Thursday, February 27, 2014

Sugar & spice

I've thought of another thing that made January the pits: no baking. No baking! No wonder I was wallowing around in the dumps.

How I love to have a good reason to bake (beyond just the two of us stuffing ourselves silly), and within the last couple of weeks, excuses have been popping up all over.

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I may have shared this recipe before, but it's so fantastic, it deserves a second appearance. Muffins are my favorites to bake (at least right now); they're such tidy little packages of comfort, they usually require only one bowl, and they freeze so well. I've used this recipe for ages, and I can't remember where I found it, although I do think it was originally meant for a loaf of bread.

Banana Cinnamon Swirl Muffins
3 over-ripe bananas
1/3 cup melted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
Dash salt
1 1/2 cups flour

Preheat to 350 and grease a muffin tin (that non-stick cooking spray with flour is great for muffins). Mix together the bananas, butter, sugar, egg & vanilla. Sprinkle soda & salt over banana mixture. Add flour & gently stir, being careful not to over-mix. Spoon a bit of batter into each cup & sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Top with more batter & more cinnamon sugar. Bake about 20 minutes (18 for me because our oven runs on the hot side.) 

*Add chopped walnuts for extra yum! Be generous with the cinnamon sugar!

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And now prepare to have your socks knocked off. As far as I'm concerned, this is the Pioneer Woman's greatest culinary triumph. (Her recipe is intended as a layer cake, but I use it for cupcakes, and it makes a pile. Around 22, I think.)

Coffee Cream Cupcakes 
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks butter
3 Tbsp instant coffee crystals
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 and line two muffins tins with cupcake papers. Mix together the flour, sugar & salt. Melt butter over medium-low heat. While melting, add coffee crystals to 1 cup boiling water; set aside. When butter has melted, add the coffee & let come to a boil about 10 seconds; set aside for just a minute. In a separate bowl, mix together buttermilk, eggs, soda & vanilla. Pour the butter/coffee mixture into the flour & stir gently. Add in the egg mixture & stir gently until combined. Fill papers 3/4 full. Bake about 18 minutes. 

I made these yesterday for a friend's birthday and you can see that I very thoughtfully ate one to make sure they weren't poisonous:

Coffee Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz cream cheese, at room temp
2 Tbsp milk or cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups powdered sugar
4 tsp instant coffee crystals

Beat cream cheese & milk until smooth. Beat in vanilla, salt, powdered sugar & coffee crystals.

*This isn't the Pioneer Woman's creation; I found it on the internet, but again, can't remember exactly where. The consistency ends up being fairly thin; the batch I made this morning was definitely much too runny for piping & actually seemed more like a glaze. Adding more cream cheese and powdered sugar would bulk it up enough for piping, I think. 

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This has nothing to do with baking, but I've been awfully hard on winter, so here's some evidence that it hasn't been all gloom & doom:

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Color splash

Whew, January was tough. It was gray and gray and GRAY and totally stole my thunder in the be-happy-and-productive department. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a serious problem, so in February I decided to make a concerted effort to snap myself out of the dumps.

First, I would feed my creative side, which had been lethargic for too long. And, if the outside world was one enormous iron curtain, I would fill the inside of our house with color - pink and red specifically, because what else in there in February? :) So...

I took 500 trips to craft store (pigs will fly before I can organize myself enough to get everything I need in one shot); this pile of goodies is now a sweet little pendant banner that hangs across the doors to our deck:
And this is just a piece of scrapbook paper in a picture frame-turned-tray that sits on the coffee table:
I woke up one morning in a fit of ridiculous & decided our candles were unacceptable and needed replacing right now. After running all over looking for new ones, I had a flash of common sense & decided to wrap the old ones in paper left over from the pendant project. The white tray is filled with clear gems from the dollar store; I punched out circles from different scrapbook paper I had lying around & modge-podge'd them to the bottoms. (Easy-peasy & cheap, yahoo!) 
More framed scrapbook paper:

I also sent out Valentines; doing something small for someone else is a wonderful way to cheer our own hearts, and I had great fun shopping for pink tea :)

And then the flowers! I love the grocery store on Valentine's Day; roses & tulips & carnations everywhere, just begging to be brought home:

Our juicer is getting a ton of use lately, and in keeping with the pink explosion, I used a Gala apple, an orange, a carrot, a little bit of pineapple & two beets to make this:
It's just as delicious as it looks, although if you're not a fan of beets to begin with, this may not be your favorite...but you should try it anyway; really, I mean it!

And that's the story of how I fought the big, bad winter blahs & won :) Now, COME ON spring!

Saturday, February 01, 2014