Vanilla Latte Cupcakes

 

It is one of my work bestie's birthday this weekend and we are celebrating tomorrow! She is a coffee lover too so I'm hoping these Vanilla Latte cupcakes will go over well! It is a surprise!

The recipe is from Annie's Eats, so it was sure to be a good one. The cake has espresso powder AND brewed coffee in the mix (I skipped the Kahlua, since it was for WORK. BOO!) and the frosting is a Swiss Meringue frosting. Half of the frosting got a concentrated espresso powder boost and it was piped prettily in a swirl. The vanilla bean flecks are just lovely! I just LOVE fresh vanilla.

 

The cake was moist and fluffy, with just a subtle coffee flavor. I expected it to be a heavy flavor and I was very glad it was not. The frosting is one of my favorite kinds- the Swiss Meringue has to be cooked in a double boiler, and then ultra whipped by my KitchenAid mixer for a good eight minutes into stiff peaks and to cool down. It is a silky, lovely, not-too-sweet frosting. YUM.

Thumbs up!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Vanilla Latte Cupcakes.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Boiled Apple Cider and Baked Cider Donuts

DROOL.

I guess the donut doesn't really matter to me because its covered in cinnamon sugar... but this donut was GOOD. I had made boiled cider a few days before and finally I got around to doing something with it. Boiled cider is basically apple cider reduced down to a syrup. It took a few hours and my house smelled wonderful. It was no problem whatsoever to make!

I guess the boiled cider syrup is also good on pancakes. I really need to find more uses for this stuff. It is delicious.

This is a basic baked donut recipe but for the addition of the boiled cider. I probably could have added a bit more for flavor, but the donut was nice and delicious. Even James had one! Or two. Or three?

I finally discovered how to make the donuts look PERFECT. Turn them upside down! The bottom side is perfectly formed by the donut pan, so then the presentation is nice. I mean, if that sort of thing matters to you. These donuts were inhaled pretty quickly so it didn't matter much besides for this picture!

Baked donuts are the way to go! You don't even miss the fried/sugary ones!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Boiled Cider.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Baked Cider Donuts.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Christmas Cookies

I love Christmas baking! First, here is my final tray of cookies.

I made:
Gingerbread cookies
Roll-out sugar cookies
Almond candy
Peppermint marshmallows
Chocolate Peanut Butter Blossoms
Mexican Wedding Cakes


My assembly line of sugar cookie decorating. The squeeze bottles contain the thin "flooding" icing- it squeezes out very thinly and will harden eventually. The pastry bags have my coordinating colors of piping icing.

I found that making a true red icing is very difficult. I remember that I gave up the year before when I started to mix the colors. I got so frustrated by my failure that I didn't even decorate or finish the cookies!

My Christmas trees are pretty wild looking. I remembered that I had christmas light bulb and candy cane decorations from the year before, so we decorated using those. I still had a lot to learn about the piping and flooding techniques!



The swirled candy canes were my favorites! Especially the ones with the green and red.


Marshmallows are surprisingly easy to mae. I would not do the swirls again though. The food color clumped and looked like something unpleasant- blood. The peppermint flavor was nice though. That's all it really needed anyway!

Marshmallows are cut into squares and tossed with powdered sugar to prevent them from sticking together. Mmmmm... imagine these bad boys in some hot chocolate!

Click here for the stolen recipe for marshmallows.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Blossoms. These cookies were an accident. I asked Jim to print out the recipe for the regular Peanut Butter Blossoms, he mistakenly printed CHOCOLATE Peanut Butter Blossoms, with cocoa in the peanut butter cookie dough. It ended up being a very nice mistake!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Martha's Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies. I actually got the recipe from my Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook, but the recipe is online.

There is no stolen recipe for the sugar cookies YET. I still need to type this out from my cookbook Cookie Craft.

There will never be a stolen recipe for the Almond Candy. I am sworn to secrecy on that recipe. For real!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Gingerbread Cookies. These are AWESOME. I did make the mistake of leaving these out overnight (to dry) and if they are on the thin side, again, they get stale. I made them thicker the next time and they were much better. Actually they didn't really get stale but crispy. I think they are much better soft.

I think Christmas cookies are my best baking experiences. I love it :)

Caramel corn

I've been wanting to make this caramel corn since I first saw it in the fall. Caramel corn does seem like a fall treat but with today's rain and cooler winds it seemed natural to have the oven on and the warm, sweet smell in the kitchen!

Click here for the stolen recipe. It made tons!

I bagged it up in these cute little carrot cellophane bags. I think maybe this is my centerpiece for my Easter table?