Halloween

Ah, Halloween. Such a great holiday on it's own, on top of kicking off the Holiday Season.

The holiday weekend kicked off with my work party. I love potlucks where people take great pride in what they bring. You have never seen so much food in your life! I made a giant candy corn cupcake cake for my contribution.



We started the holiday proper with the annual Pumpkin run, and reminisced about the previous years when 3.1 miles seemed like crossing a continent. Even though a 5k has become a "light" run for me these days, I didn't feel so great that morning. I still did extremely well, but I missed my PR and 3rd place in my age division by five seconds. Ouch.

In fact, I'm sort of embarrassed about it. First, that I didn't keep up my continuous improvement. And then second, that I was upset about my time at all. Four years ago, breaking 30 minutes was my ultimate running goal. This year I did 27:53. The lesson here is to make this motivate me to work harder for next year!

Afterward, we had some celebratory pumpkin spice lattes and finished setting up the house for wine and Halloween candy tasting. It was a spur of the moment idea, and it came out well!


Even though the day was supposed to be about candy, I made a veggie platter and bruschetta. I'm happy to say while there was candy left over, the healthy stuff was gone! I have such smart friends. I also made popcorn balls and apple chips, although these were both fails. The apple chips were in the oven nearly all day, and never quite got crispy. The popcorn balls turned into a solid ball when I put them in a bowl; I didn't have a candy thermometer to check the temperature. But I'm sure these will appear in the future - they were much easier to make than anticipated!

When it got dark, we handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. My favorites were the under-five set; you can immediately tell they don't know what's going on yet, and they're not sure if they want to be a part of it. Too cute! We gave out candy until we ran out, except I discovered another two bags today! Those will have to go to the Operation Gratitude drive.

I used leftover cake batter from the cupcake cake to send candy corn cupcakes to work with the husband. From what I hear, they went over pretty well. And they do look rather cute, if I do say so myself.


I hope your Halloween was fun, happy, and safe! Now, on to Thanksgiving. I can't wait!

Birthday Cupcakes

Gratuitous cupcake shot!!


These were for my coworker's birthday. I know she likes chocolate and ... chocolate. The sprinkles were a risk I was willing to take.


Who doesn't like sprinkles?

Chunky Monkey Cupcakes

Banana. Peanut butter. Chocolate.

Our neighbor gave us this book, the Cake Mix Doctor. I say us, because seriously, do you think the mister doesn't benefit? It's a great book, if you want/need a souped up dessert. The good doctor has a website, too.

And in this case, gave me the right proportions to turn a plain white cake mix into banana cupcakes!

There wasn't too much banana called for in the recipe. But believe me, they were certainly banana-y.

As for frosting, I made peanut butter frosting with some leftover chocolate chips. Which came out looking like cookie dough, confusing everyone at the event. Oh well. I didn't hear any complaints.

Guinness Cake

In the theme of Irish foods: how about a beer cake?

Here are a couple of recipes to use as a guide, one with sour cream and one with coffee. I didn't add either, so it was essentially a chocolate cake with a bottle of Guinness instead of the water you'd normally use.


The rather disappointing thing is, it doesn't taste like beer at all. It's a great cake, but I was kind of hoping for a unique flavor. Mint flavored frosting, though.

The decoration was a very cute idea stolen from Martha Stewart. I drew a clover on a sheet of paper, cut it out, and laid the paper on top of the cake. It helps if you press it down a little, so the sugar doesn't get under the template. And stick with a simpler design; the clover might have been a little detailed.

Given the meh results, I may or may not be interested in trying the diet Coke cake any more.

Cupcake Hero!!

See, I read all these blogs. Mostly about cupcakes. And one has this contest, Cupcake Hero. I kind of always wanted to enter but it's kind of intimidating. And this month the secret ingredient was caramel, and hey, I know how to bake pretty well, and I have a blog, so ... here I am entering a cupcake contest.

I'm not used to, um, actually documenting what I do. Or measuring. But I actually took notes. Yeah, I'm really trying this time.

So on to the good stuff! I humbly present Devil's Caramel Cupcakes.

For the cupcakes:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup butter (OK, I used my good buddy Imperial. So that's 60% vegetable oil margarine.)
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 and 1/4 cup water
• 1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• 2 egg whites
• 5 tablespoons caramel

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Step 2: Cream the butter and sugar. Start slowly lest it fly all over your kitchen (not like I know anything about that).

Step 3: Add the flour, soda, salt, baking powder, eggs, and water. I sort of did it in that order.

Step 4: Pour out one cup of batter and put it aside. This will become the caramel layer.

Step 5: Add the cocoa to the batter. Mix it for a good few minutes to get everything smooth.

Step 6: Fill the cupcake liners a little less than half full with the chocolate batter. We have these really big soup spoons that came with our silverware set, and I used about one giant spoonful of those.


Step 7: Whisk together 5 tablespoons of caramel with the cup of cake batter. I used a fork in a bowl, but if you have two mixing bowls (lucky!), you could do it with the mixer too. Also, I used Smucker's Sundae Syrup. 'Cause making cupcakes was daunting enough without being super industrious and making caramel too.


Step 8: Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full with the caramel batter. This was about the same giant spoonful, and ends up was just exactly enough for 12 cupcakes.

Step 9: Top with a dollop of chocolate batter. Keep in mind that I kind of overfilled, because I love when the cupcake puffs out over the top of the cupcake liner.


Step 10: Bake for 3o minutes. I'm basically at sea level, though, so check with a toothpick if you're not quite sure. The coloring reminds me of rottweilers.



For the frosting:

• 1 cup butter (Yes, real butter this time!)
• 1 lb. powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup caramel

You know the drill. Mix together.

Then go get your husband to use his fancy expensive camera to take extra nice pictures in exchange for eating said cupcake. Yeah, I could have done it myself. But I carpeted the garage steps today. I already had my "I am woman, hear me roar" moment. Plus, eating cupcakes with someone you love is that much more fun.