I'm feeling rather ridiculous.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Getting up for work on what for the past three years has been the most glorified week off of the year is quite unsettling. It's unfortunate I cannot put my foot down about such things, sigh. Missing Jersey.

{via Black*Eiffel}

I needed to make some cupcakes to take to a game night last week, but I knew I didn't have time to make proper cupcakes with all the sugary frosting.  So I decided to make a stencil and use powdered sugar to decorate the top.  I recently saw a post from How About Orange that brought the idea to my mind, but I've done this before.  Once when I was younger I made an angel food cake for my parents' anniversay and used a heart stencil and cocoa powder to make the top pretty.  It's brilliant.  I need to remember this more often.

[Image from entertainment.ie, who won Best Entertainment website.]

Ok, so I missed out on a Blog Award earlier this year, but I grabbed an Irish Web Award at the weekend on behalf of our work website.

In the pic, is my colleague Martha who maintains the site with me and became known as the Yay Girl on the night, such was her enthusiasm for EVERYONE involved on the night (yay!). And holding the bubbly is Simon, who outdappered whomever he stood next to.

Highlights? Tons.

1. Complete lack of formality. My favourite speech was a one-liner from a web designer on behalf of her winning client: "I should have fucking charged them more!"
2. Much whoopin' and hollerin'.
3. Free bar that went on a very very long time.
4. Delicious food (not a cocktail sausage in sight).
5. Polystyrene 'W's strewn everywhere (4 of them seem to have followed us home... not the enormo ones though. How the hell would that get on the Nitelink?).
6. Ditching my speech for an improvised one and saying something about Sarah Palin and streakers (see No. 3 above).
7. Multiple Rickrollage. Which resulted in my having to root out an SAW compliation later that night (see No. 3 above).
8. My colleague Simon's amazing waistcoat and tie.
9. Rick O'Shea, who totally gets it.
10. Bumping randomly into some NUIM graduates who seemed genuinely delighted that we beat some of the heavy hitters in our category.
11. The lovely cupcakes.
12. Being the only person to say 'LOL' on stage. (It was in inverted commas, dammit) (see No. 3 above).
13. Being exposed to really great sites that I hadn't heard of before. Most notably Kanchi, who got Most Beautiful Website Award.
14. Damien Mulley, who obviously gets it.

MOAR!

Check here for more commentary and pics.

Not pumpkin-flavored, unfortunately, but because I love the chocolate-buttercream combination, one of my favorite flavors. These little cakes are the perfect holiday confection - a simple treat for October or November.

The other night my mother asked me to watch my little sister while she and my dad went to a surprise party for a family friend. So when I get there, my little sister has a multitude of groceries covering the counter and the oven heating. She bought a cookbook for 500 cupcakes. This would be her first attempt at baking. I thought it was cute and wonderful for a 12 year old girl to find total enjoyment and excitement out of baking. What a nice idea for an activity for babysitting too (That is if the kid is old enough, of coarse)! But anyway, she made apple-cinnamon cupcakes (She was inspired by the Thanksgiving season). I don't know if they were good or not, because I don't like cinnamon and therefore didn't try them. However, from what I hear, they were amazing.

Semoga teman Yuli suka dengan cupcakenya :)

This morning I called every single one of my friends to see if they want to come over and hang out.  I was really hoping that Claire could come over and teach me how to bake her amazingly delicious cupcakes.  Every single one of my friends was either sick, not answering, not home, or can't make it.  By 10:00 my day was over.  I finished my chores, slept for three more hours, then read New Moon and Eclipse.  Again.  Okay, I only read my favorite parts, but that's gotta count for something! 

I plan on getting in my P.J.'s on, making my all-time favorite comfort food, then watch some kind of action movie where everyone get slaughtered.  Ahhh, the weekend. 

The one, the only, the pathetic,

Bella

P.S.  I'm getting kind of tired of saying "Fly on" at the end of my posts.  It's just a term I got from one of my favorite books that just seems dumb now that I've read Twilight.  Any suggestions for a different one?  I sure do like the one I used today.  I'm pretty pathetic, you know.  I still have wussy nightmares where I *says dramatically* wake up screaming/crying in terror and in a cold sweat.  *Gasp.*  That's pathetic.  I'm freaking twelve!!!

As soon as I saw these ingenious little cupcakes I immediately starred them in my google reader. Unfortunately for me, I will not make sweets unless I have someone to take them so they are out of my house! Last week, my internship site was having a pot luck for one of the ladies who was moving to another hospital. I quickly volunteered to make a dessert (or two!). These cupcakes were such a hit and I was thrilled to try a new technique.

Roscoe wondering why I am discarding the center of a perfectly good cupcake J

Apple Pie Cupcakes

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

3 cups sifted cake flour (I used 3 Cups all-purpose minus 6 Tbsp)

1 Tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 cup butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

1 cup milk

Filling:

2 Tbsp. butter

2 tsp. cinnamon

3 Tbsp sugar

3 large apples, peeled, cored and diced

Frosting:

2 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp heavy cream

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 and line 24 muffin tins with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, sift together cake flour, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar together on medium speed about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla mixing well to combine. Add the dry ingredients and milk alternating dry, milk, dry, milk, dry. Stir until just combined.

Fill cupcake liners about ¾ full. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean, 18-22 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

To make the filling, heat butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the cinnamon and sugar and cook for a minute, until the mixture begins to bubble. Lower the heat to medium and add apples, mixing well. Cook approximately 10 minutes or until apples are tender. Cool completely.

Meanwhile, use the cone technique to remove a ‘cone’ from the center of each cupcake. Make sure to leave a rim around the top of each cupcake. Fill the holes with the cooled apple mixture.

For the frosting, use a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat butter at medium-high speed until smooth, about 20 seconds. Add confectioners’ sugar and salt beating at medium-low speed until sugar is moistened, about 45 seconds. Scrape down the bowl and beat at medium speed until mixture is fully combined, approximately 15 seconds. Add, vanilla and heavy cream and beat at medium speed until incorporated. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, approximately 4 minutes. Scrape the bowl down completely at about 2 minutes.

To decorate the cupcakes, top each cupcake with a dollop of buttercream.

Source: Adapted from Annie’s Eats

1) Free Fashion Advice at the Union Square Green Market.

Two women who claimed to be stylists were giving free fashion advice to anyone who lined up at their booth. Sammy and I eavesdropped and tried to ask them the business rationale for setting up here -- was this for a TV show? A book proposal? a web site? A magazine prank? (Yours truly used to do that for JANE magazine...remember the infamous street spa in Times Square for the March 2006 issue?). They avoided non-style questions and only gave out a paper with this web site, which looks pretty hokey...plus, these bloggers caught some cameramen hanging around the girls, so I'm betting it's candid camera for a reality show. Another reason to love NY: Where else can you get locally grown produce and good, free fashion advice in one place?

2) Free Mini Crumbs Cupcakes!

You know it's your lucky day when a woman stands on the street corner with a pink baker's hat serving free mini Crumbs cupcakes, of the M&M, Oreo, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup variety. This plate was cleared in less than a minute!

I love oreos. I love how they taste nothing like real cocoa and the filling tastes nothing like vanilla but rather almost pure sugar. I love how savory it tastes when you dip it in cold milk and let it suck up the liquid just enough that its got a soft crisp without being soggy and wet. And I love how after you eat one and you have a cup of milk, it makes the drink taste 10x more better. Unfortunately, oreos and I don't get along. After one night of eating two sleeves (thats 20 cookies, folks) worth after not touching junkfood for 4 months, I realized that I could never enjoy oreos again.

That did not mean, however, that other people couldn't. While my stomach and I both agree that oreos are not something that we want to mess with in even small quantities (honestly, I bit in half of a cookie last night and wanted to puke just from that) there are still loads of people out there who enjoy these sorry excuse for chocolate and vanilla cookies. Those people, as you can guess, are mainly in the kid/teenager area. Although my boyfriend who is going to turn 20 next year (oh wow) could probably eat an entire oreo cheesecake; these little delights are a treat for any kid who enjoys eating sugar by the mouthful.

Therefore, for sunday morning sunday school, I looked up some oreo recipes. At first, I was doing this for my boyfriend, since he is an oreo fiend. But when I came upon these little temptations, it was no guess as to what I was making for the kids this weekend.

The recipe was relatively easy to make. A basic vanilla cupcake with crushed up oreos stirred in. The batter itself was enough to drive me crazy, and I was surprised I was able to surpress myself from eating all of it. Honestly, it tasted like cookies'n'cream icecream in batter form. And I cannot even begin to explain how much more delicious it is than the icecream.

The frosting, however, was not the vanilla buttercream the cupcake recipe calls for. Instead, I got creative. What would go well with a chocolatey cookie? And then I thought smores. And then I thought: marshmallows.

Struck with inspiration, I decided to decor these cakes with marshmallow buttercream icing, which, thankfully refrigerated well overnight. Add a quarter of a oreo cookie ontop and you've got yourself something that kids will be begging for more of. Literally. Begging. As in, I got asked 3 times if there was any left-overs at the end of church. By 3 different kids.

I haven't tasted the cupcakes, because like I mentioned earlier; Oreo's and I don't get along well at all. But, from what everyone told me, they were stupendous and no one thought twice about the marshmallow icing, so I suppose I hit the nail on the head with this recipe.

Oreo Cupcake Ingredients:

(Original from bakingbites.com)

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter,  room temperature
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 egg whites, room temperature
• 3/4 cup whole milk (I used fat-free)
• 1 1/4 cups crushed oreo cookies (10 cookies will do the trick)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line 24 muffin cups with baking cups.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract, and then beat in the egg whites one at a time, making sure each is well-incorporated before adding the next.
4. Working in 4-5 additions, alternately add the flour mixture and milk to the sugar mixture. Keep your mixer on low speed as you do this. When combined well, stir in the crushed oreo cookies.
5. Spoon batter evenly into baking cups, about 2/3 full.
6. Bake for 15-16 minutes at 350F, or until toothpick/fork can come out without any batter (crushed cookies are fine)
7. Cool on wire wrack completely before frosting, or store in air-tight container till you're ready to serve them/frost them.

Marshmallow Buttercream Icing Ingredients:

• 1 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 jar (7oz) of marshmallow creme' or fluff. (Yes, you will need the whole jar.)
• 1 cup powdered sugar (you may want to use more if you want a sweeter taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Beat butter with mixer on high speed until nice and creamy.
2. Beat in marshmallow creme', spoonfuls at a time.
3. Reduce speed to low and add in vanilla and powdered sugar.
4. Increase speed to high until frosting is fluffy.
5. Frost, or pipe onto oreo cupcakes. Or refrigerate in air-tight container. If refrigerating overnight, leave out for 45 minutes at room temperature uncovered until frosting cupcakes.
6. Garnish with oreos chopped into quarter portions or as desired.

I'll post more later, because I also made something else to start rolling in the fall season. Let's just say it has to do with pumpkins, muffins, and the frustrating unpredictability of baking.

Toodles.

-Alexandra

Prep Time: 10 min
Total Time: 1 hr 34 min
Makes: 24 servings, 1 cupcake each

• 1 pkg. (2-layer size) white cake mix
• 1 pkg. (3 oz.) JELL-O Lemon Flavor Instant Pudding
• 1 cup water
• 4 egg whites
• 2 Tbsp. oil
• 1 pkg. (16 oz.) powdered sugar
• 1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
• 2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Beat cake mix, pudding mix, water, egg whites and oil in large bowl with mixer on low speed until moistened. (Batter will be thick.) Beat on medium speed 2 min. Spoon batter evenly into 24 paper-lined 2-1/2-inch muffin cups.
2. Bake 21 to 24 min. or until toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 min.; remove to wire racks. Cool completely.
3. Meanwhile, beat sugar, cream cheese, butter and juice with mixer on low speed until well blended. Frost cupcakes.

**Personal Review: No Review Yet**

It happens sometimes.  OK--I'll be honest.  It happens a lot.  It doesn't matter what time it is, how tired I am, whether we have to be somewhere or I have all the time in the world.  Sometimes I get an urge to bake--an urge that won't be ignored.  I have to succumb!  I don't have a choice!  And that is why tonight, at an odd and late hour, I made these molten cupcakes.

The recipe doesn't indicate an approximate time for how long they should be baked.  It simply says "Bake at 350 degrees until the sides of the cupcakes look firm and the centers are still soft."  I think I missed this by about 3 minutes.  I put them in for 11 minutes.  I should have taken them out but I thought they could use a little bit longer so I added an additional 2 minutes.  (13 minutes total.)  Next time I would keep a closer eye and take them out after about 10 minutes (total).  I think that is the best way to ensure a nice drippy middle.

I think these are a perfect dinner party dessert.  Serve warm out of the oven, individually plated with some ice cream and fresh berries.  And maybe a sprig of mint. Yum!  That is what I will do next time.  But because there were no dinner party guests, there was no ice cream, no fresh berries, no mint, no frosting.  Nope.  Just me and my husband. We ate these tasty simple little cakes as you see them in the photo above--naked!  (The cakes!!!)

Bittersweet Molten Chocolate Cupcakes:

• 1 and 1/4 sticks butter
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 3 eggs
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Carefully melt butter and chocolate in a saucepan.  (Use a double boiler if you wish, or just be very careful not to burn the chocolate.)  Cool for five minutes.

In a large bowl beat the eggs, egg yolks, and sugar with an electric mixer until thick and creamy. (About five minutes.)

Fold the egg mixture into the chocolate until fully incorporated.  Fold in the sifted flour.

Fill the cupcake liners two-thirds full.  Bake until the sides of the cupcakes look firm but their centers are still soft.  (About 10 minutes.  Keep an eye on them!)

Remove from the oven.  Cool for a few minutes then gently remove the liners.  Serve warm with ice cream (or whipped cream) and fresh berries.

Adapted from recipe found in Crazy about Cupcakes by Krystina Castella available for purchase here.