Memorial Day Confetti Cupcakes with Festive Icing

In my opinion, nothing says Memorial Day more than a sunny barbecue with good food, good drinks and good friends. I’ve decided to spend the holiday with my best friend Alyssa in Newark, Delaware, where she’s a student and finishing up finals. I would have loved to throw a barbecue of my own, but I decided that if I can’t throw my own barbecue, I can at least contribute. Despite Alyssa’s best attempts at persuading me otherwise, I decided this morning to bake up a batch of homemade cupcakes and adorn them in the most festive, perhaps annoying and over-the-top, way possible.

The recipe was quite simple—essentially, confetti cake is simply a white cake batter with sprinkles which dissolve during baking. Nonetheless, I think it’s a festive-looking dessert, and it certainly goes along with the red, white and blue theme I shot for.

The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large egg, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups self rising flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 tablespoons colorful sprinkles (elongated)

Serves: 2 cakes or 24 cupcakes
Duration: 30 minutes

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and lightly flour three 9 inch round cake pans, then line the bottoms with waxed paper. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine the flours and add in four parts, alternating with the milk and the vanilla extract, beating well after each addition. Add sprinkles. Divide batter among the cupcake pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

To decorate the cupcakes, I used my favorite vanilla frosting recipe:

Ingredients:
6 cups confectioners’ sugar
16 Tbs. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 1/2 Tbs. milk, plus more if needed
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt
Food colorings (red and blue)

Serves: 4 cups, or 24 cupcakes frosted liberally
Duration: 10 minutes

Have all the ingredients at room temperature. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, combine the confectioners’ sugar, butter, the 4 1/2 Tbs. milk, the vanilla and salt and beat on low speed until combined, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Increase the speed to medium and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. If the frosting is dry, add more milk, 1 tsp. at a time, until it is creamy but still holds peaks. Separate into three batches. Dye one batch red and one batch blue using the food coloring. Frost immediately.

Afterwards, I separated the frosting into three batches—one which remained untouched and white, a red batch and a blue batch. I used my favorite frosting piper and adorned them with festive sprinkles from Landis.

They turned out delicious—fluffy and moist with a soft delicacy. Yum! I’ll probably end up making these again for July 4^th, as they're so festive.

Have Memorial Day, everyone!

-Amy

Espresso and Vanilla Frosted Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Last weekend Caleb and I were invited to a graduation barbecue thrown by some of our graduating senior friends. We didn’t have a lot on hand since it was the end of the year and we were trying to use up what food was left, but luckily we had a dark chocolate cake mix and plenty of homemade frosting ingredients.



While I always try to make cupcakes from scratch since they’re so easy, the premade mix created moist, fluffy chocolate cupcakes and the following two frostings accented them perfectly. Caleb and I both enjoy espresso-flavored food items tremendously, but not everyone shares this love, which is why I made two altogether different yet similarly delicious icings.

For the vanilla frosting:

Ingredients:
6 cups confectioners’ sugar
16 Tbs. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 1/2 Tbs. milk, plus more if needed
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt
Food colorings (optional)

Serves: 4 cups, or 24 cupcakes frosted liberally
Duration: 10 minutes

Have all the ingredients at room temperature. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, combine the confectioners’ sugar, butter, the 4 1/2 Tbs. milk, the vanilla and salt and beat on low speed until combined, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Increase the speed to medium and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. If the frosting is dry, add more milk, 1 tsp. at a time, until it is creamy but still holds peaks. Tint with food coloring as desired.

For the espresso frosting:

Ingredients:
6 cups confectioners’ sugar
16 Tbs. (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1.5 shots espresso
1/4 tsp. salt
Food colorings (optional)
2 Tbs. freshly ground coffee (preferably hazelnut or French vanilla)
3 Tbs. melted chocolate or chocolate sauce

Serves: 4 cups, or 24 cupcakes frosted liberally
Duration: 10 minutes

Have all the ingredients at room temperature. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, combine the confectioners’ sugar, butter, the espresso, the vanilla and salt and beat on low speed until combined, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl Increase the speed to medium and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. If the frosting is dry, add more milk, 1 tsp. at a time, until it is creamy but still holds peaks.

After applying to cupcakes, sprinkle coffee grounds onto frosting lightly and drizzle chocolate sauce. Serve within 24 hours for best quality.

-Amy

Cheese Fondue

On Wednesday night, Caleb and I decided to spice up the evening with one of our favorite recipes—fondue. This has been “our meal” for quite some time now, since he introduced the dish to me only months after we first began dating. The recipe has evolved over time, depending on our tastes, but on Wednesday night we made the tastiest fondue yet—and it’s unbelievably simple.




The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:
2 Tbs. olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 block Cabot “Hunter’s Sharp” cheddar cheese, minced
½ cup white wine (preferably Chardonnay)
1 Granny Smith apple
½ loaf whole wheat, freshly baked bread, toasted
Black pepper to taste

Servings: 2-3 people
Duration: 25 minutes

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Slice the bread in one inch cubes and place on cooking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and crunchy. In the meantime, turn fondue pot on to 250 degrees. Once warm, add olive oil and minced garlic. When garlic is golden brown, add wine and stir for one minute. Add cheese in three portions, stirring between each new addition. When the cheese is melted, turn fondue pot to “warm” (or, if you fondue part does not have such a setting, turn it off). Remove bread from the oven, slice apple into one inch cubes and serve beside the fondue.

-Amy

Blueberry Muffins

Two nights ago, Caleb and I were hanging out with one of our friends, Jenn, a recent graduate from a San Francisco based culinary school, who was showing us various cooking blogs. These blogs not only energized us to start one of our own, but they also inspired us to make something—at 2am. After leaving the party, Caleb and I came home and decided to use up what remaining bit of sugar, flour and blueberries we had left, since we’ll be leaving college (and our college apartment) this Sunday. We found a recipe online (surprisingly, at Martha Stewart’s website) and went about measuring, mixing and baking.



The muffins came out surprisingly delicious, as the blueberries were in fact frozen and we had our doubts about how moist they would turn out. Not only were these muffins absolutely tasty, but they were incredibly soft and fluffy, too, with a subtle sweetness that wasn’t too over-powering, which made them the ideal breakfast food. We both agree that there isn’t much worse than overly sweetened breakfast products (well, except for the occasional bowl of Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries), so we were pleasantly surprised at how balanced these muffins came out.



The recipe, for those interested, is as follows:

Ingredients:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for tins
3 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups sugar, plus more for sprinkling
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1 3/4 cups blueberries

Servings: 6 large/12 small muffins
Duration: 1 hour

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter large (3 3/4 inches) or small (2 3/4 inches) muffin tins, and set aside. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg, egg yolks, and vanilla; mix until well combined. Reduce speed to low; alternate adding reserved flour mixture and milk to mixer, beginning and ending with flour. Remove bowl from mixer; gently fold in berries by hand. Divide batter among muffin tins; sprinkle generously with sugar. Bake until light golden, about 45 minutes for large muffins, about 30 minutes for small muffins. Cool in pan 15 minutes. Remove from pan; transfer to wire rack, and let cool completely.

Introductions, Hellos, Past Meal Photos

Hi there! This is Amy and Caleb, and we’re two college students at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. We have enjoyed cooking together since the day we met, and it has quickly become our favorite activity to do together. Therefore we cook our own meals each day; Caleb likes to cook and I like to bake (recently, I’ve really gotten into cake decorating). Recently we decided to take our cooking public and we’ll be using this blog to log our meals, photos and recipes. This blog will be used by both of us—either together or separate (we separate for the summer in just one week)—so you never know who will be writing! Until our first real update, enjoy the pictures of the food we’ve made together in the last year:





















































-Amy

Introductions, Hellos and Past Recipes

Hi there! This is Amy and Caleb, and we’re two college students at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. We have enjoyed cooking together since we met, and it’s become our favorite activity to do together. Therefore we cook our own meals (all three a day!) together each day; Caleb likes to cook and I like to bake (recently, I’ve really gotten into cake decorating)! Recently we decided to take our cooking public and we’ll be using this blog to log our recent meals, along with photos of the meal and recipes. This blog will also be used by both of us—either together or separated (we separate for the summer in just one week)—so you never know who will be writing! Until our first real update, enjoy the pictures of the food we’ve made together in the last year:






















































-Amy