67/365 - Dinner Differences

As we're getting closer & closer to our move, I'm realizing that my blog posts might not fall on the day they're supposed to but I am still taking the photos and I will post as I can!

Dinner yesterday was a perfect example of how different our girls are. Miss M will eat anything we put in front of her as quickly as she possible can get it in her mouth.



On the other hand, Miss A sometimes needs a little convincing. Last night that took the form of a promise of a bite of brownie if she ate all of her dinner. Magically, all of her food disappeared! :)

17/365 - What a difference a donut makes

Today we were having a hard time getting Miss A to eat her lunch. As we were trying to convince her to take a few more bites, I remembered that we had a few donut holes left. As soon as I told Miss A that if she ate the rest of her lunch so could have a donut, her entire face lit up and the food disappeared!

12/365 - Snack Time

Today was a quiet day for us - one of those days you stay in pajamas all afternoon and curl up with a blanket. The main reason for the quiet day - other than the grey and dreary winter weather - was that I had 2 sick girls. Even when sick, they are still adorable!

3/365 - A Taste of Philly

Unfortunately because of traveling, I missed a day of photos and the 2 days I do have were taken with my phone! (But there are photos nonetheless).

We spent Saturday evening hanging out with old friends at a bar in the Philly area. A PA staple is Yuengling - a lager brewed at the oldest US brewery. It is one of my favorite beers but unfortunately I can't get it here in OH.

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!