Apple Cider Cupcakes

Apple Cider Spiced Cupcakes Filled with Chunky Apple Butter and Topped with a Brown Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream. 

Fall is here!  I think that my biggest motivation for making these cupcakes was that I wanted to be able to eat apple butter by the spoonful, an then some.  Plus, I've had these fall colored sprinkles for a while now and I have been dying to use them!  (You know, the whole "when life gives you sprinkles" thing...) Most of my creations are inspired by the sprinkles that I find. 

When Jamie and I were in college we used to take regular trips to the nearby apple farm, eat at the yummy diner, shop in the country stores, and taste and buy as many apple flavored things that we could.  After the apple season was over, we would still visit to play in the snow in the winter time. 

 

These cupcakes are spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom and truly give you the nice warm feeling you get from sipping hot apple cider from a mug.  You know by now that I love me some Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but when I figured out that I could use BROWN BUTTER to make it, my mouth began to water just thinking about it.  This is the best SMBC you will ever make.  And remember, Swiss Meringue Buttercreams can seem intimidating at first, but it is worth the extra effort, and really isn't difficult. 

  

Tiramisu Cupcakes

Tiramisu Cupcakes with Mascarpone Whipped Cream Frosting

 

What would I do without cupcakes?  What would the world do without cupcakes?  We would be forced to create full sized desserts, of course... and where's the fun in that?  Cupcakes are portable, sharable, customizable, easy to decorate and there are no utensils needed to eat them!  If I had to create full sized layer cakes for all of my baking adventures I would be stuck with a giant cake that would sit in my fridge with three slices taken out of it and then be thrown away.  With cupcakes, I can bring some to work, share with friends and keep just as many as I want to keep at home. 

Think about it... if I make a batch of 24 cupcakes, the decorating possibilities are ENDLESS!  I can put filling in some, I can top them with different frostings, different swirling or decorating techniques, and I could even top each of the two dozen cupcakes with a different variety of sprinkle!!  And yes, I do have that many sprinkles...

Don't even get me started on cupcake liners either.... I'm sort of obsessed.  Does anyone else have this problem?  I'm at the store, planning to make a batch of cupcakes, and even though I have a bazillion liners at home already, if I see a pattern that I don't have yet, I HAVE to buy them.  Yes, I HAVE TO.  Sometimes I will even plan a new cupcake flavor or decorating style based on the new liners that I found.  Please tell me I'm not the only one that does this!

These Tiramisu cupcakes are definitely making it onto my permanent rotation of cupcakes creations.  Everyone at the event told me they loved them and the classic Tiramisu dessert translates perfectly into cupcake form, minus the lady fingers, which I don't think anyone missed. 

This cupcake is your basic white cupcake.  The center is removed, soaked in coffee liqueur syrup and stuffed back in with a little bit of frosting inside.  The topping is a Mascarpone Whipped Cream flavored with a little Kahlua as well.  In my recipe I've added an additional option for making a stabilized whipped cream in case you want to make these ahead of time. 

Roasted Strawberry Cornmeal Muffins

A Light Cornmeal Muffin Loaded with Sweet, Roasted Strawberries

 

 

I'm so sorry that I have abandoned the blog for the last few weeks, but to be honest, I have abandoned my kitchen a little bit too.  Our old house does not have air conditioning, and although we've had a relatively mild summer so far, heating up the oven to 350, means the house feels about that temperature too.  It's a great excuse to grill outside most nights, but I have yet to develop any baking recipes for the grill... Hmmm... that gets the wheels spinning...

 

 

The times that I have been able to suck it up and do some baking, I've really enjoyed using the fresh fruits of summer, and Fresh Strawberry Muffins can only be made better with ROASTED STRAWBERRIES.  I saw roasted strawberries all over the blogs and Instagram a few months ago and I thought I would try my hand at it.  And, man 'o man, these little suckers are good!  I had to resist snaking on all of them before they landed in my batter. 

 



King Arthur Flour Fudge Brownies

Only the Best Brownie Recipe... EVER!

 

First of all huuuge shout out to King Arthur Flour (no, I am not in any way tied to KAF, just a fan of their products and blog).  It is very rare that I take a recipe that I find and don't adjust or add to it in any way... but this one warrants following the recipe EXACTLY.  These brownies are the best I've tried. 

In fact, I made this recipe twice already.  The first time I followed the recipe, but couldn't get ahold of Dutch-Process Cocoa from my local grocery store, so I used the plain ol' unsweetened stuff.  The brownies were good but they weren't great, but I could see the potential.  The chocolate flavor in my first batch was just too strong and acidic.  So that lead me on my hunt to find Dutch-Process Cocoa so that I could recreate the recipe EXACTLY.  I finally found it at Cost Plus World Market.  The brand is called Droste. 

The difference between Dutch-Process and other cocoa powders is that it has been treated with an alkalizing agent that modifies its color and gives it a milder taste.  It has a neutral pH and isn't as acidic as well.  But beware for those of you looking to switch to Dutch-process in your other recipes... You cannot use Dutch-process cocoa in recipes that use baking soda as the leavening agent because the baking soda relies on the acidity of the cocoa to activate it.  You must use it in recipes that call for baking powder (rather than baking soda) for leavening.

The unfortunate part of the dutching process is that it removes the antioxidants from the chocolate, sometimes up to 90% are removed in a heavy dutching process.  Oh well! I guess that means I will still have to eat my square of dark chocolate after I enjoy my brownies... darn!  But really, are we truly eating brownies for the antioxidants?  I don't think so. 

Anyway, back to the brownies!  The second round went fantastic!  The brownies had an excellent chocolate flavor and by heating the butter and sugar together before adding it to the batter, it allows for the sugar to rise to the top during the baking process and gives you that awesome shiny, crackling top.  What's even better about these brownies?  You don't even have to get out the mixer!  Love it!

Fudge Brownies

From King Arthur Flour

Makes 24 brownies

1 cup unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp espresso powder
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached AP Flour
1 1/4 cups Dutch-Process Cocoa Powder
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare a 9x13 baking pan with a light layer of baking spray. 

In a large bowl crack eggs and whisk in cocoa, baking powder, salt, espresso powder and vanilla.

In a small saucepan, over low heat, melt the butter.  Add in sugar and stir to combine.  Heat the butter and sugar mixture for a couple more minutes on the stove just until it is hot (110-120 degrees, not bubbling).  You can do this process in the microwave as well.  The mixture will become shiny as you heat it.  This process is what helps the sugar distribute more and gives you that shiny, crackly top. 

Add the warm sugar/butter mixture into the egg/cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.  Add the flour and chocolate chips and stir until smooth.  If you want the chips to remain solid chunks in your brownie and not melt into the batter, allow the batter to cool for 10-20 minutes before stirring in the chips. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake on the middle rack for 30-35 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick comes out with very moist crumbs, but no batter. Allow them to cool on a rack before cutting and serving. 

Enjoy!

Ginger Peach Teacakes

Peach Teacakes with a Ginger Liqueur Glaze, Ol' Sport!

Which potluck item would be appropriate for a Great Gatsby themed 20's housewarming party?!  I racked my brain...  I knew I wanted to make sweets, and of course, cupcakes are always on the top of my mind.  I even went shopping for cupcake liners to get some inspiration.  Well, I did manage to find the cutest cupcake liners that were grey, black and yellow and super elegant. I thought I would be using those, but I made a last minute change and wanted to do something smaller and more bite sized for the party. So I landed on mini cakes, tiny, cute, teacakes. 

Now, I may be taking some liberties in calling them teacakes, because what really makes a teacake a teacake?  I typed that exact question into my search engine.  I got results for traditional English teacakes, which aren't very cute at all, more like a yeast-based bun with dried fruit.  The South will refer to a large, dense, cookie-like treat made with butter, flour, eggs, milk and sugar as a teacake. BUT, in the rest of the United States a teacake is usually a single-layered, lightly spiced cake, often made with buttermilk, topped with a glaze and sometimes they contain fruit.  Ding! Ding! Ding!  We have a winner.  And by just doing a glaze on top, instead of frosting, gave me a chance to play around with my royal icing and piping techniques that I so rarely use outside of work. 

Real Men Eat Quiche.

Ham, Cheddar, and Onion Quiche and Sun-Dried Tomato, Feta and Spinach Quiche.



 

I love preparing quiche for easy breakfasts and lunches.  I usually make two so that we can eat them throughout the week, whenever we choose.  It's great to pack a slice to take to work for lunch and we even eat them for dinner served with a simple salad.  Quiche is one of those recipes that you can really customize.  Use a basic custard recipe and add a couple cups of your favorite ingredients and you've got it made in the shade!  Leftovers always make the perfect ingredients for your quiche as well! 







 

When making quick quiches for the week I take a shortcut and use a store-bought pie crust.  My favorite is Pillsbury, but you can use any variety you choose.  When I've got the time and patience a homemade crust just makes it that much better!

Churro Cupcakes for Cinco de Mayo

Cinnamon Cupcakes Filled with Salted Dulce de Leche and Topped with a Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting and a Churro Tortilla Crisp.

Let me begin this post with saying that these cupcakes are sooo good!  You don't need to make them for Cinco de Mayo only, they are a big hit all year round!  The description of these treats may seem a little complicated, but I've created lots of shortcuts with disguises so that no one will ever know! Really the hardest part is trying not to eat all of the cupcake centers before you are done filling the batch with dulce de leche!





My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie

Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Like many bakers, whether a professional or a home baker, we are all searching for that perfect chocolate chip cookie.  Well, look no further. I've found it! 

This cookie is perfect for those that like their chocolate chip cookies thin and crispy, with lots of chips, a perfectly golden bottom, and a tiny salty bite that just makes everything taste better!  Unlike the other cookie recipes that all begin with you preheating your oven to 350, you bake these babies at a hot 425 degrees for a shorter amount of time. You must be very careful not to over cook these, they can be very finicky, but once you get it down, they come together so quickly.

Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Cookies

The Best Peanut Butter Cookies

My man loves Peanut Butter Cookies!  He gets the prepackaged ones from 7-11 all the time and he just recently, unknowingly, bought a giant vegan peanut butter cookie.  Sorry vegans, but it just wasn't the same without the eggs and butter! :(

After this, I decided to make him a batch of fabulous cookies, but I didn't want to do a plain ol' PB cookie.  I tossed around the idea of either adding cream cheese or apples...  both options sounded so good, I thought I'd make the cream cheese ones now and save the apple PB cookies for apple season!

Garlic Rosemary Bread

A Simple Bread Recipe That is Baked in a Dutch Oven.

Can one live on only bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic? If anyone out there is doing a scientific study on this, I'd like to sign up!  Bread and butter, sandwiches, french toast, paninis, you name it---  I love bread. 

I've been baking for a long time now, and I have NEVER made more than a banana bread.  I don't really know why, but something about using yeast and having to knead are intimidating to me.  I know that it really is not that scary or hard, but I have always stayed away. 



Big shoutout to one of the besties, Katy, and her boyfriend Kyle for making me this cute sign! Visit their Etsy shop here.

I knew for my first bread recipe I wanted something simple... something I could use as a good base to experiment with flavors rather than with techniques.  I settled on this recipe for crusty bread specifically because it seemed easy enough and because the bread is baked in a Dutch oven. My mom got be a beautiful Dutch oven for Christmas and I've been cooking all I can in it.  I don't know how I survived without one for so long!

Chocolate Raspberry Cupakes

Chocolate Cupcakes filled with Raspberry and Chocolate Ganache Topped with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream. 

So my real true love in the kitchen is baking cupcakes. I love to come up with different flavor combinations of cakes, fillings and frostings.  For Valentine's Day this year I created my Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes. This is a simple cupcake recipe, using my gussied up boxed cake mix, filled with a raspberry ganache and a fresh raspberry and topped with a raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream.  

I do make cupcakes from scratch, but when I'm feeling a little lazy, or if I'm going to spend a lot of time on fillings and a more complicated frosting, I will take a quick shortcut and use a cake mix.  But I have doctored up the recipe so that it takes like a made from scratch cake!  

Citrus Upside Down Cake

Instagram Inspiration and an Upside Down Cake with Tangerines, Meyer Lemons, Kumquat and Blood Oranges. 


For my first post I would love to share just how in awe I am of the great community of such kind, creative, talented, and inspirational folks that I've found through avenues of social media and this blogosphere that I am diving into. I am so grateful for these connections that I've made and things I've discovered that wasn't possible even five years ago. I'd like to pretend that I am blossoming into a creative and talented young lady, but I should confess that most of it comes from places we are all to familiar with now like Pinterest and Instagram. Now, I do not condone plagiarism all, I will always give credit where credit is due.  But I love to take ideas that I find on those sites and make them my own.

Now I must admit... I am somewhat of an Instagram addict. Shameless plug in 3...2...1... follow me @iloveyoubooo :)

Ok, maybe more than somewhat... But how could I not be! I was the kid who's mom used to get mad at her because every roll of film we had developed was full of closeup photos of food, flowers and my childhood dog, Sandi. Having a food stylist as a mother didn't help much either... I was born to love beautiful food.   I have now somewhat conditioned my man, Jamie, to not start eating his meal before I snap some shots. I used to feel bad, but every now and then I catch him taking a few of his own pictures when sitting down to eat a massive burger or fancy dessert. Now he just laughs a little when I stand up at our restaurant table to try and get an overhead shot. However, he doesn't actually have an Instagram account... Perhaps if he did, he would think it was a little less "cute" and start researching rehab facilities to ship me to! :)

One of my more recent finds on Instagram is @carolineadobo and more specifically this photo. I mean, C'MON!!! How could you not want to recreate that magic!  So I tried my best, using her tip of candying the fruit before baking the cake. And I think it came out wonderfully!  I think I will be making this again for Easter in a couple of weeks.

One of my favorite parts of our new house is that we have three Meyer Lemon trees on the side of our house, and let me tell you that they are so abundant and big and sweet!  I've been building recipes around them for the last two months.  And I am lucky to live two blocks away from a weekly Street Fair and Farmer's Market.  So I went to the side of the house to get some lemons and to the market to gather some blood oranges, tangerines, and kumquats. We HAD a kumquat tree when we moved into our house, but it had to go, due to the fact that it was planted in the strangest, most random place in our front yard.

My big debate was, because I was going to candy the citrus, whether or not to leave the peels on... I decided to leave the peel on the kumquats but remove it from the other three.  I know now to be sure to cut the peeled fruit no smaller than a 1/4 inch because I almost lost my Meyers during the candying due to the fact that I had cut them too thin.

By candying the citrus, I was trying to avoid the cake being too soggy from all the citrus juice and I think I was pretty successful! I also ended up with an entire mason jar of Citrus Simple Syrup that I'm sure I can find a good use for!  Perhaps to sweeten iced tea or add to some champagne, of course.

I had never made an upside down cake with a schmear before. I had always created the caramel-like sauce for the bottom of the pan. The schmear worked out great and it was so tasty.  The recipe for the schmear also makes more than you need, so I am storing the rest in the freezer for the next time I spontaneously or otherwise want to create an upside down cake of some kind.

Also, I wish I had cut up one or two more oranges or tangerines.  I had a few gaps when I was placing all of the citrus over the schmear...

The idea to pair the cornmeal cake with the citrus is an excellent choice. The cake is not very sweet and it has a little crunch to it, which goes perfectly with the sweet citrus and glaze.

I'm going to see how long this cake holds up to know if I should make it the day before Easter or before I go to brunch on Sunday morning. That is... if we don't eat it all tonight!

Citrus Cornmeal Upside Down Cake

Adapted from recipe at When Adobo Met Feijoada

Pan Schmear

8 tbsp unsalted butter

1 1/2 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup tightly packed light brown sugar

Pinch of salt

Citrus

You can substitute any citrus that you would like, I used

4-5 kumquats

2-3 each of blood oranges, Meyer lemons, and tangerines 

Cornmeal Cake

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups whole milk yogurt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp finely grated blood orange zest
1 tbsp freshly squeezed blood orange juice

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

To candy the fruit, heat equal parts water and sugar in a saucepan over low to medium heat. When sugar is dissolved, add the citrus slices and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat and allow the fruit to cool in the syrup.. Drain and cool slices on a cooling rack. 

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

In bowl of stand mixer fitted with a paddle, combine the butter, honey, vanilla, brown sugar and salt, and beat until smooth and blended. Spread 1/3 cup of the schmear onto the bottom of an 10-inch pan. (Reserve the remaining schmear in the refrigerator for two weeks or a month in the freezer.)

Slice off the tops and bottoms of citrus, place on a clean surface and slice away rind and pith top to bottom following curve of fruit. Slice crosswise into 1/4-inch thick, discard any seeds. Arrange on top of pan schmear in a single, tight layer. Set aside and prepare cake batter.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs until blended. Add the yogurt and stir to combine. Add the butter and stir until blended. Add the zest, juice and vanilla extract and whisk to combine.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the wet into the dry ingredients, mixing until just blended. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is lightly golden and cake test comes out clean. Cool the cake on the wire rack for 10 minutes.

Run a knife around the edges of the cake, invert onto a serving platter and serve.

Enjoy!