Never Bashful with Butter

I’ve been wanting to do this since I was a kid. Dont ask me why I waited this long. I definately should have done this as often as possible ever since I knew that it was possible.

When I was a kid, my mom loved playing April fools jokes on the family. There was a special trick for each one of us, and every year it was different.. for everyone but me.

I dont know if I was just extremely gullible, but I never realized what was going on until after it happened, and then I forgot about it by the next year, so I was totally clueless.

My mom would spend the whole week preparing.

A dozen eggs.

3 packages lime jello.
3 cups boiling water
Package of toothpicks
Tiny funnel
Duct tape
Paring knife.
Vodka

Can you figure out what it is yet?

I guess my weakness was that I always had hard boiled eggs in my lunch. I loved them. It wasnt strange for me to see an egg in my lunchbox, so.. no problem.

I had no idea that on April 1st, they were Lime Jello filled eggs.

The process is simple.
everbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comn
With the paring knife, tap a small hole in the smaller end of the egg. Tap a slightly larger, though no larger than a pencil eraser, sized hole in the bottom of the egg.

Stick a toothpick in the larger hole and sorta scramble around the egg to make it easier to remove.

Put yer mouth over the smaller hole on the egg and blow. Blow like you would on a trumpet. This is not the time for loose cheeks. You’ll get a whole bunch of jaw pain if you dont tighten up your cheeks when you blow. The egg should come completely out of the shell.

Repeat with each of the eggs.

You’ll need to rinse out the eggs. Use the funnel to fill them each halfway with hot hot hot water, shake them around and then blow the water out. Do this as many times as it takes for the water to come out clean. I take it a step farther and fill them each halfway with vodka, shake them around a bit, let them sit a few minutes, shake them around a bit again and then blow the vodka out. Then I rinse them one more time to remove the vodka (cant have kids with jello shots now can we?)

You’ll want to let them dry for about a day, maybe two. leave them in their egg carton and put the egg carton somewhere no one will find it, except you.

About 24 hours before they’re needed, you’ll want to seal up the small hole on the egg with duct tape. Make sure this is REALLY sealed. The boiling water can make short order of any adhesive seal, so its important that the seal is tight.

Add 1 cup of boiling water per 1 package of jello. When I did this today, I forgot about this part, and I prepared the jello according to the box. This was a bad idea. The jello didnt set up correctly. Basically you’re wanting stiffer eggs that are easier to remove from the shell and that will withstand a bit of handling. Especially if you’re making them for a kid, because they’ll hold it in their hand and show all their friends. heh.

After you’ve sealed up the small end, and you’ve mixed up the jello, let the jello cool a little. Maybe a few minutes. Dont let it set up.

Set the eggs into the carton with the adhesive side down. use the small funnel to fill the eggs with the jello. Once all the eggs are full, wipe them clean of any drips (the green will stain the little egg shells) and place back in the fridge.

So.. I did this this morning. Like I said, I didnt prepare the jello exactly right, but it still worked. I just ended up with more fragile jello.

Rodney wanted to help me out with the photos.. here you go-

“look ma! No holes!”- small holes are imperative when it comes to passing off the april fool. if you can see the hole right off the bat, then thats no fun!

Rodney make short order of the shell. That fuzzy green looking thing is the membrane just under the shell. Dont worry, its not stuck to the jello, I was just being careful when opening it so I didnt kill the jello underneath.

Rodney wanted to feast on the delicious green jello inside. So much for being careful!

This was really fun. I think it’d probably be even more fun to do as a project with kids, or like my mom did, as an april fool or special treat for kids. if you make the jello right, the eggs have the consistancy of jello jigglers, and are way more cool.

Another thing you can do with completely clean and dried blown- eggs is use them as fortune shells. take little pieces of paper and write fortunes on them, roll them up and stick them into the large end of the egg. I also put a small piece of seed beaded jewelry (it was the only thing small enough to fit in the hole.) I did this once as a party game for my little sisters. It was loads of fun because there were a ton of little girls and everyone reached for an egg and got a little surprise.

So.. there you go. Food experiment number 1. I’m starting off slow. cant start blowing things up just yet!

-A.

Also while at the grocery store yesterday, I picked up a pack of whole blueberries. It had been too long since I made blueberry muffins.

This morning, early, I set out to make these muffins. I hunted through recipe books high and low. All of my recipes for blueberry muffins called for milk, and alas, I was out. It was early, and sure.. I could take a shower and go to the store and come back and make muffins with milk and everything would be fine, but the essence of fresh baked muffins for breakfast would have been lost when baking them in the afternoon. Its just not the same.

So I thought, I’ll look on the internet for a recipe for lemon yogurt cake. I LOVE lemon blueberry muffins, and I know I’ve seen plenty of lemon yogurt cake recipes out there.. I’d just switch a few ingredients around, and I could use up that tub of plain yogurt I have taking space in the back of my fridge.

After a considerable amount of searching, I finally found an acceptable one.

A few inneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comgredient switcharoo’s, some blueberries, twenty minutes in the oven and a simple lemon sugar glaze later.. I had me some tasty muffins.

I have to say I got my inspiration for today’s muffins from my nephew troy. He’s about 9 months old, and the most adorable little creature on the planet.

Since getting engaged, I’ve noticed that I have started getting all gooey eyed over babies. It’s strange. I like kids, they’re so much fun, but to be honest, until a little while after the wedding, I really wasn’t too fond of babies.
(Don’t hate me. I’m just being honest. I love babies now. Its like some sort of strange married lady thing, at least that is what I’m going to blame it on. hehe..)

But Troy was the cutest, even a few days after he was born.

Anyways, so last night all of my husband’s siblings and their significant others got together for Aaron’s brother’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant. Troy is my brother in law’s son. So he was there too.

This little boy was obsessed with this little wedge of lemon. It was the cutest thing. He’s like many kids his age, everything goes in his mouth. If it’s in his hand, its in his mouth… but it was a lemon, so it was sour.

So he’d put it in his mouth, and for a split second he would have this look of “ah, I’m so HAPPY its in my mouth” until the sour kicked in and he would have this look of utter HORROR AND DISGUST all at the same time. I do not thing that anyone can replicate this facial expression. It was wholly his own.. Then he took the wedge of lemon out of his mouth, and looked at it. He looked at it like, “what? Why are you doing this to me?” and then he’d hear all of us laughing and he’d look up and smile.

One time would have been enough, but no. This kid had a mission, and this mission was to have this lemon wedge IN his mouth, and he would stop and nothing to accomplish this.

He tried at least five more times. Finally his dad asked a waitress if they had any oranges they could get a wedge of, and they replaced the lemon wedge with the orange one. He started crying. He didn’t want the orange, he wanted the lemon.

So today, it was lemons and blueberries.
…and they were just as good as I had hoped.

Lemon blueberry yogurt muffins-

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
3 extra-large eggs
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

This was what I came up with-

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
a dash of salt
1 cup plain nonfat yogurt
1/4 cup coconut oil (it comes as a solid)
1 Tablespoon butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup fresh blueberries
lemon curd (optional)

Mixing is easy.

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking soda, and in a larger bowl, cream together the coconut oil and butter. Whisk in the sugar. Once the sugar is incorporated, add in the eggs, vanilla, lemon juice, lemon extract and whisk until fully incorporated. fold in the yogurt and vegetable oil.

Add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients, slowly mixing until no large lumps are left (you still want lumps though. Lumps are important for muffins!) Fold in the blueberries gently.

Pour into a papered muffin cups and top with a 1/4 teaspoon of lemon curd and bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. The tops will be shiny and browned.

When the muffins are done, remove them from the oven and let them sit about 5 minutes.

Poke a few small holes in the tops of the muffins with a toothpick and pour about a tablespoon of lemon glaze over the top.

you can make the lemon glaze by mixing together a cup of powdered sugar and 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice.

It only takes about a minute for the glaze to soak in. Sprinkle with a pinch of powdered sugar and serve warm! (or cold, they’re still really good!)

A little tip- If you don’t want your muffins to turn purple, roll your blueberries in flour and shake ‘em out so they have just a fine dusting of flour on them- BEFORE you add them to the mix. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

You can use canned berries, just make sure you add them at the very end, or you will DEFINATELY have purple muffins. Also, make sure to rinse and dry them before adding them. I guess if you get really desperate, you can use dried blueberries, but I have no real experience working with dried fruit in muffins, only cookies, so I have no idea what advice to give you.

Also, you can use all butter if you don’t have the coconut oil, I just LOVE the moisture that coconut oil adds to baked goods. PLUS there’s a little coconutty aftertaste.. mmm.

The cool thing about this recipe is that the lemon curd sort of falls to the bottom of the muffin, and the lemon glaze stays kind of at the top, so together, you’ve got a perfectly lemony muffin, with little globes of blueberry goodness inside! It’s great!

-A.

In feverish preparation for a very important upcoming entry, I spent the early morning and mid afternoon hours at several area grocery stores. The shopping trip began with a little stop at my home away from home- Whole foods market.

When you walk into Whole foods, you automatically understand why Alton Brown features them so often in his shows.

Their aisles are clean, their shelves are stocked. Their staff is plentiful and THEY ACTUALLY SMILE AT YOU. I have a choice of 15 different types of sugar there. I can buy vegetable dyed cupcake sprinkles there. If this store existed when I was a child, one trip there would make me ache for the delicious rainbow of vegetables that they offer. They have a cheesemonger. You can ask them what type of fruit would go well with what type of cheese, and they would tell you. AND they would be right. You can buy designer chocolate, or you can buy plain old delicious chocolate that isn’t horribly expensive, but is made with healthier ingreneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comdients than a regular old Hershey bar. You can find locally produced products, fresh bakery items from local bakers. You can find every kind of hippie product imaginable.

Sorry if that sounded like an advertisement. Its just that when you spend as much time in the kitchen as I do, you form bonds with certain venues. I’ve grown to love this place so much, that I can’t help but speak highly of it.

Anyways…

My goal upon entering the store was to procure a few specialty items. Of course, whenever I write a list, I leave it on the kitchen table, and I end up getting lost in a sea of delicious food prospects, and I buy all sorts of crazy stuff. So I went with plan B. Start at one side of the store and make a clean sweep to the other side. Not skipping an aisle, save for the non-food item aisles.

I lost myself in the baking aisle. I spent over half an hour staring at everything. Finally my mom pried me away. We made our way through the veggies, the fruit, the canned goods, the massive olive oil/ vinegar selection. Then I found it. The cheese section.

This is my favourite part of any store with a cheesemonger. Stores that have cheesemongers (the proper word for a person who sells cheese.) tend to have a larger selection of cheese. This is helpful for people like me, who eat entirely too much cheese and therefore seek out stronger cheeses to satiate the need for flavour, and curb the amount of cheese that we do infact end up eating.

It was there that I found it. My true love. Crema Bel Paese. One of the best cheeses I have ever tasted. It is soft, smooth, creamy.. completely delicious. It has enough flavour to hold its own, and I’ve never had it any other way than schmeared on a slice of crusty bread. The wonderful thing about cheesemongers, is that they know that if you like a particular type of cheese, they’ll find you other cheeses that you would like..

which is what happened today.

While discussing our mutual love of the bel paese, the lady behind the counter visibly produced a lightbulb over her head (well, not really, but I could totally tell by the look on her face) and said, you know.. you might like this cheese… and pointed me to a cheese called Pannarello.

Then she leaned down closer and said “I like it with fresh preserves on a croissant”.

I was sold. I grabbed a manageable slice of the giant wheel o’ cheese, and made a B-line to the bakery for some fresh croissants.

The rest of the day was hard. I woke up too early this morning, and I wasn’t hungry because I was still tired. It didn’t take long, a few conversations about cheese is really all it takes, to get me started thinking about finding something to eat. I didn’t think I could give the new cheese the official welcome very well, throwing a lump down one a piece of torn croissant in the passenger seat of my mom’s car. I told my tummy I would have to wait, and I went through the rest of the day, dreaming of my snack that lay just out of reach.

Finally, that time came. After I dispatched with the groceries, I quickly prepared a little snack for myself. That is what the photo you see above, was.

A few baguette slices, for the bel paese (I have my traditions and habits, and this will always remain a baguette cheese.) A fresh, crispy coated, soft centered croissant, for the Pannarello. Some homemade grape jelly (from a grapevine in my brother in law’s back yard.) Some red globe grapes, and a frilly little glass filled with some wonderful raspberry lime sparkling water.

I will admit, there are no other photos because I could not hold myself back any longer. I lunged at this plate like I had never seen food before. It was nearly 2pm and I hadn’t eaten since the night before, so I blame that entirely for my ravenousness. If thats even a word.

It was most satisfying.

I ate it on the back patio. The cool breeze, the bright spring sun, the smell of fresh cut grass after an early morning rain.. It wasn’t yet late enough to fade away and get lost in the smell of the city. I loved it. It was like for one small moment, my patio was my little world, and I lost myself in the amazing flavours of each bite, and in the ambiance of this wonderful little niche I had created… Until I was jolted back to reality by the maintainance guy with the leaf blower. After that, I was relegated to consume my snack indoors, and my little world just didn’t feel the same when spied upon through a closed window.

Now that I am satiated, I must ask you all.. What is your favourite spring time snack?

-A.

After eating one of these puppies I seriously thought if I ever decided to become vegan… I could make it.

Last week I tried my hand at vegan cupcakes. I had been wanting to try the art of vegan baking since falling in love with some of the cupcakes that chose had posted a while back when I first started checking out her Livejournal. I remember a specific cupcake (although I can’t seem to locate it at the moment) that had a HUGE mound of frosting on it. The frosting especially had me at first glance..

So since successfully creating my first batch of cupcakes, where I was unable to make this fluffy frosting due to lack of the proper ingredients (namely the elusive vegan margarine) I soon set out to locate what I needed, and made my way to Trader Joes (a grocery store located in various and sporadic areas of the U.S.) where I had been assured I would find it. Luckily, it was there, and along with a few other items (some dark chocolate for another project, a loaf of ciabatta for last night’s fondue experiment, a bag of apples, and a few other thneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comings for upcoming kitchen adventures.) I made my way back home.

Today I decided I would go for it. I started early and quickly. It’s important with any cake or muffin batter that it not sit too long before being cooked. Something happens and basically you end up with flat doughy cupcakes and muffins if you don’t use it pretty much immediately. Apparently it’s even worse with Vegan cupcakes.

I got my recipe online, and it is very similar to the recipe for golden cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I decided to go with a mix of coconut extract and vanilla extract. The combination proved DELICIOUS!

After the cupcakes began to cool I started working on the fluffy vegan icing. I wanted FLUFFY and had hoped I would not be disappointed. I totally wasn’t. I ended up with the fluffiest “butter” cream icing I have ever made in my life. Ecstatic, I decided it was worthy of dirtying my jumbo cupcake icing bag, coupler and shell tip. I coloured the icing light pink, since… light pink always looks good on a nice fluffy cupcake.

I took some of the leftovers from the sugar dough I had made for the last batch of cupcakes and made little hearts.

Here is what I ended up with-

Closeup so you can see the fluffy frosting and uber-fluffy cake!

I think I might even venture to say this cupcake is better than any other home made plain “white” cake I’ve made thus far! It really is true that the butter and eggs in non-vegan baking really does mask the flavour of whatever flavouring you add to the cake. Like I said before, I added coconut and vanilla and those flavours together enhanced the vanilla (Madagascar bourbon. Only the best for my cupcakes!) and really brought a richness to the cake that you can’t really taste in normal cake.

AND THAT ICING IS SO GOOD! I wanted to just eat it with a spoon, even though thats sort of gross. Haha.. it wasn’t grainy at all, and it wasn’t greasy.. which was sort of a fear of mine considering its made with margarine AND shortening. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s just plain good. Not greasy, not weird. Light and fluffy, I think I might have to use this on some of my non-vegan cupcakes. hehe..

I’ve GOT to get these cupcakes out of my house!

Have a wonderful day!
-A.

P.S. As one of the commentors said below, “regular” sugar is sort of hit and miss as far as the vegan standard goes. I forgot to mention that I only use beet sugar as a rule in any of my recipes (from a company that does not use bone char to filter their sugar), so.. for me its not an issue to buy special sugar

So here goes.. from an entry on Schmooed Food-

1 TB apple cider vinegar
1 ½ scant cups plain soymilk
2 1/8 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. kosher salt
1 1/8 cups sugar
½ cup oil
1 ¼ tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. coconut extract

Preheat the oven to 350º. Line muffin tin with paper cupcake liners, Set aside. (This recipe says it makes 22, but I stretched it to 24)

Place the apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup and fill the cup with soymilk to equal 1 ½ cups. Stir well and set aside for about five minutes (the mixture will curdle).

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another mixing bowl whisk together the soymilk mixture, canola oil, vanilla, and coconut extract. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and whisk together until all of the large lumps are gone. (the recipe actually said to use a hand mixer, but I felt that it’s much to easy to over beat your batter with a mixer, its better to just whisk it.)

Fill each muffin cup with ¼ cup of batter. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

Let cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then remove cupcakes from the pan and place on a wire rack. Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

The icing I used was-

1/2 cup non hydrogenated vegan shortening
1/2 cup vegan margarine (earth balance)
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup plain soymilk
1 tablespoon coconut extract
one drop of whatever kind of food colouring you’d like.

With a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat the shortening and margarine together until fully incorporated and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar to that and beat until the mixture is crumbly, but the powdered sugar is fully incorporated. While the mixer is still on, add the soymilk slowly, and then the flavouring and then the colouring. Beat for a few minutes.. just until its fluffy.

Make sure the cupcakes are FULLY cooled before frosting. The frosting melts quick, so the colder the cupcake the better. You can refrigerate the frosting, but if you chill it longer than a few hours, you’ll want to “re-fluff” it in the mixer before you use it. Just let the icing warm up on the counter for about 15 minutes and whip it in the mixer for a minute or two.

I have to tell you, this recipe makes DELICIOUS cupcakes and the icing is to die for. It is wonderful. I’m not even vegan and I want to make it all the time!

Use the cake batter immediately. If you don’t, you never know if you’ll end up with something more like a muffin, or more like a hockey puck.

Happy eating!

-A.

I know its not Christmas time, but I made cookies today. Cookies always make me think of Christmas.. so.. here goes-

Once my older sister found out Santa wasn’t real, I knew Santa wasn’t real. We’re only three years apart, and her goal in life between my birth and the age of 10 was to injury, maim or otherwise scar me for life. It just makes sense that she would tell me the Santa secret. I tried to not believe her, but I was a skeptical kid anyways. My family sort of lost interest in maintaining the Santa secret after my sister found out anyways, and things went sort of downhill. Santa went on a diet, and we left him sandwiches. Sure, we made cookies, but they weren’t for him, they were for these enormous cookie baskets that we gave to family members.

Christmas was cookie baking time, and inevitably my sister and I would get the urge to make thousands of cookies with no inherent purpose other than to make every member of my family gain weight.

Christmas with me and my sister wasn’t held only to the confines of the winter months. Oh no-neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com It began almost immediately after it ended. Sure, we took a few weeks off to recover from present overload, then, just like any addicts, we began to feel withdrawls. Of course, this lead us back into the vicious circle to continue our Christmas Celebration through as many months of the year as possible.

It was much more serious for my sister. She would gather up all of the Christmas wrapping and with delicate tiny tipped scissors, would snip each and every figure, character, drawing, doll, Santa Claus, penguin, snowman, reindeer or any other holiday icon embossed on Christmas wrap in our house. Mostly it was snowmen. My mom collected snowmen. Santa Claus wasn’t really a prevalent holiday icon for us. Christmas meant snow, and snow meant snowmen, and snowmen made my mom happy.

A happy mom was hard to come by at Christmas time. Actually.. From Thanksgiving until St. Patrick’s Day, our family was much more somber than usual. When I was really little it was just something I noticed, and when I asked what was wrong, they’d put on happy faces and pretend everything was OK. It wasn’t until I was much older, right around the time I learned Santa Claus wasn’t real, that I learned that my mom’s dad, my grandfather, had died when she was in her early teens right around Christmas time. I don’t remember the exact date, and thats not exactly something you ask your mom about without expecting a good cry, so.. I always just expected things to be toned down around Christmas.

Things didn’t get any better after Christmas though, because as soon as my mom had begun to snap out of her holiday depression, my sister and I were in Christmas withdrawl, and after that ended, my dad had begun mourning his mother. I don’t know when she died, I do know that she was born on Valentine’s day. The end of November through the beginning of March were the hardest times of the year for my family. My mom was much closer to her dad than her mom, and my dad was much closer to his mother than his father.

So.. as enterprising young children, my sister and I devised a foolproof plan to cheer them both up. We would do all of the cookie baking ourselves!

…Don’t ask me what we were thinking. I was only in the second grade, and my sister was in the fifth grade. I believe that would put us at Seven and ten years old, respectively. We’d only baked cookies with our mom, and really, the only “baking” we did was the shaping of the cookies, and the decorating of the cookies. Sometimes we would stir the batter, or add the chocolate chips.. but never the entire recipe.

We started early, before my mom was awake, and after my dad had left for work. We dug every ingredient out of the cupboards and put them on the counter. We got out the recipe books, including my “kids cookbook” with the recipe for “Darrell’s forget about the cookies just give me that batter” cookies. I don’t remember many other recipes, but.. I remember that one. There were a few other cookbooks we got out.. the Pillsbury cookbook, the Betty Crocker cookbook (the same one I have now, actually) and others that I think just said “cookies” on the front. Our mission was simple. Make at least three different types of cookies. Bake them. Decorate them. Wake mom and present her with cookie wonderfulness.

Suffice to say, we failed. There’s just something about small children cooking up a plan to use dangerous kitchen appliances and utensils that moms can smell. Mischief is a putrid odor to my mom. This was no exception.

She flew down the stairs only a few minutes after my sister turned on the oven. Now that I’m older I’m sure she smelled the oven and thought “FIRE” and woke up. But then, we thought she was a woman possessed. We were really afraid we had ruined Christmas.

I don’t remember the words that were coming out of her mouth. I just remember what it looked like. My mother, angry, wearing a night gown and a pair of slippers, her hair all over the place, no makeup, FLAILING her arms and screaming. Perhaps I blocked the sound out because it was just too much stimuli. Yeah.. we hadn’t even been able to make one single cookie, and yet we had made the kitchen a huge mess. “You could have burnt the house down, or chopped off a finger!” I remember her saying once she had calmed down a bit.

So.. that scared me off baking for a while. I was solely a decorator from that moment until a few years later when my mom decided I could be trusted alone with the oven. It was October, actually, and I wanted to make something special for my mom. I had to make it up to her. The memory of the reason I hadn’t been allowed to use the kitchen appliances was still fresh in my mind.

I dug through all of the cook books. My mom loved chocolate chip cookies and I had to find a perfect recipe for them. I ended up finding a really cool looking recipe for meltaway cookies, which were actually just chocolate chip cookies made with powdered sugar instead of brown sugar. I decided I would make those, so I gathered up all of the ingredients and got to work.

After all was said and done, I had a plate full of… pale looking chocolate chip cookies. I thought she would love them, and so I sat them on the kitchen table, went and got her and presented them to her.

I guess it was a less momentous occasion for her than I. She seemed less than thrilled, but feigned excitement for my sake. She went to the fridge for what I thought would be a glass of milk…

She returned with a jar of strawberry jam and a tub of cream cheese.

I watched, unknowing what she would do next.

she took two cookies and flipped them upside down. Then she spread strawberry jam on the bottoms of the cookies, and followed that with a big dollop of softened cream cheese.

What.. the… heck? What is she doing with my cookies? SHE’S RUINING THEM! She hates them! I did a horrible job!- all of these things ran through my head.. until she handed me one of the cookies… she smiled and I took a bite.

My mom was a genius. (And still is)

So.. today, when I woke up feeling kind of down I decided to make something that reminded me of happier times. Cooking something simple in my family’s kitchen and seeing my mom smile while enjoying a cookie.

The cookies before alterations

Strawberry jam-

Strawberry jam and cream cheese Cookie sandwiches!

Now my mom can’t have chocolate chip cookie sandwiches. She has a few health problems that severely restrict her diet. We did find an amicable resolution to the issue-

Salted rice cakes with strawberry preserves and Tofutti cream “cheese”. Don’t ask me why, but these taste wonderful. If you use the right serving amounts, its also good for you!

But for those of us who can eat cookies, and dairy products, these really are good, and putting the second cookie on top makes them much less messy. One tip would be to refrigerate them after you put the jam and cheese in the center. That way when you bite into them the filling doesn’t go dripping everywhere like it did on me! haha.. I couldn’t resist taking a bite though!

So there you go. You can do this with just about any cookie. I always use Strawberry jam, but you could use any sort of fruit. And yes, this is especially delicious with grape jam and peanut butter cookies. mmm..

-A.

Alright.. so, my friend Celine has a food blog called Have cake will travel. She whips up delicious looking (and I’m sure, tasting) goodies and posts photos of them to her LJ and her foodblog.

She inspired me to try something new, and so I decided I would hunt down the totally awesome cookbook “Vegan cupcakes take over the world” With a name like that, can you seriously NOT own it? I dont think so. (Buy it Here on amazon)

Ok, so I havent bought it yet. But I’m going to. I stopped by my mom’s house on the way to the shopping trip where I had planned on purchasing the cookbook, and it just so happened that my mom recently acquired it. So.. I borrowed it.

Instead of going and buying the book, I went to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients I needed (that I didnt already have) and got prepared to make some cupcakes.

Considering that I am NOT vegan, I wholly assumed these cupcakes would taste bad. I’m wneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comoman enough to admit it. I seriously thought I was going to hate them. I even planned for a drop off with my sister’s roommate Suzanne, who’s vegan. When I heard that she hasnt had any cake since becoming vegan over a year ago.. My heart went out to her. I HAD to do something to fix this obvious problem. Everyone needs cake. Even vegans!

Today was the day. I gathered my impliments, my ingredients and my bowl. I cleared the counters and got to mixin’.

I attempted the (surprisingly easy) basic golden cupcake recipe. After I baked the cupcakes (which smelled heavenly) I got to making a soymilk/ sugar modeling paste (it actually tastes really good.). I didnt have the vegan margarine (because I’m dumb and forgot ONE ingredient. I always do that) so I couldnt make a “buttercream” icing, and the girl I’m giving these cupcakes to cant have chocolate, so ganache was out.

This was what I came up with-

100% VEGAN!

Ok, so I know you cant TELL that they’re vegan by looking at them. I could be pulling one over on you, and just saying that they’re vegan. But I wouldnt do that. Seriously. Thats not cool. Everything that I bake, I present in its true form.. no lies, no secrets. Heck, I even post about my mistakes!

So there you go guys. My first (and certainly not my last) attempt at vegan cupcakes.

Tomorrow I’m going to bake another batch, and I’m gonna get the vegan margarine so I can make the fluffy icing to go along with it!

-A.

I’ve told the story before, about growing up with my Great Grandfather owning and operating a strawberry orchard..

Truth is, I’ve always loved strawberries. I love strawberries plain, in food, in drinks, the flavour, the smell. Strawberry is one of the only fruits that I enjoy the imitation flavouring of, even. When I go to the grocer, the first place I head is to the fruit stands. Scanning always for fresh red berries. It isn’t strawberry season here yet, but occasionally a few of my regular grocer stops get pretty good shipments in from places like california, although.. if you’ve ever had Oregon or Washington strawberries in the heat of the summer during peak season.. You can definately tell the difference.

Yesterday I went to the produce market. I’d have taken photos, but its not like a farmers market, all rustic and pretty. The produce market is an all year indoor set up, basically ran likneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.come a grocery store, only they have mounds and mounds of fresh fruit and vegetables, and most of the “groceries” they have cater to the large Eastern European community in the area. I love this place, not only because I love the fresh fruits and veggies, but because those eastern european folks have the best butter on the planet. I dont know what the name of the brand is because its written in cyrillic, but.. I love it.

So when I walked in yesterday, expecting to peruse the fruit, pick up some potatoes, grab a lump of butter on the way out and go… I was pleasantly surprised when I set my eyes upon the most beautiful berries I’ve seen since last season.

…And of course I bought some.

The photos you’re seeing might make them look small. They’re not. The ones towards the back are pretty much standard strawberry size, the ones in the front… They’re handfuls.

I must admit, I almost couldnt stop myself from eating them. I saved a few, and decided I would make something even more delicious with them, to have as dessert with dinner tonight.

Everyone knows that chocolate and strawberries go together as good as peaches and cream. As good as cookies and milk and pancakes with syrup. Its just how it goes. I didnt want to make a standard chocolate dipped strawberry. I love how they taste, but I wanted something a little different.

So I made chocolate fondant covered strawberries-

I guess if I really wanted these to sound fancy, I’d call them Enrobed fondant strawberries.. But they’re not fancy.. well, they’re fancier than plain old strawberries I guess, but really, they’re simple to make.. And I used my hands to shape them.. so I guess that takes away a little bit of the allure..

You’ll need-

2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup cream OR
2 tablespoons soymilk (if you want them to be vegan)
2 cups milk chocolate or semi sweet vegan chocolate chips (again, if you want them to be vegan)
1 teaspoon pure almond extract or pure vanilla extract
about a half cup rainbow sprinkles

12 medium to large strawberries (about 20 small strawberries)

First, mix the sugar and cream together. You’ll want a paste-like consistancy. sort of a thick icing, but not as thick as sugar dough. add the flavouring extract and mix thoroughly.

Melt your chocolate chips. You can either do this in 30 second pulses in the microwave (30 seconds in, remove and stir, another 30 seconds in, remove and stir, repeat until completely melted) OR on a double boiler. It really doesnt matter. I used the microwave, even though I dont like the microwave… because its much more simple, and really, to me the microwave is just a way to melt things (butter, chocolate, cheese on nachos. stuff like that).

Add the melted chocolate to the fondant mixture. Mix together until it starts to set up, thicker- kind of like fudge.

If you’re going to make this for other people.. I’d recommend putting on some gloves. I made these for me and my husband, and god knows he’s already got my cooties, so.. I just washed my hands with antibacterial soap for 20 seconds and dried them.

take about a tablespoon and a half of the mixture and roll it into a ball. Press your washed and dried strawberry tip into the ball, and form the ball around the base of the strawberry. At this point, you could freeze them for about half an hour, dip them in melted chocolate and let them set up. That would be delicious. However, I ran out of chocolate so… I didnt get to that point.

I poured my sprinkles into a shallow bowl and rolled the bottom of the berry, the part that would make contact with the plate, into the sprinkles.

At any point after this, they are edible. And I’d definately recommend eating them.. Or I might have to find out where you are, and I’ll eat them myself. They’re SO GOOD.

-A.

Ok, so I just love how that sounded all fancy.. Truth is, you don’t need fancy shmancy tools for basic decorating, you can pretty much improvise with tools you already have around your kitchen.

Its when you get into the more elaborate decorating techniques that you really need to pull out the big guns.

Truth be told, I’ve been decorating at some level of skill ever since I was a little kid. Now.. I said “some” level, not necessarily a very high level.

When I was younger, my mom decorated cakes, and she did a kickass job of it. She was so creative, I think it was impossible for me not to come away with some love for decorating desserts. As I got older, I continued, but it wasnt until I took a job as a professional cake decorator, that I learned what tools you really need, and I was able to compare my techniques to other decorators.

If you’re confident in your decorating skill, just skim through this. There are no photos, just explainations. I figured it would be a good idea to write down a few tidbits that could help out someone who waneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.coms just starting out.

Tip 1- If you plan on doing large amounts of decorating, just go ahead and buy the tools. A coupler set costs around $1 (us) and decorating tips are usually half that price, but at the most $1.50 (us) depending on size. I’ll go ahead and give my recommendation for Wilton decorating tools. Why? Because they pretty much corner the market. Their sizes are pretty universal, so you shouldnt have too hard of a time converting their tips to other brand couplers or vice versa.

NEVER buy the small decorating bags. They realistically only hold about a handful of icing in them, and there really isnt any point in that. Start out with medium. Dont go all the way to the jumbotron size unless you’re piping whipped cream or marshmallow, or base icing cupcakes.

Canvas bags are great, because you’re not adding more waste to landfills, but you have to clean them well after each use. I have a jumbo canvas bag and a few medium canvas bags. When I’m on a decorating kick, I can go through quite a few disposable bags, so this is the little thing I can do for the environment.

also, canvas bags dont split like plastic bags do if you’re not sure about the correct amount of pressure to apply while decorating.

Tip 2- Have plenty of decorating spatulas handy. You can use them for everything. Smoothing out the icing, spreading the icing, mixing the icing.. I dont bother with the offset spatulas. They’re wobbly and weak. In the 4 years I’ve professionally decorated, I’ve never once used one, even when they were available.

Tip 3- Practice makes perfect. Dont expect yourself to be able to pipe beautiful scrollwork or make roses right off the bat. It took me 6 months working 8 hour days devoting an hour a day to learning how to make a rose, to make a rose. You can learn it quicker, Just dont let yourself get down if you dont get it at first.

If you’re going to go this route, here is my list of necessary tools-

2- #2 Tips
#10 Tip
#14 Rose Tip
#22 or #23 border tip
set of 4 couplers
2 small decorating spatulas (flat, not offset)
one flat icing spatula (large size)
bowls for mixing icing colours
set of wilton basic icing colours
meringue powder (for royal icing)
6 medium sized canvas decorating bags
1 jumbo sized canvas decorating bag
1 jumbo coupler
1 jumbo border tip

Ok, now that the three tips are out of the way.. I’m going to start all over by saying that you CAN do all of this without any of those tools. I’d like to call my decorating hack kit. hehe..

box of heavy duty quart sized or sandwich sized ziploc (sealed) bags
sharp kitchen shears
single point round toothpicks
Butter knife with rounded end and NO serrations
empty and clean yogurt tubs with lids
set of 4 liquid colours (available ANYWHERE)

Unfortunately there is no replacement for the jumbo bag and coupler, but you probably wont need that.

What I’ve got listed above is all you need to decorate a simple cookie or a simple cake. I have all the tools I could need for decorating the fancy way, but I find myself going with the ziploc bag method more often than not when doing quick jobs or on days I just dont feel like doing the dishes.

Once you’ve mixed your icing, place a heaping spoonful into the ziploc bag. Squeeze all of the air out of it. add a small amount of the colouring seal the bag and smush it around until the colour is mixed in. Now squeeze all the icing down to one corner and snip the corner off. REMEMBER to snip only the tiniest bit off. You can always snip more, but you cant put it back.

now you can pipe outlines and details. If you’re wanting to fill in large spaces, cut a larger hole, pipe a big thick line and use the butter knife to spread the icing around.

If you’re working with royal icing or another type of thin icing, the toothpicks can be very useful in filling small corners or adding detail. Same with thicker icings or sugar pastes.

The yogurt tubs are great for storing extra icing. I would not recommend storing the icing in the bag, not only is it messy, but exposure to light with either fade or darken your original icing colour. So that pink may end up red, the green might end up teal. Just store them in opaque containers in the fridge. Its much easier to work with cold icing, also.

So there you have it. The basics tools one could need to decorate. There is plenty more I could say, but I’ll save that for a day I feel like making a rose and taking photos of the how-to process.

-A.

Ever since I was little, I loved decorating cookies. It relaxed me. The process of rolling out the dough, cutting it and baking it isnt exactly my favourite, but.. I’ll do it when I have to. Usually I reserve this type of cookie for holidays or special occasions. Times in life when things get stressful and I need something to center me.

When I was young, I would help my mom in the kitchen all the time. I loved helping decorate and arrange things. She usually had a pretty good idea of what she wanted, so I didnt really get to help her with HER projects, but she usually made extra stuff for me and my older sister to play with. A few extra cookies, some miniature cakes.. something.

The older I got, the less time my mom spent in the kitchen. Baked goods were a way of the past, and everything in our house went low-fat, low calorie and low- flavour. It was the early 90’s, so there really werent any new products that inhanced flavour of those types of diet foods yet. Luckily my fneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comavourite type of cake was carrot cake, so.. that was one type of sweet I could depend on.

Cookies, however, were in short supply. My attempts at creating them on my own fell short, mostly because I made a huge mess and my parents told me if I was going to make cookies they had to be the kind that went from the bowl to the pan, no rolling out and making a mess involved. I ate a lot of snickerdoodles and peanut butter cookies, but my heart longed for the thin, delicate crunch of good old sugar cookie cutouts.

Sometime in my mid teenage years, I caught the baking bug. I started trying recipes and having parties so I could bake cakes and make goodies. My friends loved it. Something was missing. I bought fancy cookbooks with tons of photos. I made fancy cakes with spun sugar fluff balls on them. It didnt seem right. I was a country girl making city food.

One year for Christmas, my family decided to go old fashioned. Every gift we gave was home made. Luckily for everyone involved, we’re quite crafty people. I blame my mom for that. My dad is pretty enterprising as well. My mom and I decided that we should make cookies and decorate them, giving them to our friends and extended relatives as gifts.

We made all sorts of cookies. Snicker doodles, chocolate chip, jam squares, white chocolate raspberry crisps, double chocolate bar cookies, lemon bars.. And cookie cutouts.

We decided we would only use one cookie cutter shape to make it easier. With all the baking, we wanted the cookies to be simple to decorate. But I couldnt do that.

I chose a star shape. About the size of the palm of my hand, I Figured we’d put one in each gift basket and call it good. I wanted the decoration to be memorable so I started trying a few new things. I knew I would have to do the dishes when I was done, so purely out of laziness, I put the icing into ziploc bags and snipped the ends off so I wouldnt have to wash my mom’s cake decorating supplies.

It became my therapy. We baked so many of those cookies that it took me an entire day to decorate them all. Dots and lines and swirlies and swooshes, words and smily faces. I wanted the cookies to be universal, not just christmassy.

Luckily, everyone loved them. They loved the whole cookie basket. Everyone was asking about the star cookies though.

So I started making them for people’s birthdays. I started making them and bringing them to parties. I felt much more at ease, bringing something I’ve made forever, something maybe less fancy, but more me, that people still loved.

And now, whenever things get rough, I bake cookies. I make icing and put the different colours in ziploc bags and snip the ends off. I decorate intricate designs and fun patterns. It relaxes me.

So after the cheese making fiasco, I decided it would be a good idea to cool down with some cookie decorating. Here’s a few photos of the mini batch I made this morning-

And thats just a few of them! I made a whole bunch, I’m only about a quarter of the way through decorating them. I did mostly stars and hearts, a few toothbrushes and teeth, some barnyard animals and camels.. A mountain goat, a giant salmon.. Yeah, I borrowed a few cookie cutters from my mom’s cookie cutter collection. Seriously, she’s got some strange ones.

I even made cookies that are shaped like Idaho and Washington state. One of the United states, a dachshund, A key, a giant chicken, even dog bones, strawberries and a heliocopter!

I’ll post those photos separately tonight when I’m finished decorating them.

For now, I want to enjoy the last of this beautiful day outside. Maybe a late picnic on the patio.. or just some cookies and milk.

Here is my simple sugar cookie recipe, its a family recipe, so its pretty much guaranteed to be delicious.

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons almond extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream (or whole milk)

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Sift together the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl, stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the heavy cream (or whole milk). Wrap the dough in waxed paper and refridgerate for 2 to 3 hours, until firm.

When you’re ready, find a nice clean flat surface (counter, silpat, cutting board) flour it liberally and roll out the chilled dough to about 1/4 inch in thickness. Select your cookie cutters and place them on a lightly oiled cookie sheet, baking them from 4-8 minutes (depending on thickness. Mine were really thin so I only baked them for 4 minutes) at 350 Fahrenheit.

When leave them on the cookie sheet or place them on a wire rack to cool. when they’re sufficiently cooled, mix together 2 cups powdered sugar 1 tablespoon orange extract and 4 tablespoons heavy cream. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved, you should end up with a thick paste. Add your colourings or use plain. Ice with a flat spatula or decorating tools.

The icing will take about 10 hours to completely dry. If you’re like me, and you just want a nice tasty cookie, you can eat them anytime.

So, there you go. Thats my recipe and I’m stickin to it. These are some seriously tasty cookies, not overly sweet, but very flavourful. Infact, why not add to the flavour by cutting two of the same shape, and putting a tablespoon of plain cream cheese between one undecorated cookie and one iced cookie. Trust me, its a very good snack!

-A.

Just a warning but This recipe is NOT for children.

So.. its St. Patricks day, and I’ve seen a lot of people scrambling to make an Irish Cream Cake that doesnt start out with a cake mix.

Since I was having the same problem, I decided to come up with my own recipe.

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups Baileys Irish Cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk chocolate, melted

As with most cake recipes, in order to be sure they are light and fluffy, and not hard and brick-like, you need to add the liquid ingredients together, then add the flour- slowly and gradually.

In a mixer bowlneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com, cream the butter until fluffy, add the sugar and whip together until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour, alternating between adding flour and baileys until all of the ingredients are incorporated.

Once you’ve got a nice light batter, melt the milk chocolate and pour it into the batter while you whip the batter. This will incorporate it and add a nice chocolatey flavour to go along with the baileys.

I poured mine into paper lined muffin cups and baked them at 300 degrees for about 10-15 minutes, keeping a close eye on them.

the tops are flat, and have sort of a souffle appearance to them. They’re lightly crunchy, and the inside is soft and moist.
After they cooled, I whipped up a small batch of bailey’s fudge filling.

You’ll need-
3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup Baileys Irish cream
1 Tablespoon milk
1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips, melted

Pour 3 cups of powdered sugar into a medium saucepan. Over medium low heat Add 1/4 cup Bailey’s irish cream and 1 Tablespoon milk. Whip together until you have a thick glaze. If this glaze isnt thick enough (think sweetened condensed milk) add more powdered sugar. Add to this 1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips. stir constantly until the chocolate is fully incorporated. Pour into a shallow pan and refrigerate. Once the mixture is the consistency of fudge, use a cookie cutter to cut small rounds and place in the middle of a booze muffin that has been cut in half.

Mix 1 cup powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon Baileys Irish cream together and pour over top.

Eat, enjoy!

There is a LOT of alcohol in this recipe. DO NOT MAKE THIS FOR CHILDREN! Even though that should be self explanatory.

-A.