Red, White and Blue Cupcakes!

Lately I have seen a lot of "tie dye" cupcakes in the food blogging world and I always think they are so cool looking. I remember the first time I saw them I knew that I was going to have to make them! So I didn't have to brain storm for very long to decide what I wanted to make for the 4th of July. I have to say that I am very very pleased with the results! They turned out even cuter than I had hoped for. So if you are looking for an impressive treat for your 4th of July celebration, look no further. :)



Red, White and Blue Cupcakes

Supplies
White cake batter (I used the Wilton recipe below but don't feel bad if you just grab a box of white cake mix from the grocery!)
Red Food Coloring
Blue Food Coloring
3 bowls (1 for each color)
Buttercream Frosting
Red, White and Blue Sprinkles

Instructions:
Prepare the cake batter as directed.

Divide the batter into 3 bowls. Leave one bowl white. Add 3-4 drops of red food coloring to another bowl and 3-4 drops of blue food coloring in another. Mix the food coloring in and add more if the colors are not bright enough.

Prepare a cupcake pan with liners. Start by dropping a spoonful of white batter into the bottom of each liner. Follow with a spoonful of blue. If you want you can go back with a toothpick and swirl the colors a little bit, just be careful not to "stir" the batter because the colors will blend). After the blue do a drop of white in each. Then a spoonful of red. Finish with small drops of each color on top.

Bake according to cake batter recipe.

Top each cupcake with buttercream frosting and sprinkles.



Classic White Cake - I cut the recipe in half and below I've listed the measurements I used
(Source: Wilton Website)

3 cups cake flour sifted
1 tablespoons baking powder
3/4 cups butter or margarine, softened
1 1/2cups granulated sugar
1cups milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 egg whites

Preheat oven to 325°F. Prepare cupcake pans with cupcake liners (24)

Sift together flour and baking powder. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Set aside. Beat egg whites until stiff, but not dry. Set aside. With mixer at slow speed, add flour mixture to butter mixture, alternately with milk. Beat well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Gently fold egg whites into batter. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

So You Grew a Garden...Now What? 2

Tonight's edition of "So You Grew a Garden... Now What" is dedicated to the impatient gardener. It's so hard to plan your garden and then plant your garden and then....wait. The beauty of Fried Green Tomatoes is that you don't have to wait until your pretty little tomato plant turns red. :)

Like many people the first time I heard of Fried Green Tomatoes was during the movie by the same name. I have always been interested in trying to make my own but I was worried that I wouldn't like them. Finally this year I decided I would try them and make it a part of the series. I was very pleasantly surprised with the flavor of these. The inside is slightly tart and the outside is crispy and delicious. I will absolutely make these again!


Fried Green Tomatoes
(Source: Simply Recipes)

3 medium, firm green tomatoes
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup milk
2 beaten eggs
2/3 cup fine dry bread crumbs or cornmeal
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 Cut unpeeled tomatoes into 1/2 inch slices. Sprinkle slices with salt and pepper. Let tomato slices stand for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, place flour, milk, eggs, and bread crumbs in separate shallow dishes.

2 Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet on medium heat (Be very careful to not get the oil too hot!). Dip tomato slices in milk, then flour, then eggs, then bread crumbs. In the skillet, fry half of the coated tomato slices at a time, for 4-6 minutes on each side or until brown. As you cook the rest of the tomatoes, add olive oil as needed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

So You Grew a Garden...Now What? 1

For a month now I have been patiently waiting to find a ripe vegetable in my garden that is ready to pick. Finally, when I went to water the garden yesterday, I saw a cucumber through the big beautiful green leaves. When I went to pick it I was even more excited to find that there was another one just a few inches away! Every year I am always amazed at how quickly a vegetable will grow. One day you'll see a little cucumber that's a measly 2 inches and then the next day, BAM, it's a full grown cucumber and that's exactly what happened! We planted several different kinds of cucumbers and the 2 that were ready yesterday were an English style, so they were long and skinny. (We also planted a pickling variety so you can except a pickle recipe in the series!)

It really was perfect that a cucumber was the first vegetable that was ready because over the weekend I thought of a recipe idea and it has been on my mind ever since. This recipe would also be great with fresh garden tomatoes but mine are still all green, so I bought one from the store. Hopefully it will be my last store bought tomato of the summer!

So You Grew a Garden... Now What? - Recipe #1
Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Salad Ingredients -

1 cucumber, peeled and cut into bite size pieces
1 tomato, cut into bite size pieces
1/4-1/2 small red onion, cut into 1 inch strips
2 tbsp crumbled feta cheese

Dressing ingredients -
3 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp dry oregano
salt and pepper to taste
juice of half of a lemon

Whisk together all of the dressing ingredients. Pour the dressing* over the chopped vegetables and feta cheese, refrigerate for several hours. I dressed the vegetables in a Tupperware so that I could occasionally give it a shake and redistribute the dressing.

* I recommend pouring just half of the dressing on at first and tossing with the vegetables. Then if it needs more you can add more. Depending on the size of your vegetables you may need all or less of the dressing.

So You Grew a Garden...Now What? Introduction

I am very excited to announce that I am starting a Summer Time Series of posts! The series is called "So you grew a garden...now what?" For the past 4 years Jesse and I have grown vegetables in our backyard with varying degrees of success. The common trend is that each year by the time we roll around to August we've run out of steam, both in caring for the garden and finding new ways to use the vegetables which suddenly seem to be coming out of our ears. This year we set out to have the largest and most successful garden yet and this includes finding new and exciting ways to use our harvest. I thought it would be fun to share this experience with my readers. I have at least 10 posts planned including ideas for storing the different vegetables and great new recipes that will each highlight different vegetables from the garden. Part 1 will be posted later tonight!


I'll start with a brief description of our garden. In years past we have had small plots behind our garage and we always seemed to overcrowd our plants. This year we made sure to leave plenty of space for everything to grow and we tilled a very large plot in our side yard. The plot is about 19' x 29'. So it's quite large. Here is what we planted:

• Tomatoes - 14
  
• Peppers - banana, jalapeno, pimento, bell, red chili
  
• Cucumbers - 5 or 6
• Broccoli - 6
• Summer Squash - 2
• Zucchini - 1
• Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Melon - 1 each
• Corn - ~3 or 4 small close together rows
• Sunflowers - didn't survive the deer :(
• Pumpkins and gourds (can't wait for fall!!)
• Small planters of basil and flat leaf parsley

Now that you have the background I hope you are looking forward to the first official post of the series which will be posted later tonight!

Cooking With Kids

Normally on this blog I like to post a picture of a final product and the recipe, but today I am taking a slight deviation. This is because I want to share a really fun experience that I had this past weekend, cooking with two of my cousins. My aunt Ari and her three kids are visiting from Maryland and staying with my mom. I'm not sure how it works in most families but in my family, when someone is visiting from out of town, we try and spend a lot of time together. Saturday was no exception as we spent the day at the park and then in the evening my mom hosted a small cookout. During the day she asked me if I would make some brownies for the evenings dessert. Obviously I said yes and (to my excitement) my two cousins asked if they could help! I have to tell you, cooking with kids is a blast. It was fun teaching them some new tricks and watching them figure out how to do other things on their own. Of course it was easy to see that both of them have helped their mom in the kitchen before because they did such a great job!

The end result were some killer brownies that everyone thoroughly enjoyed. Of course we were all so excited to eat them I actually forgot take a picture, oops! I did make a few slight variations to the original recipe that I posted here so I am posting the edited version below all of the pictures. Now check out my baking pro cousins!

I started by having Alli melt the butter on stove.


While Alli was doing that I had Harris measure out the flour.

Then we realized that we didn't have enough cocoa powder so we improvised! I cut up some bakers chocolate and we added it to the sugar/butter on the stove!


Then they took turns stirring the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
When we finally got the brownies in the oven we, of course, had to lick the spoon!


And as with any great project, we needed someone to supervise!



Best Fudge Brownies
(Adapted from King Arthur)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups Dutch-process cocoa
2 squares (2 ounces total)semi-sweet bakers chocolate, chopped into small pieces
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour


Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" pan

In a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine. Continue to heat briefly, just until it's hot (about 110°F to 120°F), but not bubbling; it'll become shiny looking as you stir it. Heating this mixture a second time will dissolve more of the sugar, which will yield a shiny top crust on your brownies.

Add the bakers chocolate and stir until melted. Take off of the heat and set aside to slightly cool.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour cocoa powder, salt and baking powder.

Transfer the sugar mixture to a medium-sized mixing bowl. Stir in the vanilla and then whisk in the eggs, stirring until smooth.

Slowly add the dry ingredients and stir just until smooth and combined.

Spoon the batter into a lightly greased 9" x 13" pan.

Bake the brownies for about 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, or with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it. The brownies should feel set on the edges, and the center should look very moist, but not uncooked. Remove them from the oven and cool on a rack before cutting and serving.

Whole Wheat Applesauce Spice Muffins

Wow, that's a mouthful (no pun intended :))! Seriously though, these muffins are really great. They are everything a good muffin should be. Moist, flavorful and filling without being too heavy. But the very best part about these muffins is the smell. I can't even describe how delicious my house smelled while these muffins were baking. I couldn't wait to eat them so I had one pretty much as soon as they came out of the oven. These are going to be a welcome breakfast treat for the rest of this week.

Whole Wheat Applesauce Spice Muffins
(Adapted from: Food for my Life)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat white flour (I use King Arthurs)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup light brown sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup unsweetened applesauce

Streusel Topping
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and prepare a muffin tin with liners.
In a small bowl blend the dry streusel ingredients. Use your fingers to work butter into the flour/sugar mixture.
Sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt. Set aside.
In a bowl combine the applesauce, butter and brown sugar.
Add the eggs, one at a time, to the wet ingredients.
Slowly add the dry ingredients to dry ingredients and stir just until combined.
Fill the muffin liners 3/4 of the way full (about 1/3 of cup per muffin) and top with the streusel mixture.
Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

The Chewy

One of my favorite Food Network stars has always been Alton Brown. When I was first getting into cooking his shows were really helpful because he takes one thing and focuses an entire episode on it. So you will learn several different techniques for using an ingredient or several different ways to create a dish. The science behind it is also extremely helpful for a new cook and he does a really great job of breaking things down. For this reason, I knew that I was going to have to try this recipe when I started seeing it pop up in all of my favorite blogs.

This cookie came from one of Alton Brown's shows where he made a few changes to the classic Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe to make three distinct types of cookies. The Chewy, The Thin and The Puffy. While I probably will not try The Thin cookie, The Chewy sounded right up my alley. The result was just as I had expected, great! The cookie is definitely chewy and the I like how the chocolate flavor really comes through. I would like to try to make this again and cut back on the butter a tiny bit because I felt like they were just a tad greasier than I like, but other than that I would make no changes! **Edit 6/11 After sitting for a day the cookies are even better! I am not sure I will change the amount of butter next time. I may expiriment with 1 1/2 sticks, but after cooling all the way, they are no longer "greasy"**


The Chewy
(Source: Alton Brown via The Beantown Baker)

Ingredients

2 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.

Pour the melted butter in the mixer's work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Chill the dough (I chilled my dough for 1 hour), then scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet (I was able to fit 12 cookies per sheet using my medium scoop). Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown (mine were finished in 12 minutes), checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

*TIP* When storing chocolate chip cookies, keep a slice of bread in the air tight container. It will keep the cookies moist and chewy!