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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Originally posted Febraury 23, 2010.

I’ve come to the realization that after a particularly bad day at work, I like to bake a little comfort food. Okay, a lot of comfort food.

This is both good and bad. It’s good because said bad day usually happens on Tuesday, so I have baked deliciousness to take to knit group on Wednesdays. It’s bad because I DON’T NEED TO KEEP BAKING. *sigh* What’s a girl to do? Bake, bake, and bake some more.

This recipe was made a full month ago, after seeing a version my friend Shannon made. I NEEDED to make this bread. It looked too good to pass up.

I started with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and modified it a bit to TRY to make a healthier version. I’ve posted the recipe with my changes below.

3 cups all-purpose wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
3/4 cup egg beaters (or egg replacer of your choice)
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 large firm, ripe pears, depending on size (you’ll need 2 grated cups total, but I don’t recommend you grate them until you are about to use them, so they don’t brown)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Heat your oven to 350°F (175°C) and lightly grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans.

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl, and stir with a fork to mix everything well.

Peel and core pears, then grate them. You’ll want two grated cups total; set them briefly aside. In a medium bowl, combine the applesauce, egg beaters, sugar, grated pear, and vanilla, and stir to mix everything well. Scrape the pear mixture into the flour mixture and stir just until the flour disappears and the batter is evenly moistened.

Quickly scrape the batter into the prepared pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 60 to 70 minutes, or until the bread is handsomely browned and firm on top and a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool the bread in the pan on a wire rack or folded kitchen towel for about 10 minutes. Then turn it out onto a plate or a wire rack to cool completely, top side up. Serve it as is, sprinkle it with confectioners sugar or drizzle it with a simple glaze made from whisking 3 tablespoons buttermilk, a dash of vanilla and 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar together.

I’m fairly sure I baked mine for less time, although I can’t remember now. Maybe 55 minutes? My oven tends to run a little bit hot, though, so I often wind up baking things less than the recipe calls for.

This weekend was our Relay For Life event & I baked a TON of cupcakes to sell again. Unfortunately, this year was much colder than last year, so the crowd was smaller. We didn’t sell out, but we did make some more money for our event team before calling it a night.

I made tiny funfetti “birthday” cupcakes to give away to the cancer survivors who happened by our table, but I think most of them headed home after the opening ceremony &/or dinner. Like I said, it was COLD outside on Saturday night. But how cute are these cupcakes?!

These Salted Caramel Cupcakes are my new favorite to make. Here’s the secret ingredient I used: Fleur De Sel caramels & caramel sauce from Trader Joe’s. Instead of making the caramel filling, I baked one of the caramels into the center of the cupcake. Then I used about 1/3 cup of the sauce in the frosting & drizzled a little more on top, followed by a little sprinkle of sea salt. DIVINE.

These Yellow Cake cupcakes with chocolate frosting are also surprisingly delicious & do not invoke my “Vanilla Cake Syndrome”. I’ll have to do a proper post on them sometime soon, as I can’t remember where I actually found the recipe now.

We also had Fredbird stop by the table to help us sell some cupcakes. :)

In other news, my computer came home on Tuesday & it took me until Friday to get everything back on it – there was drama because I had two Time Machine backups on the same disk & it chose the wrong one to use to restore everything. So I had to erase the disk & reinstall my OS. Then I tried to restore from the correct backup, but couldn’t access or even FIND any of the files, even though I could see they were taking up space on my hard drive. In the end, I did a copy & paste to get the docs back, reinstalled the software, & even managed to get my iTunes playlists back. WOO.

And now I must get back to work on my presentation. I’ll be back soon to talk about knitting.

*If you click that link, I can not be held responsible for the earworm. Also, I’M SORRY.

In other news:

• The speedometer on my car has stopped working. The gas gauge quit about a year and a half ago. The car is only 8 years old and has around 70,000 miles on it. This should not be happening. A quick call to the dealer suggested that I needed a few hundred dollars to get it fixed. *sigh* As luck would have it, my tax refund will be enough to fix this plus let me do something else. Yay for being a responsible adult?
• I’m taking a class this summer that requires I have Windows 7. I wish I would have just pulled the trigger on switching back to a Windows laptop when I was shopping for a computer in the summer, but I thought I would be able to hold out for a little longer.
• As if the new(ish) mac knows of my plan to buy a new computer, it has been acting up the past few days. I don’t know what’s up with it and it’s hard to explain other than general slowness, so there may be a trip to the genius bar in my future. This is just what one needs at the end of the semester, right? *sigh*
• I am crazy cupcake prep mode – our Relay for Life event is next weekend & I’ll be baking cupcakes to sell there again this year. This year I have an assistant in coworker Jennifer, whose house we’ll be doing most of the baking at.
• I survived the first storm of the Spring of 2013 – there was apparently an EF0 tornado only a few blocks away from me, but my little corner of the city was unharmed (save for a power outage that lasted just long enough for me to find & light a candle).
• And, finally, only a few more weeks of class this semester & then I get about 4 weeks off before I start the summer semester. My class in the summer is only 6 weeks, so after it’s over I get July & most of August without classes. Whee!
• Apparently today is officially “National Grilled Cheese Day”, so go out and enjoy a tasty cheesy sammy today.

Originally posted April 23, 2009.

Did you know that April is National Grilled Cheese month?

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know until one of the StL locals twittered about it, then posted a link that inspired this sandwich.

Looks like a delicious mess of gooey cheese, right? It is, and I’m going to tell you how I did it.

I started with this recipe from Pithy & Cleaver for the Tomato Soup Grilled Cheese and made a few modifications based on preference and my inability to find Sun Dried Tomato Paste at my local grocery. Really, I was trying to make this a tiny bit healthier without losing the flavors that drew me to the recipe in the first place.

Ingredients:

For the creamy tomato soup spread
1 1/2 tablespoons lowfat cream cheese
2 tsp regular tomato paste
scant 1/2 teaspoon sugar
freshly ground pepper (or just regular black pepper if you happen to think you have a pepper grinder when, in fact, all you have is plain ol’ black pepper)
diced/minced garlic, or maybe a little garlic paste. Something garlicky.

For sandwiches
1 slice Asiago cheese
1 slice cheddar (medium, sharp, whatever – I used Sargento medium reduced fat)
2 slices light wheat bread (I use Healthy Life’s Flax Seed Bread – low in carbs, calories, and HFCS free!)
butter or margarine (I used Brummel & Brown)

Take all your ingredients for the tomato soup spread and mix them together. The original recipe said this was enough for 2 sandwiches, but I used most of it on my one sandwich. So I guess it depends on how tomatoey you want your sandwich.

Next, butter each piece of bread lightly on one side. On the other side, spread the tomato mixture. Heat up your griddle or skillet, but keep the heat around medium or low – I actually burned the first side of my sandwich. Put one piece of bread on the griddle butter side down, place 1 slice each cheese on the bread, then top with the other piece of bread. Let it cook for a few minutes – until the bottom is appropriately golden brown – then flip and cook another couple minutes.

Serve with…something. I didn’t get that far as my sandwich finished cooking before I could get a can of soup in the microwave. And then I inhaled the sandwich and followed it up with some pot roast & veggie leftovers from the fridge. WHATEVER. IT WAS DELICIOUS.

This is a recipe that it would be clearly easy to make several at a time, especially since the cheese slices come in packs of 10 around these parts. I probably could have eaten 3 more of them myself, but I didn’t.

Oh, and as for that “healthy” thing I was trying to do, it wasn’t too terrible – if you use the same bread I did (which runs 80 calories for 2 slices), you get a sandwich with 262 calories, 21g carbs, 14g fat, & 19g protein.

Stef at Cupcake Project has a great selection of Passover-friendly cupcake recipes and I jumped over to try to decide which ones to make this year. Mindy & I agreed on the Flourless Chocolate cupcakes. These were a stretch of my abilities because of the no flour, water bath, melt ALL THE CHOCOLATE required. I also needed (or so I thought) a double batch of them to serve at a work potluck that was on Tuesday.

I changed nothing about Stef’s recipe, other than I did try to bake a tray without the water bath & that did not work. So don’t do that. These cupcakes are basically chocolate, butter, and eggs.

I was lucky and got to break in Mindy’s brand new KitchenAid mixer and OH MY GOSH I NEED ONE NOW. It was the BEST. I was tempted to go buy one as soon as I got paid this month, but I’m going to try to be responsible and save up for it over a few months. But OH MY GOSH I WANT ONE RIGHT NOW. With the baking for Relay for Life coming up this month it would be great to have, but must be responsible and adult and not distracted by the shiny (Target has one in Flamingo Pink and that is the one I want. SO HARD.)

After the cupcakes came out of the oven & cooled, I tried one. These are decadent. Rich. And, I thought, too much to have a full sized cupcake of. So I decided to turn them into “cupcake bites” by cutting each cupcake into fourths, then adding the frosting. I put them in mini cupcake liners after they were cut up, then stored them in the refrigerator – they soften up quite a bit when out of the fridge, turning them to the consistency of a truffle filling.

When I decided to turn these into “bites”, the cutting of the cupcakes got a little messy, so I had to lock the puppies out of the kitchen. Bittersweet chocolate + dogs who hoover up anything on the floor = not a good combination.

I had a coworker tell me that these were the best thing she’s ever eaten. Rachel and Jamie both said these are in their top 5 favorites of my cupcakes. I thought I was going to get away with not having to make these again, but they might have to go in the rotation for very special occassions.