Almond Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam and White Chocolate Ganache

These cupcakes come with a story. So one day I was sitting in the kitchen and my mom was sitting in the computer room, my mom yells (and I am mean I really thought I was in trouble or something bad had happened) "Zoe!, come here RIGHT NOW!" so I run over, and she shows me these cupcakes on a food blog called foodporndaily.com, she says that we HAVE to make them! So here we are! They were quite delicious! Not quite as fluffy as I had anticipated, more like the density of angel food cake than a light cupcake, but the density balanced out the smoother flavors of the white chocolate ganache.
The inside is filled with homemade raspberry jam! It was so good! To fill the cupcakes you have to cut out little "pockets"out of the top to put the jam in and then replace it with the caps that were cut. The little pockets make for the perfect surprise when you bite into the cupcake! We had some left over that we ate with the homemade bread that my aunt had made earlier that day and the combination was simply divine! Making the jam was really easy! We didn't use any pectin or thickeners and it came out just great! It really got my mom and I thinking that it would be fun to make some jams next summer after our annual fruit pickings!!! I am so excited!

Market Bag

I knitted this bag for my friend's birthday back in September. I actually had uploaded these pictures awhile ago but forgot to post them! Anyways, I made this bag using a pattern my mom had from The Yarn Basket, one of the few knitting stores left in Virginia Beach . The pattern calls for you to knit in the round using circular needles. This was really fun to make because I got to learn a new stitch! I learned how to "yarn over" which is very simple, and gives the knitting a lacey look. I also learned how to make handles! The bags that I have made in the past have mostly been felted bags so I have just made handles that get sewn on but these were actually incorporated into the knitting which was pretty neat!

I recycled a paper bag to wrap it and used some of the left over yarn to tie it up!

The pattern has a "pocket" that lets the bag be folded into itself to form a pouch.

Ladder Shelf

This ladder shelf was the second of my two big projects this summer! The adventure started out with finding a ladder that would fit the bill. My mom and I went to Barrett's Antique Market about 2 minutes from my house and found this beauty. It was a great size and in great shape, it even still had the original Sears, Roebuck, and Co. sticker on it!!

The next thing to be done was the sanding and priming, which evolved into scraping and chipping paint off of the ladder. Next, I primed the ladder and let that dry.

I went to the hardware store and picked out my paint, I eventually decided on "Tahitian Sky" and I couldn't have been happier with the way it turned out! It is simply the cutest, most fun blue, plus it complements the color my chair quite nicely! While waiting for it to dry after painting and repainting the ladder, I turned my attention to the actual shelves. My dad and I went and bought the wood (and I learned about all the different grades etc. of wood!) and then started assembling the shelves.

Initially I was under the impression that you could just buy wood that was wide enough for shelves but apparently that was not the case! My dad explained that we would have to cut the wood and then join two pieces together using a wood joiner, wood glue, clamps and biscuits. The wood joiner is sort of like a saw but it just makes groves on the side of wood so that the biscuits and wood glue can be inserted into them and hold the wood together. After gluing the boards together we clamped the wood until it dried. Once the shelves were complete I painted them and cut them to size.

Here is the finished product all set up and assembled in my dorm at UVa! A special thanks to Dad for helping me with the project! Can't wait until I get home and can think of another fun project to do together!

Carrot Cupcakes

I've been wanting to try out a carrot cupcake recipe for a while and finally just chose a recipe and went with it. The recipe I used produced a lighter, fluffier cake that contrasted the traditional dense base of carrot cake. I was pleased with the lighter cake batter, but at the same time it made it that much harder to just eat one (or two). The recipe I used included raisins, which I feel are vital to carrot cake, but if you're not a fan they can be omitted. I frosted the cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting and added fondant carrots to the tops.

Ingredients:
1 pound carrots, peeled and grated
3 large eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup golden raisins
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon each of salt, cinnamon, + ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Preheat oven to 325 F. Whisk together carrots, eggs, buttermilk, sugar, oil, vanilla and raisins. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then combine with the wet ingredients. Divide batter evenly among the cups and bake 23-28 minutes, rotating half way through, until a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 pound confectioners sugar, sifted
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar 1/2 cup at a time and then vanilla, and mix until smooth.

To finish the cupcakes, make a batch of fondant, color it orange and green and then shape the fondant into miniature carrots. For detail, I added little lines to the orange part of the carrots with the dull side of a knife.

Ladybug Cupcakes

I made these ladybug cupcakes for a party I attended. The ladybugs are made out of fondant that was dyed black and red. I made the fondant using mini marshmallows, water, and powdered sugar. To make the fondant you put 8 oz. of mini marshmallows and 2 tbps. water in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minute and then stir. If there are still lumps you can put the marshmallows back in the microwave. After the marshmallows are smooth, add in 4 cups of powdered sugar a little at a time, then knead the fondant until it is the desired consistency, adding more powdered sugar as necessary. If you are just making one color, you can add the food coloring into the melted marshmallows before adding the powdered sugar, but if you want to make more than one color then wait until after you knead the fondant and the add the coloring. This recipe makes alot of fondant and was way more than necessary for my 24 ladybugs, but it can keep for a while in the refrigerator to be used for something else.To assemble the ladybugs simply make 24 red ovals and 24 black balls and then add the desired amount of spots using small balls of black fondant. To give the appearance of grass, I used a Wilton #233 tip (with multiple openings) and piped on the green icing.

Embroidered/Appliqued Pillow

After sewing my slip cover I gained some confidence in my sewing abilities. I made this pillow to go with my chair that I covered. To make the pillow I started by working on the applique. I cut out the various pieces of fabric and then cut out matching pieces of "Bondaweb" which is an iron-on fabric fuser. I ironed on the fabric and then went back and machine stitched around the outside of the fabric to secure on the fabric. After sewing on the various pieces of fabric I hand embroidered some detail on the bird and leaves. Next, I cut up little pieces of fabric to make the nest and then sewed those onto the fabric. Once all of the applique was finished I sewed the fabric onto a blue background to provide contrast and bring out the blue in the bird's eggs. I then sewed the front onto the two back pieces and then stuffed it with the pillow.

Rainbow Cake

I saw this Rainbow Cake on a blog and instantly knew I wanted to make it! The cake is just a white cake that is dyed with gel food coloring ( the gel is the key to making the colors so vibrant). Having the cake be white also helped to make the colors stand out. In order to make sure that all of the layers were the same size we weighed the batter (subtracting out the pre-measured weight of the mixing bowl) and then divided that by six to get the weight of each layer. Next, we put a bowl on the scale, zero-ed it out and then weighed out the correct amount of batter, then we repeated it for the next five layers. Once the batter was evenly divided between the six bowls we colored each one, then put them into six parchment lined and greased pans. After they were baked they were allowed to cool for 10 minutes in the pans and then taken out to cool more. We used a butter cream frosting and stacked the layers and then iced the outside of the cake.

Slip Cover!!

Since I found out that I would be an RA for the upcoming school year I had started thinking about how to decorate my dorm room. RAs are given standard double rooms but I won't have a roommate, therefore will have some extra space in my room! I had been on the hunt for a while for a good chair and then it turned out that my Grammy had this chair that needed a home! My mom and I started our slipcover project by going to the fabric stores and perusing the fabric for something that would suit my chair (Criteria: comfy, washable, light enough to not show tons of lint, dark enough to not show tons of dirt, and inexpensive).
Meeting all of these requirements proved to be harder than I had anticipated. Fabric can be so expensive, especially when working on a large project!! After looking at about 4 different fabric stores and going back to a couple of them, I ended up ordering my fabric from JoAnn's fabrics online store and used a 40% off coupon!! Even with the shipping, the fabric cost way less this way, plus the store didn't have enough of what I needed in stock. My mom and I started to use a pattern that we got from the fabric store that seemed pretty basic. The pattern instructed us to seam together the lengths of fabric that we calculated would be needed for our chair. Next, the pattern called to make ties that would attach to this giant rectangle that would somehow give this "slipcover" the proper shape...we got about 1/4 way through and decided that this pattern was not exactly what we had in mind so decided to make a change in plan (or CIP as my dad likes to say).
We decided to go back to square one. Square one = public library. Public library = best friend. The public library was a HUGE help in this project!! We got 7 books and 2 VHS tapes from the library and saved a whole bunch of money! We started out by watching the videos, one was more helpful than the other. The first video we watched was pretty much just showing different slip covers and how to use them to decorate, but it was well worth the time watching it for all of the shoulder pads and big hair do's of the early 90s. The second video was very helpful and showed step by step instructions.

Here is what the chair looks like to start with! The chair is really comfortable but the fabric just didn't go with the rest of my decor, thus the slip cover project begins.

The lady on the video suggested that we start with the cushion so that we could get a feel for how to cut out, sew, and put everything together, plus, this way we could say we finished something. We decided to put a zipper in the back so that it could taken off and washed.

To make the cover we had to measure all of the different pieces and then measure and cut out the fabric into pieces. After all of the pieces were cut out to size we pinned them onto the chair to make sure they would all fit together. We started out by sewing the front of the back to the back of the back, then sewing the deck to the front of the deck. Next, we sewed both of those things together, and then sewed on the two arms. One thing that we did not think of and had to do a little fixing was making sure the nap all went to same way. It was definitely a lot easier using fabric that did not have a pattern, especially since my sewing skills were a little rusty (but I have definitely become a lot more comfortable with the sewing machine after doing this project!). Once all of the pieces were sewn together we had to try it on the chair, find what needed to be fixed and then take it off and make the appropriate adjustments. After we were happy with the cover we had to add the skirt. We decided that a soft ruffle would look the best. To make the soft ruffle, you have to cut out the fabric and then near the top sew two parallel lines using the sewing machine on a setting with a wide and long stitch size, enabling the fabric to be bunched up slightly. Next, you have to change the sewing machine setting back to the regular stitch size and go back over the lines that you made before so the ruffles stay in place. After the various pieces were ruffled we sewed them together and then sewed the skirt onto the cover.

Here is the finished project!! It took about 30 hours for my mom and I to complete the project but it was a lot cheaper and more fun than getting it professionally covered!

Care for Some Pie?

My cousin came over the other day and we baked these "pie" cupcakes. The cupcakes are vanilla with vanilla frosting. To make the frosting look like pie crust we added a couple of drops of yellow food coloring and about a tablespoon of hot cocoa mix! The recipe actually called for cocoa powder but I improvised with hot cocoa mix since we didn't have any cocoa powder. The "fruit" in the pie are M&Ms!!

To decorate the cupcakes we sorted the M&Ms into colors and then topped the cupcakes with them. After the M&Ms were placed (M side down) we put the icing in a pastry bag and piped the rim of the crust followed by the lattice.

Would you like fries with that?

These are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing and pieces of crinkle cut toasted pound cake on top!! And the "ketchup" is red icing!

Peach Pocket Pies

My mom and I made these peach pies because we had some peaches that needed to be used. I just used a premade pie crust and used the pocket pie mold to cut out the different shapes. I made stars and hearts, the start ones were fried and the heart ones baked.
The baked ones came out better than the fried ones since the oil got to hot and cooked the outsides too fast and the middle not enough. It was a little tricky to keep the temperature constant in just a standard pot over the stove.

The pie filling was just cut up peaches, sugar,almond extract and quick cooking tapioca that was all combined and allowed to stand for 15 minutes. The peaches had a lot of juice so the tapioca allowed the filling to get to a thicker consistency.

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Toasted Marshmallows and Candied Pecans

These sweet potato cupcakes are quite possibly my favorite cupcakes! The toasted marshmallows and candied pecans give a great contrast to the slightly denser cupcake base. This recipe came from the book Martha Stewart's Cupcakes and isn't on her website so I'll reproduce the recipe below.

After I filled up the 24 cupcake liners with batter I had a little left over so decided to make a few mini cupcakes! The minis turned out great and were a perfect bite sized treat. I think next time I make these cupcakes I will make more of the minis.

Ingredients:
-2 pounds sweet potatoes
-2 cups all purpose flour
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-1 teaspoon coarse salt
-1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
-1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
-1 cup granulated sugar
-1 cup dark brown sugar
-4 large eggs
-2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
-2 cups miniature marshmallows
-Candied pecan pieces (recipe to follow)

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Pierce sweet potatoes with a fork and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for about an hour, until they are fork tender. When cool enough to handle, slice lengthwise and scrape the inside away from the skin. Discard skin. Mash potatoes with a fork until smooth.
2. Reduce oven to 325°F. Whisk together flour, baking powder,salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. With an electric mixer cream together the butter and both sugars on medium high speed. Add eggs one at a time, thoroughly incorporating each. Beat in the mashed sweet potatoes and vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add the flour mixture in three batches, beating to incorporate after each batch.
3. Fill lined cups three-quarters full. Bake, rotating half way through, about 28 minutes. (About 12-14 for the minis!) Cool on wire racks.
4. To make the marshmallow topping, simply place 24 mounds of marshmallows on a non-stick baking mat (ie. Silpat) on a baking sheet and heat under the broiler (you could also use a kitchen torch but I found the broiler to be easier) CAUTION: Watch the marshmallows very closely! They only take about a minute or two to toast and they will burn and catch on fire if you leave them in too long! Trust me on this one.
5. Transfer the mounds onto the cupcakes and top with the candied pecan pieces. It is best to toast the marshmallows the day you will be serving the cupcakes because the marshmallows tend to wilt a little after a day or so.

Candied Pecan Pieces
-1/2 cup sugar
-1/4 cup water
- 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Line a rimmed baking sheet with a nonstick baking mat. Heat sugar and water to a simmer in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved. Stop stirring and cook until syrup comes to a boil. Boil, gently swirling pan occasionally, until mixture is a light amber. Remove from heat and stir in pecans with a wooden spoon to coat them. Immediately remove pecans from caramel and spread in a single layer on baking mat. Let cool and then break into small pieces.

S'mores Cupcakes

These S'more cupcakes are made with graham flour, honey, and cinnamon so they sort of taste like graham crackers. They are topped with an icing made out of gelatin and a simple syrup (sugar and water brought to a boil) that was then whipped with the electric mixer for about 8 minutes. Thank goodness for my Kitchen Aid mixer!! I would have to build up alot more arm strength if I had to mix that icing by hand. I was personally not really a fan of the icing, although everyone else didn't seem to dislike it. I think next time I'd add some vanilla. Although the icing wasn't the best tasting it really did have the consistency of a marshmallow and the gelatin allowed it to stay that consistency. In between the cupcake and the icing is a layer of chocolate glaze. The glaze couldn't be easier to make, its just heavy cream and corn syrup heated to a simmer that is then poured over chocolate chips (I used a combination of milk and semi sweet ghirardelli chocolate chips).


Another first!! A video! I thought this would be a good video to post. I had my little sister tape it for me. I was thinking about just holding the camera in one hand and the flame torch in the other but then realized how badly that could end. For the finishing touch I used a kitchen torch to "roast the marshmallow." It was really cool and you can kind of see how it fluffs up and sizzles. This has probably been the easiest icing to toast that I've made so far.

Flower Headband

I decided to make this flower headband for one of my friends as a birthday present. The flower and leaves are made out of felt that was recycled from two wool sweaters. The green sweater I found already felted in a box of old clothes and the pink one my mom found at a thrift store and felted it. Before I knew my mom had the pink sweater I attempted to find some wool sweaters on my own in a couple of local thrift stores but was dreadfully unsuccessful. Of the few sweaters I did find (probably because its summer)none of them would have worked, they were all either cotton or a combination of cotton and acrylic. In order to felt fabric it has to be wool or mostly wool so that it can be cut.

I cut the green fabric into leaves and then with a lighter green thread embroidered the leaves so that there looked to be veins on the leaves. Next, I cut the pink fabric into the shape of petals and sewed them together. You know all of those extra buttons that come with sweaters and dresses and stuff? Well for some reason I have kept all of these buttons even though I have never actually used one to replace a lost button. Well, I finally found a use for one of those, I used it as the center of the flower. For the headband part I knitted a thin brown strip and then bound it together. Once I had all of the pieces I sewed them all together!!

Strawberries!!!

I can't remember a year where my family and I haven't gone strawberry picking. Ever since we were little, my family has always gone out to Pungo, the countryside of Virginia Beach, to pick strawberries. This year I decided to make a Strawberry Chiffon cake. The chiffon was made with strawberries, sugar, gelatin, and cool whip, then edged with lady fingers. This dessert was very light and great for the summer, but personally I didn't think it was strawberry-y enough.

Gel Electrophoresis Cookies

More science cookies for my IB Bio teacher! These are gel electrophoresis runs, the bands are the different DNA, which separates out according to size. The smaller, lighter segments of DNA travel the farthest away from the wells when connected to electricity and the larger ones travel the shortest distance. These were fun to make, but a little challenging. In order for the bands to be flush with the background I had to make sure I added the pink bands immediately after I put the blue background on. These cookies were really fun to make and they were also really messy to make, especially trying to separate out all of the icing to make it the different colors.

Bacteria Culture Cookies

Embracing my inner nerd, I decided to make bacteria culture cookies. I cut the cookies into circles and then decorated them with royal icing. I used correct streaking techniques, but that proved to be a little harder with royal icing. I made these cookies as a congratulation gift for my IB Biology teacher who received her PhD this year!

Flower Power

When my friends and I went down to Nags Head for a week once school was over we had a couple of rainy days so decided to make cupcakes! These were really easy to make, we just made regular vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing and then cut mini marshmallows in half and coated them with sprinkles to make the petals!

Halloween Cookie Bouquet

Ok, so these pictures aren't really current, but I found the pictures on my mom's computer and thought I would post them. This is a cookie bouquet that my mom, sister, and I put together a couple Halloweens ago. There used to be this really cute store down near the oceanfront that sold tons of baking supplies and cookie cutters and I'm pretty sure thats where we got all of these cookie cutters. My family has suitcases full of cookie cutters (literally, we keep our cookie cutters in these old fashion suitcases my mom got somewhere) and we have a good cookie recipe that allows the cookies to keep their shape while baking.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

These lemon meringue cupcakes are one of my favorites! They are just the right combination of sweet and tangy. These are lemon cupcakes topped with lemon curd and a 7-minute frosting, all courtesy of Martha Stewart. After frosting the cupcakes, I took a kitchen torch and toasted them lightly to give them that nice toasted taste. Martha Stewart's website and magezine is one of my favorite places to get recipes and ideas. The website is always changing and the directions are usually pretty straight forward and clear.

KD Magnets

I made these magnets for my roommate who pledged KD (Kappa Delta) this semester! They are green and have white stiching since white and green are the sorority's colors. They are plushy since I stuffed them with quilting batting.

A Nautical Dinner Party

This past summer I decided to host a dinner party for my friends. It had a nautical theme and my mom and I made all the food from scratch! We went out to a couple of the local farms and picked corn and blackberries and bought cantaloupe, watermelon and some squash. I used the cantaloupe to make sailboat place cards using sticks and cardstock to make sails with everyone's names on them. For dessert, I made homemade blackberry sorbet (with the blackberries we picked) and anchor vanilla bean sugar cookies! I also made homemade watermelon punch that I served in a watermelon! We had already hollowed out the watermelon to make the punch, so we had bought a spout, put it at the bottom of the watermelon and used it to serve the punch! I would say that overall the dinner party was a great success!