Inspiration

You never know where clicking around the web will take you. A few weeks ago I was learning about Cake Pops. I often forget You Tube isn't just for watching your favorite movie and cartoon clips illegally. I was watching videos on how to make cake lollipops and in the suggestions section were videos on baking cupcakes inside ice cream cones. Granted, most of the amateur videos should be made fun of on Tosh.O, but here is this kid, making cupcakes for his Mom on Mother's Day, and hocking his T-shirts - with 27,000 views! Complete with porn-style background music! I really enjoyed it. It's 9 minutes long, but worth watching the whole thing.

Su-Tang Cupcake Clan

My take

The other day was a special anniversary here in the Hungry Household. Fifteen years ago, there was a blizzard in the Northeast. NYC Public Schools were closed for a snow day for the first time in a long while. I was a junior in high school. I was spending the day on the Internet, much like today. On that day, I met my future husband! Online. He was snowed in, in King of Prussia, PA. I didn't know a town called King of Prussia existed and was sure he was making it up. What is not made up, is that we fell in love and spent many years commuting back and forth on weekends to see each other. To mark this occasion I wanted to make something with similar flavors as one of our 2 wedding cakes, and so I created my own cupcakes in ice cream cones. Chocolate cake with lemon curd filling and rich chocolate frosting.

I explained to the Hubby that I didn't invent these, but he was as excited as the first person to see sliced bread must have been. ♥

Place the cones in a foil wrapped muffin tin to hold them upright.

The finished product. I seem to always frost cupcakes the same way.

The original cake!

Crowd Pleasers

I love chocolate anything. I've eaten chocolate covered tortilla chips and potato chips, chocolate bars with bacon, chipotle and various salts. I can taste differences in chocolate as if I'm sipping fine wine or describing a great craft micro brew. Thanks to the various food allergies/aversions/phobias I assume are present at gatherings of more than 6 people or so, I hesitate to bring chocolate when I am responsible for dessert or an extra treat. Enter blondies.

Easy to make, essentially a bar cookie, blondies are brownies without the chocolate. They are great plain, but are also pantry friendly to accept the scant 1/4 cup of leftover nut hanging around. I've made them with half whole wheat flour, and have even substituted some olive oil if I was short on butter and a trip to the store would derail me when I'm in "the zone". My favorite combination is pressing salted cashews in the top and sprinkling with toffee pieces before baking.

In my vast cookbook collection I couldn't find a blondie recipe so I turned to the Gods of Google. I stumbled upon a fantastic blog, Whipped - complete with a post full of alliteration as a nod to V for Vendetta! You can whip it up on a whim and feel like a whiz and share the wonderment that is, BLONDIES!

You Say it's Your Birthday?

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie." - Jim Davis, creator of Garfield.

Preparations were underway for my Father-in-law's 70th birthday. The party was to be a surprise, at a casual Italian restaurant nearby. Our family tradition states that although there is a party planned, there will also be a mandatory after party. While there was an equally traditional pound cake birthday cake for the restaurant, my Mother-in-law was baking an apple spice cake for the after party. "He asked for carrot cake, but I don't know how to make that, so he's getting apple," she said. A light bulb went off in my head. I have carrots and a kick ass recipe for carrot cake cookies! Time to make a present to accompany the bottle of well aged single malt Scotch to mark the occasion.

Notice the picture is NOT carrot cake cookies. Here is the progression of my baking energy on a Saturday morning after a late Friday night out: 1 - Thinking, "Gee, I have to go to the store to get some more butter and cream cheese for the cookies." 2 - Go to the store, but also stop at Chick-fil-A to bring home their irresistible chicken biscuits for breakfast. 3 - Eat breakfast, lay on the couch because I'm still not fully awake and now have a full stomach. 4 - Think, "I really need to start the cookies." 5 - Continue to lay on the couch. You get the idea. The clock was ticking and we absolutely could not miss the surprise part of the party. I decided a carrot cake would save labor time. Throw it in the oven, cook, cool, frost. Easy-peasy as Jamie Oliver would say.

I preheat the oven, grate the carrots, decide that I know more than the food geniuses at Epicurious and alter their recipe. I sub half the sugar in the recipe for brown for added flavor and moisture, reduce total sugar by 25% just because, add a cup of raisins because carrot cake SHOULD have raisins, sub ginger extract for fresh because that's what I had in the pantry. I go to get my cake pans and... I don't have any cake pans! I use disposable ones because recipes require so many different sizes I don't want to stock them all. Also, I don't have to be delicate with disposables, worrying about scratching a dainty non-stick surface, etc. I didn't have any! What I did have was a small arsenal of disposable muffin tins leftover from a healthy muffin kick a few months ago. I also had cupcake cups. I was in business!

In the end, cupcakes are more work than cakes but less work than cookies. No one had the hassle of slicing a cake, and the look on my Father-in-law's face when I handed him one of 3 containers and told him these were only for him was priceless. ♥

Snowed In

Here in Philadelphia we're having the snowiest winter ever. Ever. Recently, during the second blizzard in a week, I was in full baking mode after reading every status update and planting every Farmville acre on Facebook. I whipped up this recipe from Epicurious for brownie cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. The frosting was a peanut butter - butter cream. In my head it would taste like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Turns out, the frosting tastes exactly like a nutter butter cookie. Yum! The cupcake didn't pair well with the frosting, however. It was a rich brownie but the texture was distracting from the flavor of the frosting. A soft devil's food cupcake would be the perfect combo with this terrific frosting. That did not stop us from eating them all, and dueling to defeat for the last one.

It's snowing again today. Maybe it's time to turn the chocolate and peanut butter combo into a cake?

Berry in Blue

This morning's thought progression regarding breakfast:

"I feel like eating grits.

I have a load of fresh blueberries in the fridge.

Would blueberry grits be good?

I don't think so, but blueberry corn muffins would be!"

And so, my blueberry corn muffins were born. I based my ingredients on this recipe from Epicurious, doubling the recipe and reducing the sugar, and substituting some sour cream for milk to retain moisture and because I like sour cream. The only thing better on these than sweet butter is a drizzle of maple syrup.