frosting, frosting, and more frosting!

Frosting is very important to us.  Very!  Neither one of us enjoys a sickly sweet, overly buttery frosting.  I can remember a time when we would look at each other after eating a particularly good store-bought cupcake and talk about how on earth we could mimic that frosting! 

Last summer, Lavonne did one better than all those store-bought creations out there.  She discovered the beautiful, magical, stick-your-face-in-the-bowl, Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  Frosting of all frostings in our humble opinion!  Light, fluffy, not-too-sweet and oh, so delicious.  I have called this the "frosting that icing-haters will love" and proven that when a friend who professes to be an icing-scraper (a person who scrapes 90% of icing off a piece of cake or cupcake) ate an entire cupcake, frosting and all...and actually enjoyed it! The only downside (if there could be one) is that it takes a full half hour to make a batch of this frosting.  A lot of whisking, beating and butter-adding is involved.  The result is more than worth it, though!

We've done several variations on the Swiss Meringue, with our favorite being Peanut Butter.  Other amazing flavors that we've tried have been White Chocolate Peppermint, Chocolate Hazelnut (Nutella), and Milk Chocolate.  Yummy! 

Now that we've perfected the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, we're on the hunt for a fudgy chocolate frosting.  Rich and delicious.  But not too sweet!  For me that's the number one rule of frosting.  There has to be a balance of sweetness with the cake.  It makes for a heavenly cupcake experience!

stories from barely burnt cookies and more

During the week of Christmas we completed a rather large order. We split the order, each baking cookies and cupcakes. Julia dropped in for lunch and brought her part of the order around noon on the day of delivery which was to be in an hour or so. 

Interesting things tend to happen when we are together and any sort of baking occurs.

I had been baking all morning. The kitchen was a disaster, not a clear space on the counter. The dining room table was full of Christmas gifts that needed wrapping. There were now three small children in my home. I had just completed decorating two dozen mini chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate peppermint swiss meringue buttercream and needed a place to put them.

I couldn't use the floor or coffee table in case one of the children messed with the box. I couldn't use any kitchen or dining room table space. So the only other logical place to put the box with two dozen decorated cupcakes was the bed in our spare room. I placed them on the bed, ran into the kitchen to grab another box of cupcakes, and returned to discover a crushed box oozing with frosting.

The cat sat on it.

Not funny.

I gasped, Julia ran in, and we jumped into problem solving mode. We thought about salvaging some of the cupcakes but the frosting was drooping off the edges making a major mess of things. Thank goodness I had baked the entire chocolate cupcake recipe into mini's as my plan was to bring some to a family gathering. I screeched "how many cupcakes do we have left?" in a panic stricken voice to Julia who was busy counting. I could just imagine myself re-baking all two dozen cupcakes one hour before delivery. 

Julia breathed a sigh of relief. There were 24 mini cupcakes left and enough frosting to decorate.

Our next problem was the box which was full of oh-so-tasty white chocolate peppermint buttercream. That was our last box for mini cupcakes. So while I decorated another two dozen cupcakes, Julia painstakingly cleaned the box.  

In the end all the cupcakes and cookies looked lovely and were enjoyed by their recipients. Potential disaster averted!

We are fully aware that in all likelihood none of this would have happened if Julia had dropped off her baking and left immediately. Things just get crazy when we bake together...hence the name "barely burnt!" 

However, the craziness is fun and in the end we do get a good story!

the deep-fried mars bar experiement

We have a confession. Our chocolate obsession runs deep and wide.

This obsession mostly involves high quality European chocolate. Long ago did we lose interest in nondescript foil covered chocolates and easter bunnies and would rather save room for the good stuff. However, everybody has a weakness and our chocolate obsession weakness involves mars bars and the deep fryer.

The deep-fried mars bar first entered our awareness after participating in Chocolate Fest. (What self-proclaimed chocolate enthusiast wouldn't attend this annual festival of yumminess?!). We discovered a peculiar menu item at Fergies Fish 'n Chips...the deep-fried mars bar. One bite and we were both hooked.

In preparing our family Christmas fondue menu this year, we decided to add batter and mars bars to the table. The end result was delectable.

Crispy on the outside. Warm and gooey on the inside. It doesn't get much better than that!

our second love

The Oreo cookie.  It truly is our second love.  It may come from a box and been baked by the mysterious Mr. Christie, but wow!  They are good.  Both of us could easily polish off a box of these bad boys in one sitting (with a tall glass of milk, of course).  So it wasn't a stretch for us to test a Cookies and Cream Cupcake recipe.  Chock full of Oreo cookies.  We found a recipe that looked tasty and here is the result.  A real treat!

Unfortunately the frosting portion of the recipe was a bust.  Terrible.  Too sugary, and overpowered the real star of the show.  The Oreo!  So I went back to our old faithful of frostings, which is the light and airy Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  Much better.  Almost mimics the creamy Oreo center.

I took a plate minis of this cupcake to my son's preschool Christmas concert party, and they were devoured within minutes.  And I can't remember exactly how many I ate during the day.  All in all, I would say they were a success!

After all these accolades, the jury is still out on if we'll be adding these to the line-up of offerings.  We still have a little cost calculating to do before committing to baking them for the masses.