68/365 - Time with Friends

We were blessed with a beautiful spring day today, so Miss A's friend (another Miss A) came over to play today. Time was spent on the playground, running around, and even playing with bubbles!



After the play date, our friends kindly invited us over for another BBQ so I offered to bring brownies (still cleaning out the pantry!!). Of course Miss A jumped at the chance to help again and had move the stool to the counter before I could even grab the bowl! She then promptly instructed me to get my camera - I think I might be creating a cooking diva! :)



Also just for fun, I played with the processing on theses photos a little - I'm feeling a little nostalgic with the impending move and needed to reflect that in the pictures.

65/365 - Just a little taste

(Note: These were actually taken yesterday, just not posted!)

We our moving rapidly approaching, we are in the final "pantry clearing" phase. During that process, I discovered several baking mixes that needed to be used up so I decided to make brownies. Miss A very quickly announced that she would be helping to make them and pulled the stool right up to the counter to get in the mix! Even though she was still in her pjs, I though adding the apron would be a good idea. Plus it made her look even more adorable!



And, of course, she got to lick the spoon at the end and she made sure not to miss any of the chocolate!

48/365 - Baking & Time with Abuela

Today the girls had lots of fun spending time with Abuela (more affectionately known as WaWa). Miss M spent quite a while looking for birds and was hamming it up during snack after her nap - probably because Miss A was still sleeping so she had our undivided attention for a little while!



Later in the afternoon Miss A & I decided to make brownies together since we know they are one of WaWa's favorites!



This was the first time that Miss A really helped me in the kitchen so I figured she could have the fun of licking the spoon :)

38/365 - Learning to Bake

Miss A loves to play n her kitchen and loves to show Miss M how to make cupcakes.



Today though, along with teaching Miss M, Miss A decided to watch me while I decorated a cake.

37/365 - When Snack Time Goes Awry

Snack time started like this today:

*Please note the oh-so-dramatic tear rolling down Miss A's cheek*


You may ask yourself what caused this melt-down - simply that we did not have anymore fruit snacks and apparently apple slices were a VERY inferior second choice!

Miss M was completely unfazed by all of this. As long as she had a snack she was happy - in fact she couldn't eat it fast enough.


As Miss M develops more of her personality, it's funny to see just how different the girls are.

Miss M is our mischievous one. Don't let the eyes fool you. She's trouble with a capital T!


Miss A is our little mother. She wants to take care of everyone and everything. In the photo on the left, she is making cupcakes using puzzle pieces - she has such a large imagination and most days she amazes me with the ideas she comes up with.

22/365 - A Birthday Wish

Today my baby girl Miss M turn one year old. It's hard to believe that it's already been a year and at the same time I can't believe it's only been a year. I can't imagine my life without her in it! Miss M is her own person in so many ways - I can already tell that she will be one to push the rules and will probably get into her fair share of trouble but will have a lot of fun while doing it.

Today we celebrated her birthday with lemon cupcakes - fitting because before she was born, we called her Lemon. Maya loved every bite of her cupcake and probably would have eaten more if we let her!









Happy Birthday my sweet girl. I wish for you a life full of love & happiness and for this to be only the first of many very happy birthdays that I can share with you.

13/365 - Another Sick Day

When we bought a play kitchen for Miss A last christmas, I couldn't picture the scene that today's photos show. Now, however, it's virtually an everyday occurrence for Miss A & Miss M to cook together in their kitchen. Moments like this make sick days brighter.

Buttermilk Cupcakes with Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Last weekend I felt the urge to bake again so I pulled out a new cupcake book to try a recipe. I recently picked up Martha Stewart's Cupcakes - It's a great cookbook with tons of photos and creative design ideas for cupcakes! The first recipe I decided to try was for Buttermilk cupcakes - a fairly basic cake, but I already had buttermilk in the fridge that I didn't want to waste so this was a perfect use for it.

One downside to the recipes in the Cupcakes is they are written for 36 cupcakes - too many for this household! Because the quantities in the recipe aren't easily spilt, I had to slightly modify the recipe to only make 16.

1.5 cups cake flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/8 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/8 cup sugar
2 whole eggs, plus 2 yolks, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. On medium-high speed, cream butter & sugar until pale & fluffy. Reduce speed to medium. Add whole eggs, one at a time, beating until eggs are incorporated. Add yolks, and beat until thoroughly combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, and beating until combined after each. Beat in vanilla.

3. Divide batter among cups - filling each 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes.


Top the finished cupcake with whatever frosting you'd like - the joy of buttermilk cupcakes is that it's a great base to be creative with! I opted to use a chocolate swiss meringue and also to fill half the cupcakes with melted chocolate.







Enjoy!!

A Summer Salad

Not much is better than fresh berries on a hot summer day...



Unless the berries are served with a side of Lemon Cream Cupcakes!

Hot Chocolate with Baileys

Lately I've been in a cupcake baking kick yet I don't really want to bake the standard chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting so I've started to branch out more. An idea came to me to try to recreate a classic drink, Hot Chocolate with Baileys, in cupcake form - I figured that if the flavor combination works for a drink, then it definitely should work for cake! I took inspiration for the recipe from a new cookbook that I picked up at Williams-Sonoma recently called Cupcakes.

Here is the basic recipe that I used:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup Baileys
1/2 cup coffee, at room temp
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temp
1/2 cup granular sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temp

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. In a small bowl, combine Baileys and coffee. In the stand mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter & sugars until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). Add the egg and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the Baileys mixture in 2 parts, beating on low speed until just combined.
Fill the cups about 3/4 full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out cleanly, 22-24 minutes.

This recipe made 13 cupcakes for me, although had I not overfilled a few of the cups, it most likely would have made 14.

Now during the process of making the cupcakes, I faced the difficult decision of what sort of frosting I should use. Although the cupcakes have a chocolate base to them, the Baileys is definitely the dominating flavor so really it came down to 2 choices. I could stick with the chocolate buttercream - thus recreating the Hot Chocolate w/ Baileys idea - or I could switch it up and do a coffee buttercream and have the flavors of Coffee w/ Baileys. I opted to do half & half! I also tried out a new (to me!) buttercream recipe from the cookbook and although skeptical, it ended up being a delicious change from my normal recipe! It wasn't as sweet as my typical buttercream which complimented the cupcakes well, although the consistency of the coffee buttercream didn't seem quite right, but may have had something to do with me halving the recipe.

Here are the finished products!






For any cupcake fans out there, I highly recommend Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski. It has some great ideas and fabulous photos to provide inspiration!

A New Creation

Last weekend we hosted a bbq for our friends here in Dayton, so I decided to try out a new cupcake idea.  Carlos loves lemon cake - especially when filled with lemon curd - but since the 2 of us usually can't (or maybe shouldn't is a better term) eat a whole cake, I wanted to try to make it into a cupcake.  

Here's what I came up with - Lemon cake, filled with lemon curd, and topped with vanilla buttercream.  

What's your favorite candy bar?

I asked Carlos this question recently and he replied that Snickers is his favorite, so as a treat to him I decided to attempt to make Snickers Cupcakes.  After googling some cupcake recipes, I came across one for caramel cupcakes and I thought that pairing that with chocolate buttercream frosting and peanut pieces would hit all the key parts of a Snickers bar!  Here is the finished product :

Although they tasted great, the cake was denser than I anticipated so the cups were not full enough!  The buttercream frosting is a perfect pairing for the pound cake like texture of the cake and the peanuts add a little texture.