Something Sweet, Something Cheesy, and Something Lonely

First let's do the something sweet.  Twas my very good friend Donnie's golden birthday this weekend and as I met him whilst working at Starbucks and he has furthered his career with the coffee giant, I felt some sort of Starbucks-themed cupcakes would be relevant and fun.  I'd seen some variation on Pinterest and decided to make Caramel Frappucino Cupcakes. 


Yes this may require some theft of Starbucks Venti straws.  (Your straws went to a good cause, *$ :) ) .


So these are pretty involved and took some time because of the filling, but the filling is delicious so I don't recommend leaving it out.  Also, I made monstrous sized cupcakes.  Don't over fill the tins if you don't want them to look like they are on steroids.  


Caramel Frappucino Cupcakes 

Adorable and Delicious - May be my favorites yet!

For the Cupcakes: (Cupcakes and filling based on Kim's Kitchen)

• 3/4 cup whole or low-fat milk
• 2 package of Starbucks Via Instant Coffee
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 3 cups cake flour (I actually used all-purpose and it worked fine)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons unsweetened natural cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup butter at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cup white sugar
• 4 eggs, yolks and whites separated
• 1/4 cup sour cream

Heat the milk in the microwave or on the stove until hot – stop short of a simmer. Stir in the instant coffee until well blended. Add the vanilla and set aside.

Sift together the cake flour, baking powder, soda, salt,  and cocoa.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar with the paddle attachment until creamed. It should be slightly fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time.

Add 2/3 of the flour mixture and the sour cream. Add the remaining flour mixture and milk. Beat until smooth.

Scrape all the batter out into a separate bowl and wash the mixer bowl thoroughly.

Switch to the whisk attachment and beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. They will hold a stiff peak but they will still slip around a little in the bowl.
Fold the egg whites into the cake batter gently, folding the batter around until well combined.

Fill cupcake liners with batter and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes (they baked up surprisingly fast).

Let cool. 

For the Coffee Mousse - (I actually recommend cutting this recipe in half because I had TONS leftover and now it's all sitting in my fridge to torment me at night.) 

• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 6 large egg yolks
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 package of Starbucks Via Caramel flavored coffee  (I am an idiot.  I went to Starbucks just to get this - well and to steal a few venti straws - and saw Iced Coffee Via and thought that would be better since I would be more likely to actually use it.  I didn't pay attention and bought regular  - So to solve the problem, I used regular caramel (the kind you put on ice cream cause I had it already in my fridge) and it worked deliciously.  If you go this route so you don't have to buy two kinds of Via or instant coffee, just add a whole bunch of caramel.  Maybe like 1/3 cup).  
• 2 1/2 cups chilled whipping cream

Whisk sugar, yolks, water and Starbucks via in large metal bowl.  Set bowl over saucepan of simmering water (do not allow bowl to touch water); whisk until candy thermometer registers 160°F, about 8 minutes. (I do not have such a  thermometer. I pretty much just kept touching it until it was super hot) 

Remove bowl from over water. Using electric mixer, beat egg mixture until cool and thick, about 5 minutes.  

Beat cream in another large bowl until stiff peaks form.  Fold into egg mixture.  

Caramel Coffee Mousse Filling :)

Caramel Buttercream Frosting: (From Martha Stewart)

• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 package (16 ounces) confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream, plus more if needed
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium-high heat until nut-brown in color, about 8 minutes. Remove pan from heat and pour butter into a bowl, leaving any burned sediment behind; let cool.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add confectioners' sugar, vanilla, salt, and butter. With the mixer on low, slowly add cream; beat until smooth. If frosting seems too thick, stir another tablespoon cream into the mixture

  

Fill the cooled cupcakes by pouring mousse into a pastry bag fitted with a piping tip and squeeze until the mousse bubbles over a bit.  Frost with a large flower tip to look like Starbucks whipped cream and drizzle with caramel.  The site I used for the cupcakes has what looks to be a delicious recipe for caramel, however, I am cheap and lazy and had ice cream caramel in the fridge from a previous cupcake excursion.  Cut Starbucks venti straws into about 4 pieces each and stick out of the cupcakes.

I printed a bunch of Starbucks logos off and created little strips to wrap around the bottom of the cupcakes to complete the look. These were a huge hit at the party.


Next for the cheesy!!! 

Quinoa Mac and Cheese: 


Alright, this is another one snagged from Pinterest and as you may have read in my previous posts, I am on a huge quinoa kick.  I tried red quinoa for this which tastes about the same, but maybe isn't as pretty for this purpose so ignore that as far as the photos go and use whichever quinoa you prefer.  This probably wasn't that healthy because I used a hell of a lot of cheese.  Can you blame me?  Sometimes I like to convince myself that cheese isn't actually bad for you.

This is altered from: Around the Table

• 1 1/2 cups quinoa, rinsed and drained
• Veggies of your choice (optional) (I didn't have any on hand so I did without)
• good pinch of salt
• a few grinds of seasoning salt (Didn't have - Used chipotle seasoning)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup non-fat milk
• 1 1/2 cups grated Cheddar cheese, more for sprinkling (I always have a ton of cheese so I decided to use it.  I used about 1/2 cup graded Cheddar, 1/2 cup shredded Mexican, 1/4 fresh shredded gouda, and about 1/4 cup or so shredded Parmesan.  A totally different taste and it was delicious) 
• Panko bread crumbs for topping 

Cook quinoa to packaged instructions until fully cooked. (About 15 minutes) (I like to cook it in chicken broth)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Coat 13x9 inch dish( or 8 individual ramekins) with cooking spray.Whisk together eggs and milk in large bowl. Fold in quinoa mixture and cheese. Stir very well and let some of the cheese melt.  Transfer to prepared baking dish and if using Panko Crumbs or Bread add now and bake 30-35 mins, until bread crumbs are browned. 


I, as usual, enjoyed this with some Greek yogurt and Srihacha ( I can't spell that word even though I use it every day).


OK Last: The Lonely


Made a new cover song video.  Christina Perri's "The Lonely".  Enjoy.

Cake Decorating Classes

Well my summer has been quite the blur of fun times, which means less cooking, more eating out, less healthy.  This past weekend my mom and I went to Wisconsin for Festa Italiana followed by Country Thunder.  Italian opera one day, country crazy the next.  It was a great time filled with a lot of dancing, singing, and especially eating and now I'm having trouble getting back to reality.  Hmm... sounds exactly like my post 4th of July post.  I've had a busy July, what can I say?

Cece and I have been taking Cake Decorating classes at Michael's on Tuesday nights and it's been so much fun.  It's interesting what little techniques you don't even think of when you're decorating cakes and cupcakes on your own.  Plus it's obviously nice to have a weekly set date with a friend because everything is so busy in the summer.  We usually go to dinner afterward, last week to our favorite Indian place, Tandoor, which is located on Halsted.  Some of the best wait staff I've seen!  This week we tried Indie Burger on Belmont and I had a chickpea burger, which was good but nothing to write home about.


Here are some pictures of various designs and techniques I've learned so far in cake decorating (a class that only cost $22.50 because there was a tuition discount.  Then every week you have to buy a few things, but nothing crazy.  It's definitely a lot of fun).

Fish!  I like the seaweed and the scallops along the bottom. 

All sorts of flowers and grass and such

A Whole Bunch of New Recipes

There is a Tim Burton marathon on ABC Family right now and it's causing my mind to completely melt.  I keep trying to do productive things like clean and do laundry, but it's happening very slowly.  So I'll share a few recipes I made yesterday with you.

This first one is one of my childhood favorites that I used to have all the time when I stayed at my grandma's so it's dear to my heart.  I started making it again for myself after I moved out and thought it's worth sharing as a healthy and easy breakfast recipe.  I call it simply, Eggs in a Glass.

Eggs in a glass is quite simple.  They are in a glass because you need something to press the egg against as you mash it so a narrow glass works well.  You can add a variety of ingredients.  At my grandma's we only used salt and pepper and butter, but I've spiced it up a bit over the years.

Eggs in a Glass 


3 hard boiled eggs (or however many you want)
1 tbs butter
1 tbs shredded cheese (I used Mexican for this one)
Chipotle Tabasco to taste (regular is good, too)
Salt and Pepper to taste

I've added diced ham when I have it laying around, too.  It's delicious.  You could obviously mix anything you want.  All you do is peel the hard boiled eggs and put them in the bottom of the glass.

Make sure you didn't miss any pieces of shell.  Add the butter and let it melt a bit against the eggs while you add the remaining ingredients.

Keep pressing the eggs against the glass with a fork until it resembles something more like scrambled eggs.   Make sure all of the ingredients are mixed well.  You will seriously love this recipe if you like eggs.

Eggs in a Glass

The next thing is what I had along with my eggs yesterday morning.  Sometimes you get bored just having regular coffee every day (OK not really.  I've been doing it for years).  But anyway, I wanted to try to make a sort of Frappucino.  A healthy variety.  I saw something about freezing coffee and blending it on Pinterest.  This came out very good, but I would recommend freezing the coffee in smaller cubes rather than one big container.  It took a really long time for the blender to be able to work with the massive coffee cube I had.  

Just take frozen coffee of your choice (I happened to make coffee the other day but was out of cream so I just threw it in a container in the freezer and went to Starbucks) and blend it with cinnamon, as much cream as you'd like, and a bit of vanilla extract.  It was a refreshing coffee treat without all of the calories.  

Healthy Frozen Blended Coffee Beverage.

If you haven't noticed, I am a big fan of my cold beverage Starbucks cups.  I take them everywhere.  Especially the venti sized ones.  

OK last but not least, I was going to a BBQ, which obviously meant I should make cupcakes.  I love any excuse to make cupcakes.  I had seen a watermelon cake online and wanted to replicate it into cupcakes, but I had trouble finding all of the necessary ingredients and found myself doing a lot of improvising.  They turned out pretty good though.  

I tried using Ketchup cups that I bought at Michael's because you can make them on a cookie tray instead of little muffin tins, which I assumed would be a time saver,  but they were a lot more difficult to get the cupcakes out of.  

Watermelon Cupcakes

Watermelon Cupcakes: 

Ingredients: 

1 box white cake mix 

1 3 oz box watermelon flavored Jell-O (They did not have this at two different stores I went to, so I just used some strawberry an upped the watermelon puree) 

1 cup watermelon puree (the recipe called for half a cup puree and half a cup water but because I didn't have not have the right Jell-O flavor, I doubled the puree in place of water as it was very watery anyway) 

1/2 cup oil 

4 eggs 

1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional, but highly recommended.  They are cute and add a different element to the cupcakes) 

Red food coloring (optional ... the cake will already be pink, but this makes it darker) 

Frosting: 

1 package cream cheese

1/2 cup butter 

5 cups confectioner's sugar

2 tbs watermelon puree (I used a lot more than this which resulted in better watermelon flavor, but much thinner consistency) 

Red and green food coloring 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place ketchup containers or cupcake liners in muffin tins (or ketchup containers on a baking sheet) 

In a large bowl, combine cake mix and Jell-O. Add oil; mix on medium speed. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well. Add watermelon puree and beat until blended. Add red food coloring a little at a time, until you reach desired color. Place chocolate chips and a teaspoon of flour in a ziploc bag; shake to coat. Fold the chocolate chips into the batter. Pour into mini cake cups and bake for about 25 minutes (or until a toothpick comes clean.  Keep checking back regularly).  Let cool completely before frosting.  

For the frosting, 

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and butter together. Beat in watermelon puree. Gradually add sugar, beating until smooth. Color 1/3 of the frosting green, color the remaining 2/3 the same color as the cake. (I don't think I'd recommend putting green food coloring in this frosting as there is a lot of pink to it naturally and I think the result would be brown.  I made separate plain frosting and died it green for the edges.  It was also a firmer consistency which made it easier to shape them)  

Decorate first by coating each completely cooled cupcakes with the red watermelon flavored icing.  Using a star tip, ring each cupcake with the green frosting.   Finish by sprinkling the cupcakes with chocolate chip "seeds".    Definitely a hit!

Trip to Trader Joe's to Kick my Ass

Over the last 10 days or so, my terrible eating and lack of physical exertion sort of hit a peak.  My baby brother was in town from New York and with 4th of July taking place on a Wednesday, well my week became a really long vacation-y weekend.  This meant boating, drinking, sun, snacking, delicious meals out, and absolutely nothing good for me.

Luckily for me, there is Trader Joe's and I spent an intense $115 stocking up there on healthy food the other day.  I've started doing some jumping jacks, push ups, and lunges every morning as my big work out effort (hey at least it's something!).  I bought a bunch of salads to take to work and a lot of good, frozen, healthy, low carb options.  I WILL get skinnier by the end of summer (you know, when it's time to put a coat on again).

It doesn't help that I started this ass kicking a day before my first cake decorating class with Cece, which I will say was a success and I am looking forward to more.  Get excited to start seeing some beautifully decorated cakes soon!

Last night was my brother's last night in town and the family took a night boat cruise to a restaurant where you're allowed to tie up.  I had a few drinks and the table shared some delicious lobster mac and cheese, which of course is monstrously unhealthy.  But other than that, I ordered a chickpea burger and removed the top bun and only ate half of my fries so I'm not calling the night at total fail.

This brings me to tonight's amazing dinner, which I cannot wait to share and am proud because for once, I made this one up entirely.  I'm on a total quinoa kick because it's like a low carb carb and can fill up a lot of space without getting really bad for you.  Pretty much all of the ingredients for this recipe are from Trader Joe's.

I will warn that this dish is VERY spicy.  If you do not like things really spicy, make a few substitutions.  I pretty much layered up the spice, because I love it that way.  You'll notice there is jalapeno, jalapeno chicken sausage, and srirarcha in this recipe.

Before adding the Greek Yogurt and Sriracha 

Spicy Chicken and Quinoa with Avocado: 


Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 cup dry quinoa, rinsed
2 cups low sodium chicken broth
3 chicken sausage links of your choosing (I used spicy jalepeno), sliced
Chopped jalapeno to taste (optional) (If you don't like really spicy things, remove the seeds.  I kept em :) )
1 tbs olive oil
1 avocado, chopped
2 tbs fresh basil, chopped
1/2 cup greek yogurt (I like Fage 0%)
Srirarcha to taste

Bring quinoa and chicken broth to boil in a saucepan.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer 15 minutes.  Remove from heat, fluff with a fork, and let stand 5 minutes.  Add sliced avocado and basil and mix thoroughly.

Meanwhile, saute jalepeno in oil over medium high heat for about two minutes.  Add sliced sausage links.  Cook for about 5 minutes, or until sausage looks golden brown on the edges.  Add to quinoa mixture.

Pour into a bowl and top each bowl with greek yogurt and sriracha.  Mix well.

So good and spicy and just the right amount of creamy.  I felt like I was eating an unhealthy pasta!

Spicy Chicken and Quinoa with Avocado and Greek Yogurt 

Off to karaoke tonight.  My summer has been totally amazing.  I even sent out my first agent query the other day.  I know it's a bit early, but I came across her blog and just loved the sound of her so we'll see if I hear anything back.  So excited!

Brunch and a New Song

Yesterday I made my typical weekend morning breakfast and upon looking at it, I thought, this really deserves to be shared with the world.  So you're welcome.

Before hitting up a summer pool party, I also posted a video of myself singing one of the songs I'll be putting on my great aunt's birthday CD.  Her favorite song is "I Will Always Love You" and she's been bugging me to sing it for a while.  I kept trying to tell her that this song isn't something people can just learn to do.  No one sings like Whitney did.  In any case, I'm so sorry neighbors, that you had to hear the 10 million takes I did to try and get a passable version.  Don't worry, that's not what I shared.  I made her a whole CD and this one was (hopefully) more acceptable.  Or maybe it's horrific.  I don't know.  I can't judge myself.

Anyway, as promised, here is Ranch Scrambled Egg Skillet

The pic looks a big messy, but this is delicious

Ingredients (one very large skillet.  I had leftovers for today :) ):

1 tbs olive oil

2 yukon gold potatoes, diced (I use the ones that are pretty little.  You could probably just use one biggie)

1/4 cup green pepper, chopped 

1/4 cup red pepper, chopped

1/4 cup red onion, chopped 

1/3 cup diced ham (bacon would be good too... you could cook the skillet in the bacon grease instead         of oil.. I've done it and it's delicious.) 

1/4 cup diced tomatoes

1/4 cup Mexican cheese 

2 eggs 

2 tbs Ranch dressing of your choice

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.  Add the diced potatoes and toss to coat.  Let cook for about 5 minutes or until edges start  to get brown.  Add both peppers and onion.  Cook another 3 or so minutes or until crisp-tender.  Around this point, I usually add some salt and pepper.  

While this is cooking, whisk the eggs vigorously with the Ranch dressing.  I like my eggs fluffy so I do some serious whisking.  Add to a heated, small skillet, scraping from the sides and pushing to the middle as the bottom cooks.  

Add tomatoes to the skillet and cook another 30 seconds, mixing everything together well.  Pour the skillet contents onto a plate and top with Mexican cheese.  Once eggs are cooked, place them on top of the skillet and enjoy.  I like a bit of Tabasco on mine. 

The Ranch adds a lot of flavor to the eggs and brings it throughout the entire skillet.  I'm not gonna lie, I came across this on accident once upon the realization I had no milk or cream to beat with the eggs and it is delicious!  Feel free to substitute whatever vegetables or meat you choose.  I've added various kinds of hot peppers when I have them around as well.  

Now it's off to more BBQs if the storm passes...