I’ve got this baking itch I think because today I made Blondies. and they were freaking DELICIOUS. oh man. I even made the syrup-y stuff they put all over them and went out and bought vanilla ice-cream.

But, Sadly, I am giving them away, along with the cupcakes I made yesterday, I had one cupcake and one blondie. Stupid Diet! I can’t believe I’ve had the willpower not to go out to the kitchen and heat up more of the syrup stuffs & devour the blondies.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup flour, sifted
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1/3 cup butter or margarine (melted)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

  Maple Sauce

• 3/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Add baking powder, baking soda and salt to the already sifted flour. Then sift dry ingredients again. Add chopped nuts and mix well. Set aside.

Add brown sugar to melted butter and mix well. Then add egg and vanilla extract. Mix well. Add flour mixture, a little at a time, until mixed well. Stir in white chocolate chips. Spread out dough in a 9-inch pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Use a toothpick for testing.

Sauce:

In a pan, add real maple syrup and butter, cook over low heat until butter is melted. Next, stir in brown sugar until completely dissolved. If you desire, add walnuts.

Other news on the baking front :

My good friends Elise & Will are having another baby girl. There has been some chatter about me making a cake for the shower. I was flattered, of course I agreed and now I am nervous! I’ve only made a few cakes before and I’m scared I’ll mess up! haha. Atleast its for a girl, I feel like I work better in pinks & purples. I’m sure I’ll write more and more about that as the dates get closer, I still haven’t even gotten my invite so I have a while to plan.

Another thing that is interesting, well okay two more things. I got my application in the mail for the Culinary Institute of America. I looked it over and started re-thinking. Lol. why do I do that? I need to go for whats in my gut, or else I will just be unhappy. Haven’t I learned ?

Last thing! I Swear !

A blog I follow, and I’m sure a lot of other foodies follow, How To Eat A Cupcake is holding a cool contest to win a cupcake book. (Hello, Cupcake) You have to make one out of five choice cupcakes from the book. I’m not sure which one I’m doing yet but I’m pretty excited.

I could probably use the money that I’d spend on ingredients to buy the book, but, WHAT FUN IS THAT ?

So after making the owls for that contest in my last post, I had a lot of left over Oreos. and since I’m on a diet I couldn’t devour them like I wanted to. So I decided to make oreo cupcakes. they came out really good. I had to have one, you know… to make sure I wasn’t serving people crap.. :p

And, I sure wasn’t. They were delicious. Probably my best cupcakes yet. I can’t recall where I got the recipe from because I found it on my computer. but the Frosting recipe I used was from the Cupcake Project and it came out pretty awesome.

On 4 of the cupcakes, I placed an Oreo cookie on the bottom before putting the batter in. I didnt have enough Oreos to do it with all of the cupcakes and I wasn’t sure if that would just bring it over the top in a bad way or a good way, so I decided only four with a whole cookie. Well, it was over the top in an awesome way.

Everyone who ate these cupcakes enjoyed them so I’m pretty proud. I even broke my diet to eat them!

The Recipes:

Oreo Cupcakes
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 egg whites, room temperature
3/4 cup milk
1 1/4 cups crushed oreo cookies (10 cookies)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line 24 muffin cups with baking cups.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract, then beat in the egg whites one at a time, making sure each is fully incorporated before adding the next.
Working in 4 or 5 additions, alternately add the flour mixture and the milk to the sugar mixture. Keep the mixer on low speed while you do this. When just combined, stir in the crushed oreos.
Spoon batter evenly into muffin tins, filling each about 2/3 full.
Bake for 15-18 minutes at 350F, until a toothpick comes out clean (a few chocolate cookie crumbs are fine, but not batter).

Cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.
Store in an airtight container if not serving the same day.

Makes 24 cupcakes

So. I made some cupcakes recently for my darling cousin Lauren, aka Lor Lor aka Sissy. I asked her what she wanted, she decided on chocolate & banana. Once I hear something, I pretty much get a picture in my head of how I want it to be. I ended up making chocolate cupcakes and topping them with banana buttercream. I decided to do that instead of just making a banana cake & chocolate icing (which in my personal opinion would have been WAY better to my taste buds because I HATE chocolate cake) because I don’t think I’ve ever had Banana Buttercream before & I wanted to try something different. Also, the initial image I got in my head was yellow icing all cute. topped with some chocolate and then another little dab of icing on top of that. & thats exactly what I did….

I think they are pretty much… Adorable. Those are just the mini’s. for the Regular Cupcakes I put chocolate sprinkles around them, I didn’t really like the outcome of that but here it is:

So I had some issues with the frosting. I made TWO batches of it. TWO different days.  I used THIS recipe:

• 1 1/2 sticks butter
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 tsp banana extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 3/4 confectioner’s sugar

Blend sugar & butter. add milk & more sugar. once blended, add vanilla and salt.

the first time around, instead of using banana extract i used ACTUAL bananas. it TASTED a whole hell of a lot better than the one with the banana extract. it was actually kind of amazing tasting. but it was soupy and fell right off the cupcakes. also, it looked separated and gross. i tried to add more sugar and as i went it just DIDN’T help at all. I’m not really sure what went wrong but IF you have any idea what would have helped me, PLEASE leave a comment and let me know cuz im VERY curious. It tasted so delicious and I would have much rather used the one with real banana’s!

I also made sugar cookies yesterday & today but I’ll post about them either later or tomorrow. I was planning on making some other cupcakes but I didnt have the ingredients and im kind of broke !

So. I made some apple crisp & apple cupcakes recently. I guess thats all I’ve done thats productive this week. I went apple picking with Joe & got some pre packaged apple cake & apple crisp mix from the orchard we went to. So I guess its cheating but I wanted to check it out.  (the orchard btw, is awesome. its local and is near where my tutor in highschool lived, I’ve never been there until last week but always saw the signs for it. totally worth it. I got apple cider donuts, fudge, and apple ciderrrr)

Don’t have any recipes because both the crisp & the cupcakes were pre packaged, honestly all I did was add some of the apples. But I do plan to start writing my own recipes and maybe someday write a recipe book. how cool would that be?

Apple Crisp, so yum.

Now cupcakes :

So this is the only thing I have a recipe for. looks gross right? well, it wasn’t done. but its glaze. like donut glaze.  I wasn’t sure what to top the cupcakes/muffins whatever u wanna call them with. I was going back and fouth between this, brown sugar frosting, or cinnamon frosting. well, i kept it simple but instead of maple I used Apple Butter I had in the fridge.

Apple Butter Glaze

• 2 3/4 C powdered sugar
• 2 T corn syrup
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 2 T Apple Butter
• 4-6 T water (I used 4)

1. Mix together powdered sugar, corn syrup, and vanilla extract.
2. Add in water 2 T at a time until the glaze is sticky but spreadable.
3. Add Apple Butter & mix well.

You can add more if you’d like it more apple buttery. I think I ended up putting more in. You can probably also take out the vanilla extract.

After Glaze & Fall colored sprinkles:

So baking makes me sane. or less insane. or something. more things tomorrow.

So as always, Bakerella came up with the cutest thing ever & I wanted to try it, I went to the store, grabbed the ingredients & came home all excited to give it a shot. I realized I have some apples left over from my apple picking adventures. So, instead of making her latest Pumpkin Pie Bites, I decided to make Apple Pie Bites !

Right after they were baked! I used an Apple Cookie Cutter so I would get the steam and the leaf.

I thought Maybe some Fall Colors would be cute, thinking back, not really.

I added some leaves & fall sprinkles to the dough. In Theory: CUTE

Actually baked: kinda messy looking. oh well! still yummy!

I also made some Pie Pops (also inspired by Bakerella & Luxirare

Most are Regular Circles, I made some Hearts & Apple Shapes.

The Recipe:

Apple Pie Filling: (Used for both pie pops & apple pie bites)

4 apples, peeled/cored & cut into small pieces
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup light brown sugar
3tbsp corn starch
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Directions:

Peel Apples, remove core & seeds. Cut into halves, then quarters. (If making Pie Pops or Apple Pie Bites, Cut quarters into smaller pieces) Place Apples in a sauce pan, Add water & stir. Add Brown Sugar, Corn Starch, Cinnamon & Nutmeg, Stir & Bring to Medium/Low heat for 20-25 minutes. If water evaporates too quickly, add more. Stir Occasionally. After about 25 minutes remove from heat & let cool.

For Apple Pie Bites:

1 Box of Ready 2 Roll Pie crust, or make your own.
Apple Shaped Cookie Cutter
1 egg white
Apple Pie Filling
Mini Cupcake/Muffin pan
Optional: fall color sprinkles
Optional: 1/2 cup Walnuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Brush egg white with a baking brush on the Mini Muffin Pan, Cut out apple shapes with a cookie cutter, then place the apple shaped dough in alternating cups on the pan so the dough does not touch. Also, make sure to leave out the leave & stem for extra cuteness effect! fill pockets with apple pie filling, (OPTIONAL: I added WALNUTS & OATS into the pie filling after it was made, I think the walnuts were amazing and I’d definately use them) Brush some egg white on the sides of the dough (make sure to get the stem & leaf) Bake for 12-18 minutes ( maybe a bit longer to make sure the bottoms are also becoming brown. otherwise you will get a doughy taste. As long as the tops do not burn. )

NOTE: you can do this with any pie filling really. & if you dont want it to be an apple shape use a circle.

For the Pie Pops: Preheat oven to 375 degrees: use a circle cookie cutter, cut out 2 circles for each pie pop. press 1 stick into the bottom circle cut out. place apple pie filling onto the bottom circle. (make sure not to put too much filling in the middle of it will gush out the sides) Place the second circle cut out on top & use another stick to press the sides together to get the classic “pie look” brush tops with an egg white & Bake for: 12-15 minutes or longer if desired. just make sure the tops do not burn.