Gingerbread Cupcakes and Puppy Love

There have been plenty of challenges of late, but I must say I am fortunate to have lots of joys as well.  Jeanine (the bride for whom I am the MOH) brought her new bergamasco puppy, Amira, to visit today.  All this sweetie wanted to do was snuggle, kiss, and play gently with toys.  Ayla put herself on strict patrol until I really encouraged her to play.  Then the two of them chased each other around the house.  

Jeanine wanted me to show her how to make my gingerbread and make it into cupcakes.  Yea!  It's a challenge for 2 people to cook together in my 6X9 kitchen but we worked it out really well.

Gingerbread.  I could eat only that as my sweet most of the time.  I know it's sort of an autumn food but  I love it all year.  I had not make them into cupcakes before and they worked perfectly.

I adapted my recipe from here.  Also, this time we used butter, but you can use coconut oil.  I doubled all the spices.  The frosting is all my own creation.

Gingerbread cake or cupcakes

Cream 1 stick of butter with 1/2 C sugar (I use organic cane sugar)
Add 1 egg
Blend until well mixed
Add 1 C of molasses and blend until full mixed.

Sift together dry in a separate bowl:
2 1/2 C all purpose flour
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 t cinnamon
2 t ginger
1 t cloves
1/2 t nutmeg


Add dry slowly, mixing after each addition.  After the dry is well incorporated,
add 1 C hot water slowly, and blend.  I always put the hot water in the same measuring glass I used for molasses to get the last of the molasses out of it.

It is a very liquidy cake batter.   For cake, pour in 9 X 9 baking dish and bake at 350 for about an hour.

We filled cupcakes 3/4 full and baked at 350 for about 20 minutes but I kept a close eye on them.  They are done when a knife or toothpick comes out clean.  They rose exactly to the top and were flat.  If you like a more puffed up top, add more than 3/4 full.  It made 14 cupcakes.

Frosting
1 package cream cheese
2-3 T vanilla greek yogurt to achieve the right consistency
2 T maple syrup to taste
1t ginger (ground)

This made just a little too little cream cheese - just enough for a dozen, so you might want to use 1 and 1/2 packages of cream cheese.

We sprinkled the top with cinnamon.  I tried taking a bunch of photos this time.  Working on my food photography.

When I make the cake, I just make maple whipped cream and serve it on top of warm cake.  It's marvelous.  This was a nice variation.  I think it might be nice to go in a lemony direction too.

Healing:  It's just been a pain lately but I am trying to deal with a lot.  Medication for tremors is pretty awesome but it makes me extremely tired.  Right now, one eye is closed because I am about to crash completely.  Anyway,  I hope this blog post finds you well, in love, in health, and knowing your heart's desire.

Devil's Food Chocolate Cake Birthday

We've been on vacation this week.  It's the week we call birthaversary - our anniversary (5 years this year!) and my birthday (41 years this year!).

I used to be very tra-la-la-de-do-da-la about aging.  Each birthday was a "how cool, I'm older.  It's time to buy more underwear."  Now, though, after forty I feel a little weirded out.  First off, how did I get to be 41?  The idea that 41 years has happened seems mind blowing to me.  Secondly, they let me drive a car and buy houses and stuff?  I feel like a kid pretending to be a grown up a good amount of the time.  Hopefully, not because I am hopelessly immature but because I hold on to my youthful zest for life.  Yeah.

We celebrated with some nice walks and nice dinners.  We ate at Bertucci's for our anniversary.  We just love that place.  It's the rolls.  I think it is really all about those rolls.  We went to Red Stripe in Providence with Hilarie and Cara.  Always yummy there.  We ate at Not Your Average Joes one night - I had their special pecan crusted chicken with sweet potato wedges.  The chicken was so moist.  I had the other half for lunch the next day.  Last night we went to Bittersweet Farms.  It's one of my favorite places.  I had a chicken and spinach panini.  It was perfection in a sandwich.  I look forward to the second half of that for lunch today.

The more I bake, the more I discover that most restaurants have crappy desserts.  I ordered desserts from almost all of these places.  Don't judge.  From Bertucci's I got a lemoncello (sp?) cake - not so good - soggy and not lemony.  From Red Stripe, we got a key lime tart - not so good - lousy crust - bitter limes.  From Joes, we got the peanut butter thing - peanut butter ice cream pie with oreo crust and hot fudge.  It's always great.

For someone who likes to bake.  Just make your own cake.  After much fantasizing, I decided to make a devil's food chocolate cake.  Nate said he wanted just whipped cream for frosting.  So last night when I baked, I made up some whipped cream (which I put in my coffee this morning).  But I read online and discussed with a real baker that whipped cream falls apart as frosting.  I'm planning on adding cream cheese to it to stabilize it today and then take some pictures.  Okay, I'll be back.

(time passes)

After much time, I decide to stabilize my already whipped cream with some cream cheese.  Old faithful cream cheese.  Why not?  I melted some milk chocolate, added a bit more sugar, and a bit of cocoa powder.  I mixed up the cream cheese, then added the whipped cream and blended until incorporated.

So here are the cakes out of the oven and cooled.

Sorry, I am no where near food photo mastery.  Sigh.

So then I frosted them with my light brown frosting.  

It was too loose to truly decorate with but I think it came out okay.  I shaved some milk chocolate on top.

Okay, recipe:  The recipe is slightly modified from this recipe from food.com  It is a lovely devils food cake.  Is it devil's or devils?  Whatever.

2 C flour
1t salt
1t baking pwdr
2t baking soda
3/4 C cocoa pwdr
1 1/2 organic cane sugar
1 C veg oil (or liquified coconut oil)
1 C boiling water
1 C buttermilk
2 eggs
2t vanilla (one in the original recipe didn't seem like enough to flavor something so intense)

Sift dry stuff together into mixing bowl.  Yes, you really need to sift this one.  Pour in water, milk, and oil and mix.  Once combined, add eggs and vanilla and mix til smooth.  The recipe says it will be liquidy but mine seemed like normal cake batter.

Pour into two 9 inch rounds or similar and bake at 325 until toothpick comes out clean (somewhere between 15-25 mins depending on your oven - never believe a recipe - always check your cakes often).

Frosting:
Whip one pint whipping cream.  Add agave to taste.  Then realize that whipped cream won't work.  Add 2 packages of cream cheese.  1/2 bar melted milk chocolate, 2 T sifted cocoa powder.  Taste.  Lose yourself in the deliciousness.

Just Cake for Cake's Sake

This silly self portrait of Ayla and me makes me laugh.  Ayla is so snuggly and adorable and nearly impossible to photograph.  She always moves at the last minute.  So although this picture is grainy, I'm including it for joy.

I made a box cake tonight.  It's good on a Monday when there is no dessert in the house to consider a box.  We went to Trader Joe's yesterday (yay!!!) - and bought all kinds of yummy things, including a box cake of theirs.  I actually stuck to the box preparation recipe and it was great.  All you add is eggs, oil (or butter but I chose oil), and water.

The bottom line is that I have a real thing for yellow cakes with chocolate frosting.  I mean, I can't get enough of that right now.  I can't even think of baking other things.  I have to keep making different versions of it until I am done with it I guess.  This one had more chocolate in it by melting down Trader Joe's milk chocolate (big giant bars of baking chocolate in the baking section).  It's nice to have a cake without any butter as my last yellow cake was way too buttery.  Also, I'm not a fan of butter in my frosting.  A lot of cream cheese frosting recipes call for half cream cheese and half butter but it's just too much for me.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8 oz package cream cheese
1/4 C cocoa powder
1/4 C melted milk chocolate
2T heavy cream (milk would work too)
Blend til smooth.  

Health-wise, I had a tough day.  My nervous system was tweaky today and I spent a good portion of the day being shaky.  I've been diagnosed with MS but it's a weird form of it.  I don't have major attacks and I've just had funky neurological stuff for years and years.  It may be the cause of the esophagus problem but who knows?  Oh, and I have a weird rash on my chest that is driving me batty. I was supposed to see the surgeon today to make some plans but I rescheduled it.  I NEVER reschedule doctor appointments.  I was quite proud of myself for knowing that I needed to stay home tonight and chill out and make frosting and a box cake.  I did, however, talk to the surgeon on the phone and we are hoping to wait until June for the next surgery.  He said it will be same day or one night in the hospital.  Easy to plan and only a few weeks of recovery.  I don't know how I can get myself to feel ready for it, except that the leg pain is so insidious.

You know, I gave myself this blog to think *out loud* about my health and struggles but I feel terribly self-conscious about it.  I think you think, "Is she done whining yet?"  or "maybe this chick should eat less frosting and sugar" or "whatevs get over it already."  Oh, inner critics are very judgey and snarky.
I'm surprised that snarky is not a spell check red line and judgey is (even if I spelled it judgy).  I love making up words.

Anyway, here's pics of cake.  Come on over and sit on my new leather couches and eat cake with me.  And then watch me grade 2 mountains of class work!