Chocolate Cream Cheese Filled Cupcakes

A few weeks ago my blog friend, Dianne, sent me a book called Favorite Recipes from Quilters.  Thanks again, Dianne, I have really enjoyed perusing the book when I have a spare moment. Since it was only 29 degrees outside this morning, I decided to stay inside and try an easy recipe from the book.

I did not follow the recipe exactly. I put my cream cheese in the center instead of on top.

 You should be able to read the recipe in the picture above. Don't bake them for 25 minutes--or at least check them at about 18 minutes. I baked mine for 20 and that was about a minute too long for  my oven.

Nontheless, I found them to be quite tasty after I added a dollup of vanilla frosting and a squiggle of chocolate syrup.

About mid-morning, I decided to go to my local Lazyboy furniture store to get something to sit on in the family room. This is what I ended up buying, minus those accent pillows:

It is the exact color I had in my mind.  The chaise is just perfect for a five foot person like me. I will be going back later today with a cushion from the two other chairs in the room, so I can get pillows made to complement. 

I hope DH likes it.  He really does not care at all about furniture, decorating, etc. Still I am having them hold off delivery until tomorrow, just so he has a chance to voice his opinion. I will have him go in and sit on the sofa to make sure it is comfortable for his 6 ft. 3 inch body.

I just remembered that I have not gone outside today and I need to remove the heavy blankets I covered all the containers with last night.  I had better get out there now and do that.  Then I think I will run a few more errands before I need to start dinner.

Doughnut Muffins

I always like to bake when snowed in on the weekend, so Saturday I made these doughnut muffins from  the King Arthur site.

  In the middle of making these,  I discovered I didn't have any ground cinnamon. Luckily I did have some cinnamon sticks that worked nicely once I grated them.

DH really loves glazed doughnuts, so  I made a glaze instead of the cinnamon topping they showed on the King Arthur page.
 

He proclaimed the recipe a keeper. I was surprised because he does not normally like muffins.  I will most definitely be making these again.

Mixed Animal Print Outfit & Banana Coconut Cupcakes w/Cooked Caramel Frosting Recipe

Today I am wearing this outfit while toting the  mixed animal print handbag I made Saturday.

I just wish I had some animal print sides for my glasses! I plan to get a set, but they were out of them the last time I was there. 

Since it's only 36 degrees outside, I will have to wear my animal jacket, too. :)

Every now and then you need to dress for fun!


DH knows that I use spotted bananas for baking, so when he came across this bunch at the grocery store, he could not resist bringing them home to me.

Instead of throwing them in the freezer, I decided to make some banana cupcakes and freeze half of those.

I used this recipe (I added toasted coconut to 1/2 of the batter) for the cupcakes. I like that the recipe uses 4 bananas (most use 2) so there is a lot of banana flavor.

A-Number-1 Banana Cake
Rated: 5 stars
Submitted By: Kevin Ryan
Photo By: Angie
Prep Time: 30 Minutes
Cook Time: 30 Minutes Ready In: 1 Hour

"This is a very versatile and fast cake recipe. Not only is it moist and delicious, the same batter can be used to make banana bread and muffins. Delicious frosted with chocolate or cream cheese frosting."

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup white sugar 3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, mashed
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour 2 - 8 inch round pans. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

2. In a large bowl, cream butter, white sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in the bananas. Add flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk to the creamed mixture. Stir in chopped walnuts. Pour batter into the prepared pans.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven, and place on a damp tea towel to cool.

Cooked Caramel Frosting

1/2 cup of butter
2 cups brown sugar (I used light brown)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Combine the cream and brown sugar in a heavy pan with high sides. Bring to boil. Stir continulusly for one minute. Add the 1/2 tsp. baking soda and boil one minute more.  (This is why you need a high sided pot; it will foam up). Remove from high. Cut the butter into pices and drop on top of the mixture. DON'T STIR it in.  Put the pan in the refrigerator until it's cold (I left mine in for about three hours)
It will look like this when you take it out:

I transferred mine to my big mixer.
See all that sticky caramel?

Get it all out.
Then beat on high until it looks like this:

I think it took about 5 minutes. I also added a touch more cream as mine seemed a bit thick.

The plain caramel frosted ones have no coconut inside.

A Trip to the Apple Farm

It was a beautiful late summer morning, so we decided to take a trip to an apple farm to get some pie-making apples.  I don't bake too many pies from scratch, but September/October always finds me filling a homemade pie crust with some sort of apple concoction.

This country road  seems so fitting for an apple orchard and farm stand. It's about a 45-minute drive from where I live. It is gorgeous when the maple trees are dressed in their autumn finery.  We plan to go again next month to get more apples and take in the spectacular colors.

Cute welcome sign by the main entrance to the store.

We arrived 15 minutes before the store opened, so we walked around the orchard and explored a bit.
They have a few farm animals for children, making it the perfect autumn day trip for families (what a great marketing idea that was!)

This sign was above the outside sink for the porta-a-potty.

  How cute!

They have a covered outdoor seating area for their lunches. They were cooking brats and grilled apples today.

As soon as the doors opened, we headed to the apples.  I asked for a tart apple for pies and they suggested Gala Reds.

While DH paid for our peck of apples, I  snapped a few pictures around the store.

They had some cute Halloween displays.

We were back home by noon and I immediately started cooking with the apples.  I made crust for a double-crust pie, but instead of one pie, I decided to make some hand held apple pies.

Just two hours ago those apples were sitting in at bin in an adjacent city.  Now they are pies sitting on my counter--it warms my heart--and DH's tummy.

I have not tried one yet, but DH did and said they are good. 

I had planned to take a glass-bottom boat tour of local shipwrecks this weekend, but that never happened.  The tour is over two hours long and I just did not have the time to spare on Saturday. Maybe next weekend.  If I do, I will certainly share it with all of you.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

I finished the whoopie pies yesterday.

They are cake-like with a filling of marshmallow creme and cream cheese. There is no other sugar in the filling so it is not very sweet, which I liked.
I found the recipe here.  Update:  Thanks, Pea, for mentioning the frosting recipe on this page. I did not use that one. I found one that called for 8 oz. cream cheese and 1 7-oz jar of marshmallow creme.  I just whipped it until fluffy (albeit very sticky!). 

We had our first lightning/ thunderstorm last night. Our power got knocked out for over two hours. How did people ever live without electricity? 

I think all that rain got rid of the last piles of snow in my yard. Now if it dries out, I can get to work in the gardens.

For dinner last night, I  made these chicken crescent sandwiches:

Here is the recipe from the Pillsbury site:

Pillsbury Chicken Crescent Sandwiches

INGREDIENTS:


1package (3 oz) cream cheese, softened

1tablespoon LAND O LAKES® Butter, softened

2cups cubed cooked chicken

1tablespoon chopped fresh chives or onion

1/4teaspoon salt

1/8teaspoon pepper

2tablespoons milk

1tablespoon chopped pimientos, if desired (I left out and put in cooked carrots instead)

1can (8 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated crescent dinner rolls or 1 can (8 oz) Pillsbury® Crescent Recipe Creations® refrigerated seamless dough sheet

1tablespoon LAND O LAKES® Butter, melted

3/4cup seasoned croutons, crushed



DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 350°F. In medium bowl, mix cream cheese and 1 tablespoon softened butter; beat until smooth. Add chicken, chives, salt, pepper, milk and pimientos; mix well.

Separate or cut dough into 4 rectangles. If using crescent dough, firmly press perforations to seal. Spoon 1/2 cup chicken mixture onto center of each rectangle. Pull 4 corners of dough to center of chicken mixture; twist firmly. Pinch edges to seal. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Brush tops of sandwiches with 1 tablespoon melted butter; sprinkle with crushed croutons.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Just before the power died, I finished this wonky house block.

Last week I did a mock up on my computer and this is what I am working toward:

I only need to make 4 or 5 more house blocks, so it won't take too long.

I Made Cupcakes Again

I just bought the cute tulip liners yesterday. This time I made my own frosting--nonsweet buttery red velvet cake frosting.-- (much better than the canned stuff that I used last time).   I tinted it peachy pink.


"Why pink?" I will pretend you asked because the question is the perfect segue to the reason I am posting twice today.

Pastel frosting goes nicely with the cupcake table runner I recently finished and wanted to show you.

I am now done  posting for today. I am going to eat a cupcake.

RED VELVET CAKE FROSTING

1 cup milk

2 TBL flour

1 c. granulated sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 c. butter

Cook flour and milk in double boiler until thick, stirring constantly. Let milk mixture cool completely. Cream sugar, butter and vanilla until light & fluffy (takes about 8 minutes). Add the cooled milk/flour mixture and beat about another 10 minutes.

Makes enough for 2 dozen cupcakes

Real Cupcakes for My Man

Today my husband called me at work and asked where the dessert was that I had made last night. 

"What dessert?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Those cupcakes."

I started laughing.

"Yeah," he said, "I saw your blog post headline about cupcakes and my mouth started watering. I was pretty disappointed when I read further and found out they were made of fabric!"

"You're so funny," I replied.

When he got home last night I was already fast asleep so I did not know that he had read my blog.

So tonight I decided to surprise him with some real cupcakes.

A few weeks ago, I had a $5 off coupon for JoAnne Fabrics and I bought this cupcake decorating kit and I have been wanting to try it out.

I am not very good at decorating cupcakes or cookies.  All I want is a nice way to put the frosting on so it looks appealing.  I don't find my usual spreading with a butter knife to be very attractive.

I just used a yellow cake mix and made some mini and some full-sized cupcakes.  When they were done, I injected most of the minis with my mother-in-law's raspberry jam that I had heated in the microwave and then put through a sieve to remove all of the seeds.  I have a little injector thingy that worked great to get the jam inside.  I think I posted some pics of that in an earlier blog post. 

Then I went to YouTube to find a cupcake video to see how to make a nice swirl of frosting.  I found tons of videos and watched a couple.  It look so easy and I felt very confident that I could do it with my largest star tip - 1M- I think they called it. 

I just used this canned frosting:

I put it in one of the decorating bags that came with the kit and gingerly began my first swirl....not bad.....I swirled and swirled until the whole container was gone.  There was only enough frosting for about half a cake mix. I used two full containers to get all the cupcakes frosted.

Look - cupcake perfection!  At least for me.  I don't ask for much in the way of cupcake decorating.

 This little swirl thrills me to no end!

Remember I told you I injected raspberry jam into the minis?  Take a look at this mini mouthful of sweet perfection.

I sprinkled a few large sugar crystals on top of the frosting.  It added just the right amount of crunch when I popped this baby into my mouth.

I think my Man will be very happy when he gets home tonight.

Valentine Sweets for My Sweetie

Happy Valentine's Day!


I  spent a lot of  my weekend  in the kitchen. Strawberries looked good when DH was shopping, so I made spinach/strawberry salad for Sunday lunch and then decorated these four berries  with

some leftover melting chocolate.  I just love the look of jumbo berries dipped in chocolate and nuts.  I guess you can tell that since I used them in my new header.  Each one got its own heart-shaped plate and was slowly devoured with every bite  enjoyed to the fullest.

I bought a new Wilton heart cutter--one of those big thick ones-- and decided to make boxed brownies to try it out.

I am not too thrilled with it, but I think it's because the brownies were under cooked and did not cut cleanly.  I threw away about half of them because they were too gooey in the center.

I also did a lot of sewing this weekend.  One of the items I made was a Dresden plate (name of the old quilt patten) placemat to go with my black and red dishes.  I do love designing table items to match my many sets of dishes.

 But instead of the black/red dishes,  I decided to use them with glass dishes so I could put one of my Vintage valentines under each plate.

That marshmallow stick on the top of the plate is cute, but it tasted awful! So bad it was inedible. So don't buy them if you see them marked down after the holiday. Well, buy them if you want to, I don't mean to tell you what to do, but I can't imagine that anybody could eat one of those--it was like chewing on a rubber tire.

Hope you all have a great Valentine's Day!

February Blog Funk

I have had nothing to write about for the past week as I haven't done much but sew in my spare time.  I did a lot of sewing the first week of February.
 I have posted all my projects on my quilting blog, http://www.zoeyquilts.blogspot.com/, or just click on the link on my sidebar if you want to know more about the projects. They are all made from free patterns that I got on the Internet and I have posted links to the free patterns, if you are interested in making any of them.

Today I pulled these lovely bananas from the freezer.

and turned them into 2 loaves of a glazed banana bread.I have not yet tasted the bread, but it looks a lot prettier than those frozen bananas, don't you agree?

I hope it's good as I intend to take a loaf to my MIL tomorrow. We are going there for dinner for my father-in-law's birthday.

Did you notice those roses behind the banana bread? It's my Valentine's Day flower from my sweet husband.

If I can keep it alive until June, I can plant it in the garden. 

I hope you are all having a good February. It's been very, very cold here. A couple of days last week were below zero.  I am enjoying the cold weather. I don't have to worry about spending too much time on my sewing projects because there is nothing else I need to do outside.  Spring will be here soon enough.