Red Velvet cupcakes with a flower twist!

The second of my 2 cupcake recipes this month lead me to red velvet.  Why not?  It's only one of the most delicious cakes ever!

I wanted to do something different for summer, so I looked online for ideas.

My favorite flower is a daisy, and I came across a site that mentioned using marshmallows for petals.
I used skittles for the center :)

I tried it out, and it took a little getting used to.  Flatten a large marshmallow and cut into 3 strips.  In the end I found out that cleaning the scissors often helped (duh!)

I think they turned out cute, and I hope you do too.

Red Velvet Cupcakes and cream cheese frosting found here.

Side note, I've been taking the Wilton cake decorating classes at Michael's and I'm having so much fun.

Here is one of my pink lemonade cupcakes that I decorated into a rose and then ate half of ;)

-April

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

It's that time again.  The time when I scour my brain for cupcake recipes and look online for a recipe to fit my idea.

I make at least 50 cupcakes a month, always 2 different kinds for the folks I work with (not sure if I've mentioned that before.)

Being summer, I wanted to make something fun and fresh.  The first thing that came to mind was pink lemonade.

When I was on the hunt for what I thought looked like a good recipe, I was sad to find out that a lot of them started the ingredient list with "1 box of white cake mix."  It took me a while to find one that didn't.  One of these days I'm going to alter my own recipes and try them out.

Anyway, I found one that I thought was going to work, and did it!

Just a heads up, these cupcakes do have a tang to them, so if you are not a fan of lemon, these are not for you.

If you are... well... enjoy :D

Seriously, these cupcakes are the cutest things I have seen all year.

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes (from here)

Cupcakes:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 egg whites
1/2 cup buttermilk
Red food coloring, as needed


Frosting:
8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups confectioners' sugar
3 T. frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
1 T. lemon juice
Pinch kosher salt
Red food coloring, as needed


Adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line 24 standard muffin cups with paper liners and set aside.

In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the sugar, pink lemonade concentrate, oil, and egg whites until well blended. Add half the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Then add the buttermilk and mix again, followed finally by the remaining dry ingredients. Do not over mix. Add red food coloring one drop at a time to achieve desired pink color. The color will fade slightly when baked.

Fill each liner 3/4 full with batter. Bake the cupcakes for about 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool cupcakes completely.

To make the frosting, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment beat the butter until nice and fluffy. Pause the mixer occasionally to add the confectioners' sugar 1/2 cup at a time and beat until combined and fluffy. Add the pink lemonade concentrate, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt and beat until smooth and fluffy. Add red food coloring one drop at a time to achieve desired pink color.


Top with whatever you like.  I wanted them to have an ice cream look so I added sprinkles and a gum drop on top.

-April

Stuffed Zucchini

Since becoming a vegetarian again there is one vegetable that I have been obsessed with.  This would be zucchini.

I was craving stuffed zucchini, so yesterday when at Bristol Farms I picked up a few.  Little did I know that I would get a pound in my CSA box today.  I won't complain, more zucchini for me :D

I wanted to use what veggies I had on hand, so I made my own recipe.  The result was delicious.
I won't lie, it was inspired by a dish I had at a wedding rehearsal.

Vegetarian Stuffed Zucchini

3 medium zucchini
8 ounces finely chopped mushrooms
1 medium onion, finely chopped
6 ounces of fresh Parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablespoons pesto
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Saute mushrooms and onion in a skillet with preferred oil (I use coconut)
Use a melon baller to create "boats" in halved zucchini
Place zucchini on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.  Bake for 20 minutes
Chop the reserved zucchini and add to mushroom/onion mixture.  Season with salt and pepper
When zucchini is done cooking, mix the mushroom/onion mixture with pesto and parmesean cheese
Stuff zucchini with mixture, top with more cheese and bake for 5 more minutes

ENJOY :D

-April

Let's make jam!!!!

I love jam.  It's good on toast, with ice cream and on crackers with peanut butter (maybe even some cookie butter.)

I had a ton of blueberries and blackberries and I needed to use them up before I could no longer.

I decided to make jam, because, why not??

Jam is pretty simple to make.  You have fruit, pectin, sugar and possibly some lemon juice.

For this recipe I had 5 cups of the blueberry/blackberry (with 5 TB of fresh lemon juice) mixture.

Here it is cooking for a couple of minutes.

It already looks good.  After it cooks and gets to a rolling boil that can't be stirred down it's time to add the sugar.  I think I added about 5 cups of sugar (and this is the low sugar recipe.)

It's starting to look like jam.  Bring it back to a rolling boil and cook for one minute more. You need to stir this whole time!

During this time I like to heat the water in my water bath (for canning the jam.)  I also sterilize the jars in that water. At the same time, I put the lids and rings in some very hot water to sterilize and get the glue on the lids soft.

Once the jam is done, I used a "canning kit" to funnel the jam into the jars.

After the jam was canned, I cleaned the rims, added the lids and rims and into the bath they went.

Let the water get to a simmering boil, put the lid on the canner and process for 10 minutes.  Once the 10 minutes is up, turn off the stove and let the jars sit for 5 minutes.

After the 5 minutes take the jars out with a jar lifter and place them on a towel, not touching, for 24 hours.  The lids will "pop" down sealing the jars.  After this is done, they can be put in the cubbard for a year I believe until opened.  I don't think they will last that long though. ;)

This batch made 6 half pint jars.

Try it someday, and thank me later.  Keep some, give some as gifts, save some!

-April

Blueberry Waffles

I went to Costco the other day and stocked up on a lot of fruit.  I love this time of year!

I came home with strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, pineapple and bananas.  

This morning I woke up and wanted waffles (again) and the first thing I thought of were the blueberries.

I searched online for a recipe in which I had all the ingredients for.  I also wanted to make my own syrup.

The whole process took less than an hour, and they were delicious!

Blueberry Waffles (recipe adapted from here)

2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups milk (I use almond)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoon white sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1.5 cups blueberries

Preheat waffle iron. Beat eggs in large bowl with hand beater until fluffy. Mix in flour, milk, vegetable oil, sugar, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and cinnamon just until smooth. Let sit 10 minutes then fold in blueberries.


Spray preheated waffle iron with non-stick cooking spray. Pour mix onto hot waffle iron. Cook until golden brown. You may need to spray the iron in between waffles as the blueberries tend to stick.

Homemade Syrup (recipe from here)
1 cup water
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon maple extract (I got the Archer Farms brand at Target)


Bring water to a boil.  Add sugars and mix until they dissolve.  Let cool and enjoy.


Have a great Sunday!
-April

Waffles for any meal

I'm not much of a breakfast person.  I am not 100% sure why, but I'm sure it is partly because I'm so lazy in the mornings on the weekends and I don't really want to make anything until at least 2pm.

I do love waffles though, and for a while now I have been wanting to get a waffle iron, so I did.  I was at Target the other day and they had a pretty good iron on sale.

Knowing myself I couldn't wait to try it out, but it was dinner time.  Who says you can't have waffles for dinner??  I whipped up these cheese waffles and threw a tasty over easy egg on top.  They were pretty good!

This morning I was thinking about breakfast, and how easy those cheese waffles were to make.  I looked in the refrigerator and remembered that I had tons of strawberries.  I decided on strawberry waffles with strawberry syrup.

I did a quick search online and found some good looking recipes.

First I made the syrup.  It called for a lot of sugar, but this is a treat, so I was ok with that.

See

After cooking the sauce for about 10 minutes I had a very tasty looking topping for the waffles I was about to make.

The waffles themselves were very easy to whip up.  I also liked that there wasn't a lot of sugar involved, especially since I used so much in the sauce.

I added a good amount to the waffle iron

A few minutes later I had a golden waffle with strawberries running all though.

Now let's top it :)

If you like strawberries and waffles, please try this.  They were the fluffiest waffles I've ever had, and they didn't take that long to cook.  Also, they are much easier to make than pancakes...and they are prettier :) 

Homemade Strawberry Syrup from here.

2 cups strawberries
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup water

Wash the strawberries and remove the stalks

Mash the strawberries to the consistency you want. I threw them in the food processor for about 30 seconds.

In a pot place the strawberries, sugar and 3/4 cup of water.

Bring to a boil over medium low heat, stirring every now and then for 10 minutes

When you have 5 minutes left in the cooking time, dissolve the corn starch in the 1/4 cup of water and add it to the syrup while stirring. This will thicken the sauce and give it a beautiful consistency.

Strawberry Waffles adapted from here.
(this recipe made about 9 large waffles, I froze half.)

2 ½ c all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
2 Tbs sugar
2 eggs
2 ½ c milk (I used almond)
½ c vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c chopped strawberries.

Heat the waffle iron.

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla. When the waffle iron is ready to use, mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined. Stir in the strawberries. Do not overbeat.

Pour batter into center of the waffle iron (amount will depend on the size of your waffle iron). Bake until lightly browned. Serve with powdered sugar , syrup and/or sliced strawberries.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

-April

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I finally ran out of my store bought laundry detergent.  After many washes, my large tub is empty.  Normally I would be upset because I knew I would have to shell out anywhere from $10-13 for more detergent, but not today.

I was very excited.  Why, you might ask?!? Well, because I can finally make my own HOMEMADE detergent.  The recipe is simple:

Grind up a bar of soap.  I used Dr. Bronner's Peppermint bar soap.  I just chopped it up a bit and used my food processor to grind it down pretty fine.  I know $4 seems a bit steep for a bar of soap, but I do believe in the brand.  Also, in the end, you get a lot of soap!

1 cup each of washing soda and borax.  I found them both in the laundry aisle.  Please note that washing soda is NOT baking soda, it's this stuff.

Mix all together and use 1 tablespoon per load.  I have used it for 2 loads already, and it smells wonderful.

I'm guessing I'll get about 60 loads out of this, for a cost of about $4.50.  That's .075 a load.  Tide will run you $12 for the about the same amount of washes.  Also, you know what's going in your detergent!

I put my detergent in a liter size mason jar.

I haven't run out of fabric softener, but when I do I have some orange infused vinegar that I am going to start using in the rinse cycle.

I hope that if you try this out you like it.  It's nice to save a little cash for the savings account.

-April