S'mores Pops

We stayed home today with a sick Olivia, so decided to make something with what I had on hand. I had some of these SUPER big marshmallows left over from a bonfire night, so we made these S'mores pops. Yum! The girls wanted their's with sprinkles instead of the graham cracker crumbs, but if you're going for the true S'mores experience you must use the crumbs!

Glazed Pink Grapefruit Mini-Bundt Cakes

The same sweet friend who unloaded a bunch of navel oranges on me has also given me a ton of pink grapefruit. I LOVE grapefruit, but you can only eat so many before you start to lose sensation in your tongue. I stumbled on this recipe for glazed pink grapefruit bread on Pinterest (aka my favorite new time-suck) and decided to try it in my adorable mini-bundt pan. They are SO good and refreshing and sweet! This is what mine looked like (obviously my baking skills outshine my photography skills!):

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Yumminess

I made these little darlins a couple weeks ago. I was inspired by the Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cupcake recipe from Hoosier Homemade. She used a mix though, and I wanted to make my cupcakes from scratch, so used this recipe from For the Love of Cooking. Very simple, and they turned out great, despite my concern since there was no butter in the recipe.

Then I used the frosting recipe as shown in the original post on Hoosier Homemade. That frosting... OMG! So very yummy!

I have to say, one of my best cupcakes to date.

Next I think I'll try the sangria cupcakes I found on Spain in a Cupcake.

When life gives you oranges....

Got a bunch of fresh navel oranges from a sweet friend's tree this weekend. Decided to try to make homemade Orange Julius' with them. I basically used this recipe but because I had actual oranges, not frozen concentrate, I first peeled about 8 orange, pureed them in my blender, ran that through the sieve to separate juice from pulp and seeds and then went from there.

Huge success.

Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Made this for a Football Sunday Chili Cook Off with friends. It is simple and amazing. I'm going to make it in these mini bundt pans for my work party on Sunday. Kinda excited about it, in a sicko, I love to bake stuff kinda way!

The Year of the Bark

So, every year for the holiday season, I make something that I can give as a "food gift"... for co-workers, friends, teachers, neighbors, etc... It's usually fudge. Fudge is pretty simple and you can package it nicely. I've grown tired of fudge.

Two years ago, I'd grown tired of fudge. I decided to make these Martha Stewart cookies that consisted of like 346 steps. They weren't hard, no complicated techniques or anything... just a very long process. At about step 327, I needed some counter space in my tiny apartment kitchen so I stuck the cookies in the oven while I did other things. On Christmas Eve, I was very very very sick. Like gonna die from a head cold sick. But I'd promised to bring a pumpkin pie to a friend's family's get together, so I pre-heated the oven and made my pie. The pain in the ass Martha Stewart cookies and a butt-load of plastic RubberMaid tubs were melted all over the inside of my oven.

So this year, with my boredom of fudge having returned, I'm going with bark. All you gotta do is melt some chocolate: dark, milk, semi-sweet, white, whatever... and add some crunchy bits to it. Then you let it harden and then you break it. Yep, break it, you don't even have to cut it. It looks pretty all packaged up in little baggies too. I've got what I've deemed "Movie Theater Bark" (that perfect blend of salty and sweet, like popcorn and M&M's) chillin' in the fridge right now. Semi-sweet chocolate swirled with a little bit of white chocolate, topped with crushed pretzels and mini M&M's!

Here's a fun article from Food TV Magazine with some mix and match ideas. Bark it up.

What's next?

What shall I make this coming weekend?

I'll let you guys choose!

Option A: Vanilla Pumpkin Cupcake with Cinnamon Buttercream

Option B: Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Whoopie!

No, not the cushion.... and no, not the euphemism for sex used on The Newlywed Show. Whoopie as in Whoopie Pies. I don't think I've ever had an actual Whoopie Pie, but I've been seeing them pop up everywhere lately on baking blogs and in cooking magazines. I found this recipe from epicurious.com and decided to give it a try. They turned out pretty good overall... very messy and the filling needed to be a little thicker to stay put, but still rather tasty. They are reminiscent of a Hostess cupcake. And yes, I am aware they aren't technically a "cupcake" but since this is my blog, I can bake and post about whatever the hell I want! = )

I miss my cupcakes...

So the Cupcake Sunday experiment got a smidge off track.... football season was to blame. GO SAINTS! But I digress. I won't commit to cupcakes every Sunday, but every once in a while, yes.

Last week, I whipped up Martha's Banana Cupcakes with honey-cinnamon frosting. The cupcakes by themselves were yummy, but the frosting was, well, the icing on the cake! I didn't get any pictures of mine, they disappeared too fast.

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Meringue Buttercream

This week, I made Martha's Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Meringue Buttercream. If you are skeered of butter, this recipe is not for you! There is a butt-ton of butter in both the cupcakes and the frosting. The cupcake batter...oh my word.... I challenge anyone to make these and not eat at least 3 tablespoons of the batter alone! Once baked, they have more of a muffin quality, and would be rather tasty for breakfast without the buttercream.

Ahhh, the buttercream! I've never made homemade buttercream frosting before, it was fun. And rather, well, buttery! Bug LOVED it! She is a self-confessed butter addict.

All in all, these were tasty and moist, and I'm guessing really really fattening!

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Ok, this is my first shot at Martha cupcakes... here's the recipe as I found it on the Martha website. I didn't do the chocolate chip frosting though, the book called for straight up chocolate. The results: they were good, the Little O'Neil's loved them, but I wasn't blown away by them, considering all the steps involved. But cupcakes, like pizza, fishing, and sex....are good even when they're bad!

Cupcake Sundays

So I picked up this little book at Barnes & Noble today and decided it would be fun to make a different cupcake recipe out of the book every Sunday for the next year... a la Julie and Julia. Yes, I know that sounds crazy but I find baking very therapeutic... and Sundays are my day. So I will begin tomorrow with Chocolate Chip Cupcakes from scratch, Martha Style! Stay tuned!