Old Fashioned Cupcakes

My  mother-in-law made these for my birthday this year and OMG they are the best. The recipe is a whiskey soaked orange cupcake and orange buttercream. When a friend of mine's birthday rolled around, I decided to make them for her. I used this recipe.

fallen chocolate cake

I haven't blogged in so long - eeek! We're getting close to summer though, and I plan to start posting regularly again. Eric's mom and I made this cake for him for his 30th birthday. He requested a flourless chocolate cake and Bon Appetit had a great recipe that gets topped with a mascarpone whipped cream! (Not pictured, but delicious!). Recipe here.

More soon xoxo

Mini Burger Cupcakes

I made some mini burger cupcakes for a 4th of July party that ended up being a hit. They're just mini cupcakes sliced in half with a small brownie in the middle.

In other news, we got two ratties this week! They're both really sweet and seem pretty attached to us already, too. Look how sweet Gigi is:

I'm off for Louisiana to visit my brother but I'll post when I'm back in town.

Babka

I tried babka for the first time a few years ago. How had I never had this before?  When a Bon Appetit issue from last year included it, I saved it and promised I'd make it.

A year later, I finally did, and it was so good and fairly easy to make. Bon Appetit's Chocolate-Cinnamon Babkallah recipe here.

I forgot to snap a photo when it was finished and only remembered when half of it was left! Cheers to anything you make that needs braided!

Key Lime Pie

Key Lime Pie for Eric's grandma's 90th (!!!) birthday last month. It was my first time making a key lime pie and it was so-freaking-good. I'm not even a huge key lime pie fan.

I should be back to posting regularly again soon.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Hi-Hats

Some late birthday cupcakes for Eric. I had been wanting to make hi-hat cupcakes for a while now and went with a chocolate peanut butter version. OMG the frosting is unbelievable (rich, of course). The frosting is like the chocolate peanut butter balls my mom makes every Christmas (lighter & airy-er thanks to a couple of egg whites in the buttercream). Recipe from here. Definitely making these again.

Thanksgiving Treats

We ended up having a huge change of plans for Thanksgiving after discovering that Big Bend's campgrounds would be full before we could even leave town. Two of our good friends just moved to Austin the week before, so we decided to have a proper Thanksgiving here with them. I baked all day Wednesday - brandied pumpkin pie, blondies, and a chocolate mocha cake (with my attempt at sculpting a turkey out of caramel for on top!).

 I thought I was over pumpkin pie, but OMG it was so good. I used the New York Time's recipe for brandied pumpkin pie that recommended using pureed butternut squash. I still had a couple jars of butternut squash from grandma's gardens, so I was sold. It's amazing. I also had never made my own pie crust before (pathetic, I know, but this is the first pie I've ever made...I'm usually not a pie person.)

The pie came out of the oven looking beautiful and later I covered it with a piece of plastic wrap. The plastic wrap eventually sunk onto part of the pie and when I pulled it up, the perimeter of the sunken plastic left a weird ring on my pie. Boo!

We had a perfect few days off and now there's only a tiny bit of the semester left before I can keep baking and meet my sweet little nephew, Jacob!

Happy Halloween!

I made some halloween treats earlier this week. Toasting marshmallows under the broiler is fun. :) I used my standard brownie recipe found here (it's one bowl, which is awesome. I add instant espresso to the recipe). After the brownies cool a bit, you use the broiler to quickly set the faces (about a minute).

My father-in-law will be in town this weekend and I think tonight we're going to take him downtown to see the craziness of 6th street on halloween. I'm wearing a pretty simple costume, but I did spend hours last weekend sewing part of it. I'll put it up on the blog in the next few days.

Sorry for a long time without posting. I swear one day I'll have more time to post regularly. This month has been really busy at work and we went to NYC for a long weekend and are just now starting to catch up.

Lemon Raspberry Muffins

These definitely rank in the top tier of muffins I've made (it doesn't hurt that there's a naughty crumble on top of them!). My only complaint is that the muffin stuck a little the liner, but otherwise this is an amazing muffin.

 I used this recipe for Raspberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake Muffins (with lemon streusel crumb topping). My sour cream had gone bad, so I subbed greek yogurt. I had frozen raspberries, so I rolled them in flour before putting them in to prevent bleeding while baking.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

omfg, these are so good. A close rival to my favorite coconut oil chocolate chip cookie recipe.

 Really good chocolate chip cookies are dangerous in our house..they are usually all consumed within 2 days. I cut the recipe in half and sent some home with our friend Greg to help save us from eating a dozen cookies in a day.

 I turned in my final grades on Friday, so the past couple days have felt like non-stop celebrating. Gouda & crispy prosciutto burger for lunch? YES. Delicious IPA at 2pm? YES. Buy a bottle of champagne while at the grocery store? DUH.

 I'm looking forward this week to lots of crafting, baking, seeing Neil Degrasse Tyson on Tuesday (!!!) with family, tagging along to a metal show, and seeing Mark Kozelek (where I'll probably cry the entire way through the show like last time).


Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 2 1/2 dozen; can easily be cut in half

1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup  sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups chocolate chips

1. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Continue to cook until the butter turns golden brown. Stir or swirl pan occasionally. Watch the butter closely - it burns easily. When the butter is golden in color and has a nutty aroma, it's done. Pour into a shallow dish and allow to cool in the fridge until soft (no longer melted).

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper.

3. Beat the (softened) brown butter and sugars with a mixer. Add eggs (one at a time) & vanilla extract.

4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the wet ingredients and mix just until combined. Add the chocolate chips.

5. Spoon onto your cookie sheet leaving a couple inches between each cookie. Bake 10-12 minutes.

Cinnamon Rolls

Met up with a few friends out in Zilker Park yesterday for brunch. I made cinnamon rolls using Paula Deen's recipe. I let them do their second rise overnight in the fridge (and set them out a couple hours before baking that morning). They are delcious, but already at the second day they aren't nearly as good. Make them the day of and try to get all of them eaten (not by yourself hopefully)!

Carrot Apple Coconut Muffins

Hi. I'm back.

The spring semester has started and I think it's going to be much smoother than the last. We just finished our first full week back of classes. This weekend I managed to come down with the flu on Friday night and I'm just now getting over it. I don't remember being sick for over 48 hours in a long time. I felt defeated yesterday, but my appetite was returning..I convinced Eric that a milkshake and french fries from our local fast food place would cheer my spirits. He didn't think it would be good for me, but still went and got them for me. :D

Last night I was feeling stir crazy and decided to bake. I went for a healthy-ish muffin. It's sweetened with honey only and has a lot of bulk from shredded carrots, apples and unsweetened coconut. I think they're great.

The original recipe came from here. Makes 12 regular sized muffins or 30 minis.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 carrots, peeled & grated, about 1 cup
1 apple, peeled and grated, about 1/2 cup
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil (I used grapeseed)
1/2 cup honey

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
 2. Combine the first 7 ingredients in a bowl.
 3. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining ingredients.
 4. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet and stir to combine.
5. Place 1 tbsp of batter into greased mini muffin tins.
 6. Bake for 15 minutes for minis, or 25 for regular sized.

Pumpkin Biscotti

Happy Friday! I'm looking forward to a weekend of Paramount Theatre dates (2 in one weekend!), a massage (my second one ever - I'm using a groupon), and piles of grading. Okay, I'm not looking forward to the amount of grading, but grading in cold weather isn't all that bad.

I baked pumpkin biscotti the other night using this recipe. The recipe holds its own without drizzled chocolate, but everything is better with drizzled chocolate.

I know I haven't been a good blogger, but I assure you in my absence from blogging that I'm not doing lots of exciting things. I've been kept busy with my new job. Next semester should be smoother and I will be returning to posting lots more. I will try and start posting something every week though.

Enjoy the cooler weather this weekend!

crazy cake request

Hi, blog. I haven't forgotten you. I'm super busy with the start of the semester.

 This past weekend we celebrated our friend Jared's birthday. Meg and I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he responded, "well...something I've wanted for years is a chocolate chipotle blueberry cake...with cream cheese frosting." I responded with "cool, we'll do that" trying to mask the wtf thoughts going off in my head. Meg and I agreed to fulfill his wishes, compromising our baking reputation among our friends if necessary.

We used this recipe for chocolate chipotle cake that actually has a nutella cream cheese frosting. We cut back on half of the nutella in the frosting and replaced it with blueberry jam. In the middle layer, we added more blueberry jam (& some powdered sugar) to the frosting and used that as our filling.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be really good, although it's extremely rich. It's as close to a flourless cake without actually being one. I think one of our halves could have baked a couple minutes longer, only adding to the fudginess. Birthday boy was really happy with it.

The chipotle isn't noticable until you stop eating the cake and then you git a small kick. If you want to make a rich fudgy cake, this would be a hit (and you can skip the blueberry stuff).

pb&j cookies

I never had a pb&j until after college. I grew up on peanut butter sandwiches, but never had them with jelly. In college I'd get pretty mad when a roommate would use the same knife from the jelly and dip it in my pb. I had my first pb&j during a cross-country bike trip. We ate pb sandwiches every single day for lunch. Well, everyone made pb&j I think, except for me. One day I tried one (I used raspberry jam) and I was blown away. (For the record, I couldn't eat peanut butter for almost a year after that trip...eight weeks of eating pb every day, ugh.)

























Above: Trader Joes donated two huge buckets of pb for our trip. I wish I could remember how long these lasted, but it definitely was only a fraction of our trip (we had 30 people). I just skimmed some photos from that bike trip, because I know we documented a lot of the weird sandwiches we made and I found this one:

Cara's peanut butter fluff oreo pancake taco. (Cara made the most interesting lunch sandwiches most of the time. One day I was riding with her and she had made a triple decker sandwich that was layered with peanut butter, banana, and leftover wedding cake that someone gave our group.)


That bike trip was six years ago, so it's safe to say that I like peanut butter again. I used Martha Stewart's recipe for the pb&j cookies .

Bagel Dogs Dinner

I stumbled upon homemade pretzel dogs on a blog this week, and had those stuck in my head all week. Yesterday I got back from yoga (pretty disgusting to think I wanted these after that..) and decided I wanted to make bagel dogs. Three hours later, we were munching on them.

 These are pretty easy to make, and obviously yummy. The first rise for the dough takes an hour and the second rise takes 30-45 minutes. I followed this recipe.

Happy Friday! (And, wait, has it really been a week since I've last posted? boo.)

baby shower cupcakes

I used my usual cupcake recipe, and used a pretty standard buttercream icing recipe. This time I left the milk completely out of the recipe and I love how the frosting looked. They were a hit at the shower; the cupcake recipe is very good. I had such a fun weekend and last night was the perfect ending. Our usual small group had a barbecue, but this time we had three additional people, actually that none of us had met before this weekend. I really couldn't believe we met, for the most part randomly, three really great people. One is a house guest at Meg's that was renting a room for her visit to Austin. She's from Australia and we captured her for most of the weekend. It was really cute watching her see lightning bugs for the the first time.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream Icing

Happy Birthday to my best friend Meg! Meg and I met back in college and instantly became close friends. My mom refers to us as "Laverne & Shirley" sometimes. :)

Meg and I May 2006.

December 2011.

Her birthday cupcakes are Devil's Food Cupcakes, recipe adapted from Martha Stewart and Salted Buttercream Frosting, recipe by My Baking Addiction.

Devil's Food Cupcakes
Ingredients (makes 32 cupcakes - I split the entire recipe in half and made it work for a dozen large cupcakes)

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot coffee (Martha Stewart's recipe had 3/4 cup hot water...c'mon!)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp coarse salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 TBS plus 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream, room temperature

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together cocoa and hot coffee until smooth. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. Melt butter with sugar in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. Remove from heat, and pour into a mixing bowl. With an electric mixer on medium-low speed, beat until mixture is cooled (a few minutes). Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add vanilla, cocoa, and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the sour cream, and beating until just combined after each addition.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three- quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

Salted Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients

4 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/3 cup caramel syrup
1 1/2 lb powdered sugar


(I cut the above recipe in half as well since I split the cupcake recipe.)
Directions
Cream the butter with a mixer. Add the vanilla extract, salt and caramel syrup. Begin adding the sugar and mix thoroughly after each addition.

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To be able to haul around the cupcakes in the afternoon, I made a disposable cupcake carrier. I cut plastic cups and hot glued them to the bottom of a box. The cupcakes fit tightly in their spots and you can shake the box pretty hard and the cupcakes don't move!

Buttermilk Oatmeal Bread

It was about time I baked some fresh bread. Recipe here.

This weekend was exactly how I wish summer would be: family dinners, fun dates (we saw Martin Short at the Paramount on Friday!), baking, swimming, drinking Corona Lights in the sun, barbequing, ... I have to keep reminding myself that the weather this summer won't be like this. Or do you not remind yourself and then just get angry when it's 110F every day of the summer?

m&m cookies

These are delicious. I brought a cookie to each of my tutors that help out in my class. One of them ate it and goes, "wow, the aftertaste is so awesome". I responded, "Butter!".

These are chewy and nutty. I didn't realize they would be quite this giant. Make sure to space them out quite a bit on your cookie sheets.

Recipe from Joyofbaking.com

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup m&ms

Preheat oven to 350F. Place one oven rack in the top third of the oven, and one oven rack in the bottom third of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the egg and egg yolk, beating until well combined. Beat in the vanilla extract. Gradually add the flour mixture and mix until just incorporated.

Form large balls with the batter and flatten them on the baking sheets (they will spread a lot). The recipe then says to gently press the candies into the cookies - but my m&ms color shell melted off into the cookie. I would recommend waiting until the cookies have baked for 5-7 minutes, take them out, and then press in the candies.

The cookies bake for about 15 minutes. Rotate the pans halfway through. Makes 15 large (!!) cookies.