I really haven't been knitting a lot or even making scrapbooks. All I want to do is bake! I end up with more than I can possibly eat! I ate one of these babies from Brown Eyed Baker and decided it would be in my best interest to give the rest away before I got myself a muffin top. This is an excellent recipe for Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter frosting. They were a hit with my neighbors. I don't even like frosting usually, but this kind was so amazing I licked the bowl ;)
Step 1: Gather ingredients
Step 2: Start drinking. Be sure your alcohol compliments your baking project.
Step 3: Melt delicious ingredients together, being sure to not eat them before hand. They will taste better IN the cupcake! Also, don't burn yourself on the double boiler.
Step 4: It's important to remember in baking that guesstimating is okay. Professional bakers only make you think those fancy bakers scales are important so they don't feel so bad about spending 50 grand at Le Cordon Bleu.
Filled cupcakes just look so amazing, don't they? When I was making my recipe for Sweet Potato Cupcakes I was going to use Marshmallow Fluff as either a filling or as frosting. The grocery store unfortunately had none and I was working on a budget at that (I'm flat broke!)
Next week I'll be heading out to buy cupcake ingredients... If I don't have to work all weekend.
I've had a big can of sweet potato pie mix in my cupboard since December. Even though I've never actually eaten sweet potato pie and probably should try it, I couldn't just make the basic recipe on the can... I like to experiment too much!
Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
2 1/3 Cup Flour
1 Cup White Sugar
3 Eggs
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
1 Can 29oz Sweet Potato Pie Mix
Frosting:
1 Cup Butter, softened
6 to 8 Cups Confectioners Sugar
1 Cup Water
Directions:
Cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 350F
Sift flour, sugar and baking powder together and mix.
In separate bowl mix pie filling and eggs with electric mixer.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients.
Pour into baking cups in cupcake pan. Pour two thirds of the way up each baking cup.
Bake for 18 minutes at 350F
Frosting:
Cream butter and sugar together, add water until you get the consistency you want.
After the cupcakes cool, spread on the frosting and enjoy!
They ended up sticking to the baking cups quite a lot, but that's what happens when you load up cupcakes with yummy sweet potato!
These are my Christmas/Halloween/St Patrick's Day/Gay Pride cupcakes! I hate having holiday themed stuff around my house. It's fun to have around the time of the holiday, but immediately after I'm thinking, "What am I gonna do with this NOW? It's just taking up space." I had Halloween cupcake liners just laying around, green frosting in the fridge and Christmas sprinkles. I figured adding a little Gay Pride would make these cupcakes all inclusive!
I really love how the colors came out. The teal especially. Does anyone know the secret to purple food coloring? I can't seem to keep it from looking like mud.
Happy Halloween everyone! This year I went as Alex from A Clockwork Orange. I didn't get any fabulous pictures of my costume, but I snapped a few of my makeup, which is the best part of the costume anyway! I've been messing with some iPhone photo apps lately. So far I'm loving Labelbox and Pic Stitch. I tried out Spooky Pics for my Halloween photos...
I made some orange and purple Halloween cupcakes for the party. They got eaten up really fast! I'm not an expert at baking yet, but I was pretty happy with these. The frosting is the hardest part. I had to resist buying the cupcake icing kits from Target and settled on using ziplock bags for piping the icing.
I also snapped a bunch of photos with my Instax. I'll be putting together my Zombie Mini Album soon! The party was full of zombies, pirates, 80's metal rockers, 70's coke heads, serial killer butchers, and of course a bit of the old 'ultra violence.'
On another note, last Wednesday I got my tattoo! It was drawn by Mindy Massacre at Primal Instincts Tattoo in Anchorage AK. I made an appointment to get it colored in two weeks. I love how it turned out! I heard that she and another female artist were fighting over who would get to do my tattoo, because they both loved the idea of the dress form. The sewing stuff is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, who left me her sewing room when she passed away. She always made tons of great stuff! I have a purse she made and I carry it everywhere. The butterfly on the dress-form's shoulder is for my paternal grandmother, who used to do a butterfly census at the UCSC Arboretum in Santa Cruz, CA. She would walk around and see how many butterflies were in the gardens and figure out what types they were. I'm going to get some flowers in the background for her too... Maybe some from this book that my aunt made of her artwork after she passed away. She did some wonderful drawings! Anywhere she went she would draw, she didn't bother taking photos.
Last but not least is an update on my knitting progress... I had 24 hour duty the morning after the Halloween party, which sucked, but at least I had some time to catch up on my knitting. It started snowing yesterday morning and I thought to myself, "You'd better get that sweater done!" I started it last year but I kept putting it down to work on other projects. Now that it's cold out I'll need it!
The Fall 2010 issue of Vogue Knitting is still the best issue I've seen. They were on point with the London Calling collection. I may even make two of these pullovers!
I chose a grey yarn that was too dark in comparison to the original pattern, but I like how it is turning out.
That's all for now! Thanks to everyone who stopped by for the October Followers Fest! I'll leave you with a video for the lovely song "Dear Darkness" by PJ Harvey. She's a wonderful singer/songwriter and very "goth". Perfect for this time of year.
