Mini Thanksgiving

Well, hello there! It's been a while! I am finally settled into my new job, new apartment, and new life, which means one thing: time to blog more! I know, I know, I say this all the time. But maybe this time it will actually stick?

We are midway through my absolute favorite time of year. Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays with no strings attached - no gifts, no religion; just family, food, and fun. The stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a time for hall decking, treat baking, and gift giving (my three favorite things). Christmas is, of course, the BEST day of the year, and this year I have the great joy of bringing Hanukkah to my gentile roommates. We close the season with New Year's - a fresh start for the next 12 months of life. Isn't it beautiful?!

This year, my roommates and I decided to host a potluck "Friendsgiving" dinner. Mary pointed out that serving a traditional Thanksgiving dinner would take away from the big day, which we were all spending with our families outside of NYC. We decided our Thanksgiving needed a theme - and after we crushed Karin's dream of a Mexican Thanksgiving, Mini Thanksgiving was born. Few people know this about me, but it has always been my dream to host a party where everything was prepared in muffin tins. Mini Thanksgiving was here to make my dreams come true!

Okay, so neither of the things that I made were actually cupcake shaped. BUT it was really amazing how all of our guests interpreted the miniature theme. I hope you're hungry, because you're headed for a food pic spam!

Our table was set.



Sarah made sure we didn't prepare dinner starving - we all arrived to an apartment rich with the smells of Pumpkin Muffins and spicy Sweet Potato Fries!

Karin made Mini Brie Bites filled with delicious blueberry jam.

Mary prepared our main course, Turkey and Cranberry Ravioli. Giada ain't got nothing on this girl!

Mary also made sure we had plenty of crusty bread to soak up the buttery sauce.

I made Pioneer Woman's Crash Hot Potatoes, but added a little extra garlic and rosemary for good measure.

Attempting to bring a little health to the table, I also made my famous Roasted Green Beans... served in martini glasses, of course.

Laura & Renee made Mini Mac and Cheeses that were to die for.



Kait stopped by and brought Domino's Cheesy Bread - a welcome addition!

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of our delicious dessert - I think I was too full to move! Laura & Renee made us Mini Apple Pies a la mode. Here's a picture from Little Bit Funky's original recipe:

And obviously we hated every bite.



It was, by far, one of the BEST dinner parties I've ever been a part of.

Have you ever put a twist on a traditional holiday celebration?

Butter and Brawn

How does a man prove that he's a man? Think about it for a second.

This past weekend, a friend of mine needed a little assistance in setting up some IKEA-style furniture. She was so worried that a male friend of hers wouldn't want to help her out; we spent a good bit of time brainstorming ways to bribe him into doing so. But when it came down to it, he jumped at the opportunity. The opportunity to build something, to exert physical strength and meld things together and create a functional piece of wooden crap. The opportunity to prove he was a man.

The following day, I baked up a storm. And for the first time ever, I hand made pie crust. I used a dough blender to beat cold butter into flour and sugar. I used a wine bottle rolling pin to roll out dough. I used two very sharp knives in a number of different ways. I blended and pinched and assembled and baked. I baked and baked and baked. I knew I had done something great. And then it dawned on me. These little crispy golden wonders are the female equivalent to a particle board bookcase.

Before you freek out thinking that I've gone all weak woman on you over here, hear me out. I've built some-assembly-required furniture a dozen times. Hell, I used to love the opportunity to help out my dad when I was a kid. But if I'm going to do serious physical labor, you better believe there's going to be a delicious sugary sweet to enjoy as the output, not a judgmental dresser. And do not go on thinking that cooking is not serious physical labor. I dare you to make Jambalaya and not break a sweat, or to roll out pie dough without a sore arm the next day. You just can't, friend; you just can't.

Baking is a delightfully feminist experience. I get to prove I can do anything a man can do (manual labor), and the end result will still be delicate and beautiful.

My mom asked me last night why I didn't just buy the Pillsbury pie crust. It tastes just as good, and it's so much easier. Well, mom, I know you can make pie crust. I've seen you do it dozens of times. But I had never done it before. And for some reason, I needed to know that I could take a crazy looking handle knife blade thingy, throw some cold butter into a bowl of dry ingredients, and pulverize the hell out of it. 

Seriously, look at this thing. Tell me that's not a power tool.

Source

Like man building a fire, or grilling meat, or assembling a desk, I needed to validate my own gender with hard ass work. I am woman. Hear me roar. And then enjoy some of these delicious cookies.

To read more about my baking adventures, check out my baking blog!

There's even a whole post on these delicious, labor-intensive, feminist cookies.

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

... they obviously are baking and/or eating cupcakes.


St. Patrick's Day fell in the middle of spring break & midterms this year, which was also peak dieting phase for me. Y'all know I would much rather eat my calories in dessert than drink them in alcohol, so while I allowed myself a celebratory Guinness, I did most of my St. Paddy's celebrating with chocolate cupcakes and Bailey's frosting.


I used Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake recipe, with a few alterations, and Baileys Irish Cream Frosting from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book, which was simply perfect. I wholeheartedly believe these could be a year-round treat!


Here's what you'll need to make about 30 cupcakes:

• 2 cups of sugar
• 3/4 cups cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup milk (I used skim)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Mix together cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour.

In a separate bowl, mix together oil, sugar, and vanilla extract. I did this by hand, but you're welcome to use a mixer here.

Add eggs, one at a time, until your mixture looks nice and goopy.

Meanwhile, put your milk and water together in a pot and bring to an almost-boil. You want it hot, but milk gets funky when it boils. You just want to scald it a bit.

Alternate adding dry ingredients and milk mixture into your wet ingredient bowl. Again, I do this by hand so as not to overmix the cake, but you could do it in a stand mixer and most people wouldn't know the difference.

Oh yea, be prepared for your kitchen to start smelling AMAZING the minute the milk hits the cocoa. It'll be like delicious, bakeable hot chocolate. People will come out of the woodwork. Be prepared.

Once everything is combined (it'll probably be a little bubbly or lumpy), fill your cupcake liners about 2/3 of the way with the batter. Bake 22 to 25 minutes, depending on the size and temperature of your oven. I rotate mine halfway through because my oven is horrible.

When they're done, you will have delicious, perfectly chocolate cupcakes.

These cupcakes take easily to any frosting, or to no frosting at all! I halved Martha's Baileys recipe and had enough to pipe onto 30 cupcakes, easily, but I like a big cake to frosting ratio. Here's the halved recipe:

• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 1/2 Tbsp Baileys Irish Cream liqueur (do yourself a favor and use the real stuff here, no knockoffs. It's worth it. It's such a small amount that you'll have the rest for drinking later - and do you really want to drink the fake stuff? No. No you don't.)
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

With an electric mixer (hand or stand) on medium-high speed, cream the butter until smooth. Reduce speed to medium. Add sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of the bowl. After every two additions, raise speed to high and beat for 10 seconds to aerate frosting.

Add Baileys and vanilla, and beat until combined and smooth. I used a piping bag with a round tip and topped my babies with semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Voila! Such delicious little cupcakes. And don't they look like miniature Guinnesses?

These were a HUGE hit. I ended up stashing some in the freezer to make truffles out of, and they magically disappeared over a few days. This cake is my absolute favorite, go-to chocolate cake recipe, and I'll definitely be making this frosting again!

We've had a lot of cause for celebration lately. Have you made any treats to share with friends and family?

Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Part II

Disclaimer: Before you read this, you should probably get one big "that's what she said" out of your system. I apologize in advance.

The pumpkin spice cupcakes were a HUGE hit! Everyone who had one basically gobbled it up one one bite. (Get it? Gobble? Turkey? It's almost Thanksgiving? Okay fine.)

Following a process I learned at Yum Cupcakery, I decided to make some extra cupcakes to turn into cake truffles. Then I had this stroke of genius. Why not make Bakerella's famous Cupcake Pops?

(Source - Bakerella)

Uber cute, right? And she makes it look SO easy! Well, our cupcake pop attempt was a miserable failure. I made at least 3 big mistakes. Don't get me wrong, the cake pops we made were DELICIOUS, but they did not look anything like the adorable cupcakes on a stick above.

I wish I could give you a specific recipe for what I did. Bakerella recommends one 13x9 baked cake (from a box or from scratch) and one can of frosting for her cake balls. I tend to just eyeball it. I think I had about 9 cupcakes leftover and about 1/3 of the container of cream cheese frosting -equal proportions as above. I added a little extra powdered sugar (maybe about 1/4 cup) to try to stiffen it, called it done, and rolled the filling into balls to be dipped in melted chocolate and candy.

Well, I was wrong. Looking back, because of how moist the pumpkin spice cupcakes were, I should've added much more powdered sugar and/or frozen the filling for longer. Bakerella's method of using the cookie cutter to shape the balls into cupcakes just didn't work out for me, partially because of the consistency of the candy and partially because of the size I was trying to use. My lovely sous chefs, Jungle M and Jungle K, told me I should give up and just make round cake balls instead.

Just chilling.

(man, I am punny today)

It wasn't stiff enough, so they weren't quite round (okay fine, you're allowed another TWSS here). I didn't melt enough chocolate, so they weren't quite cake pops. The chocolate didn't cover the entire filling, so they weren't quite sealed. Lucky for me, literally no one I served them to knew the difference. We dipped the pumpkiny goodness in melted chocolate and/or orange candy melts (available at Michael's).

Festive! Jungle K was not pleased.

And then we added sprinkles and/or M&Ms. Someone had the wonderful idea of dipping the cake pop into a bowl of sprinkles to make sprinkle-coated pops!

One of the most important food groups.

Cake pops drying in my makeshift candy holder

(on my incredibly messy kitchen table)

Then we wrapped them in little plastic candy wrappers and tied orange ribbons around them... precious! Overall, it was a delicious disaster. But I am not discouraged! I fully intend to try the cupcake pops again the next time I make a batch of cupcakes. I really think the key to pop success is stiffer filling, longer freezing time, and deeper dipping chocolate. But they were a crowd pleaser nonetheless, even if I was kind of disappointed with them. Until next time!

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice, Part I

I've already expressed my undying love for cupcakes. I also love fall - my birthday, college football, leaves changing colors - it's wonderful! So why not combine the two for my first NYC cupcaking adventure? This recipe comes courtesy of my wonderful sorority sister over at Living in Lilly. I altered it ever so slightly, mostly because New York grocery stores don't believe in butterscotch.

The All-Time Best Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 (3.4 oz) package instant butterscotch pudding

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 Tbsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

4 eggs, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree

Cream Cheese Frosting

And LOTS of candy for toppings!

ALL the candy.

My Alterations:

- I used instant vanilla pudding instead of butterscotch pudding. Butterscotch wasn't available at any of the 4 grocery stores I went to, but after some research I learned that the big difference between the two is the use of brown sugar.

- So I took out a Tbsp of the white sugar in the recipe and added in an extra Tbsp of brown sugar. It didn't mess with the consistency at all; they were still some of the most moist cupcakes I've ever had!

- Instead of the spices, I used 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Seasoning. Since I'm new to the kitchen here, I didn't have many of the ingredients, so buying the blend was significantly cheaper. If you have an established spice rack, going with the individual ones is probably a better idea.

- Taryn also provided a homemade Cream Cheese Frosting recipe. Since I don't have a stand mixer (or even a hand mixer right now), I decided to opt for the can of frosting. I'm usually really opposed to this, so if you can go homemade, I highly recommend it. But anyone who has ever tried to make frosting without a mixer feels my pain on this one.

- I also doubled the recipe (actually I made it twice in a row), so I could have leftovers to make cake truffles... which I'll talk about later!

Roomie D with the massive amounts of butter that went into our 48 cupcakes

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 24 muffin cups.

2. Whisk together the flour, pudding mix, baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, beat together butter, white sugar and brown sugar. If you have a standing mixer, use the paddle attachment. If you're poor like me, do it by hand and skip the gym that day.

Ouch forearms.

4. Add the eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend before adding the next.

5. Beat in the vanilla and pumpkin with the last egg.

6. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. I tend to do half the dry ingredients, make sure it's totally mixed, and then add in the other half. Habit, I suppose.

7. Pour the batter into prepared muffin cups.

Ready to bake!

8. Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, about 20 minutes

9. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

10. Top with cream cheese frosting and delicious decorations!

Our naked cupcakes just waiting for a wardrobe

So How Did They Turn Out?

I'll be the first to admit it. I am a cake snob. I expect my cake to be moist yet springy, dense yet fluffy, and all around delicious. These cupcakes were PERFECT. This recipe is practically foolproof. It's just the right amount of spice, and the pumpkin puree makes them yummy and moist - so moist that you can see a few of them shedding their liners in that picture up there! It was a great recipe to get back into the groove of baking to. I HIGHLY recommend it!

But of course, a cupcake is more like a muffin until you put it's topping on. I bought this starter kit from Michael's. It comes with three frosting tips, a filling tip, and a handful of disposable pastry bags to start you off:

(Source - Shop Local)

My roommates had never piped frosting before, so teaching them was SO much fun for me. I was definitely in my element. Some examples:

Piping the standard cream cheese frosting

A perfect little pumpkin cupcake!

Roomie S piping little green grass

Pumpkin Patches! How precious.

The Pumpkin Spice Latte Cupcake

(covered in cinnamon sugar)

All our pretty cupcakes!

So there it is - the first cupcake adventure in our dorm kitchen. Success!

Do you have a favorite fall or winter dessert recipe?

Hello Cupcake!

For those who don't know, I've always loved baking. But before I get into my first cupcaking excursion in a city of cupcake snobs, you need a little background info. Last summer I had the great pleasure of interning with Yum Cupcakery (now Sarkara Sweets Cafe). It was one of the most rewarding jobs I've ever had; I didn't want to leave, but New York was calling. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the first of the Things I'll Miss about the Swamp:

(Source: Sarkara Sweets)

Yum/Sarkara is owned by Stephanie and Susan Claire Browning, two lovely young women following their dream of serving delicious sweets to the good students and people of the Swamp. Their concept is one-of-a-kind (at least I've never heard of anything like it); think Coldstone or Build-A-Bear for cupcakes. Various flavors of cake are already prepared, along with a smorgasbord of cream cheese buttercream frostings. Customers come in and select their cake, filling, frosting and topping(s). A few pre-made cupcakes are there for the grab-and-go type (or indecisive/intimidated first timers).

Vanilla cake with coconut frosting, gold pearls and a fondant flower

(Source - Yum Cupcakery)

They wonderful pull-apart cupcake cakes and other yummy things for catering orders. They also have a strong following of people with dietary restrictions; they offer gluten-free and vegan cupcakes, along with treats for those on the raw food diet. I've never had the raw, and the gluten-free is (naturally) a little funky for someone who isn't used to non-wheat flours... but the vegan is DELICIOUS. Sometimes I chose it over the regular cupcakes!

Hello Kitty Pull-Apart Cupcake Cake

(Source - Yum Cupcakery)

Now I know a lot has changed in the months since I worked there, but Stephanie and Claire's generosity and kindness will never change. These girls love creating new recipes, tweaking and perfecting until everything is absolutely perfect. In my summer at the Cupcakery, I learned so many random things that I would have never learned otherwise. For example, if you can trick your brain into thinking it's eating the most peanut buttery goodness by just adding a touch of sesame oil. There is always a market for unconventional flavors. Cake should be hand mixed, no matter how much it hurts your forearms or you look like a crazy person stirring moonshine on the bayou.

Red velvet cupcake with champagne frosting, pink pearls and red sugar

- a personal favorite

(Source - Yum Cupcakery)

This experience changed my life. Baking became a ritual. There was something soothing and repetitive about following the natural order - sift dry ingredients, cream butter and sugar, add wet ingredients, add eggs one at a time, alternate dry ingredients with milk into wet ingredients. It was everything about science that I liked, except you got to eat the end result. When I took vacations or didn't work for a few days, I missed the process.

Chocolate cupcake with blueberry frosting and chocolate sprinkles

(Source - Yum Cupcakery)

I loved the look on someone's face when they tried something new for the first time, or when they remembered just how important it is to do simple things perfectly. So many tips and tweaks went into a simple chocolate or vanilla cupcake - they had to be flawless. And who cares if I had red velvet batter in my hair that day? I just had to get the last scrap of it out of the giant mixing bowl and into Flaubert, the piping bag. For me, the most rewarding thing was talking to a parent with a child with Celiac's who had never had a birthday cake before... until Stephanie and Claire.

Chocolate Cookie Monster Cupcakes

(Source - Yum Cupcakery)

So, in short, although I've always loved baking, and I've always had a thing for cupcakes, working with Yum/Sarkara made it more than just a thing. So now, in my most stressful times, I find space in my schedule to bake cupcakes for friends. I don't mind being That Cupcake Girl. I don't mind passing out baked goods to the security guards in my building, my students or a slew of professors. I certainly don't mind having a cupcake or two around (although I could do without frosting). So although this is far from a cooking blog, expect a recipe or two. I want this blog to be about everything in my life, and cupcaking is a big part of my life. And since I'm currently watching Julie and Julia, I leave you with a quote:

"You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure (and when I say nothing, I mean nothing) you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It's such a comfort." - Julie Powell

Next up... my first NYC baking adventure!