Weekend adventures

It was a busy weekend which leads me to writing this two days after the official end of the weekend.  It began on Saturday with weeding.  I wish I could report that the area in question was successfully de-weeded but I must disappoint.  Burrs+rocks+grass+Rocks+alfalfa+ROCKS=a very difficult area to defeat. It's halfway done, but it's windy/rainy again.  It'll get done.  Sometime.

I was able to plant some colourful flowers in the front of the house, and I had help!  My parent's neighbor, Cassie (10) was bored so I entertained her through planting then baking.  I bout a new cupcake book on Friday and as we were looking though it we found a recipe that sounded too good to not make right away: Frosted Peanut Butter Cupcakes.  Oh man, so tasty.

Since we decided to make mini-cupcakes, we had to figure out how much to put into each paper.  It turned out 1 tablespoon was the perfect amount! Then we frosted them...yum!  It was a cream cheese frosting that came out perfect with just a tint of purple!

  The perfect plate!  It was to first time I'd piped frosting on like this.  I think they turned out really well.

Today my task for the afternoon was to re-pot my poor seedlings.  They really need to get into the ground, but first I have to finish pulling weeds/rocks/alfalfa out of the place I want to put in my beds.  This will have to do for now.  Oh and my lettuce and carrots have finally sprouted!  So excited for fresh lettuce for salads!

Cupcakes Galore

Have you ever seen the t.v. show "Cupcake Wars"?  Well, it's evil...in a good way :)  Cupcakes are generally a lovely treat, all tasty and sweet goodness wrapped up in a little paper cup.  Easy to serve, easy to eat, how could you complain?

Today my boyfriend and I were watching this show and decided cupcakes sounded really good.  So the search began.  I tried allrecipes.com, one of my favourite food sites, and didn't come up with anything that sounded really good.  I then tried googling cupcake recipes and success!  I came across this great site called , ironically enough, Cupcake Recipes.  They have a large variety of recipes, but one specific one stuck out: white chocolate mud cupcakes.

So we gathered up the ingredients and began baking.  Except for one problem, I don't have a kitchen scale and everything in the recipe is measured by weight.  Problem?  Possibly, but where there's a will, there's a way!  We managed to convert everything over to regular measurements and began baking.  We melted the chocolate and mixed the batter and found that it was really runny.  I was worried, but went with it anyway.

They baked. And we waited.  And they were amazing!

Then we made the frosting...well I guess you could call it frosting.  Its base was whipped cream, and it really didn't taste that good.

So I guess overall, the cake part was great, but definitely going to have to find a better frosting.  And no pictures.  They didn't turn out very well :(

Muffins!

I hate throwing away food ingredients because I a) forgot I had them or b) bought too much of said ingredient.  Not only is it a waste of money, but it's such a waste of good food.  I found myself in this situation today with some bananas and I thought to myself "What can I do with these?"  And what came to mind but banana bread!  Except I have a problem with breads.  It's not that I don't like them, its just that I never eat them.  I either forget I made them or don't want to take the time to cut off a chunk (I know, silly, but true).  So whenever I want to make bread I make muffins instead.  They're fast, easy, and really tasty.  And I eat them.  Mmmm....they do smell good!

Here's the recipe, just in case you were curious:

Ingredients
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup applesauce or butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3-4 ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups all purpose flower
1tsp baking soda

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350F.  Prepare muffin tin.
2) Mix white sugar, brown sugar, and applesauce; add vanilla, eggs, and bananas and mix until just combined.
3) Add flour and baking soda and mix until combined (again)
4) Spoon mixture into prepared muffin tin.  (I fill each cup with a 1/4 cup)
5) Bake 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the muffin comes out clean.

Make about 12 muffins.

Enjoy!