white buttercream frosting and sugar cookies and pipe on red ribbons and am glad I didn't. Way too kitsch. I figured people would probably spend more money on pretty cupcakes rather than something kitschy. Who knows though. Hopefully they make some money!

Photo by Collin Monda