Creative Cupcakes from Trader Joe's!

Hey blog buddies! That was me talking like Davey Wavey, the flamboyant YouTube blogger extraordinaire. Anyway, a few days back, I decided I wanted to make cupcakes, especially because I had noticed an abundance of chocolate lurking in my pantry. There was just something so enthralling about a chocolate-cakey flavor, coming in cute and joyful little cups of dark, cakey sponginess. 

not even weird though

 But, I could never settle for plain old boring cupcakes! Conceptually, I knew I didn't have any fancy schmancy baking ingredients, but having set my mind on weirdness, I hunted around my kitchen in search of originality. Lo and behold, I found some awesome stuff! Tidbits of creative peanut butter, in individually wrapped pouches! Coconut flakes! Spiced Carribbean chocolate! Graham crackers... marshmallows? So, I had decided on four different flavors of cupcake: peanut butter, s'mores, coconut, and plain ecstatic chocolate. It was at this point that the adventure began. And I'm sorry, I don't know why this is highlighted, I've tried everything in my power to stop it.

Oh, and I also apologize for not taking photos of the batter - I really couldn't hold a camera while I was making it because the camera would have gotten covered in chocolatey mess, dooming it to a chocolatey death because I was too busy cooking.

I carefully lined my cupcake pan with twelve paper thingys. I put a layer of batter in the bottom of each cupcake hole, followed by the middle layer of filling, and then the final layer of cake batter on top. I went about this cake batter endeavor in a precautious manner, careful to not spill anything. Each bottom layer filled the cupcake tin a third of the way. The toppings I used were peanut butter, coconut flakes, and chunks of high-end Caribbean chocolate that was accompanied by graham crackers. The latter topping was used to create a delicious s'mores concoction.

They came out of the oven and everyone devoured them in three seconds and they tasted wonderful! Peanut butter was by far the prettiest cupcake, resembling a piece of candy, except even prettier. I dubbed it the Reese's Peanut Butter CupCake. Apparently, one JifToGo®  pouch can fill two cupcakes with peanut butter. Also, I am apparently capable of advertising for Jif®. Reese's® as well.

The S'mores cupcake definitely tasted the best, despite lacking marshmallow, but a spot of milk in a martini glass did the trick. 

Conceptualized: Reese's Peanut Butter Cupcake

You can't really see the chocolate in this s'mores cupcake below, but there are chunks of delicious, melty, spicy chocolate sprinkled around the top, accompanied by graham crackers, which may or may not have turned brown from being in chocolate cake.

Oh, and the coconut ones were pretty good.

#GlassofTheRightStuff

Until next baking (or cooking) time! Something is making me sense especially festive brownies on this blog in the near future. ;)

Happy 4th of July: Patriot Lemon Cake Pops

       Basically, I just had to give cake pops another try - and I am SO glad I did! These cake pops are amazing, maybe even more amazing than store-bought ones. I AM NOT KIDDING AROUND HERE! I like food; I know good food when I have it!

       To start off with, you want all of the ingredients for a classic lemon cake. I sort of improvised here from what I knew to be cake ingredients and what I knew to be lemons.

INGREDIENTS (Makes about 24 pops):

• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
•  ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp lemon zest
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
• 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup low-fat buttermilk
• 1 1/2 boxes Baking chocolate, semi-sweet
• About 2 cups of icing

       Since this is an improvised recipe, I decided to be more detailed in this post. Now, you too can make perfectly awesome pops!

       First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prepare (butter, flour, or grease) a 8-by-8-inch cake pan - or any size sheet cake pan, really. It will make sense later, I promise. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Put the butter out to soften as you work.

       In separate bowl (or bowls), use a grater to make lemon zest from your 4 lemons. This part will take some time, especially if your grater is anything like mine, where the grater sort of holds the zest instead of just dropping it in the bowl Once finally done, add the zest to the main mixing bowl. Then, slice two lemons in half and juice them. You can buy a juicer at most grocery stores and any cooking store. While juicing, I found it extremely practical to hold a strainer between the juicer and the small bowl. That way, if any seeds or blechy unwanted stuff fell out, the strainer would catch it and I wouldn't have to fish it out of the juice. When you have the proper amount, add juice to the main mixing bowl.

       Mix in buttermilk and eggs well. Now, you can add your softened butter. Mix by hand for two minutes to chunkify the butter and then use an electric mixer on low (or setting 1) to smooth the dough.

       As soon as the dough is smooth - give or take a few lumps - bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes, while you prep your icing. I used store-bought royal icing, which requires microwaving for about 30 seconds.

       Once cooled, break your cake into chunks and toss them in a large bowl. Don't actually toss food in your kitchen - you'll have to clean the mess up later. In the large bowl, start breaking your cake chunks down into crumbs. Gradually add icing to the chunks until you've made a matter similar to dough. Roll your pseudo-dough into balls with your hands, or use a round ice cream scoop (very effective).

       Let your cake balls chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours, or even overnight. Before taking any cake balls out, start melting just one block of chocolate (about 1-2 oz). Using this small bit of chocolate, dip a cake pop stick in the chocolate and then insert into cake ball. Repeat until all cake balls have a chocolate-inserted stick. Stick the balls back in the freezer for at least 15 minutes while you start melting the rest of your chocolate.

       I used Baker's baking chocolate, but it's much thicker than chocolate like Hershey's chocolate chips. If you want a thinner layer of chocolate around your cake pop, use Hershey's. If you are a chocolate lover and dig thick chocolate, grab Baker's chocolate.

       Once the sticks have set, pull out about 8 or 9 cake pops at a time to dip. Dip each and set on a wax-paper covered platter or plate or sheet. Once dipped, you can decorate as you please. After dipped and decorate, switch out for another 8 or 9 pops. Repeat until all pops are dipped and decorated. I used red, blue, and silver for my pops. It came out looking like fireworks, which was perfect.

       It's sort of a long process, but it's totally worth it! These babies came out perfectly moist and delicious and lemon-y. These were a totally triumph over our first cake pop attempt. Now, I know - and you know - exactly how to make perfectly moist and chewy cake pops.

       Stay tuned, next week and beyond, for more awesome recipes and kitchen crazy! Don't forget to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Share the yummy with your friends on Pinterest, Reddit, Facebook, or via email!

Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing: Take Forever!

Last time we made sugar cookies they were cool and everything, but I especially loved the cookies on which I devoted about 10 hours minutes each, carefully icing each one into a masterpiece. While Kajsa and Finn knocked out a gazillion Jackson Pollocks at a time and produced a lot of deliciousness, I made the most realistic wine glasses and bottles out of Cookie that I had ever seen. I decided to take a day off and dive into an abyss of artwork, sitting forever alone in my kitchen making beautiful cookies all day, because I have all the time in the world. WORTH IT.

I MADE THESE WITH MY HANDS

I began the whole process the night before Epic Natalie Cookie Day, on ENCD eve. I whipped up the same delicious dough Kajsa and I have been using; the one with almond extract. Delicious. This time around, I really wanted to use the wine glasses and bottles for cookie cutters again, but I couldn't find them anywhere in my house. So it was Off To Sur La Table with my enthusiastic teenage brother to buy a martini glass cutter, as a substitute until I found my other alcohcutters. And it was awesome!

WHO WANTS A MARTINI, AND A LION HORSE THING

I had a few other cookie cutters from my grandmother, who baked like she was Bob Marley. Flowers, circles, deformed figurines (witch? cat? I don't know). After baking forever I got frustrated creative and made my own freaking shapes with a knife, no metal shapes or anything. Most of these looked like continents, or gingerbread men. Or islands.

So I let all those guys cool off, while making my own royal icing instead of buying it from Sur La Table. I used a "healthier" recipe that didn't call for corn syrup, because honestly, who even has corn syrup? This one calls for a cup of powdered sugar and half a cup of white sugar as a base. Then add 2 tablespoons of water and 2 teaspoons of milk, along with a dash of almond extract if you're feeling risqué.

Without further ado, I made a bunch of colors...

BEAUTIFUL... Yeah that's a pizza

SOMETHING TO KNOW ABOUT THIS ICING: Stick it in the freezer for a few minutes. It's. So. Runny. I tried adding more sugar, microwaving, yelling, among other things to find a good icing consistency, but the freezer works the best. It's like magic. But don't leave it in there forever, I mean it's not like you want a sweet brick of sugary ice or anything weird, just a thicker icing. Stir it once it's out of the freezer and you're good to go.

And as far as colors go, I just separated my bowl of white icing into smaller dishes, adding colors as I please. A brown icing takes just a bit of cocoa powder and chocolate syrup, and then I made black by adding blue to that. 

I continued to create pride and joy, all over the place.  My favorite band got in on this, because I guess some of the random shapes I made (gingerbread men, probably?) looked like Green Day.

#BILLIELOVEME

Tré even has his drumsticks! Mike is also Hulk Hogan for some reason! And the heart grenade on the album cover is made out of sprinkles AND frosting. What am I doing with my life? Oh, right, being AWESOME. We ate the band and the bottle of Jack, but I just couldn't eat the album, so I left it on the ledge of a building on Powell street. Now more people can appreciate my art! GO FIND IT. 

Till next time! Off to make the banana bread again for Fathers' Day because it's his favorite.

Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing: Take 2!

       Saturday, we baked about 36 cookies. These weren't just any cookies, but particularly almond-extract-flavored sugar cookies! There was vanilla extract in them too, but that's not special or anything, Vanilla is always in cookies.

       It began with a dough. You will need two bowls for this experiment recipe, one big and one small. CALLING ALL INGREDIENTS! First you'll need to cream one stick of butter into a pulp, inside the small bowl. 

PAULA DEEN WAS HERE

       SECOND INGREDIENT: A CUP OF POWDERED SUGAR FOR THE CREAMED BUTTER'S FACE. Mix that really well, so once you have a nice and creamy pile of sugarfat, you can move on to the next bowl. Bowl #2, again, the bigger bowl, should have one egg, 2.5 cups of flour, a teaspoon of almond extract (WOOHOO BEST PART!!), and a teaspoon of vanilla extract (bawwwww). Oh yeah and salt. Just a little. Like a teaspoon, not a handful, come on, you should know this, you're a chef. After you've mixed it all together and it looks creamy (or maybe crumbly like ours did), put it in the refrigerator.

       Now, while that sits in the fridge, busy yourself with other entertaining things. We watched Labyrinth - yes, the one with David Bowie - for the allotted hour.

       After watching your movie or drawing or whatever you like for about an hour, take out the dough and start rolling it out. As you roll, make sure you have preheated your oven to 375 degrees, and prepared your cookie sheets. We got right to it with plenty of flour on hand!

What up, fishes?!?

       We kind of took a practical approach by only doing part of the dough at one time. We went by fourths. So we rolled out one fourth of the dough, cookie-cutted it, and then used the pink spatula there to transfer the cut dough onto our prepared sheets. Once a sheet was full, it was sent to the oven for 8 minutes - since ovens vary, the cookies should be in for about 7-9 minutes. From the first sheet on, we alternated cutting and removing cookies from the oven.

       I should note that it was ninety degrees outside while we were doing this and we both died of heat after the first two batches. It was HOT inside and outside. And we had to wear thick mitts, and handle hot sheets....

BUT IT WAS WORTH IT ALL!

         The cookies came out perfectly golden - not browned. They weren't as flat as we would've liked, but they still worked very well when icing. Oh, yeah, the icing! Well, we got a little lazy with the icing. Originally, we were going to make the icing from scratch; however, Sur la Table has some amazing icing-in-a-bottle that fit our schedule much better. Put the bottle in the microwave for about 20 to 30 seconds, and then kind of massage the bottle until the warmth spreads. The icing bottle has a glue-bottle type of top, where you twist and it pours out. We soon figured out that, if we loosened the top just a little, the icing cooperated much better.

You see that cupcake? Natalie spent FOREVER on THAT cupcake.

       Once we had finished icing all of the cookies, the icing proved to be very temperamental. We had the cookies in the fridge, again, for about an hour, but most of the cookies simply refused to set. Long story short, we had to wait overnight for the darn things to stay shiny and pretty. Our main batches (see above picture) were beautiful and largely very simple in decoration. Nonetheless, Natalie had bought a couple of cutters and focused mainly on making her cookies absolutely gorgeous - which, they absolutely were!

She did this with a toothpick, sprinkles, and food coloring.

       By Sunday, all of the cookies were set and perfect and delicious. After I got home from taking Natalie home, there were only three cookies left from the 25 cookies I had warned my family to not eat all. I really wasn't surprised - they are delicious! - but I had to hide the remaining three just to be sure I actually got a chance to eat some!

       

       Stay tuned for more fun with the College Kitchenettes! Don't forget to check out our new poll: What's your favorite summer dessert?

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The College Kitchenette Hiatus is Over!

       As the College Kitchenettes are in college, this last month has been especially busy! Our semester has been winding down (although, really more like winding up), and we made it through final exams! We are now out, free to enjoy the summer and the baking adventures to come!
       As a matter of fact, I had my first summer baking adventure recently on a trip to Berkeley, California.

The ever-stunning Spun Sugar in Berkeley, California!

       Like most bakers, I absolutely love cooking shops. On the way to IKEA, I stopped by a small baking shop called Spun Sugar. If anyone hasn't been there, it's amazing. Go look, I'm not kidding. They've got everything there!

• Cookie Cutters
• Cake pans
• Baking chocolate
• Sprinkles
• Liners
• Frosting tips, dye, and bags
• Cupcake containers
• And so much more!

Yes, they even have THESE!

       I thought I must have died and gone to heaven. I spent a good amount of money, too. I got some couplers, some liners, and some amazingly awesome cookie cutters. I would have bought more but I was saving for IKEA as well.

Mah loot - it's beautiful!

       Stay tuned for more baking adventures, and more amazing concoctions, with the College Kitchenettes. We'll be back soon with all new recipes!
       Don't forget to share the yummy on Facebook, Reddit, and Pinterest! Also, check out our newest poll: What's your favorite summer dessert?

Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes!

       Once upon a time, there was me in my kitchen at school, wanting to recreate something I saw on the internet: mini versions of pineapple upside down cake! I was equipped with a box of cake and a few other random ingredients, and this Betty Crocker Super Moist looked pretty delicious, which was all perfect because I was craving some delicious fluff after going to see The Vagina Monologues. I was ready to attempt a pinterest-inspired version of mini pineapple upside down cake! Because the only thing better than food is MINI-FOOD! Right?

Whoa, dude, you're using strawberry cake for this pineapple dessert? YES

       The box of cake only called for a cup of water, half a cup of vegetable oil, and a few stupid eggs. Make sure you actually have eggs, because I had to go ALL THE WAY to the market to get them and then they didn't have those nice little packages of six eggs so I had to get twelve eggs and now they're just sitting here. Maybe I can cook the rest of them up with some bacon! Oh wait we ate the bacon. Ehh.

DAT PINK AND BLUE. DAT CONTRAST

       At least the cake mix is beautifully vibrant! I couldn't stop tasting it only because it was faaaahbulously pink. And I have this bacon in the picture because I almost cooked bacon into some of the cakes, except again, we ate the bacon.

       I wasn't sure how well bacon would go with the pineapple flavor, anyway, since I had poured some of the pineapple juice into the cake batter. I continued to get out my muffin tin, a tiny one because I live in a dorm and have a toaster oven! Shh, I'm not really supposed to have a toaster oven. Anyway, I lined the tin with some butter, created these pretty little flowers out of some pineapple chunks, and cinnamon-sugared them. I saw this done on pinterest with pineapple rings instead, but that's okay, not everyone's food is as pretty as mine. But actually though, rings might give your cakes more leverage when it comes to getting them out of the pan; I would try it out!

EAT YO FRUIT

       I proceeded to coat the pineapple in cake mix to prepare for baking. I filled them up about 3/4 of the way full. I would usually only fill them halfway because cake rises so much, but think about it, pineapple doesn't expand or rise.

       Lo and behold, they rose just the perfect amount! Getting them out was easy since the pineapple juice lubricates the pan, AND the chunky fruit is baked into the cake so it all comes out in one nice little package!

Don't they look like plain strawberry cupcakes? Haha, joke on you

       I'm glad they were so easy to take out and didn't fall apart! I had to wait for them to cool off completely, though, so everything could solidify together. Look how pretty they turned out! They look like cute little individual tiki festivities! It's like I want to serve them on an island inside a coconut.

I ended up taking the cakes over to my friend Lauren's, (SHOUTOUT! GO LAUREN! SHE GOT ME INTO PINTEREST!) and my old high school friends and I devoured them like true inebriates. Because of all the sugar we had been eating, of course.

Let's have a Tiki Kiki!!!

       Stay tuned for more baking adventures with the College Kitchenettes!

       Share the yummy with friends on Facebook, Reddit, or Pinterest! See you soon!

Royal Icing: Take 1!

Since we have been offline so long (blame college), we decided to give you all a treat:

A front-row seat to our first Royal Icing attempt.

The sugar cookies themselves were relatively simple (see recipe below), although they took quite a while to make before we even got to the icing.

Oven ready and almost perfectly spherical!

Our recipe:

1 cup butter, almost completely melted
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, powdered sugar, egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt and flour. Mix until smooth. Chill dough until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper, or butter sheets, and set aside.

Roll out dough on a well floured surface until it is 1/4 inch thick. Cut out cookies with cookie cutters and carefully transfer them to the prepared cookie sheets. I used a spatula to try to maintain the spherical shape as much as possible. 

Bake cookies for 7-9 minutes. Cookies should be slightly brown on bottom. Let cool completely before frosting.

Relax, it's on wax paper...

For the frosting, we sort of cheated. I had been shopping early that day, and lost all willpower at one of my favorite cooking supply stores. Long story short, I ended up buying the royal icing in a bottle. At least it was good icing, okay?

Look how pretty!

It took about ten to fifteen minutes to ice all the cookies, and then they had to dry for about 45 minutes to an hour. Luckily, my parents weren't home so nobody tried to eat them while they were drying. By the time they were finished, I almost wished I had bought one of those frosting pens.

Smooth and dry... perfect for writing if I had a frosting pen!

Apparently the cookies were really tasty because they were gone in, like, ten minutes. I kid you not. I had 24 cookies, and they are gone. I think I had about 3. The really exciting part is that my mom was able to enjoy them as much as the rest of the family - and they aren't even gluten-free! They were delicious and simple, although time consuming.

Stay tuned this week for lunch and dinner recipes! Also, watch this weekend for an awesome St. Patty's recipe - for you, kids, and the leprechauns!

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