Coconut cupcakes!

Closeup of the coconut cupcake (the hairy white ones...lol) Coconut cakes/cupcakes always crack me up because when covered with the shredded coconut, they tend to look all hairy. I made these for Brad and Jamie's engagement party which was a fabu beach bbq at Paradise Beach Park in Tiburon. We've cycled by the beach numerous times when riding Paradise Loop but have never been to the beach before and I have no idea why not because it is a really well kept beach/park/picnic ground.

As for the "white hairy" comment, I was going to write something about how Brad is old, white and hairy just like the cupcakes in the card but refrained as this was a family function - G rated please :)
As for the recipe, I used a different cake base recipe this time around. After many weeks of Magnolia's Vanilla cake base, I decided to go the American Cake Decorating route and used a recipe that has all of the same basic ingredients, it just has you work them in a different order. Instead of creaming together the butter and sugar with eggs and then adding the flour, this recipe has you mixing the butter and dry ingredients together then adding the milk/eggs....It creates a light crumb on the cake and I find it to be a little lighter in density than the Magnolia's method. And I used lots of coconut extract...in the batter and in the frosting.

Recipe
4 eggs at room temperature
1 cup milk
2 1/4 teaspoons coconut extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 sticks softened butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl mix eggs, 1/4 cup milk and coconut extract.

In a large mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients and mix well. Add butter and remaining 3/4 cup milk to the dry ingredients and beat on low speed, just to combine.

Pour half of the egg/milk mixture into bowl, mixing well. Add the last half of the egg/milk mixture and beat on medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat an another minute. Pour half full into prepared cake pans or cupcake cups and bake for 25-35 minutes.

Coconut Buttercream
2 sticks softened butter
1/8 cup whipping cream
6-8 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons coconut extract

Put all ingredients into a stand mixer and mix on low speed until incorporated. Then increase speed and beat at med/high for 5-7 minutes until light and fluffy.

Fresh Cherry Pie (revisiting cherry soup)

This is the repeat of the failed cherry pie/cherry soup from back in July. I was thinking of ways to make it less soupy and I needed another try at the lattice work.

So the key is to cook the filling on the stovetop until the juices are bubbling and it starts to thicken BEFORE you put everything into the pie shell and bake it. Otherwise it seems that it is not enough time for the cornstarch to "activate"and thicken..

Recipe

1 1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/8 tsp salt

3 drops almond extract

4 cups pitted tart cherries

Add pitted cherries, sugar, salt and almond extract to a saucepan. Simmer on low/medium until there is a lot of juice in the pan from the berries. Add cornstarch and increase heat to med/high and bring to a quick boil...then stir constantly until the "whiteness" or the cornstarch disappears and the filling thickens.

Pour into an uncooked pie shell and top with another pie crust or lattice and bake at 425 degrees for about 40 minutes or until golden brown on top.

ENJOY!

"Watermelon Slice" Birthday Cake

I should have taken more pictures of the construction but alas, I forgot and it's probably better for my camera that I didn't since my hands were covered in food coloring and pieces of fondant. Regardless, it was so much fun! The cake is the standard Magnolia's vanilla cake with some blueberry frosting and fresh blueberries in the middle. What's rad is that you only need one cake pan since you cut the cake in half and stack it. For the seeds, I used chocolate chips.

Aria's Birthday Cupcakes

Good old fashioned vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting...I used the Magnolia's recipe for both.

Brunchtime Crustless Quiche

We had family in town all weekend and lots of people = lots of cooking and eating! I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT when we have people over so I can cook up a storm. I truly am happiest in the kitchen...it is my favorite room in the house. It's a place where I can relax, exercise my creative brain muscles and create something that can provide happiness and sustenance for the people I love. (insert sappy moment here) I know, I know. Anyhoo.. for brunch with both parents I decided to make quiche, blueberry muffins and fruit salad. Here goes for the quiche - I was winging it so I do not have exact measurements.

Bacon
Onion
Green Onion
Mushrooms
Grated Cheese (whatever flavor you like)
Eggs + Milk (2 eggs to 1 cup milk ratio)
Butter
Breadcrumbs
Assorted Heirloom Tomatoes, sliced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a baking dish and then cover with breadcrumbs.

Saute the first four ingredients separately and mix together. You should not need any additional salt as the bacon has enough salt on it's own to flavor the entire dish. Evenly spread mixture in the baking dish. Sprinkle on a generous amount of cheese.

Beat together eggs and milk (you will need anywhere from 2-8 eggs depending on the size of your baking dish) and gently pour over the meat, veggies and cheese in the baking dish.

Gently lay the sliced tomatoes on top of the egg mixture and bake the entire thing anywhere from 20 minutes for a small baking dish to 45 minutes for a large baking dish. It should still jiggle when you shake it but not be liquidy.

ENJOY!

Blueberry Muffins

These muffins were part of the family brunch from the weekend. It is the Magnolia's recipe and there are a few changes that I would make to it... one is bake it a couple of minutes longer than they recommend and two is to add some lemon zest to the batter. The recipe used buttermilk instead of regular milk so it added a nice tang to the muffin itself.


Blah I don't want to post the recipe because I didn't love it... if you have the Magnolia's cookbook, it's that one but I am going to try and find a different one.

Bars of Experimentation...

Above: Passionfruit Bars
Below: Lime Bars

Recently I made a batch of lemon bars and had been noodling on the idea of branching out into bars of other flavors. Primarily flavored with other citrus fruits then on to others as well...

So this Sunday was a girls potluck dinner at Vanessa's house and I decided to make lime and passionfruit bars...with my fingers crossed that it would turn out ok. And much to my relief they were delicious! So same recipe as the lemon, just make substitutions as follows:

Passionfruit bars
Use orange zest wherever lemon zest is called for
Replace lemon juice with passionfruit juice (I get mine from the Perfect Puree of Napa Valley)
Top with powdered sugar and sweetened coconut shavings

Lime bars
Use lime zest and juice in place of lemon
If I could, I would have used key lime juice as that would have given a different flavor and I would have added a little green food coloring since the natural lime juice isn't that colorful. This would have been fun with a little candied pineapple chopped on top.

Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes

This weekend included two batches of cupcakes! Sunday was a Pig Roast BBQ at Carly and Charles' casa in the Inner Richmond. They are former co-workers of Molly and Mike's who have recently started a monthly BBQ featuring a whole roasted beast/animal/creature.

I missed last month's lamb because we already had a BBQ that day and really, we can only manage about one event per day with Donut. I really aim to keep her on a schedule so that she can have some consistency as she learns to sleep, etc...

So I bought a huge clamshell of blueberries with the intention of trying to incorporate them into cupcakes but they turned out to be more like muffins...bleh. But again, take the base yellow cake recipe and augment with fruit, etc... but be sure to adjust cooktimes for added moisture from the fruit.

Forrest thought these looked a bit too "healthy and organic" because of the earthy color and the visible bits of blueberry skin. And I was overcompensating for the extra moisture in the batter from the fruit so I cooked it a bit longer and well, they were admittedly a tiny bit dry - arg. But I thought the frosting was a really pretty shade of blue/purple...

Recipe

3/4 cups self-rising flour
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/4 cup milk
1/4 lemon juice
1/2 cup crushed blueberries (in blender with lemon juice)


Frosting
1 sticks butter
1 Tablespoons Vanilla
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
1/2 cup crushed blueberries in lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line one 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers.

In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside. 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. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk, lemon juice and blueberries. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat.

Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Put softened butter, vanilla, cream and powdered sugar and blueberries into a mixer and blend on slow until incorporated...then whip on medium to high speed for 5-6 minutes until light and fluffy.

Strawberry Cupcakes

It's Annelise's first birthday is this weekend and the invitation specifically said "no gifts please" but it didn't say anything about cupcakes :) so here goes...

All prepped and ready to go! woot woot....

I wanted to make strawberry cupcakes so in keeping with the pink theme for the little one's birthday but I needed to find a way to not increase the liquid too much otherwise it would mess up my cook time. So lo and behold I found these rad dehydrated strawberries at Whole Foods to smash up and mix into the batter and frosting. They were perfectly tangy so as to not add too much sweetness to what was already an inordinate amount of powdered and granulated sugar used in the confection.

All packed up and ready to be delivered to the birthday girl. What's great is that you can take a standard yellow cake recipe that you like and play around with the liquid and flavoring portion to make different cakes. For example you can substitute juice for milk and use different extracts besides vanilla to adjust the flavors. In this instance, I just added about 1 cup of powdered dehydrated strawberries to both the batter and the frosting.


Recipe

3/4 cups self-rising flour
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup powdered dehydrated strawberries (crush with a meat tenderizer in a bag)

Strawberry Frosting
1 sticks butter
1 Tablespoons Vanilla
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
1/8 cup cream
1 cup powdered dehydrated strawberries (crush with a meat tenderizer in a bag)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line one 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers.

In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside. 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. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat.

Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Put softened butter, vanilla, cream and powdered sugar and strawberries into a mixer and blend on slow until incorporated...then whip on medium to high speed for 5-6 minutes until light and fluffy.

Lemon Squares

Always a goodie, I made some lemon bars/squares whatever you want to call them for our dessert on Sunday night. This time I didn't press the crust into the pan too hard and it made for a light and flaky crust. I'm going to experiment with the filling recipe a bit and try other fruits like passionfruit and lime...oooo maybe a key lime!

Any suggestions? I am running out of ideas for cooking...

For the crust.....

• 2 sticks softened butter
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest

Mix on low speed until well incorporated. press into the bottom of a square cake pan. I think mine are 8" but a 9" square would be just fine. Bake for 18-20 minutes at 350 degrees. Take out of oven and cool for 10-15 minutes.

For the filling....

• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 6 teaspoons lemon zest
• 1 cup sugar

Mix all the ingredients together until well incorporated. Pour into the slightly cooled shell. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until the filling is set. Remove from oven, dust with powdered sugar and cool completely before cutting.

Cherry Scones

This is a redo of a previous recipe...but with a fruit change. I used dried cherries this time instead and soaked them in hot water + almond extract. Had family in town for the weekend and in my house more people = lots of fun cooking!

Recipe

2 sticks butter

4 3/4 cups flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cup buttermilk

1 cup dried cherries chopped up
1 Tablespoon almond extract

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Soak the dried fruit in a bowl of warm water with almond extract for 10 minutes, then drain thoroughly.

Sift together flour, baking powder and baking soda into a large bowl. Gently mix in sugar and salt with a wooden spoon. Sprinkle 1/2 inch cubes of butter over the bowl. Using a pastry cutter/blender thing, gently incorporate until you have pea sized pieces of butter covered in flour...it is important to keep visible chunks of butter in the dough. Add buttermilk dried fruit all and once and gently mix until incorporated. If making two different batches, separate the dry ingredients into two bowls before mixing in the wet ingredients to limit the amount of mixing required.

Turn dough onto floured surface and pat into a flat log, cut into wedges and bake for 25-35 minutes until golden brown on top. Serve immediately.