[Gluten Free] Nutella Cupcakes

One of my friends at college can't eat gluten, so when I would make cupcakes or sweets, most of the time she wouldn't be able to eat them. Around Valentine's Day, this year, I found a blog that had a good variety of gluten free desserts. I found this recipe for Gluten Free Nutella Cupcakes and knew I had to try it! To say that my friends at college love Nutella would be an understatement, I think the love lies somewhere between an obsession and an addiction! But really, what's not to love about chocolately hazelnuty goodness? So I knew I had to try to out! And luckily this recipe only called for 2 different types of flour (many gluten free recipes have lengthy lists of ingredients to make up for the absences of wheat flour). So I set out for my neighborhood Whole Foods Market and got to baking!



The recipe I found came from a blog entitled Tartelette but I've reproduced it below as well. I also used a buttercream frosting instead of a cream cheese frosting.

1 stick + 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temp
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 Nutella
2 large eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine sweet rice flour
1/4 cup millet flour
1/4 corn starch
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
extra Nutella for filling cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 350F. Place muffin liners in tins. Beat the butter and sugar at medium speed until fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add the milk and Nutella, then add the eggs one at a time, incorporating after each addition. In a separate bowl combine the flours, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt and then add this to the dry mixture, mixing until smooth. Divide evenly among the 12 cupcake liners and bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool completely before frosting. For an added surprise, I injected the cupcakes with more Nutella once they were finished baking.

Buttercream Frosting

1 stick butter
1 pound powdered sugar (4 cups)
2-3 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl, add vanilla, then add milk one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency.

Fortune Cookie Cupcakes

I work at Forbidden City, a Chinese restaurant in Virginia Beach, so for our Holiday party I decided that I would make fortune cookie cupcakes! I made both chocolate and vanilla cupcakes and buttercream frosting which I tinted yellow.
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.
I needed both brownish yellow and white, so I didn't dye the fondant until after the sugar was incorporated. Sometimes the fondant becomes difficult to work with so I usually dust the surface that I am working on with powdered sugar and corn starch, and make sure that the fondant doesn't get to warm. If it does, just stick it in the refrigerator for a little while to let it cool down a bit. I rolled the brown fondant out and then cut it into circles, which I then trifolded, then folded in half to make the half moon fortune cookie shape. For the white, I rolled it out and cut it into strips and then using a black food color pen, wrote messages on them, the tip was still pretty wide despite being "fine tip" so I had to keep the phrases pretty short.

Baby Clothes!

So when I found out that I was going to be finished with all of my exams in the first week of the exam period I was pretty excited. I then realized that I actually would have to stay until the very end of the exam period due to my position as an RA. So, to make the best use of my time (I had an entire week of no tests or classes!) I decided that I would make some crafts!



I made these clothes for my baby cousin Felix for Christmas. The first shirt is a felt Christmas tree with embroidered detailing which I adhered to the long sleeved onsie using an iron transfer and then reinforce that by sewing around the edges. I had to wait to sew it until I got home, since I don't have a sewing machine at school.



Here is a close up of the felt Christmas tree with the embroidered detailing. I am just starting to learn how to embroider. I found this website which has lots of really great videos and finally learned how to make french knots! Thats how I made all of the little ornaments. I am really excited to learn more about embroidery!



For this shirt I used freezer paper and an exacto knife to cut out a template for the shirt. The freezer paper is waxy on one side so when you iron it onto the shirt, it sticks so the fabric paint doesn't get underneath the template, but its not too sticky, so the transfer can be easily removed when you are finished painting! I made another shirt, but unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of it!


Here is a picture of Felix with his Christmas shirt on!

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.