Week 5 and A New Year

Week 5 was the last tasting box I did before the holidays I decided to make one of the cupcakes fit in to the "Christmas" theme. Cupcake #1 is a gingerbread cupcake that is frosted with a vanilla buttercream frosting and decorated with a homemade mini gingerbread man. Cupcake #2 is a banana cupcake that is filled with a chocolate ganache and then frosted with a peanut butter mousse frosting and decorated with a dried banana chip. The peanut butter frosting was AMAZING, I could have eaten it by the spoonful, yum!

I took the time between Christmas and New Years off from cupcake testing, so I could spend the holidays with the family. We had a nice Christmas, my parents came up from VA and we had lots of visits from family in RI over the next week.

I am excited to see what 2012 will bring. I am working on lots of new tasty treats for the upcoming weeks, some of the flavors I am hoping to try are tiramisu, red velvet, hummingbird, carrot cake, maple bacon, and a few others.

Week 3 & Week 4

Cupcake tasting is moving right along, so far the response has been great and I have gotten a ton of great feedback.

Week 3 only had 1 cupcake in it, I had planned on doing a caramel apple cupcake, however could not get them to cook right. They would rise really high then fall and sink really bad in the middle. My google research gave me the reassurance that this is a common problem with apples, due to them holding in steam. I may try this again but grate the apples this time. I did however send out a really yummy pecan pie cupcake. It was a cupcake filled with a ton of pecans and topped with a brown sugar frosting, it really did taste like a slice of pecan pie! YUM

Week 4 was a fun week, cupcake #1 was the lemon lime one that I have made several times for other occasions. It is a lemon lime cake that is glazed with a lemon lime frosting, it is a great end when you want dessert but dont want something overly sweet. Cupcake # 2 was chocolate stout cupcake frosted with a vanilla bean cream cheese. I used Youngs double chocolate stout beer in place of the Guiness and it worked really well, made a nice moist cake. The frosting was amazing, I used a vanilla bean paste in addition to the vanilla extract.

Where does the time go??

Wow it has been a really long time since I sat down and updated about life in cupcake world...

I have been toying with the idea of selling my cupcakes, I thought the first step was to actually figure out if my cupcakes were good enough to sell. I enlisted a group of 11 local moms to be my testers, every week for 10 weeks, they get 4 cupcakes to test, only requirement is they give me honest feed back. So far it is going really well, I have actually been asked to bake cupcakes for a ladies night and a few other things.

Week 1 I did chocolate cake that was frosted with a chocolate buttercream frosting and garnished with chocolate chunks. The second cupcake was a vanilla cake frosted with a vanilla buttercream and garnished with a fondant flower for some color.

Week 2 I did my favorite cupcake, salted chocolate caramel. It was a dark chocolate cupcake, filled with a homemade caramel and sea salt, frosted with dark chocolate frosting and garnished with sea salt. HEAVEN. The second cupcake was a spiced pumpkin frosted with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting, I am not a fan of pumpkin but I can say the frosting was quite yummy! These both got amazing reviews.

This week I am trying a pecan pie cupcake and a caramel apple cupcake, I am excited to see how they turn out :)

lots of yummy things

Last week I tried a new cheesecake recipe, I think I have finally found my go to recipe! This was the perfect balance of creamy and rich, not too dry but not mushy, just right! Every one in the house had multiple slices, and Matthew asks daily if I can make more! I made a homemade raspberry sauce to go with it, I used really nice fresh raspberries and used a spoon to break them up so you got nice bites of raspberry, only added a small amount of sugar so it wasn't overly sweet....yumm it was perfect! I was quite pleased by how easy and tasty it all was.

Saturday we went to "lobster fest" at the Kemper house, I decided to try a new cupcake recipe on everyone...lemon-lime. Wow, they were AMAZING! Not too heavy or sweet with a nice lemon lime bite, the perfect end to lobster night. I was really surprised by how easy the batter was, eggs sugar, lemon juice powder, lime juice and zest, and a small amount of cake flour. They had a lemon lime glaze on them instead of the usual buttercream frosting. Thank you again to the Kemper family for having us and for all the wonderful food! Erik definitely got is fill of lobsters, stuffies, and steamers!
Today is rainy and nasty out, and I am in the mood to make soup. I will have to go raid the pantry and fridge and see what I have in there to throw together. I am really craving Portuguese soup, I think I have everything except the kale. I may have to brave the rain and go to the grocery store.

Sourdough..

I think I am going to have to give sourdough a 2nd try, I ran out of AP flour and had to sub cake flour for my bread. The taste was really yummy, nice and sour, but the texture was off. It was very hard and crunchy on the outside which was good, but the inside was just off. I can't really describe it, it just wasn't right. So all in all not a bad first try. I had never made bread with a starter before, I was really surprised by how easy it was. It reminded me of my Mom and Grandma making the Amish friendship bread that was fairly popular a while back. If you have never heard of Amish Friendship bread before, basically a friend gave you a baggie or jar full of starter and a list of instructions, for the next 10 days you added fruit, water and flour or sugar to it and only stirred it with a wooden spoon and only stirred it until it was blended, never more. On day 10 you had to divide the stuff up and find 3 friends that were willing to take the goo and start their own bread, you always knew it was time to give up when you started getting the starter back from people you gave it to! I do remember the bread being quite tasty, and it was alot easier to give away then the starter was! Maybe I will have to start my starter and make some Amish Friendship bread :)

yummy things in the works

I have lots of yummy things in the works. Right now I have sourdough starter "starting" so I can try my hand at sourdough bread, I have the stuff to make everything bagels this weekend, and at some point I am going to make lemon lime cupcakes with a lemon glaze. YUM

I got up and took Molly to doggie day care so she can play with her friends today while I work on my latest project, painting Matthew's new room! He requested a Star Wars room, so Erik and I convinced him that he wanted to move to the bigger empty room. I have it all taped and hopefully today during nap time I will get it painted. We chose a really nice blue-grey color. I think I am more excited about it then he is! After we get him all settled in his new room, we will move Adam over to Matthew's old room. I think we are going to do his room in Thomas the Tank Engine.

Matthew has been going to Hooray For Books camp this week, they do reading activities and cooking activities with them. So far he has made "dog chow" which is basically muddy buddy snack mix, and they made lobster claw shaped soft pretzels. Both VERY cute! Next week he has art camp, they were told to wear clothes they can get messy as they will be working with clay and paper mache. I am sure he will enjoy that :)

It's hard to believe that summer is almost over and that Matthew starts Kindergarten in the fall!

Oh Ms. Molly...

We noticed Ms Molly was limping a bit yesterday evening, didn't really think a whole lot about it, just figured she pulled something in her foot or leg and would let her rest it for the night. Woke her up this AM and noticed that one of her toes were quite swollen and she was not putting any weight on it. UH OH off to the vet we went...the whole family had to go on this trip, as there was no way she was going to be able to use the step we have on the truck for her and there was no way I was going to be able to lift all 73 pounds of her in to the back. Vet decides that she has something stuck in her toe pad and it has gotten infected, they will need to take her to the procedure room, give her some sedation, open up the toe pad, drain it and clean it and see if they can get what ever out (if its still in there) About 45 mins later they bring me back a loopy, still out of it Molly with a bright green bandage on her paw, needless to say she was not a happy puppy. If you wanted to get a chuckle for the day all you had to do was watch Erik and I trying to get a half sedated 73 pound lump in and out of the back of the truck. I am sure all the neighbors had a nice chuckle. We now have 14 days of antibiotics, 5 days of anti-inflammatory meds, and 3 days of 2x a day foot soaking we have to do. I am sure that will be FUN! Molly is NOT amused.