Monday, September 30, 2013

Three Ingredient Cupcakes: Pumpkin Spice M&M Chocolate Cupcakes

Easy as 1, 2, 3. What?! Blogger A Mom Creative has developed a fun seasonal recipe using ONLY three ingredients-one box chocolate cake mix, one bag of Pumpkin Spice M&Ms and one can of pumpkin. Read how to make them on The Mom Creative.

Make Adorable Panda Cupcakes With Oreo Cookies

Yes to all of this! At the Zoo Atlanta, twin pandas were recently born. You can see them on the Panda Cam. A delicious way to celebrate is make these cute panda cupcakes. Blogger Sparked Ideas show you how.

Caramel Latte Cupcakes

Caramel Latte Cupcakes 
I'm all for caramel lattes in the morning, but how about these cupcakes!? I would love one of these with my coffee. A Mommy Too flavored these cupcakes with instant coffee and they're topped with white chocolate buttercream frosting and a fudgy, caramel drizzle. If you're a Starbucks fan or a caramel-latte-kind-of-person, these cupcakes are definitely for you! Get the recipe here!

A Cake Pop Tutorial From Cake Journal

Cake pops are like the little sister to cupcakes. They are the Jan to cupcake's Marcia; they are a little high maintenance. Want to learn how to make them easily? Check out the tutorial by Cake Journal.
How to make cake pops

Sunday, September 29, 2013

The cookie baked inside the cookies and cream cupcake from Grace & Shelly's Cupcakes

Sometimes, even when I'm not looking for them, cupcakes find me. That's what happened yesterday when I went to see a movie as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival and literally looked up and there was Grace & Shelly's Cupcakes, who are based in Florida and also have a Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin location. I'll post more about my visit, but I will say that ice cream and cupcakes are a win/win, and this is the cookies and cream cupcake I tried. I loved the cookie baked into the bottom! Find out more at their Facebook page and at graceandshellyscupcakes.com.

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Mallorca



I realized I never posted the rest of my photos from Mallorca. Honesty I didn't take very many (I was on vacation, right!?) and I definitely didn't eat enough dessert. I did eat croissants for breakfast though. Every day. That's what I call a vacation.

By the way. Some of these photos are taken with my phone. I'll definitely be using it a lot more for travel photography.





















Weekend Baking: Carrot Cake Cupcakes With Orange Cardamom Frosting

I don't bake that often, but when I do I like to experiment. When I poured all the frosting recipes in Heather Saffer's new cookbook, The Dollop Book of Frosting,  it has inspired me to mix and match her creative frostings with classic cupcake flavors. I got some cardamom a few weeks ago from the farmer's market and decided to make the orange cardamom frosting from her cookbook to go with carrot cake cupcakes.
Yes, I used a mix. Duncan Hines carrot cake is good cake mix with carrots and raisins in a packet. I added some Craisins, too for extra flavor. (When the holidays come around, this would be a good base for fruit cake.

The Dollop Book of Frosting by Heather Saffer

Cupcakes chilling on the cooling rack.

My Dad asked that I didn't frost all of them since he wants to eat with morning coffee. Here's a photo of the one I frosted and ate immediately.





Bon Voyage Cupcakes

"So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight..." Today is a countdown for the series finale of Breaking Bad.  We posted five Breaking Bad Cupcakes a few weeks ago, and here's some bon voyage cupcakes which have nothing to do with the show, but they are lovely.
Bon Voyage Cupcakes

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Philadelphia Cream Cheese Ad Starring Friend Of The Blog, Abbi Crutchfield

Did you see the lovely curly haired woman eating the red velvet cupcake in Philly Cream Cheese ad? It's my friend Abbi Crutchfield who is an actress/comedian. I met Abbi when I ran a stand-up comedy show in New York, Chicks and Giggles. It's cool when you see your friends on TV.


Lip And Mustache Wedding Cupcakes

Adorbs! I love these lip and mustache cupcakes made by July Cupcakes. What a great idea for a wedding!
Lips and Mustache Cupcakes

Check out the cupcake tower.
Lips and Mustache Wedding Cupcake Tower

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Creepy Baby Shower Cupcakes

It's not Halloween, but I think these baby shower cupcakes are kinda creepy. Would you eat a fondant baby?!
Baby Shower Cupcakes
Baby boy!
Baptism Cupcakes
Baby girl!

For Halloween, A Frankenstein Cake Pop Tutorial

Frankenstein is comic relief in movies, wheres as vampires and werewolves are now sexy, mysterious characters. Frankenstein cake pops are fun to make and eat. Check out the tutorial below by My Cupcake Addiction.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Chocolate and Caramel: Swirl, Swirl!

The post title is a little homage to "Orange Is The New Black". These chocolate caramel swirl cupcakes are so drool-worthy. via Arina Habich
Chocolate cupcake

Lemon Tree Cupcakes and Tutorial

Lemon Tree Cupcakes 
I love these incredibly adorable Lemon Tree Cupcakes by 100 Days of Evelyn! The cupcakes themselves are lemon cupcakes topped with lemon curd. The trees are made of chocolate and the leaves and lemons are made of white chocolate with food coloring. Not only are these Lemon Trees cute, you can make them yourself! There is a full tutorial as well as recipes and pictures. You can find it all here!

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Corn on the cob with chili garlic butter, parmesan cheese and lime





I love corn on the cob with butter. Even as a snack. With garlic butter - even better.

Sometimes when I read other food blogs, I envy all great stories and memories about food. Seems like I am the only one with very few food related memories.
Somehow I started thinking about this today. I ate food as a kid, how come I don't really remember anything?
Well, you see, I decided to stop eating meat when I was nine and food was sometimes a struggle for me (mostly because I was so picky).
I remember (see, a memory, but not a good one) eating "pytt i panna" (a mix of diced potatoes and meat) in school one day and being disgusted by it. I couldn't chew it.  From then on I stopped eating meat. Or at least I tried.
It wasn't so common that people ate vegetarian food back then (not as far as I knew at least) as it is now.
People around me didn't really know how to deal with it.
"It'll pass, it's just a phase" I was told.
But it didn't pass.
 


Years went by and I still removed the meat as much as possible from my food.
I remember one certain lady who worked in the school kitchen.
Her name was Hillevi. She took extra good care of me and made me fried potatoes - my favorite.
I was very particular back then and didn't eat too many vegetables which made it even more difficult. But I sure loved those potatoes and had no problem eating them every day.
When I started high school my school actually served vegetarian food. And when I say that I don't mean a leaf of lettuce and a carrot, but real, hearty vegetarian food. I learned to eat so many things there that I had never even tasted before. I guess it has to do with age too.



Corn on the cob with chili garlic butter, parmesan cheese and lime

For the butter:
75 g soft butter
1 clove garlic
1/2-1 tsp chili powder (or fresh chili if you prefer that)
sea salt
pepper

For the corn:
2-4 corn husks

Parmesan cheese, grated
1 lime

Mix soft butter with crushed/minced garlic, chili powder, sea salt and pepper. Put in the fridge for a little while.

Heat oven to 175°C (350F). Roast corn in husk for 30-35 minutes. Remove husks, and serve with the butter and a squeeze of lime juice.




Monday, September 9, 2013

Mini strawberry galettes and the end of summer



I know, I know.. strawberries are not in season anymore but I actually managed to find some Swedish strawberries anyway.
I wanted to turn them into something delicious and pretty.
There is just something about galettes and pies that make me happy. I don't know why as I really dislike making pies (you know, allt the waiting, shrinking crusts, blind baking and all that). I think that's why I love the galette oh so very much. It's a free form version of pie. Very forgiving. I like that.

And you know what, I'm not really ready for fall. I don't want to give up summer just yet. The past few days have been sunny and quite warm, but looking out the window right know, I can tell fall is approaching way to fast.

I've been working like crazy this summer, that's probably why I'm not ready for fall. I feel like I've missed out! I had one amazing week of summer in Mallorca though, which I'm ever so thankful for.
The reason I've been busy is because, drumrolls... I'm working on my third book!! Yay!! You didn't see that coming, did you?! I can tell you it's going to be GORGEOUS!

Anyhow, you can click the image below for the recipe, or find it in text after the jump (scroll down to the bottom of this post).











Recipe after the jump!



Mini strawberry galettes
If you can't find strawberries, use blueberries, raspberries, plums, peaches, apricots, apples.. whatever you like! The almond flour can be omitted but is great when using juicy berries like strawberries as it soaks up some of the juices. You can also make these into one large, or two not so large, or three.. you get the point.

Pastry
325 ml flour
1 tbsp powdered sugar
A pinch of salt
100 g cold butter, in cubes
50 ml ice cold water

Filling

500 g fresh strawberries
4 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla powder
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
50 ml almond flour

Egg wash
1 egg
a splash of milk

1 tbsp granulated sugar

Mix flour, powdered sugar and salt in a bowl. Pinch together the butter and the flour mixture until dough is crumbly. Add water and carefully but quickly mix with your hands until dough just holds together. Form into a disk and wrap in cling film and put in fridge for 1 hour.  Hull strawberries and cut in smaller pieces. Put the strawberries in a bowl and add sugar, vanilla and cornstarch. Mix carefully.  Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until 3-4 mm thick. Use a round cutter or a bowl (or whatever you can find) to cut out 8 circles, approx 13 cm in diameter. Put the circles of dough on a piece of parchment paper, put 1-1 1/2 tsp almond flour in the middle of each circle of dough. Arrange strawberries on top,  leaving the edges free from filling. Fold up the edges over the filling. Put galettes on a baking pan or cutting board and put in the freezer for 10 minutes (helps the dough hold its shape). Heat oven to 175°C (350°F). In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and a splash of milk. Brush edges of galettes with eggwash, then sprinkle sugar on top. Bake until crust is slightly brown and crisp and filling bubbly, about 30-35 minutes.


 

Copyright 2013 The Cupcake Fairy