Tag Archives: Baking

SHF: Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes

Peanut butter and jelly cupcake, Sugar High Friday, SHF, food blog, food blog event, dessert, baking, sweets, fanny of foodbeam, cooking, recipes, food photography, cupcakes, peanut butter, strawberry jam, magnolia bakery, magnolia bakery cupcakes

I have to thank Fanny for hosting this fun event.  Who does not love sugar and cupcakes!  Fanny, over at Foodbeam is hosting this months SHF.  If you have not heard of Fanny or Foodbeam, you really should rush over there (after reading this post – wink wink).  She is delightful and her pastries will have you drooling over your keyboard in no time!  This is my first time par-taking in SHF, usually I am too busy and/or there are two many sweets laying around from my other baking groups.  This time, I knew I had to make the time as the topic is dear to my heart!

I have always held a special place in my heart for cupcakes.  They are cute!  Delicate!  Soft and fluffy!  And ever so sweet!  Most of all, it reminds me of my grandfather, as he use to call me cupcake!  I don’t have many memories of him, unfortunately he passed away while I was young.  But, I do remember the smell of his pipe on him.  To this day, I can smell that sweet smell of tabacco (burnt sugary/vanilla smell) a mile away.  As well I remember being small, looking up at him, a smile across his face and him calling me “cupcake”.  He use to be a conductor on the train and I loved going down to the tracks, waiting for the train to pull into town, so I could wave to him and have him wave back!  I really wish, I could have had more time to really get to know him, to continue smelling the smell of his sweet pipe and to make many many cupcakes for him.  This post is dedicated to him!

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Friday Night Dinner

I meant to post this a couple nights ago and time slipped by us. We had a pretty busy weekend, painting (still), wedding reception, Chinese Wedding Banquet and an insane toothache! I am dying over here while I wait for Monday to come!

Cooking, Recipes, Culinary, Figs, Blue Cheese, Puff Pastry, Baking, Easy Dinner, Food and Wine, Food and Drink, Food Blog, Food Blog Event, Vlog, Eating Local, Organic Food

I wanted to share what we had for dinner Friday night as it was really fantastic……. I caramelized some onions, added some Balsamic Vinegar, rolled out a puff pastry, covered it with onions, figs and blue cheese!

Cooking, Recipes, Culinary, Figs, Blue Cheese, Puff Pastry, Baking, Easy Dinner, Food and Wine, Food and Drink, Food Blog, Food Blog Event, Vlog, Eating Local, Organic Food

Serve with a simple green salad and a nice glass of wine – easy dinner! Recipe.

Tuesdays with Dorie | Savory Galette

Fennel, Portabella Mushrooms, TWD, Tuesdays With Dorie, Galette, Savory, Cooking, Recipes, Food and wine, easy dinners, culinary, food blog, food photography, baking

While the TWD crowd was making sweet summery and fruity Galette’s last week, we were traveling. I had Galette on the brain! We love peach ones, plum ones, fig ones, berry ones, you name it, we love it! Tonight I decided to try to make a savory one for dinner. Something light. Something veggie.

I used a basic Pate Brisee; but, I put a handful of fresh rosemary into the flour! For the filling I cooked some garlic and yellow onions just until lightly browned, then I added thinly sliced fennel and Portabella Mushrooms, and a sprinkle of white wine. I cooked it just until everything was warmed and slightly limp. Then I wrapped it nicely in the Pate Brisee, baked and served with a simple green salad and a glass of white wine.

Lenny’s two cents: Delicious! Really good! It did not even need any hot sauce!

Daring Bakers: Opera Cake

Those Daring Bakers are at it again! Our challenge this month was hosted by Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs of Venice, the ever so talented creators of the DB cult, as well, there were two honor hosts, Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin and Shea of Whiskful. As well this challenge has been dedicated to honorary Daring Baker member, Barbara of Winos and Foodies as well. WOW, that was a lot, huh?

Now onto the unveiling …. drum roll please! A very “tradition” and very “French” desert, one that I have loved on too many occasions when in France. The Opera Cake! You are asking yourself, what exactly is an Opéra Cake? Well it’s a cake that is made up of five components: a joconde (a cake layer), a syrup (to wet the joconde), a buttercream (to fill some of the layers), a ganache or mousse (to top the final cake layer) and a glaze (to cover the final layer of cake or of ganache/mousse). Traditionally, it is made with darker flavors, ie .. such as chocolate or coffee. This particular challenge we were instructed to keep it light – no dark flavors allowed!

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Tuesdays with Dorie | Peanut Butter Torte

I almost forgot about this post, then I just smelled Lenny scooping out the peanut butter from the jar for lunch … I love to do that as well! YUM! Anyhow, Elizabeth over at Ugg Smell Food was our hostess with the mostest this week for the Tuesdays with Dorie event. Elizabeth went with the Peanut Butter Torte for our challenge. While I love peanut butter and peanut butter cups, I was not to excited for this recipe, maybe because of all the extra “peanuts” in it – I hate to eat a plain old peanut, I know weirdo! Even though my excitement was not with this recipe, I pulled myself together and did the challenge.

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Daring Bakers: Pain Francais


The Daring Baker’s challenge for February was hosted by Breadchick Mary over at The Sour Dough and Sara over at I like to Cook. Drum roll please! It was Julia Child’s Pain Francais. (click here to see more photos of this challenge)

When I first read the recipe given to us by Breadchick and Sara, I was scared, very scared, 15 pages of instructions! WOW, this was going to be the mother of all challenges for me thus far. I was sure I was going to use this as one of my two I could bail on. Then I stared reading other comments from fellow DBs and I became inspired, should we say very inspired or just DAMN INSPIRED! I could not wait!

There was only one weekend in the entire month that I could do this and we were kind of busy – friend in from Hawaii, errands, dinner with friends – but, I knew I could make it work. So, Saturday rolled around and I did errands, worked, picked up the house, blah blah blah and dinner time hit! “Damn, I forgot the bread and now I had plans on Sunday with the friend!!!” But, I was confident that I could make it work ……

I got up early Sunday, started the lengthly process. So, far very good! The first rising was perfect and right on my tight schedule! Got it all ready for the next round of keeping warm and headed out for lunch and shopping with friend. It was hard to cut it short and fast because of a loaf of bread, so it ran a little late. Got home, still perfect! All was working out so well. I was very confident and very happy. Proceeded with the remaining steps and then molded the dough with my new pastry canvas and tucked it all in next to a warm heater and headed out to dinner! We had a fantastic dinner with friends but once dessert ended I started watching the clock and thinking about my perfect little breads at home. Again, I did not want to bolt over a pan of bread, so I held out as long as I could and finally told L. we had to leave. Then they started talking about after dinner drinks – NO!!! Thank god the host decided to kick us out since it was a school night!

Got home and all still looked perfect! I could not believe I had done it and still had a day of fun without sitting at home waiting for all the rising to take place. Now was time to unmold the beauties and get them ready to bake! Only 30 minutes until I could call it a wrap and head to bed!

Well, let’s just say – never be over confident when baking bread, especially this bread! They collapsed! They were flat baguettes! The color as beautiful! The texture was fantastic! The flavor was well, very french! But, something happened when I unmolded them – lost all their air, they were flat!

Moral to the story ….. Never be over confident until they come out of the oven! Was it a challenge – of course! Was it fun – definitely! Will, I make them again – on our next rainy weekend!!

We are going Nuts …



about the Click Photo Event! This month’s theme is all about Nuts. We had some extra Cranberries and Pistachios and since I wanted it to be somewhat “holiday” like, I mixed them up and recreated a favorite dish of ours, Sticky Buns for our friend, S. who was out visiting from Boston, we think he loved them! Back to photography …. we thought the color of the nuts worked nicely with the crannberries, so we shot away. As well, the buns were FANTASTIC!

Enjoy!