[Food + Drink Wednesdays] Dessert to Die For

Source: spain-in-a-cupcake.blogspot.com via Amber on Pinterest

Sangria Cupcakes from Spain in a Cupcake
Ingredients (for 6 cupcakes):
100 gr flour
100 gr sugar
100 gr glazed fruits (orange and lemon)
100 gr butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
100 ml red wine
1 egg
Mix all the ingredients as you’d do in any cupcake recipe. Add the red wine and the glazed fruits at the end.

You’ll notice that the mix is brownish, not red. If you’d like to recreate the red wine colour also in the batter, use red food colouring. I don’t like the idea of deep red cupcakes, so I decided to keep the natural colour, as I knew I would have to use red food colouring for the icing.
Oh! The alcohol disappears whilst the batter is in the oven, so even kids can eat this.
These are the results after 20 mins in the oven (180ºC):

For the Buttercream I used 75gr vegetable shortening, 40gr butter, 175gr icing sugar and 2 tbsp of red wine. (DON’T ADD WINE to the Buttercream if any children are going to eat these cupcakes). Then I added red food colouring, as the result without it was pink.

Then, I used a piping bag with a Wilton Sakura Tip (L) to decorate them, and added a couple more glazed fruits.

Source: tamiskitchentabletalk.blogspot.com via Amber on Pinterest

Cheesecake Filled Chocolate Covered Strawberries from Tami's Kitchen Table Talk

What You Need:
Whole Strawberries
Philadelphia Ready-To-Eat Cheesecake filling
Good Quality Dipping Chocolate

What You Do:
Carefully wash strawberries and pat dry with paper towels. Remove the stems from the berries.

Using a small paring knife, core the center of each berry being careful to leave the bottom in tact.Fill a plastic baggie with the cheesecake filling. Fill each berry with cheesecake continuing on top of berry with a pretty design.

Line a small baking sheet with wax paper.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt dipping chocolate at 30-second intervals until chocolate is smooth and creamy. Dip each strawberry into chocolate, covering 3/4 of the berry. Lay on baking sheet. Fill a second plastic baggie with chocolate and drizzle over the berries in a pretty design. Chill. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Store in a sealed plastic container in the refrigerator.

[Things We Adore Sunday] Cookies, Photos, Handmade Bags, Flea Market-ing

1. This cookie recipe, which I added pecans to. They bring out the caramely, brown sugar flavor. I also suggest topping them with some sea salt and using Sharffen Berger 70% cacao chocolate chunks (I bought these at the Ferry Building).

Only the Best Ingredients

2. The beautiful photos on The Makers Project. 

3. Beautiful, handcrafted leather purses from a.b.k. Custom Leather Craft

4. Alemany Flea Market on Sunday Mornings

Photo via Yelp

[Things We Adore Sunday] Adorable Bike Bags, Camera Bags, Cupcakes, and Garden Blogs

1. 72 Degrees in San Francisco in February. Let me just say I adore that more than anything else on earth.

2. With the beautiful weather comes the need for beautiful bike bags from Collina Strada (I love that this is a one-woman show as well). I don't want. I need. But first, I need a new bike.

3. Adorable camera bags from Jo Totes. Again, NEED.

4. Anti-Valentines Day Cupcakes from Cupcakes Take the Cake (a blog co-written by one of my favorite erotic fiction writers, Rachel Kramer Bussell). 

5. A Way to Garden, this year's choice for Best Green Home Blog from (one of my top green living blogs) Apartment Therapy Re-Nest

[Food + Drink Wednesdays] Flaming Strawberry Cupcakes

How gorgeous are these chocolate cupcakes with flaming strawberries? A perfect way to celebrate... well, anything.

The recipe is from Sprinkle Bakes:

Chocolate Cupcakes with Flaming Strawberries

Yield: About 20 cupcakes Cupcakes: 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 3/4 tsp baking powder 3/4 tsp salt 2 eggs 3/4 cup hot water 3/4 cup heavy cream 3 tbsp canola or other vegetable oil 2 tsp vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with cupcake papers and set aside. Sift together cocoa, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Add eggs, water, heavy cream, oil and vanilla. Mix with a hand held mixer until smooth. Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each half full. Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool before frosting. Frosting: 2 sticks softened butter 4 cups confectioners' sugar 4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, cream together sugar, cocoa and butter; beginning on low speed then increase to high. Beat until fluffy and lightened in color. Transfer mixture to a piping bag fitted with a decorative tip. Frost cupcakes. Strawberries: 18-24 Strawberries - you'll need as many as you have cupcakes Vodka, rum, or your choice of liquor 80 proof or higher (over-proof such as 110 will give you a yellow flame) Hollow the strawberries carefully. If you pierce the side of the strawberry accidentally, start with a new one. Since you'll be setting the liquor aflame, it is important that your strawberry is leak-proof. Set one strawberry atop each frosted cupcake. Fill strawberries with liquor just before lighting (see tips). If you need to light them all at once, (say, for a party) use a turkey baster to quickly fill all the strawberries and a grill lighter in lieu of matches.

[Food + Drink Wednesdays] Our Hearts Go out to Omnomicon

How adorbs is the author, Aleta?

New favorite food blog! It's snarky and sweet and totally unique.

I only wish you would post more often, girrrrlfriend!

But take, for instance, this recipe for rainbow cake: http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake. It's the perfect balance of wit and creativity. And those colors basically make me want to be five years old again, so I can stuff that in my face and get it stuck in my hair. Oh, who am I kidding? I might just do it anyway.

My goal for this week is to try to convert that rainbow cake recipe into this giant cupcake pan.

That would be epic. Almost as epic as Omnomicon.

What To Do with All that Leftover Pumpkin

  

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

BUNS

2¼ tsp active dry yeast
¼ c warm water

3/4 c pumpkin puree (I used fresh, but canned also works just fine)
2 tbsp margarine, melted

2 c flour, plus more for dusting
2 tbsp sugar
¼ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp salt

FILLING
½ c packed brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
¼ c margarine, melted

ICING
1 tsp margarine
1 tsp vanilla
1½ c powdered sugar
2 tbsp water

In a small bowl, stir yeast into warm water; set aside to proof. 

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, nutmeg and salt. Add pumpkin puree and margarine to your foamy yeast mixture; blend well. Make a well in your dry mix and add liquid, stirring to incorporate. Knead for a couple of minutes until smooth, adding extra flour a little bit at a time as needed to keep it from sticking to everything. (Don’t add too much or your rolls will end up tough!) Gently poke the dough with your index finger; if the indent bounces back, you’re good to go.

Cover tightly with plastic, set in a warm, draft-free place, and go work on that cook zine you’ve always meant to finish for an hour while your dough rises. Once it’s about doubled, punch it down and roll out until it’s rectangular and about ¼-½” thick. Slather with melted margarine and sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon evenly over the top.

Applying slight pressure, roll it up like a jelly roll. Firmly saw through the roll with a serrated knife. Basically, if you want wide, squat buns with a ton of rings, roll it up the long way and make thinner slices; if you’d rather have more, taller buns, roll it up the short way and make thicker slices. Arrange in a pan (9×13″ for squatter buns, else a 9″ cake pan); it’s okay for there to be a little bit of room between the rolls, as they’ll expand into each other and create that nice pull-away effect. Cover and set in a warm place to rise for another 40 minutes. Bake at 375° for 25 minutes.

While the buns bake, whisk together icing ingredients until smooth. Let sit at room temperature (refrigeration will make it difficult to pour). Drizzle generously onto warm buns. 

This recipe re-posted from Hell Yeah It's Vegan! (These were a bit dry for me, so make sure you are really careful about not overworking the dough. More icing always helps too.)

Vegan Chocolate Chip/Raisin Pumpkin Cupcakes

Even though that picture is really awful, these cupcakes are the bomb. Canned pumpkin tends to get really gummy when you overmix it, so try to only stir the batter about 3 times once you've added the pumpkin in at the end. You will not regret it. 

WHAT YOU NEED

1/3 c canola oil

2/3 c granulated, white sugar
1/3 c brown sugar

1/4 c soymilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp gound nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 c chocolate chips

3/4 c raisins

1 c pureed pumpkin

ICING
1 tsp margarine
1 tsp vanilla
1½ c powdered sugar
2 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with paper cups

Stir together the first 5 ingredients (from the oil to vanilla)

In another bowl sift together the remaining dry ingredients. Do not mix in the raisins, chocolate chips, or pumpkin yet.

Gradually incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients by hand with a fork. Do not use a mixer.

Add in pumpkin, chocolate chips, and raisins. Try to stir as little as possible, just enough to incorporate everything and no more.

Fill the muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake for 23-25 minutes. Cupcakes should be firm to the touch, but still moist and delicious.

After they've cooled, I'm happy to glaze them with the same stuff I used to make the cinnamon rolls. 

This recipe is a modified version from food.com. 

[Food + Drink Wednesdays] Vegan Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate

Peanut Butter and Cake

This recipe was inspired (okay, mostly taken) from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is by the girls who brought us Veganomicon and The Post Punk Kitchen.

November is the month of autumn-themed eating, at least according to me. That means lots baked goods, lots of squash, lots of apples and cinnamon, and lots of molasses. I'm pretty sure peanut butter fits in there somewhere too.

With a little re-working, I made sure these cupcakes were the perfect amount of moist and rich. That is, don't even think about eating half of one without a big glass of milk, soy or otherwise. What I also love about this recipe is that it's made from stuff you always keep in the pantry anyway, so I didn't even have to go to the store. I was just bored and started pulling out pots and pans.

Ingredients
3/4 cup of soy milk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter (the original calls for natural, but that's really not necessary)
1/4 cup canola oil (the original calls for much more, but it's not necessary either, especially if you use normal PB)
2/3 cup sugar (I added 1/2 Splenda and 1/2 white sugar-- you can't tell the difference)
2 tbsp molasses or sorghum (Invest in some of this. It's also good on biscuits...)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp ground flaxseeds (I always keep this around for smoothies and replacing butter and eggs in any recipe)
1 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
OPTIONAL: a bit of melted chocolate for the topping; peanuts for garnish

Directions
1. Preheat the ocen to 350° F. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners. Mine were jumbo liners, but I realized that after the fact.
2. Mix soy milk with vinegar and set aside to curdle.
3. In a large bowl, mix together PB, oil, sugar, molasses, vanilla, ground flaxseeds. Add the soy milk mixture until combined.
4. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until JUST combined. Not too much, now!
5. Fill cupcake liners two-thirds full. Bake for 23 to 26 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
6. OPTIONAL: When cooled a bit, place on wax paper or protective surface and pour melted chocolate over the top, then garnish with peanuts. I think this step is pretty unnecessary, but it looks prettier for parties 'n things.

Take a Bite Outta That!