Blogging Experience

Through out this entire semester in college I have created a blog and committed myself to social media to promote my personal brand. It has been an enriching experience to say the least. I have learn the best and worst practices when blogging and posting to social media. I’d like to say I’ve done my best in sticking to the best practices. I’ve learned how much of a commitment blogging is, but also how much it can help you in the end while creating a focus point for my personal brand. I would have liked to in the future do a better job of posting my blog posts during the peak hours and spread out at least once a week. Although this blog has been mainly for the purposes of my fundamentals of online and digital media class, I am going to take the things I’ve learned and use them toward future job opportunities. I can now say that I have blogged and have blogging experience that before this class I couldn’t have said in a interview or to a job recruiter. And I have WordPress to thank for a lot of my blogging experience thus far for their easy to use blogging interface. I will certainly be using this site for my future blogging sites.

With Sugar,

Monica

Holiday Time: Baking Frenzy

Hey readers! We all know the reality is around the holidays, people tend to bake more (religious bakers please excuse). Check out the Storify I created on holiday baking!

[View the story “Holiday Time: Baking Frenzy” on Storify]

 

Enjoy!

With Sugar,

Monica

Guava Cheesecake

For Thanksgiving every year my mom and I bake cheesecakes for Thanksgiving dessert. We make this amazing guava cheesecake and chocolate chip cheesecake. I wanted to show y’all the guava one, because it’s special to my family since we are Cuban. Cubans absolutely love the fruit guava. It’s very sweet and sometimes too sweet for some people pallets. Also, this recipe is actually for a new york style cheesecake, but my mom and I have altered it to add the guava jelly to add our special Cuban flavor! I’ve set up a slideshow to show you the process of making this delicious wonder.

Yields 3 cheesecakes; Prep time: 15 mins; Total time: 4 hr. 55 mins.

Ingredients:

• 1 Goya guava paste (21oz)
• 3 ready graham crusts
• 5 packages of PHILADELPHIA cream cheese softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp. flour
• 1 tbsp. vanilla
• 1 cup of condensed milk
• 4 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Beat cream cheese, sugar, flour and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium until well blended.
3. Add condensed milk; mix well.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until well blended
5. Pour over crust
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until center is almost set, cool completely.
7. Refrigerate for 4 hours or over night
8. EAT

I hope y’all can try this great treat! If you have an intense sweet tooth, I promise this will settle your sweets craving!

With Sugar,

Monica

Fall is my favorite time of the year not only because of the amazing weather but also the flavors and spices. Last month I made pumpkin spice rice krispie treats in honor of the Starbucks specialty drink pumpkin spice late that every girl in America is in love with. Yesterday, I decided to continue the pumpkin flavor baking and made pumpkin cinnamon rolls. They came out delicious, and I personally favor these to original cinnamon rolls.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls Taken By Monica Iglesias

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cans of Cresent rounds dough
• 4 tbls melted butter
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree (I used a can of pumpkin from the store but not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1 tbls milk
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

For the frosting

• 4 oz cream cheese softened
• 1-1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4teaspoon pumpkin spice
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. lightly spray 8-inch non-stick pan with baking grease or butter; set aside.
3. Unroll the dough and separate into the 16 pieces from both rolls.
4. Brush each piece of dough with melted butter.
5. In a small bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, milk, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.
6. Evenly divide pumpkin filling and spread over each piece of rolled-out dough.
7. Carefully roll up each dough, lightly pinching seams together.
8. Arrange the rolls in the prepared cake pan.
9. Bake for 20 t0 22 minutes, or until tops are golden brown.

In the meantime prepare the frosting:

1. Place cream cheese in your mixer’s bowl and cream for 1 minute.
2. Gradually add in powdered sugar and continue to beat until well combined.
3. Mix in pumpkin pie spice.
4. Add vanilla and mix until thoroughly combined.
5. Remove pans from oven and immediately brush each roll with frosting.
6. Serve.

Pumpkin Pie Cinnamon Rolls

I had a hard time with deciding if the rolls were done cooking all the way through. I made these at my friends house and was not familiar with the oven I used. Feel free to adjust the time baking the dough that’s best for the oven you’re using. If you’d like to see the website I got this recipe from check out diethood.com!

With Sugar,

Monica

Ingredient App!

I’ve been thinking of ideas for a cool app that could be useful to bakers and anyone who enjoys cooking. My two best ideas were a grocery locator that have the ingredients you need in stock for a specific recipe and an app that can find a recipe for you based on the contents of your fridge. I decided the recipe app was better for me and my blog followers! Most of us have sugar, butter and chocolate in our pantry, but we’re just not sure what would be a good way to cook them together.

The main components this app would contain is first a stage where you input the contents of your fridge and pantry that you would like to cook with. Next it would take you to recipes on the internet that can be made with these ingredients. I’d like for the app to be partnered with Pinterest food and drink so that the app would go directly to popular recipes on Pinterest with the ingredients inputted. There would also be a screen that would help you find friends that also use the app and what recipes they have created using the app. Another function is a gps locator of others in your area that use the app as well, so you can friend them and see their recipes as well.

I’ve created a few screen shots of what the app would look like. Leave comments and let me know what you think about this app idea!!!

First screen in iIngredient where you input fridge content

This screen is integrated with Pinterest to find the recipes with your ingredients

This is the screen to find friends using this app too

Hocus Pocus Buns

Photo from eatatallies.com

Hocus Pocus is my most favorite Halloween movie of all time! I love the name of these treats, and I always make a point to make them sometime around Halloween although they’re good any time of the year! These are a super easy dessert that you can make quickly with any dinner. I hope you love them as much as I do!

INGREDIENTS:

• Cinnamon Sugar mix
• Melted Butter
• 10 Large Marshmallows
• 1 Roll of Crescent Rolls

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Put the cinnamon sugar mix into and melted butter in 2 small bowls.
2. Dip a marshmallow into the butter and then into the mix. Do this to each marshmallow.
3. Heat the oven according to the cresent roll instructions.
4. Roll each marshmallow into a crescent roll and place onto a non-stick pan.
5. Cook them accroding to the cresent roll instructions.
6. When they are done let cool.

When you bite into the bun, the marshmallow is gone! HOCUS POCUS! Poof they’re gone! How fun right?! This is a great dessert to cook with kids too. ENJOY!

With Sugar,

Monica

Birthday Cake Pops

Photo by Monica Iglesias

It was my one of my best friends 21st birthday the other day so I decided to make her some birthday cake pops. Cake pops have been a new trend in baking within the last few months, so I thought I’s try them out! (Please ignore the Halloween colors on the popsicle sticks…they were the only ones I could find.)

INGREDIENTS:

• Cake box mix (usually calls for 3 eggs as well, but depends on the box)
• Frosting of your choice
• 30 popsicle sticks
• Sprinkles

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Cook the cake according to the box instructions
2. After the cake is done baking and cooled, take the cake out of the pan and put into a bowl. Using a fork, mash the cake until it is into crumbs.
3. Mix 1 cup of frosting to the cake crumbs. This should make the cake crumbs stick together better.
4. Using a tablespoon, roll crumbs into balls and place on a pan with non-stick foil or wax paper on top.
5. Heat a little frosting and put on the ends of the popsicle sticks. Place them into the balls. This helps the sticks stay in the pops better.
6. Place the pan with the pops in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
7. After at least 30 minutes, heat more frosting and roll each cake pop into the frosting until fully covered or desired. After each pop, quickly add the sprinkles.
8. Now they should be done and ready to serve!! Place leftovers in fridge.

Enjoy these wonderful treats! The great thing about cake pops is about 4-5 is equivalent to 1 cupcake. So don’t feel bad for eating multiple! For a full video on creating these cake pops watch here.

With Sugar,

Monica

Cookies Gone Wrong

I wanted to post this because frankly I found it hilarious when it happened. Honestly, how hard is it to make prepackaged cookies?! Well, sometimes we get a little too distracted.

The Story:

One day my friend was over at my house and brought the prepackaged Nestle Tollhouse cookies for after we eat diner. She asked me to turn on the toaster oven and put the cookies on a sheet while she was busy putting together the main course. After, she put the cookies in the oven but forgot to put a timer on. We talked and joked around while we waiting for the cookies to be done baking. About 20 minutes go by, and light bulb goes off in my head and I say, “Um, how are the cookies not done yet?” We run to the oven to find the cookies burnt to a crisp, and all we could do was laugh our head off.

Sometimes when you’re baking things are not going to be perfect. We’re only human, shit happens. But don’t be turned down to baking and cooking just because you made a mistake one time! Keep on making yummy goods!

For a good laugh, check out the site Cake Wrecks for tragic cake fails.

With Love,

Monica

Pumpkin Spice Rice Krispie Treats

In honor of the fall season I decided I wanted to make something with pumpkin spice in the ingredients. I searched on Pinterest for ideas but putting pumpkin spice in the search bar. Things that came up in my search were cupcakes and the like, but rice krispie treats stood out to me. They were super easy to make and basically just like original krispie treats! Give them a try, and I promise you wont be disappointed!!

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 10 oz bag of marshmallows
• 1 box of pumpkin spice instant pudding mix
• 5 cups of rice krispie cereal
• 1 cup white chocolate, melted

Instructions

Line a 9 inch pan with foil. Grease the foil with butter. Set aside.

Put butter in the pan and warm in pan until melted.

Add the marshmallows. Stir constantly until fully melted.

Next, add the pumpkin spice pudding mix and stir until fully mixing into the marshmallows.

Now, take the pan off the heat and slowly fold the rice krispie cereal into the marshmallow mix.

Put the mix into the pan and press firmly into the pan with your hands. Lastly, you are going to heat the white chocolate and spread on the top of the treats. If you like sprinkles to add some color you would want to immediately add sprinkles after spreading the chocolate on top.

TRY IT AT HOME NOW!

To search more dessert recipes go to Pinterest and go to the food/drink category.

With Sugar,

Monica

Hello and Welcome! 😊

Sugar the dog! (Taken by Monica Iglesias)

Hello fellow bloggers and readers! Thank you so much for  reading my new blog, Baked Sugar. Just as the title reads, be prepared for some amazing baking recipes with a lot of sweetness. The name of my blog was inspired by the dog that has my heart, Sugar. She’s an 8 pound, tan, Chihuahua Terrier mix and is one of the sweetest dogs you will ever meet. Her name fits her perfectly, and it couldn’t be more perfect that I love to bake. Since you always use sugar when baking (I know I’m stating the obvious) my baby Sugar came to my mind, and I knew I had to have sugar in the blog title. I will be posting recipes of my favorite rice crispy treat, cupcake, muffin, cookies and many more delicious treats you must try at home. Enjoy!!

With sugar,
Monica