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September 28th, 2010
Hi! It’s been a while…oops. No cupcake competitions this month. Honestly I just wasn’t feeling the Mystery Box theme (I am not a sentimental person and the things I liked as a kid were pretty boring…ok at one point I had a great idea but it was on the last possible day to enter and I wouldn’t have had enough time to take pictures after making them). And my Cupcake Hero entry did not go as planned, although I now know how to make a sort of addictive Cheeto cream cheese frosting (just ask me if you want THAT recipe). But I’ve done other things, and I am going to share them with you here. You get TWO recipes today, hooray!
Nutty goodness.
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Tags: alcohol, caramel, citrus, cupcakes, fruit, gluten-free, ice cream, nuts, spices
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August 18th, 2010
I was really excited when I heard about this month’s Mystery Box ingredient. It’s something that I feel is underrated and unfairly mocked, even by food professionals (such a shame). I think it’s lovely and actually just misunderstood.
White chocolate is a unique ingredient, and while dark and milk chocolate have hordes of rabid fans, you’d hear those same hordes echoing horrible sentiments like “I hate white chocolate” and “white chocolate is gross” or even “white chocolate isn’t REAL chocolate.” Lately I’ve taken up the cause and have been stubbornly defending what I know to be a special, delicious ingredient. And it is TOO real chocolate!
Where's the white chocolate?
However, as with many things, sometimes it takes baby steps to get people to like an ingredient that they’ve completely dismissed. That’s why I was so elated when I learned that you could CARAMELIZE white chocolate to make it extra special!
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Tags: caramel, chocolate, cupcakes, fruit, Mystery Box, nuts, salt
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August 14th, 2010
Well well well. Guess what this month’s Cupcake Hero theme is. Could it be…my recently admitted least favorite berry? Yes, yes it could. But guess what. I remembered a totally awesome uncommon flavor combination that I really enjoy and was able to translate it well into a fittingly assembled cupcake.
Can you guess what it is?
A definite favorite color combination of mine.
You’d probably guess that’s chocolate cake, but you’d be wrong. There’s not a bit of chocolate anywhere in that cupcake. Think fragrant, roasted, strong, caffeinated…
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Tags: berries, coffee, Cupcake Hero, cupcakes, fruit, meringue, spreadables
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August 11th, 2010
Recently I thought to myself, while building an apricot-raspberry tart at work, that raspberries were my least favorite berries. Strawberries are sweet and seductive, blueberries (wild ones, anyway) are tiny and tart, blackberries are big and inky and juicy. But raspberries? Really not my thing, unless of course you count one of my favorite summer breakfasts of oatmeal with raspberries, peaches and honey.
Hooray for berries!
However, there are exceptions to every rule, and sometimes even a least favorite something has its place. One good place to stick your raspberries is in this awesome ice cream.
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Tags: alcohol, berries, fruit, ice cream
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July 18th, 2010
I was sad when it was announced that Iron Cupcake: Earth was no more. It was a significant factor in my getting seriously interested in pastry, leading me to experiment with recipes and learn how to make a real buttercream. It was on hiatus for a while as its fate was being determined, and I really missed the challenge and fun of making creative cupcakes at home.
Like a tasty flower.
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Tags: chocolate, coconut, cupcakes, fruit, Mystery Box, spice, spreadables, tea
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July 8th, 2010
Oh hey. It’s been like a month. I promised things were going to change, didn’t I?
…Well, they’re not. At least not in the way I promised. See, I just don’t have the energy, or honestly, the interest to be as hardcore into blogging as I was a year ago. Priorities change. So instead of stressing myself out over (and just plain forgetting) all the neato stuff I was going to do (which other bloggers are doing better anyway) I decided to think about what it was that I missed about blogging. And I do miss a lot! I decided that I missed sharing things when they went 100% right, and that I missed making up cupcakes. The latter will be addressed in one of the, uh, at least two other entries planned for this month. The former, however, is right below this sentence!
Not actually cherries :O
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Tags: alcohol, citrus, fruit, ice cream
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June 3rd, 2010
Currently, I’m sitting here in a pool of sweat, consuming as much icy deliciousness as I can. Sorbet, iced tea, iced coffee, you know. What’s that you say? It’s hot where you are, too? And you’re afraid that the ice cream you want so badly to cool you off will melt on the trip home?
Quite elegant.
Well, if you’re like me and are lucky enough to have a store right downstairs that sells frozen passion fruit pulp, you can rush down and get all the ingredients to make this passion fruit ice cream within a few minutes, churn it and be enjoying a flavorful frozen treat in an hour or two. It’s an interesting recipe in that it uses the whole egg as opposed to just the yolks – I think it makes the texture a bit fluffier. I changed it up a little by using half-and-half, which also lightened the recipe somewhat. It’s incredibly simple and something I will be making again, though quite possibly with cacao nibs in it next time. Yum!
Have a little more time on your hands and a hankering for something classic? Want something to do idly while watching a TV show? Then maybe this other recipe can help you out…
Bet you never thought of making THIS at home.
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Tags: alcohol, chocolate, cookies, fruit, ice cream, vanilla
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May 26th, 2010
This is going to be a rather unusual post, one of those rare, non-sugary things that I come up with every once in a great while. Not only that, but it’s flat-out healthy, and came together out of a particularly successful spring trip to the Greenmarket.
Ooh, springy!
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Tags: berries, fruit, honey, spices, vegetables
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May 18th, 2010
Though I’m a lot busier than I used to be, I still happily take special requests from friends. A couple months ago an old friend told me she wanted Margarita cookies for her birthday in May. So I made some!
It's like a one-cookie party!
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Tags: alcohol, citrus, cookies, salt, spreadables
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May 13th, 2010
I’d had a really yummy idea swimming around in my brain for a while, and like all swimmy ideas it changed and evolved over time, even getting so far as to be hypothetically written out in my notebook, along with recipes for accompanying elements. Also like many swimmy ideas, it sat fairly dormant until I came across something that caused a final change, very different to what I had been previously imagining.
It looks so exotic!
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Tags: fruit, tea
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