Fabulous Friday

Do you know why it is a fabulous Friday? Hmm? Take a guess :)

Because it is actually under 90 degrees here in the Mid-West for a change. It's actually only 82 degrees currently. WOO HOO! Perfect day for a run after work and for a walk at my lunch break.

On lunch I took a walk outside rather than at the mall I typically frequent as it was actually decent. Of course because it's not over 90 degrees I am not allowed to wear shorts to work - even though everyone did anyway. So I'm wearing dark wash blue jeans, but I don't care. I chose to walk the pond near my office and get some vitamin D. My mom called so I chatted for a good portion of that walk. Normally I can only walk for about 40 minutes before having to drive back to work but today I got in a good 54 minutes. To top it off I was able to enjoy the sun and breeze and wild life.

Hello Mr. Mallard.
Your winter feathers have not come in

 I only know about the feathers because Mike is the smart one when it comes to ducks, since he hunts them in the fall :) YAY for duck season!

Sorry Daffy, I have to go with Bugs here.

So enjoying the gorgeous day out and getting some really great texts today it's been pretty good. After work I get a workout plan from a friend who is a trainer and then I get to go run and have some girl time with a new friend, my neighbor. K should be fun to be friends with. We shall see.

In any event I have experimented a teeny bit and have found a lovely Brown Sugar Cupcake Recipe since I went and made Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting and had nothing to frost.

I just want to lick the beater.

So I was scanning through the usual food blogs when I came across this fun and amusing blog "How Sweet it is"

Yummy

These little gems turned out great. Tasted delish too. I don't typically have cupcake papers on hand since I'm a cheap ass and tend to just spray the pan. So the combination of having a gas oven and having silicone for a muffin pan the edges on my cupcakes came out a bit on the more crisp side, but it was a good contrast to the fluffy and moist inside. YUMMM!!

The frosting was simple and more experimental than anything. I just didn't feel like baking so I made frosting and of course not knowing what I was going to frost with it. Cookies, nah, that means sugar usually and I don't want to cut out cookies - I really have to be in the mood for that. So next question was cupcakes or actual cake. Since cupcakes are portable, single serve and much easier to take to work and give to co-workers I opted for find a cupcake that could carry the fluffiness of Chocolate and Peanut Butter.

Yes this frosting was just absolutely fluffy and delicious. I had a few heaping spoonfuls - which I really shouldn't have but it just tasted so darn good!

Frosting to me is just the easiest thing to make. Leave out some butter and have powdered/confectioners sugar handy. From there you just add the flavors you want.

For this recipe I took a stick of softened butter, a good blob (no I did not measure, I rarely do for frosting) of creamy peanut butter then mixed on medium until mixed well. Then I added some vanilla extract (again people, I didn't measure. I just kind of go - bloop! good enough. Baking this long you can kind of tell how much each pour is. This non measuring thing gets worse the older I get). Then I added some melted chocolate I had left over from the peanut butter cups I made recently, about 1 square, maybe 2 of the chocolate almond bark.

Super simple recipe here

Mix all ingredients together then start adding the powdered sugar, S-L-O-W-L-Y! Otherwise you WILL end up with a kitchen covered in powdered sugar, as well as you. I have done it in a rush attempt to get things done and it just isn't worth the clean up, well unless you have a helper. Then maybe. Powdered sugar in the air also seems to have the properties of laughing gas. Having worked in the Costco bakery for a year, we had one incident where we were making a lot of frosting for the cakes that day and using an insane amount of powdered sugar. I think this was during the graduation rush and there was indeed a lot of it in the air, we were inhaling it at that point. However, at one moment our boss walked in, all employees are laughing and giggling about one thing or another - I can't recall what we found funny but I remember having a great day at work that day - he just looked and asked what was funny. Of course when you are already laughing, a serious question such as "what's so funny?" just makes you laugh harder. Ahh, good times. But I digress.

Once you have incorporated the powdered sugar start to whip it, whip it good! You know you're singing that song in your head now. You are welcome - I did have a publisher tell that group of us to "Dance" today (of course it was in reference to an ad called "Dance" but, whatever).

So now that you have whipped your frosting into a delicious frenzy set it aside or even place in the fridge for just a bit. Note: if your frosting is too thick add a Tbsp at a time of water or milk to thin out until it reaches the desired consistency.

Now, for the cupcakes.

Brown Sugar Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes

1 cup loosely packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled (I used Blue Bonnet margarine and it turned out just fine)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt, stirring to mix. Set aside. Line a cupcake tin with liners.

In a large bowl, whisk brown sugar and egg until smooth. Add in vanilla extract and milk, again mixing until combined. Slowly pour in melted butter, continuing to whisk. Add in the flour, soda, and salt. Mix with a large spoon until batter is smooth.

Using a 1/4 cup measure, add batter to liners. Bake for 16-19 minutes or until tops are puffy and golden, and don't jiggle when touched. Let cool completely before frosting.

Of course you can frost this cupcake with virtually any frosting you like and decorate accordingly. This is a good all purpose cupcake and great for when you run out of white sugar, like I have on occasion. It's quite disappointing to start a recipe and pull the sugar container down only to find no sugar. Granted you can substitute brown sugar cup for cup should you run out of white sugar, just note brown sugar has molasses in it, making it a bit stickier in the baked good. Sometime caramelizing the edges.


I also made this loveliness this week. Banana bread with chocolate shavings and cinnamon sugar crust. Can I just say that this thing made my house smell like home, that homey smell that all candle companies try to make their product smell like but can't quite capture the essence. Sugar, cinnamon and banana. Umph, perfect smell combo. Should be a perfume - men would come running, just add in a side of bacon and we are good!

Sliced fresh. Yes it's a teeny bit gooey,
but I like it that way and so does Mike

A pat of butter on the warm fresh bread, now we're talking!

 This is just a classic recipe for banana bread, I then took my cheese grater and milk chocolate block and shaved about 2 ounces of chocolate into the batter and mixed. I then combined about a heaping 1/8 cup sugar and 1 Tbsp cinnamon to dust on top (which I did AFTER I baked, it was an after thought but it worked out just fine since the bread was smoldering hot, ouch!)

Here's to the weekend, I get my Insanity DVDs tomorrow, I celebrate a friends 31st birthday and then headed out to Mike's to hang out for the remainder of the weekend. Sounds good to me.

Baking Trial and Error

So here's the thing, I (Sarah), bake for the co-workers A LOT. They are kind of like my own personal guinea pigs. Well, for most things I would say. Some things are best tried by those closest and dear to you (Mike and Gooey Butter Cupcakes). So for co-workers birthdays, that have allowed us to do the little party thing for them on or near their birthday get a cake or cupcakes from me. Usually basic and typically with their name piped on it in a very simple fashion as I have yet to get the piping set and some more training from my mother (who makes the occasional cake for weddings).

So in my eagerness to make something lovely for a co-worker, whom I work pretty close with and deal with the stupidest things, I tried a new recipe with a limited few hours to do so. Had everything gone according to recipe and plan I would have had gorgeous cupcakes to show for it. However, things did not and I had this to show for it:

At least the coca-cola guy in the back is happy.

*Sigh* They would have been fabulous, light and fluffy white cake with a sweet and dense yellow cake topped with a delectable pineapple fluff frosting. But alas they turn out this way and had a weird tinny and chemical taste. *blech* So, file 13 for them and the recipe. I was not impressed and frankly I did everything according to the recipe. Letting eggs sit for 30 min and fluffing to egg whites to just so, making sure there was no water in the bowl or near the egg whites. Well, this is part of baking. You win some you lose some. So at 10:30 last night, after working out and baking a labor intensive set of 12 cupcakes I began my endeavor of a basic cake that could be whipped up quickly.

I was chatting with Mike when all this happened, he suggested "You can always buy a cake." Um, yeah, no. 1. That's cheating, 2. My co-workers expect homemade baked goods.

Mixing as fast as possible to get done before  the stroke of 12.

So mixing furiously and with a goal in mind, not really having to think about this recipe as it's a basic cake. Not really a yellow cake but not white either. Delicious either way. Kind of reminds me of pound cake mixed with yellow cake.

I did, however, cheat on the frosting the next day. I stopped at the store and picked up a can of chocolate fudge icing as I didn't want to stay up longer to make butter cream. I would have had to wait for the butter to thaw and such. By the time this puppy came out of the oven my kitchen was hot and so was I on top of being exhausted. So yes I did buy something. In the end the birthday girl was happy and half the cake was gone by the end of the workday. All in all not bad, just too long of a night for baking and experimenting. Early to bed tonight I think. (click here for the recipe of the final cake)

Happy Early Birthday to You!

He's gonna kill me for this but heck with it. Mike's birthday is on Saturday. He really only had one request when I told him he would be getting cake. Gooey Butter Cupcakes. What are those you say? Well I derived them from a Gooey Butter Cake that is famous in St. Louis Missouri. I have finally mastered the gooey butter cake. He wanted to see if I could figure out how to make them into cupcakes.

First I had to master the cake itself. After many attempts and tweaks to recipes I finally hit pay dirt.

Here are a few photos of the gooey butter cakes I have made, good and bad. A few had Mike "chasing gravy," as he puts it. You will learn, as I have, about the things I like to call "Mike-isms." You'll catch on ;) Promise.

OK Attempt #1. Not bad, but flavor was wrong and texture of the base.

Crust wasn't right, not sweet enough. Filling was good.

 OK Attempt # 2, trying new things with the crust. We are now "chasing gravy."

"Chasing Gravy"

Now, attempt #3, still can't seem to get it right. (didn't bother with a picture because I was mad.)

And the baking gods shine on me with attempt #4, I figured out the issue with the crust and pan and now it's perfecto!

Perfection - it is called "Gooey Butter Cake"

Now, time for experimenting, was going to see if I could do something different with the crust and use an old standby recipe, my mothers famous yellow cake......yeah that failed miserably.

Experiment gone wrong.

So moving to cupcakes as Mike had requested. Time to experiment. First time I filled them, cut out the centers and filled with the gooey butter cake filling...eh no so great and oozed out when you bit into it. A co-worker had the misfortune of getting it all over his hand and desk.

Oozy cupcakes -- yum, but messy

Second try was a variation of the original recipe just in a smaller form. Now I present you with the inaugural gooey butter cupcakes! Beautiful!

This one was a bit smooshed but I had to taste it :) Delish

So Mike tried those back when I first made them and approved those for his birthday. So now to present you with the birthday edition of "Gooey Butter Cupcakes A La Sarah." (had to make them twice the other night because as you can see the first batch was overcooked slightly - that was a bad day in general, work, home, baking, yuck. Let's move forward to something fun)

Overcooked

"Perfect Birthday Gooey Butter Cupcakes"

Now to call it quitting time and go home and get ready for an awesome weekend with Mike. We are going to be wild and crazy for his birthday. ;)

P.S. No you can't have the recipe I used because this one is my secret recipe and secret weapon when my advertising job falls through and I open a bakery. Everyone needs a secret recipe. This one is mine. :)

But Why is All the Rum Gone?!

Because I put it in the cupcakes.

While Mike made his oh so mouth watering sandwich, which I envy, I made cupcakes, rum cupcakes to be exact. They had a rum glaze and vanilla butter cream to top them. Mmmmmmm.

When I hear the word rum I think of two things. Mary Poppins and Pirates of the Caribbean. Mary Poppins because of the medicine they take after the rain she says "Mmm, rrrum punch" and of course Cpt. Jack Sparrow's famous "But why is all the rum gone?!" line.

I found this recipe on a fellow bloggers site. Thank you Sunny Side Up for the recipe. YUMMMMM! That's really all I can say. I don't personally care for rum, but my co-worker, for whom I made these for, loves rum flavor and loved the rum frosted cupcakes I made one day.

So, I made them, used Bacardi dark rum for my cupcakes. Sunny Side used Captain Morgan. I just didn't find a small enough bottle of the Captain to use it, I don't care for rum you see and therefore why buy a big bottle if I won't drink it? Right? Vodka, different story. Of course while picking up the rum I found this:

Pinnacle: Gummy Flavored Vodka

I have wanted to try this since Mike and I had made drunken gummy bears for the memorial weekend party. This would be amazing with drunken gummy worms. Smells like gummy bears and tastes like them too but with that warm vodka kick. YUM! I believe we are going to do this this weekend....speaking of which we need gummy worms and a bigger bottle of gummy vodka. :)

I also got a kick out of this while at the liquor store. This wine name made me laugh.

Sassy bitch Chardonnay

Can't say I would drink it as I dislike wine as well. Mike and I tend to stick to certain liquors. Currently we like Cherry Vodka and Red Bull (UV or Three Olives).

But I digress.

So here is the recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cupcake Base:
1 box yellow cake mix, get one without pudding mix in it.
1 (4 serving) pkg of instant vanilla pudding (jell-o pudding and pie filling)
4 eggs
1/2 cup cold milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil/canola oil
1/2 cup dark rum (I used Bacardi)

In large mixing bowl, dump in the cake mix and instant pudding. Add the 4 eggs, milk, oil and the rum. Mix. Batter should be smooth but not too runny. Pour mix into prepared cupcake pan with paper liners. Bake for 27 minutes.

Ready for the oven

Cupcake Batter

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven, no glaze

Cupcake frosted and glazed cupcakes in back

Rum Glaze:
1/4 cup butter (I used blue bonnet margarine)
2 Tbsp water
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup dark rum (Bacardi again)

Melt butter in small saucepan. Add water and sugar. Bring to a boil. Stir Constantly. Remove from heat and pour in the rum. This is important to remove from heat, you DO NOT want to create a fire. Also make sure to pour your rum into a measuring cup or prep bowl before pouring into saucepan. NEVER pour from bottle into the pan or over the heat.

Now the fun part. Bake up your cupcakes. Once baked dip the tops of your cupcakes in the rum glaze. Set aside and allow to cool and set. Once that is done you can frost your cooled cupcakes with a vanilla butter cream. (so easy to make).

Vanilla Butter Cream (it's not an exact science it's all abut consistency.
Approx 1 lb - 2 lbs powdered sugar
1 stick butter, soft
splash or so of milk
1 tsp vanilla

Place soft butter in mixer, fluff up your butter then add your powdered sugar slowly, unless you like the powdered sugar dusting look to your kitchen. After your butter and sugar mix get thick add your vanilla. Then add milk until you have reached the desired consistency. Not too thick but not running off the spoon. Make sure it sticks to the spoon or spatula.

The recipe also calls for rum drizzle on the cupcakes after being frosted. So I garnished with some walnuts, as most rum cake recipes call for them anyway and then drizzled away with the rum glaze, it makes quite a bit. I have some left over in my kitchen and not sure what to do with it. Maybe dip the cupcakes in it haha! Could get drunk of that because there is no way it boiled long enough to cook off all the alcohol.

I had to take a taste after they had come out of the oven and I had glazed them. So that cupcake with the bite in it, doesn't have garnish because I was eager and the cupcake was still warm, hence the looser looking frosting.

Final product looks pretty damn good and tastes pretty great too. Hoping the birthday girl likes them. Saving one for Mike too, he has to try these.

My taste tested cupcake.
YUMMMMMM...man I'm good.

Beautiful finished product.
Who says you need a piping bag when you have a fancy butter knife?