In the Kitchen: Yellow Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

It’s time to admit something. I’ve come to like the recipes with a doctored cake mix quite a lot. I still enjoy baking something totally from scratch, but there are just those times when you want to throw everything in one bowl and get to it without having to sift your dry ingredients together first. This is convenience baking that still tastes delicious.

The first time I made these cupcakes was to help out a coworker who was throwing a baby shower. The mother-to-be had specifically requested yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. We were baking after work one day, so I wanted something quick and easy. Unfortunately, the hunt for a quick doctored box recipe was anything but quick and easy. I did eventually find something, but apparently I didn’t have faith that the recipe would be something I wanted to make again – I can’t find the original source ANYWHERE. I didn’t pin it or bookmark it or anything. It’s just sitting there in my email to my coworker taunting me with no clue where it came from. Did it come from The Cake Mix Doctor herself? Maybe I just went with the doctored chocolate cupcake recipe I found at My Baking Addiction and went with yellow instead of chocolate cake mix? I just don’t know and it’s driving me a bit bonkers that I can’t attribute it to the proper person.

Photos from the original baking session leave something to be desired (stemming from the use of my phone instead of my “real” camera). But there were fun liners & sprinkles involved:

I decided to make these again for the Relay For Life cupcake extravaganza in April. They’re a moist cake and the chocolate frosting is a great addition to them (especially given my Vanilla Cake Syndrome). I also used a canned frosting for these. It worked well with the recipe & made my life without a stand mixer easier. And since I (sadly) can’t link you to the original source:

Yellow Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:
1 (15.25 oz) box yellow cake mix (I like Better Crocker Butter Recipe)
1 (3.4 oz) package instant vanilla pudding mix
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup butter, melted & cooled slightly
1/2 cup warm water
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 cans Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy Milk Chocolate frosting
Sprinkles (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º. Line muffin tin(s) with liners.
Beat together cake & pudding mixes, sour cream, butter, water, eggs, & vanilla. Beat for about 2 minutes on medium until well combined. (NOTE: I like to give the cake mix & pudding a stir together before I add the wet ingredients in.)
Fill muffin tins about 2/3 full (~3tbsp batter per well)
Bake for 18-22 minutes or until tops of cakes are slightly golden brown & a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean (or mostly clean).
Cool in tins for about 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool.

FO: Spattergroit Mitts

I have an actual finished knitting project, people! I spent a couple hours last week watching The Voice while I sewed on buttons and wove in ends on my Spattergroit mitts.

I think I’ve mentioned previously that even though the pattern is called “spatterdash”, I keep referring to them as “spattergroit” instead.

This pattern is perfect for a variegated yarn – this particular one is Dyeabolical Alter Ego in Katatomic. Such a great color. These mitts are just fun! I seamed the edge down on mine before I sewed the buttons on, as I knew there was NO WAY I’d go through buttoning them every time I tried to wear them.

I would definitely make these again, although there are several ends to weave in on each mitt, which meant I finished knitting them WEEKS before I went about weaving in ends & sewing on the buttons.

Pattern: Spatterdash wristwarmers by Dagmar Mora (free on knitty), size M.
Yarn: Dyeabolical Alter Ego in Katatomic.
Needles: Um, I forgot to note which ones. I’m gonna guess it was a size 3 (or maybe 4) since I knit tight.
Ravelry project page. :)

In the Kitchen: Banana Nutella Bread

In an attempt to get all my recipes and cooking talk in one place, I’ll be periodically re-posting recipes from my time writing on the Kitchen Mirror here. In some cases I may update pictures & proof-read, but for the most part it will just be a re-posting of what I had there. The posts are not in chronological order – I’m trying to post holiday appropriate recipes near the holidays they go with & fill in others around them.

Originally posted March 1, 2010.

I am easily suggestible. I’m an advertisers wet dream, really. If you suggest something, I will want to run out and buy it, bake it, or eat it right away. It’s a sickness. People twitter new recipes and they almost immediately go into my bookmarks. Someone suggested a dinner idea recently & I went looking for a recipe for it (especially since it fit in with the no meat, no sugar, no caffeine thing I’m doing at the moment. The “no caffeine” part lasted until I took excedrin for my headache 36 hours after I started. GO FIGURE).

So when one of my knitting people twittered a link to this recipe for Nutella Swirled Banana Bread, I had to try it. Even better, I had 4 overripe bananas sitting in my kitchen just WAITING to be turned into banana bread. Because I buy them and then forget they exist until they’re only good for banana bread. It’s a sick little cycle.

Naturally, I made a few small changes to try to make this healthier and use up the bananas I had on hand.
Here’s what I did:

4 small to medium mashed very ripe bananas
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup low fat sour cream
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3-1/2 cup Nutella

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a large bread pan (I always just spray it down with Pam).

Combine the first 4 ingredients in a medium/large bowl using an electric mixer. Mix in remaining ingredients (except the Nutella) until combined.

Pour about half the batter into your greased loaf pan. Top with half the Nutella & swirl it into the batter. Repeat with the second half of the batter & Nutella.

Bake about 65 minutes (mine only baked for about 45-50 & was a little too moist, so next time I’d leave it in another 5-10 minutes, but my toothpick was clean!). Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then remove it to a wire rack to cool completely.

The Nutella in these does get all ooey gooey the next day (and next), so this is not a clean bread to eat. But oh, it’s delicious. Try it now. Don’t make it mere days before you decide to try to go off sugar. It’s not a good idea.

In the Kitchen: Peanut Butter Cups

In an attempt to get all my recipes and cooking talk in one place, I’ll be periodically re-posting recipes from my time writing on the Kitchen Mirror here. In some cases I may update pictures & proof-read, but for the most part it will just be a re-posting of what I had there. The posts are not in chronological order – I’m trying to post holiday appropriate recipes near the holidays they go with & fill in others around them.

Originally posted September 7, 2008

I have a thing for sweets and sugar. It is my downfall, seriously. No matter how many times I try to get on track to eat healthy, something sweet and delicious sneaks into my mouth. Especially if it’s chocolate. Chocolate can turn me into Homer Simpson, complete with drool.

So, recently I’ve decided to cut down (if not out) on the amount of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in my diet. Which doesn’t mean that I’m going to be all freakazoid about it and insist on ingredient lists when I’m out eating, but I’m really trying to be more conscious about the foods I’m putting into my body and right now, I’m still learning what those are. This has led to the possibly annoying habit of reading ingredient lists on EVERYTHING until I figure out what the limits are.

Which has nothing to do with today’s cooking experiment, but it will probably flavor my future posts here, so heads up.

Now, let’s get to the fun stuff, shall we?

I love peanut butter. I love chocolate. I like making foods myself so that I know what ingredients are in it. And just the other day, I found this recipe for a home made peanut butter cup. Naturally, I jumped all over that.

<

Doesn’t it look fantastic? It really was quite yummy.

What I did – I doubled the recipe because I wanted bigger pb cups and I used regular size muffin papers to make them in.

What happened when I did that – I ran out of chocolate about halfway through topping the cups, so I improvised. I used the rest of my bag of chocolate chips and tossed in some semisweet Scharffen Berger chocolate squares I had in my candy stash (oh, yes, there is a candy stash), melted it all together in my microwave and still ran out.

Oh, well. In the end, these were delicious, but I think that next time I’ll follow the directions to make them smaller by using the mini muffin cups.

Knitting update, April 2013

The other day I spilled an entire glass of water onto a bag holding many of my current WIPs. Since I had to lay everything out to dry, I thought I’d take the opportunity to update the progress photos of all my WIPs & my two projects recently off the needles. There are several & I’m hoping to get some of them off the needles this summer (though I fear my knitting time for the 6 weeks I have class will be sorely lacking). Now I just have to get my last bit of homework turned in by Tuesday & I’ll have 3 weeks without classes – there are big plans to knit & read during that time. Woo!

Off the Needles:

Folded.

I finished this sweater for the second time on Thursday after some insane short rows, a bit more decreasing, and a few rows of garter stitch around the neck. I may have bound off a smidge too tightly this time, but I’ll know more once it’s been blocked again. At least now I can wear it without worrying about my bra straps showing all day.

Spatterdash Mitts

aka Spattergroit. These still need seamed up & the buttons sewn on, but I did finally get them blocked.

On the Needles

Camptown Races

I pulled this back out after I finished Folded this week & wanted something a little more exciting than stockinette. I actually wound up frogging the few rows I had done because I had made it too wide, so I went back to the recommended cast on amount & have made a bit of progress. I’m not as far as I was with the original color scheme, but I’m enjoying the knit. Now I just have to make sure I don’t pull my colors too tight on the inside when switching between them.

Eternity Scarf

No progress on this for several weeks, but I am done with the first cartridge rib section & have moved on to the horizontal cartridge rib section. I think I’m going to do fewer rows of stockinette at the top than the pattern calls for to alleviate some of the rolling that might try to choke me as I wear this.

Handspun Hitchhiker

Apparently, as I’ve said on twitter & in public, my goal is to have a hitchhiker on the needles at all times. It’s simple enough to work on in public, it’s great for variegated and handspun yarns, and you can just knit it until you run out of yarn, then bind off.

Souvenir Rayures

This is one of my projects that has kind of lingered in the background – I’m still excited about it, I’ve just had other projects jump ahead of it for knitting time right now. It’s fun to remember where the yarn came from while I’m knitting it, though.

Grim Adventure Socks

Not much progress in the last few weeks, but I do at least have the second toe done on these.

Hermione’s Everyday Socks

I’m getting close to the heel on the second of these. Loving the pattern – it’s simple, but has just enough texture to keep you engaged. I tend to work on socks when I’m at book club or somewhere else in public (that isn’t knit group).

Dark & Stormy

This sweater has looked the same for quite a while. It’s definitely an at home project, as I would mess up the cables in public (even though they aren’t very hard).

Gramps

I really need to work on this baby sweater more. It shouldn’t take that long to make it, but I keep knitting other things instead.

Swatched
Girl Friday

I swatched for this sweater a couple weeks ago – I had gotten some new yarn from Rachel that I was hoping to turn into this sweater, but couldn’t get gauge. I did remember that I had a sweater’s worth of malabrigo rios in Paris Night waiting for a project. Of course, this was right after I said “NO MORE BLUE SWEATERS!”, but I’m calling navy a neutral & thinking ahead to how cute it will look in the fall with a bright pink or magenta t-shirt under it.