Never Bashful with Butter

“My salad days, When I was green in judgement, cold in blood.”
William Shakespeare

When I was a little girl, I loved salad. As long as salad was just lettuce, carrots and ranch dressing. Sure, I grew up in a fruit loving family, but vegetables? Blech. I could definately do without. I liked a very select few veggies. I loved carrots with ranch. I loved carrots with onion dip. I loved corn on the cob with butter. I hated every other kind of vegetable. Ok, I liked potatoes too, but come on, who doesn’t?

Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. I’d take a salad over green beans any day. It was all about the dressing though, as I slathered my leafy greens with so much ranch dressing it was more a soupy mess than anything anyone would consider to be good for you. The lettuce itself was merely an afterthought.

My complete and total boycott of the great green salad happened one fateful summer when I was… well, probably 9 years old or so. I remember this “vacation” not becneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comause of the food fight that would ensue, but because this was the first time I’d packed my own duffle, and I’d managed to forget to pack anything resembling underwear. Nothing. Only the pair I had on me at the time.

I don’t know why I was too embarrassed to tell my aunt. I guess it might be because I knew she didn’t like me. This was the aunt that made me sit at the dinner table for 12 hours (yes, twelve hours. Half of a day.) because I refused to eat the green beans on my plate that made me gag. In the end, I only was allowed to get up because I started crying so hard that I threw up my entire dinner all over the floor. I was like, 7 at the time.  Would you want to tell THAT lady anything? Especially since I was one of those really shy kids who didn’t trust anyone, and saying things like “underwear” would make me blush and run and hide. heh. I dunno what was wrong with me.

So I didn’t tell her. I told my older sister.

This, was a big mistake.

I was 9 years old. Almost 10. My sister was 12. Telling her that I had packed my bags sans panties was like renting a billboard declaring my predicament, and hiring the boys that I formed my tween’age crushes on, to stare at it, turn, and point and laugh at me, every second of every day.

She laughed, and that was just the beginning. She then proceeded to tell my cousins. Annette and Jason*.  Annette was about a year younger than my sister (who is three years older than me.) and I always assumed she chose my sister as her “friend” cousin because she looked up to her, and it was ‘cool’ to have older friends, and to be liked by the older crowd. Annette just plain old made fun of me. Pointing, laughing, calling me stupid. between her and my sister I thought I’d heard the worst. Then, they told Jason.

Jason was 2 years younger than me. I don’t know why they felt the need to tell him, considering he couldn’t be any farther removed from the chain of “need to know”, and sure, I realized it was just to further embarrass me. They ran and told him, me trailing behind them screaming “NO!!! NO Don’t tell him!” and they just giggled and ran faster. He started laughing. Laughing so hard that he  was rolling on the floor. Oh good. a 7 year old boy now knows that I am retarded enough to forget to bring underwear. I wanted to go run and hide, but this wasn’t my house, and I didn’t know where to hide. I went into the bathroom and cried for a bit.

After gathering my courage to open the door, I went into one of the bedrooms, and noticed that everyone had left. I curled up in a ball and took a nap. I woke up to my sister dangling a pair of underwear over my face and laughing and singing some song she had made up about the whole situation. I found out that not only had my sister told my cousins, but she had also ran and told their friends that lived in the neighbourhood.  This became a long running joke between my sister and those particular cousins, by the way. I think Jason* has forgotten about it, or else he’s just too busy being more mature than his sister, but whenever Annette* sees me (which trust me, I’ve taken every precaution to make sure this is as seldom as possible) she is sure to ask if I’m wearing underwear. I’m sure if I hadn’t sat down and typed up this whole story, it would probably die with the few of us who are in the know, but I guess I’m a glutton for punishment (and pancakes.. oooh pancakes..mmm..)

But I digress…

I spent two full skivvy-free days before my aunt, the green bean lady finally caught word that I forgot to pack underwear. After a lecture about bag packing, knowing what’s important and necessary, hygiene and lastly, a good old fashioned scowl, finger waiving and “You should have told me yourself, I shouldn’t have heard it from someone else because it’s none of THEIR business”- she bought me a pack of hanes at the mall up the road. I spent the rest of the week “working off” the cost of those drawers, and they weren’t even pink, or flowery, or pretty. They were…boring and navy blue, and I think they had originally been sewn in the 50’s, and had been forgotten on some lonely department store shelf until my aunt found them.

Anyways.. so this is why I remember this particular summer.

One of my chores (to pay off the underwear) was to prepare the salad before dinner, and to set the table. No problem.

I washed the lettuce, I chopped the carrots.. I wasn’t well versed in salad fixin’s just yet, so I didn’t add anything else to the toss. Just lettuce and carrots, how my mom made it for my sister and I. My mom always added cheese, sprouts, sunflower seeds, and bacon bits to hers. I was grossed out by sprouts, so we never got any of those extra things.

My aunt was unhappy with the salad. It needed tomatoes. It needed celery and olives and cucumbers and onions.

I chopped the celery, no problem. I tossed in a can of olives. I didn’t know how to cut the cucumbers, so I didn’t peel them, I just  cut them into thick slices. I refused to cut the tomatoes or onions. After a scowling match, she finally relented and said she’d add them herself.

I set the table, and prepared to eat my salad. I refused to eat just about anything else that she made, because it either smelled like garlic (which I hated at the time, go figure) or it was soggy, or overly spicy. I had (and still have to a point) texture issues, and things like chili I just cant eat without gagging. Same thing with overcooked veggies like green beans *ahem*

So she sets the table. Everyone else comes out. I prepare myself a big bowl of salad (I picked around the undesireable bits) and waited for the dressings to be made available.

It was at this point that my aunt carried over three bottles of dressing.
French, Italian and what I thought was ranch. I grabbed the bottle and poured my usual “soup” layer ontop of my salad and got to gathering my greens.

One bite.. it didn’t taste right. The second bite, just foul. The third? Ok, I couldn’t do this anymore.

I stopped eating and asked if I could use the bathroom. My aunt rolled her eyes and said not until I finished my salad. I told her I wasn’t feeling good, and she said no. I needed to finish my salad.

Knowing that I wasn’t going to make it much longer anyways, I proceeded to lift the bowl to my lower lip, and shovel the salad into my mouth. I don’t know if I chewed. I don’t think it mattered. It went down, barely, and I asked again if I could use the bathroom. As soon as I got the green light, I ran, wretching the whole way, to the rest room. In a flurry of toilet paper and lid lifting.. well. I’ll save you the descriptions.. Lets just say, the salad took a wrong turn at my stomach and returned from whence it came.

My aunt wouldn’t make eye contact with me the rest of the night. She just scowled and relayed orders through her daughter to me.
When clearing the table I noticed that the dressing wasn’t just plain ranch, it was peppercorn ranch, and the date had long since expired.

I felt ill the rest of the week. There were only three days left in it, thank goodness. My sister ended up staying another week, but I went home because I was sick. A trip to the doctor on the monday after returning home, and they decided I must have had food poisoning. The salad dressing went bad, and apparently meat and dairy are the biggest culprits of foodbourne illness. After this trip, and after I told my parents all that had been happening, and after my aunt told her half of the story, they decided it would be up to me if I wanted to visit my aunt with my sister, of if I wanted to visit my grandma instead. Choosing the lesser of two evils, I chose grandma. After the whole -Horse chestnut stomach pumping “I KILLED YOUR SISTER” thing (which is a whole different blog entry in itself) - she let me stop eating if I felt ill.

I guess it was strange. I always liked salad, until this incident. It scarred me for a while. I would only eat salad if my dad made the dressing himself. Hidden valley ranch. He had to make it in one of those special dressing mixing containers and I’d pay attention to how long it had been since he made it. Any longer than a week, and I’d tell him I wouldn’t eat salad until he made a new batch of dressing.

I never did form a functional relationship with that particular relative. I’m sure she thought I hated her. I didn’t. I just thought it wasn’t fair that I had to sit at the table and stare at food that actually made me vomit, not just threaten to.
Ever since then, I’ve added small additions to my salad bar inventory

. Different types of lettuce- (butter head lettuce, bronze lettuce, frizee, mache, romaine) Black olives, chopped carrots.. yeah, I LOVE sunflower seeds, cheese, sprouts, bacon bits, chives and occasionally chopped cashews or almonds, on a salad.

I’ve renewed my love of the leafy green, and tonight, I’m celebrating spring with a giant bowl of it.

Of course, like my underwear that summer, I’m without most of my usual salad wardrobe. I’ll add a little bit of cheese to my individual portion when I serve it up for dinner, and I’ll probably sprinkle some bacos on top. I just don’t feel like going to the grocery store to buy sprouts and sunflower seeds when I can just tack that onto the list I have of things to buy tomorrow.

So what you see pictured here is the GIANT salad bowl I’ve prepared, so I when I get hungry I can just grab a bowl and put a handful of this mix into it, add dressing and eat, instead of reaching for something else which would be so much LESS healthy for me.

And just so you know, this is a 1.5 gallon tub, and its packed with lettuce, carrots and black olives.

So here it is, the constant reminder of my salad days, when I was green in judgement, and forgetful with underwear.

Just imagine a little salad dressing in there… mmmm..

Here you can see the different types of lettuce better.

Don’t worry, I’ll definately have some more fattening photos tomorrow, but for tonight, salad it is.

-A.

P.S. I am wearing underwear currently. Thanks for asking.

*names changed to protect my evil evil family.

Alrighty.. so, a few nights ago (or maybe just the other day, I don’t remember) an anonymous poster sent me a link to the threadcakes contest, and said that they thought I might be interested in taking a crack at it.

Basically, the premise of the contest is to take a threadless teeshirt design, and make a cake which is your interpretation of that teeshirt design.

Not being one to back down from a challenge, I sat on a few days, and like a true procrastinator (the deadline is tomorrow at midnight) I turned to my husband today around… 4pm, and said “we should do this” and he got a wild glimmer in his eye, and instead of knocking some sense into me like I thought he would have (”Andrea? What are you thinking?  We don’t have time for this! We had dinner plans. We were supposed to do something this evening!”) Nope. He agreed.

So we spent about an hour searching for a design. Something that would transfer well to a cake, but yet not be so simple that just anyone could do it. However, it needed to be so simneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comple that WE could do it, and we settled on this design-

Quite fitting, since.. well.. I’m an insomniac. Also, for Christmas I bought my husband a little glow in the dark sheep, and we thought this would be a great chance for him to get to hang out with his homies, at least… fondant homies..

Anyways.. we decided we would make a round cake, and make little sheeps out of fondant, or chocolate, or.. marzipan or something, and then affix them to the round cake which would have the numbers on the sides and regular grass on top.

Let me just tell you, we did this whole thing in the hours between 5pm until about an hour ago at 10pm. 5 hours from grocery store, baking, cooling, setting up, decorating, photographing, digesting, editing and now- posting. Seriously.. I’m so tired.

At any rate, I’ll post the photos here. We had to take photos of the process, and I really wasn’t worried so much about the clearness and quality of the photo, because it was late, we had bad lighting, and the florescents in the kitchen turn everything yellow and Blah blah blah.. The photos are alright, just not the same quality that I usually post. bear with me, aaight?

So here goes-

First, ya gotta make yer cakes-

Yellow top layer, chocolate bottom. Ignore the messy stove top, plz.

Melted dark chocolate for the sheep accent pieces. I don’t have the patience to tint fondant black. heh.

I was calling these the sheep larvae. We made the texture by poking a thick plastic straw end into the fondant after it’d been rolled in a ball  and dried for about 5 minutes. I have a big issue with this sort of texture, so I kind of had to separate myself from myself when I was doing it, also, I had Aaron make two of them so I only had to make two. I just don’t like bumps.

These were the sheeps feet before they were stuck into the sheep larvae…

Yes.. they are stuck in a muffin.  Muffins have many uses around my house. No, don’t think about how strange it is that I have muffins lying around waiting to be used for such things as a sheep leg pin cushion. Just go with it.

Sheep just before I gave it little eyes. The muzzle was made out of a dark chocolate chunk that I carved the end of so it was rounded instead of squared. This was plan B. Plan A involved too much wait time, and we were on a schedule, so.. yeah, this would have to do. I liked it better anyways.

Three finished sheeps. They each have their own little personality.

And finally, on the cake!

Closeup!
This photo has issues. I don’t know how that happened. I kinda fell asleep while editing the yellow out, so that’s probably why. hehe.. DONT SLEEP AND PHOTOSHOP, KIDS!

The final product!

Grass.

Sheep eating grass.

More sheeps eating grass. They look kinda funky in this photo. Again, I blame this on my sleeping during editing.

The numbers on the sides!

The one that almost got away..

“ewe don’t want to eat meeee”

“munch”

mmm.. caaaaaake..

Well, we had to prove that the sheep were edible, so.. sorry sheep!

..Now he’s just got a mohawk.

CAAAAAKE!!!

All in all, this was a pretty cool idea, pretty cool contest. I just wish I hadn’t procrastinated quite as long, because I would have made more than one cake design and I wouldn’t have felt as rushed.

Still though, it was fun! Hope you enjoyed the pics

-A.

In my house, we have a way of categorizing the foods that we make. We call them “The 10 categories of deliciousness”
(The ten categories are- Deep fried, sugar coated, butter laden, chocolate covered, peanutbutter filled, gooey in a good way, caramelly, smells as good as it tastes, drool factor,  or marshmallow.)

These cookies fit under Three of these.

They’d even fit under a Fourth category if I had some white chocolate in my house with which to drizzle upon these. (And now that I’ve really had time to think about this, I’m going to have to get some and do that before I give these cookies out.)

I might also add, for those of you who share in my love of the apricot, in addition to the availability of apricot oil for use as a moisturizer or massage oil (or baby oil) Jason cosmetics has an amazingly wonderful apricot shampoo and conditioner available,  as well as an apricot body wash and  deodorant. I know this, because I have them ALL! hahaha.. Told you I love apricot!

Really though, apricot kernel oil smells SO GOOD, and its good for your skin (rich in vitamin A and E!)

Ok, I’m done pimping out apricots and apricot accessories, so.. Go make yourself some cookies! These ones are delicious!

Adapted from a completely different recipe for these cookies called “galaxies” that I found in an ancient pillsbury recipe book about five years ago.

You’ll need-

1/2 cup butter
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons well pureed apricots (you can use organic baby food apricots!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
a dash of salt
1 drop orange food colouring
1-3 tablespoons milk (as needed)

So first what you’ll want to do, is mix together the powdered sugar and the butter. Once you’ve made yourself a nice paste with no lumps, add in the apricot puree, vanilla, food colour, and the dash of salt. Once you’ve got all of that mixed together, add in the flour, mixing slightly with a wooden spoon and then finishing the mixing with your hands. If the mixture is too crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and try to gather the dough again. Do this until the dough is soft but not sticky, and you can fold the dough over (as if you were going to knead it) and it won’t crumble.

Lightly flour a sanitized counter top or other sanitized area (I use a cutting board) and roll the dough out to about 1/2 an inch, maybe a little thicker. If you’ve ever seen Lorna Doone, or Walkers shortbread, you want it to be about that thick. (if you havent seen either of those, then just go with about 1/2 an inch)

Use your choice of cookie cutter. I used a small heart, and I would recommend going with smaller sized cookie cutters, probably nothing bigger than 2″ diameter. I don’t know how well the dough will cook in that sort of circumstance.

Anyways, for my small heart cookies, I got about 3 dozen. So you’ll end up with somewhere between 2 and 4 dozen cookies, depending on how you cut ‘em and how you roll out the dough and everything.

Once you’ve cut out your dough, place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet about an inch apart, and bake for 10-15 minutes at 350, or until the bottom edges are just starting to turn golden brown.

Allow the cookies to cool.

For the cream cheese icing, mix together a half cup softened cream cheese and a 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Spread thinly on cookies. Glaze tops with warmed apricot preserves. Let cookies set about 10 minutes before arranging on a plate. The tops will be slightly sticky.

If you want the cookies to be stackable, or you want to add a little extra something- Melt some white chocolate and drizzle it over the cookies. I didn’t do this, but I can imagine they’d look and taste beautiful!

So go make some cookies!

-A.

What happens when you make lemon bars with lime, and instead of making them into bars, you make them in tarte pans?

You get this little gem of a dessert-

I am a huge fan of limes. I use lime for everything from tenderizing chicken to marinating beef to flavouring baked goods. I even use it during the summer to help fade my freckles when I’m in the sun too much! hehehe.. To me, its one of the best fruits ever.

The cool thing about this recipe is that the recipe for the base of the tarte is soft enough that its easily cut, but crunchy enough to remind you that its a crust. Also, the recipe for the filling solidifies pretty well and enables it to be stacked.

SEE!-

A slice for you!

This is my favourite photo from this dessert. Just look at all that gooey lime filling!

It’s true, this tarte really is “tart”. To counter act the tartness, I plan on serving it with a little dollop of whipped cream, and a drizzle of raspberry glaze. Since I’m not serving it just yet, I didnt want to get the tarte all gooey by putting the whipped cream on it, since the whipped cream melts fairly quickly.

I did taste some of it though. I made enough for one full Torte, and I had an extra Tarte left over. Instead of stacking it (that would have been a bit much, I think) I tasted a little nibblet of it. SO GOOD. I added a bit of extra lime juice to the mixture for the filling, and you can really taste it. I love lime, and I think the raspberry glaze will really work well with it in serving.

So here’s the recipe-

For the base-

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup softened butter
1/4 HEAPING cup of powdered sugar

Mix the sugar and butter together first, then add in the flour. Mixture will be crumbly.

Place one handful of the dough into 6- 4″ tartlette pans (with removable bottoms) and press down and around until the entire bottom is flat and level. The dough shouldn’t be too thin, but it will rise up a little in the baking process. Just make sure the dough is distributed evenly amongst the 6 tartlette pans.

Bake for about 10 minutes at 325 or until the base is lightly browned, and appears to have puffed up a bit.

While that is baking, quickly whisk together-

2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder.
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons grated lime peel (or as much as you can gent from one lime. Totally optional though.)

Mix all of this together in the order it’s listed. The lime juice will cause the baking powder to fizzle a little bit, so do this as close to when the bases are finished cooking as possible.

When the bases are finished cooking and still hot, quickly pour about a 1/4 cup of the lime filling onto the bases. If you have any extra filling, try to distribute it evenly amongst the tartlette pans. Also, this mixture will rise a little bit, so keep in mind how full the pans are. If you’re within a quarter inch, its ok to let the extra filling go to waste, otherwise you risk loosing the whole tartlette.

Anyways, bake this mixture for another 7-10 minutes, or until the tops are puffy and golden brown. Remove from the oven, allow to cool until you are able to handle the pans with your bare hands. Remove them from the tartlette pans by pushing up on the bases. If you need to loosen the edges with a sharp knife, do so being careful not to cut into the tartlette, but also not into your hand. Allow the tarts to cool fully on a wire rack.

When the tarts have cooled completely, brush about a 1/8 teaspoon lime juice on the tops of two of the tarts. Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar and stack one on top of the other, and then top the second with another tart which you have not brushed with lime juice. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and Voila! Add some lime garnish, or serve as is.

I served mine with a bit of raspberry glaze drizzled on top and around the base of the tart, with a big dollop of fresh whipped cream on the top, and garnished with a lime wedge and a mint sprig. There are no photos of this because it was eaten IMMEDIATELY. Yes, I had myself some happy dessert guests. I also had several requests for the recipe, so what you’ve got here, this is coveted by many!

So go ahead and give it a try. Of course, you could make lime squares the traditional way in a 8″x 8″ square pan, but why not have fun with it? You could even try making them in those nifty little silicone heart shaped pans. Just be sure you have a way of removing the whole thing, because the filling has a tendancy to stick to the sides of every pan, even the non stick ones.

Good luck!

-A.

I know, I know.. I’ve been making a lot of cupcakes lately. What can I say? Cupcakes are popular! People at my husband’s job have been requesting them, I’ve been making gluten free ones, vegan ones… gluten free Vegan ones… They just seem to be the trend right now.

…So I figure why not keep going with it, at least for one more day. Tomorrow I’m going to make cookies, and we’ll probably have a few tarts and fruit desserts between now and the end of next week..

But today… I had to make a bunch of cupcakes. Why? I figure if I’m going to go to one of the damnportlanders  meetups, I’m going to bring something to smooth my entrance. I’m a very shy person at first, even with my husband with me (he’ll be at the meetup tonight too. He’s got a livejournal, but he hasn’t upneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comdated it since we were first dating! hahaha. )

Alright..  Since a Livejournal meetup is essentially a bunch of computer nerds having an online conversation minus the online and plus beer, I thought that my first meetup would be a perfect time to unveil my most recent cupcake experiment!

Purple Nerd-Cakes!!!

They actually taste pretty good…

They’ve got Nerds candies inside the cake and sprinkled on top. And in my own personal effort to “Keep Portland weird” I chose grape. I mean, the two most popular flavours of nerds are grape and strawberry, and strawberry doesnt seem like too strange of a cake flavour..

So grape it is!

And now, I’ve got to go finish icing another batch of 12 of these. So, I’ll be bringing a few batches with me! Two batches of these, and two batches of lemon cakes with cream cheese filling with strawberries on top.

mmm..

Sometimes a simple yellow cake can be spruced up with the addition of some flavourful little candies, a little lemon juice and some purple food coloring.

Alright, so these cupcakes served a dual purpose. I had a surplus of grape nerd candies in my house, and they needed to go away, or I just know I’d eat them all… AND I needed to make cupcakes to bring with me to an event this evening.

I’ll tell you what. They were a hit. Everyone that had one liked it, and I was even pretty happy with how they turned out.

All I did, honestly, was alter the recipe I used for the Cherry and chocolate chunk cupcakes, and ice them with some purple “fruit punch” icing, and top with some nerds. Seriously. They were really pretty good.

And just so you know, the basic yellow cupcake recipe that I’ve been altering for the last two sets of cupcakes (and another set of cupcakes I made today that I DIDN’T photograph) is the best recipe ever.

So here is the recipe I used today. Note the (parenthesis)’s.

1/2 cup softened butter
2/3 cup granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 Tablespoons grape jelly
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup milk (if you use all purpose flour instead of cake flour, you may need another 1/4 of milk)
1/4 cup grape nerds
2 drops red food colouring
1 drop blue food colouring

Cream the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well between eggs.

Mix in the lemon juice and grape jelly. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add this dry mixture to the egg mixture in three parts, alternating with the addition of the milk. If the batter is too thick, add a bit more milk, it will not hurt, just don’t exceed an additional 1/2 cup milk. Add the food colouring at this point, mix well.

Finally, fold the nerds candies into the batter.

Spoon into papered muffin cups and bake at 350 for about 15-20 minutes or until the tops are light golden brown.

The cool thing about these, is that the candies in the cupcake dissolve a little, and they’re not crunchy at all. All the candies do is add a grape flavour to the cake! The lemon juice enhances the flavour, and the grape jelly adds a bit of a realistic grape flavour to them.

I made a basic buttercream recipe only I added a touch of lemon extract, cherry extract, strawberry extract and apple extract. A little more purple food colouring and YAY! PURPLE NERD CAKES! Sprinkle with nerds and you’re good to go.

-A.

…And while I haven’t the pleasure of enjoying a Magnolia bakery cupcake, I feel that this quote really sums up how I feel about weekends and baked goods.

“Let’s hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes
No doubt, that bakery’s got all the bomb frosting.
I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling
2 no 6 no 12, bakers dozen!
I told you that I’m crazy for these cupcakes, cousin!”

…. My inspiration for these cupcakes came from my original plan for pancakes that I wanted to make for breakfast.

I tried to wake up early today. I really did. I even got out of bed, walked into the dining room, went to my cookbook shelf and removed my breakfast cookbook and went and sat on the couch. My original goal had been to study the pancake recipe and then go into the kitchen to make it. I’ve been trying to make the perfect pancakes, so I’ve been tinkering with the ingredients a bit. So I start off my breakfast endeavors by studying the recipe and my notations that I’ve scribbled next to the ingreneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comdients list, and formulate a plan from there.

Well, I never got that far. I got to the living room, sat down and promptly fell asleep. At some point, I woke up, went and got a blanket, and came back to the couch and laid down.

By the time I actually became coherent, it was 10am and my husband had already started playing video games (which is his default Sunday morning “Pre-Andrea wake up” activity.) So I decided to scratch the plan and make toast instead. It was good toast, but it just didn’t satiate the specific craving I was having. I had planned on making cherry and chocolate chunk pancakes. So… I had to figure something else out.

…But what else would taste good with cherries and chocolate chunks in them?

CUPCAKES!!!
Now introducing- Cherry and chocolate chunk cupcakes.

A whole herd of ‘em!

In order to eat one, you have to separate one from the pack…

See the little bit of chocolate peeking through the muffin-top?

The chocolate chunks spread nicely throughout the cupcake, they didn’t all settle at the bottom, which was nice.

HUGE CHUNKS OF CHOCOLATE AND CHERRIES!

..What a tease..

There was so much chocolate and cherry inside, they didn’t need much icing. A little dab’ll do ya!
I’d have to say, I ate one of these, and I felt whole again. I wanted to eat more, but I’ve been trying to limit my weekly cupcake intake. My husband on the other hand.. yeah, he had a few. He’ll take the rest to work tomorrow. His co-workers have started looking forward to their Monday cupcakes.

I used a new recipe for these cupcakes. Instead of a while cake, where you eliminate the egg yolks, I made a yellow cake. I’d have to say that was probably a mistake. While I enjoyed that the darker colour limited the stark contrast between the cake and the chocolate and cherry, I think the extra egginess only made the cake more dense, where I would have enjoyed a little fluffier consistancy. They were good though, and I might just be extra picky because of my personal cupcake intake limitations. I want every cupcake to be the best it can be.

I remember back in the day when cherry chip cake was the cake of choice. I loved it when my mom made cherry chip cake. sure.. the little cherry bits were freeze dried, and the chocolate “chips” were really just “chocolatey” chips, which were also like little chocolate pellets that made chocolate stains inside the cake when it baked, I still loved it.

These were like a little bit of nostalgia for me. I love that about certain foods. It certainly made this lazy Sunday a good one.

So, without any further adeiu’ The recipe-

1/2 cup softened butter
2/3 cup granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons marachino cherry juice
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup milk (if you use all purpose flour instead of cake flour, you may need another 1/4 of milk)
1/4 natural marachino cherries, chopped roughly
1/2 cup high quality chocolate chunks. (milk or dark chocolate works well with this recipe)

Cream the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well between eggs.

Mix in the vanilla and cherry juice. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add this dry mixture to the egg mixture in three parts, alternating with the addition of the milk. If the batter is too thick, add a bit more milk, it will not hurt, just don’t exceed an additional 1/2 cup milk.

At last, add the cherries and chocolate. fold in lightly.

Spoon into papered muffin cups and bake at 350 for about 15-20 minutes or until the tops are light golden brown.

I didn’t fill these particular cakes. I felt there was enough stuff in ‘em already. All I did was ice them with a bit of chocolate buttercream and top with a cherry and some chocolate jimmies.

Chocolate buttercream recipe-

2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the confectioners sugar, cocoa and butter. Add the heavy cream and vanilla and whip for a few minutes until fluffy. If mixture is too thick, add a tablespoon of HOT water. Whip for another minute or two.

SO GOOD. Seriously. Everyone loved these little guys.

So get in the kitchen and make some!

-A.

Gluten free and vegan. You’d never know it by tasting them though. They’re really good.  I made them for the barbecue my mother in law is having this evening. I figured I’d bring something healthy, since she’s always on some new kick. Be warned, they are NOT sugar free. Sugar free baking just has not been working out for me. I either make something and HATE the way it tastes, or it doesn’t turn out at all.  I guess this is just the baking gods’ way of saying “Don’t do it Andrea” so… I’m heeding that warning.

So, without any further ado- Lemony cupcakes with not- quite cream cheese filling.

everbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comn

These cakes rose up REALLY tall in the center. The sides were low, and the top just kept going up! they looked like little mini mountains. Also, the outer layer was kind of lightly crunchy. It really helped out the texture of the cake, which would have felt a little too dense without that  crunch, I think.

All in all, if it wasn’t for my organic lemon extract and the help of some real lemon juice, I don’t think I would have made these. I’ve been wanting lemon cupcakes for a long time, I just kept forgetting to make them!

People have been asking lately, so I figure I’ll give a little plug for some of the items that I use and love. First off, the sprinkles that I use. I love sprinkles, and lately I’ve been using more of the coloured sugars. I buy mine from whole foods, but you can find them in most organic grocery stores, or if you can’t, you can find them on amazon in the grocery section. The company is India Tree, and they make organic sprinkles that are dyed with natural vegetable dyes. They’re beautiful. I love them. I buy  the colours individually and mix them myself. The ones I used today all made me think of spring, so I figured they’d be great for a springtime barbecue.

Also, I’ve got to point this out, but the wrappers I used are special non-bleached organic paper wrappers that I bought at wild oats the other night. I saw them, and amazingly enough, THEY WERE CHEAPER than the regular ones I buy. AND I GET MORE OF THEM! These things are great, because they come in a little brown box, instead of a stupid plastic bag, so I can store them in the cupboard and not worry about them flying out and all over the place when I open the door. They’re also lightly waxed (naturally of course) so when you peel off the cupcake, IT ACTUALLY PULLS AWAY FROM THE PAPER!  If you look at the photo, and compare it to previous cupcake photos, you can actually tell.

So when I post this recipe to my recipe blog, I’ll be sure to mention the company name (since I don’t remember it right now) and you should all go out and try and find them, because they’re awesome.

Have a great day folks! Its beautiful outside (at least here in my neck of the woods) Go have a picnic or a barbecue, or if you’re stuck indoors, make yourself a nice big green salad and think of springtime!

Adapted from a recipe found in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

1 cup almond milk
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
3 teaspoons lemon extract
1/4 cup tapioca flour
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1/3 cup almond flour
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

In one bowl, mix together the salt, baking soda, baking powder, quinoa flour, rice flour, and almond flour. In another bowl, mix together the almond milk, canola oil, sugar, and lemon extract. Add the tapioca flour and ground flax seed to the bowl with the liquid ingredients and blend well until the mixture is fluffy and starts to come together. then add the rest of the dry ingredients.

Spoon the batter into the cupcake liner lined muffin tins and fill them about 3/4 of the way full. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops spring back when you press on them. (or you can test with a toothpick.)

while the cupcakes are cooling, mix together one small package of tofutti “better than cream cheese” with about 3/4 cup powdered sugar that you’ve added 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon lemon extract to. Mix well until you’ve got a thick icing consistancy.

Cut cones out of the top of the cupcakes so you can remove the center and place a spoonful of the “cream cheese” filling inside. Replace the tops of the cupcakes and use a small amount of the filling as icing. Sprinkle on some organic sugar sprinkles, and you’re good!

I was really happy with these cupcakes. The recipe that I adapted said that they wouldn’t rise that much, so I wasn’t expecting anything, but mine rose up really tall in the centers. I don’t know if this was a fluke, or if this is something that will continue happening. Its worth a try.

One thing to remember is that when you cut the tops off of the cake so you can scoop out the center, the cake will be slightly more crumbly than that of traditional cake. Be careful that you don’t scoop too much out of the center.

There ya’ll go folks! These cupcakes fooled everyone that had them, they didn’t even know they were gluten free OR that they were vegan! They just thought they were delicious.

..Cause they were!
-A.

A little explanation behind the name for this cake-

This cake is not sugar free. For a cake to be completely sugar free, it would have to be made without sweeteners of any sort. No lactose, no sucrose, no fructose. No plain white table sugar, no brown sugar. No maple syrup, no fruit.

I did not make a sugar free cake. I made a cake which is  free of  “added” sugar… well, except for the generous sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar on top. But when choosing between a syrup (made with a 1/2 cup of sugar) a frosting (with it’s 3 cups of sugar) or just sprinkling s small amount (less than a 1/4 cup) of sugar directly on top.. well.. I like to think I made the better choice.

So this cake is *not quite* sugar free.

Now for the cake explaination. How can you make a cake that is free of  “added” sugar? Easy.
Use fruit and fruit juices to sweeten the cake.

So I guess if anything, this cake is a *not quite* sugar free- Fruit cake.

But it’s delicious.

Infact, This cake has so muchneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com fruit in it that I didn’t even have to add any flavouring extracts. I barely added any extra fat to the mix, because there is coconut and applesauce in the batter, and everyone knows that coconut is FULL of oil and fat (albeit natural) and applesauce is a great replacement for added oil.

All in all, this recipe has-

Applesauce, pineapple, peaches, cherries (ok, so I used marachino cherries, but I used natural ones) lemon zest, coconut, and banana puree.  Pretty tropical huh?

I’ll divulge the recipe on my recipe blog, but lets just say, other than that there is a little butter, a few eggs, some levening products and just enough flour to call it a cake.

It’s much more dense than a typical cake, and I have no doubt that it would make some pretty tasty cupcakes as well, but I decided I wanted to make something that looked a little different than the typical things I make, so here goes-

If you’re looking for a light and fluffy cake, this is not what you’re looking for. However, if you’re looking for something you can eat an entire slice of an not feel so bad about? This is the cake for you.

As you can see, it’s got a very tight, dense structure and texture. It isn’t as chewy as you might think, though the texture is mostly made up of coconut and pineapple fibers. Its a very tropical cake, and I really enjoyed it’s flavour.

So as far as this being sugar free, It’s not. But it is made of natural fruit sugar, and the sugar on top just makes it look pretty. It is in no way necessary for sweetness. I promise!

So here’s the recipe-

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups pureed pineapple (from the can or fresh, be sure to include the juice)
1/2 applesauce
1 can of peaches (in their own juice, not syrup) drained and pureed
1/4 cup chopped natural marachino cherries (or you can use regular cherries, just make sure they’re pitted and chopped)
1/2 cup banana puree
3 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut
1 teaspoon lemon zest

The mixing instructions are real easy. Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and coconut in one bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the melted butter and the eggs. Add to this mixture the fruit and lemon zest.

Now alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the fruit mixture until throughly blended. I would actually recommend doing this with a stand mixer or a hand mixer, but if you use a hand whisk, be sure to whisk hard and long enough that the entire mixture is blended.

You should have a pretty thin batter. If it is *too* thin, add a little flour to the mixture. I wouldn’t worry though, unless it’s thinner than pancake batter.

Pour either into cupcake cups or two 8″ round cake pans, and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Because there isn’t refined sugar in the mix, the tops of the cake won’t brown very easily. Just be sure to check after about 15 minutes with a toothpick, and if it comes out clean, they’re done!

Let cool and enjoy while slightly warm, or completely refridgerated. My husband enjoyed his with some whipped cream. I liked mine with just the sprinkle of powdered sugar.

-A.

Alrighty. I promised, and now I’m delivering. The goodies I’m writing about today, they’re completely gluten and dairy free.

Can I be honest though?

I’m not sure how much I like these things. Sure, they fit into 2 of the top 10 categories of deliciousness as they are deep fried and sugar coated, (The ten  catagories are- Deep fried, sugar coated, butter laden, chocolate covered, peanutbutter filled, gooey in a good way, caramelly, smells as good as it tastes, drool factor,  or marshmallow) And from all outward appearances there seems to be nothing wrong with them. I even like how they taste. I don’t know exactly what I don’t like about them, really.

It could probably be explained by the fact that I really just don’t like donuts all that much.
So I guess I’m not the person to ask whether or not a donut is good.

I limit my donut eating to a local donut shop in Portland Oregon called Voodoo Doughnut. I figure if I’m going to eat one, it’s going to come from there.  Seriously, who could pass up a maple bar with bacon on it, a grape donut, donuts dipped in icing and then in cereal, an apple fritter the size of a human head, or a bavarian filled donut covered in chocolate that just happens to be shaped vaguely like a penis/hammer. WHO!?!?! and if that wasn’t enough, They also have VEGAN DOUGHNUTS!

They do not, however, have gluten-free donuts. Maybe there’s something to that, maybe not. Maybe they just haven’t thought about it.

Anyways…

So here are the photos of my creations. Little gluten/dairy free donuts. some in powdered sugar, some in cinnamon sugar, even a few glazed with sugar sprinkles (I don’t know if regular sprinkles are gluten free, anyone else know?)

Of all the flavours I made, these were my favourite. The cinnamon really helped out the flavour.

Here you can sort of see the texture of the inside of the doughnut. It really didnt feel as grainy as it looks though.

All in all it was a learning experience. I made some good donuts, and I’ll be sending them to work with my husband tommorrow. The good thing about them not being yeast based donuts is that they will not go stale in one day. They’ll be just as good tomorrow as they were today, and I’m sure my husband’s co-workers will like them.

For the record- The only reason I made gluten-free donuts first was because I’ve been making a heckuva lot of cupcakes lately and wanted  to switch it up a ilttle. I may not like donuts, but that’s not really a reason for me to not make them

So here is the recipe. Note that beside it there are suggestions for alternate ingredients if you’d rather not have the recipe be vegan or corn free. Anyways- here it is-

This is my own recipe. I have only tried it once, and the picture above is the result. I was happy with the result, but because I have only made this recipe once, it might need some fine tuning on your end if you’re going to attempt it. Just remember, if the dough is too soft and sticky, add more rice flour (or tapioca flour) if the dough is too dry, add a little bit of soymilk and try to knead it again.

Because there is no gluten in this recipe, you can knead the dough to your hearts content and it will never make the dough too chewy or hard. yay!

So here goes…

You will need-

3 cups rice flour ( I used 2 cups white and 1 cup brown)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup organic “raw” sugar
1 tablespoon potato starch (you can use cornstarch if you’re not worried about this recipe being corn free.)

mix all of that together in a large bowl.. meanwhile, in a smaller bowl whisk together-

Ener-G Egg replacer equivelent of 3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla soymilk
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
(if you’re not making this recipe vegan, you’ll want to whisk together 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon milk and 1 tablespoon vanilla)

Whisk these three ingredients together until liquified, then add them to the dry ingredients.

once you’ve incorporated the liquids into the dry, begin to knead the dough slightly. Once the entire recipe is formed into a ball of dough, sprinkle a board or clean sanitized countertop generously with rice flour or tapioca flour. knead as much flour into the dough as necessary to form a soft dough that is not sticky or tacky. You’ll roll it out about 1/2 inch in thickness, then cut small circles out with a 3″ round cookie cutter, and then cut the centers out with a small cookie cutter, or use a knife to cut a small square out of the center. You want it to LOOK like a real donut with a hole in it. I tried to make some so they were solid, and the centers DID NOT cook. This recipe is much too dense to hope that the centers will be light and airy so you can fill them. This is more like a batter donut.

after you’ve got all your donuts cut out, lay them on a lightly floured plate and bring them to your stove top. You’ll want to heat up enough oil or shortening to fry them. You can use any sort of oil that has a high smoke point. If you want these to be corn free- do not use corn or vegetable oil. Use canola oil (canola oil is made from the mustard plant *EDIT* It has been pointed out that canola oil is actually a genetically altered form of rapeseed that is from the same plant family as mustard. Not that it matters to anyone, because seriously, only people with entirely too much time on their hands feel the need to point out my slight mistake. If you would like to know all about the canola oil saga, feel free to read it here on wikipedia.)

You know your stovetop best, so here are the guidelines for frying-

-use a pan with high sides. Expect the oil to double in volume when a cold item is introduced to the hot oil. You want at least 3 inches of space above that doubled volume before the pan ends.

- shake any loose flour from the item you are frying before introducing it to the oil. The flour will come off in the oil and burn, causing the oil to rancid faster, also causing the oil to turn the fried objects a darker shade of brown than desired before being fully cooked.

-Bring oil to temperature (roughly 300-350 degrees) before introducing objects to the oil. If you place a food item in the oil before it is ready to cook, the oil will be absorbed into the food, changing the texture of the food and making it taste, look and feel oily. You want the hot oil to seal the food once it hits the oil, not absorb it.

- Do not walk away from the fryer while food is in the oil. watch it carefully.

-If at all possible, keep people out of the kitchen while you’re frying. You definately don’t want any children around, but make sure that adults know not to sneak up on you. Accidents do happen, and the slightest bump can cause injury or fire. Hot oil and stovetops can be dangerous together. Be careful.

-Never turn the heat on your stovetop over medium high when frying. The oil can and will burn!
It shouldn’t take very long at all for the donuts to cook. 2-5 minutes depending.

because of the outside texture of the donuts, you can wait until all of the donuts are fried before adding sugar to them. If you want them to have a clear glaze, mix powdered sugar and soy milk together to form a thin glaze, then pour it over the hot donuts. I recommend waiting until all of them are finished, but the glaze will be slightly more milky coloured because the donuts aren’t hot enough to melt the glaze. It doesn’t matter though, whatever you’re most comfortable with.

Another thing, powdered sugar has cornstarch in it. If you’re making these donuts corn-free, you can place regular granulated sugar in a food processor blender and make your own powdery sugar, though it will never be as fine as powdered sugar. If you want, you can even add some potato starch to it before blenderizing the sugar.

I dipped some of my donuts in powdered sugar (so those ones arent corn free) some of the donuts I shook in a bag full of granulated sugar and cinnamon, and the rest I glazed with homemade powdered sugar glaze (blenderized 1 cup granulated sugar+1 tablespoon potato starch) and 1 tablespoon soymilk, dipped the donuts in and sprinkled some coloured sugar on top.

So there you go. Good luck with trying this recipe! It’s not foolproof, so like I said, you might have to tweak it around a little, but it did end up tasting pretty good.

-A. 

I have no idea why I’m so tired right now, I got so much sleep over the weekend. But I am tired, so I’ll make this a glamour shot post. I made this batch this morning, but these were the cupcakes that disappeared from my husband’s birthday party because people loved them so much.

And yes, I’m typing up the recipe on Never Bashful With Butter as we speak.

Tomorrow starts a week of “alternative” baking, featuring vegan goodies gluten-free goodies and *Gasp* maybe even a little bit of baking with faux sugar for the diabetics out there. *smile*  More on that later.

ON WITH THE CUPCAKES!

Anyways.. here is the recipe for the cupcakes themselves-

I got it off the Hershey website. I’ll let you know though, I didn’t use hershey chocolate. hehehe..

2 cups sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

CUPCAKES: Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups. Heat oven to 350°F. Fill cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool completely. Frost. About 30 cupcakes.

while the cupcakes are in the oven, I made the caramel filling.

This is my own recipe, so feel free to use another one that I have posted, or one that you’re comfortable with. Just keep in mind you don’t want it to fully set up into chewy caramel, you want it to be sort of a creamy caramel, more pudding-y than set up or syrup.

You’ll need a medium saucepan and a heat proof spatula

1 Cup heavy cream
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla

In the pan you’ll place the butter, half of the cream and half of the sugar. bring mixture to a boil. When the mixture begins to thicken slightly, add the remaining sugar. bring to a full boil. when the mixture starts to thicken and turn a light brown colour, add the remaining cream and sugar.

turn temperature down to a few notches below medium. The mixture should remain boiling. stir constantly and do not allow the bottom to scorch. keep stirring and heating for about 10 minutes. when the mixture starts thickening up like pudding, remove from heat.

Let cool about 5 minutes (caramel will still be hot) or until the cupcakes are out of the oven.

Use a sharp knife to cut a cone out of the center of the cupcake. Remove the cone from the cupcake and cut the point off, leaving the top of the cupcake intact but allowing for a small amount of filling to be scooped into the cavity.

Scoop about a tablespoon of filling in, and a small amount of shaved chocolate ontop of that. replace the top of the cupcake and let cool completely before frosting with the chocolate icing of your choice.

I completely cheated on chocolate icing, because I cannot make chocolate icing without cream cheese, and since I didnt want to use cream cheese in the icing, I just couldnt do it.

I used store bought, and it worked just fine. (if you want to make your icing, there is a recipe for it on the link I supplied to the hershey’s website.)

So there you go. They really are pretty darn good. I’m looking forward to hearing how much my husband’s co-workers enjoyed them, because he’s taking all but two of them to work with him tomorrow.

-A.