HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVE!!!

Hooray for today! It's my lover's Birthday! Today Glenn turns 26, what an old man, especially since I'm not even 22 yet! I'm just kidding of course, he's still got a few more years before the big 3-0 comes around. Sorry sorry, I just can't help it.

For his birthday, Glenn requested that I FINALLY make the Seattle Mariner Mousse Cupcakes that he's been dying to try. Those were actually the first "baseball cupcakes" that he came up with. What else could I do but oblige him?

These cupcakes are a fudge cupcake with added chopped up Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. The frosting is a light and fluffy chocolate mousse, and I added a little something extra special. I made moose ears! Well, not ears, but antlers, and they are SO CUTE! They were really fun to make and I am really proud of myself. After all, I did have to make these a little "extra special" since they are doubling as Baseball Cupcakes and Birthday Cupcakes.

The recipe can be found here. These are very much like brownies as opposed to cupcakes, so don't be startled by the thickness of the batter or the denseness of the cupcakes when they are done.

In any event, Happy Birthday Lover! I hope that today is absolutely wonderful. I am so blessed to be part of your life (especially as your wife!) I love you forever!

Cupcake Wednesdays: Pink Lemonade

Keeping up with the (new) tradition, I present you with this Wednesday's cupcake. Pink lemonade cupcakes. Basically these are a white cupcake kicked up with some mashed up strawberries as well as Kool-Aid lemonade powder and some lemon juice. I still have a good amount of tweaking to do until I think they are perfect. I think my stroke of genius came when I decided to brush lemon juice on the cupcakes as soon as they were out of the oven. Brilliant I tell you, brilliant. Anyway, these are quite good. Unfrosted, they are very muffin like, but that isn't a bad thing. Once I get my recipe perfected I will post it.

BTW, I make these the day ahead, obviously, since I am certainly not crazy enough to wake up at 2 in the morning to get these ready before work. So sue me if I post a Wednesday topic on Tuesday.

TWD: Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops

This one definitely sounded promising. I love Whoppers. I always make myself sick eating them when I get them at the movie theatres. At least now they are in manageable portions. This week's recipe was chosen by Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart (btw I love the color of her blog) and I was excited to try it.

The dough was very simple to make, as most cookie doughs are. However, in my haste to finish before my Pizza Hut delivery came, I wasn't paying attention and creamed 2 sticks of butter with the sugar instead of the 1 1/3 sticks of butter. Oops! I scraped that out, threw it out, and started over. At least I figured out my mistake before I wasted much else right? After that it was all smooth sailing. Baking them was a different story. Maybe my book was messed up or something, but it didn't have an oven temperature. Kind of odd. I guessed 350. I think I underbaked my cookies a bit too much, but I like them still. I like gooey cookies. To me, it just means they will last longer before they dry out.

Thanks Rachel! Good recipe pick this week. This was a great sweet tooth pacifier (aside from the fact that my cookies were severly underbaked and came out flat, very unlike the thick ones in the picture.) I still enjoyed them a lot. The only change was using Nesquik instead of the malted chocolate milk powder, They only had the plain flavor there and I was not about to pay 6 dollars for Ovaltine that I would not use. I will however be finishing off the Nesquik though. Yum! This week's TWD in one word: malty

Fixation Friday: Chocolatiest Crinkles

Yay! The first "challenge" of my very own baking group. We make anything and everything chocolate twice a month. I like to call our members "addicts" because really, who isn't addicted to chocolate. I've been really excited to start this group. It isn't strict, there aren't too many rules, and the main point is to have fun and eat chocolate. It can be a complicated recipe, or it can be as easy as chocolate rice krispie squares. Whatever. If you are interested, you can go to the site Chocolate Fixation, and there you will also find the recipe for this week.

These cookies are called Chocolatiest Crinkles. I chose them because I haven't made them since Christmas and Glenn loves them, and I thought he deserved a treat. They are also pretty easy to make too. I tweaked mine a bit. I don't roll them in powdered sugar before I bake them because I don't like the way they turn out. Instead I bake them without any added sugar, but after they are mostly cooled, I sift some over the cookies and it looks like snow. Fun stuff. These are great cookies, I reccommend them to anyone who likes chocolate.

Birthday Cupcakes!!!

Imagine my surprise after a month of working and bringing in goodies to the staff when my boss asks me if I can make something special for the Dean and her assistant who happened to have birthdays on the same day. Big surprise right? Yeah, I don't think so. Everyday I have a random teacher come by and ask if I have anything. Sheesh. I spoil them, but they may start to hate me if they get fat. You can't fault the baker when you're the taker. Anyway, I love my job. I am so happy to be there and I love the people I work with. I have so much fun with everyone, especially when I bring in treats.

My big dilemma here was I had no idea what to make. As I am sitting in my office earlier today I overhear a handful of people in the office next door to me talking about sweets. Of course my ears prick up, so I walked next door and asked for suggestions. You know what I get as an answer? "Whatever you want, be creative!" Boo. Worst answer ever. My only real stipulation was I wanted to use buttermilk because I have a ton right now. I finally nagged them into suggestions. One, make it gooey, in other words, put stuff in it so it explodes like the eclairs. Okay. Second suggestion, chocolate, because everyone likes chocolate. Third suggestion, oh wait, there was no suggestion. It amazes me how people are so opinionated, but when I ask their opinion about baked goods, they are put into a stupor. I guess sugar does that to you.

Enough of that. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE AND JOETTE!!!!!!!!!!

They probably won't ever see that, but now they can't say I don't care.

Cupcake Wednesday

Yes, I do know that it is not Wednesday yet. However, at work we have Late Start Wednesdays where the students can go in for extra help and the teachers can prep or have meetings, whatever, until 9:30 am. I decided that Wednesdays would be the best day for me to bring in cupcakes because that way the teachers who can't normally make it to my office will have time to.

Since Glenn started the Baseball Cupcakes blog for me, I have been making the recipes that he finds for Cupcake Wednesdays. Last week's was Philadelphia Phillie Cream Cheese Cupcakes (pictured below) and this week's was Cincinnati Red Velvet Cupcakes (pictured above.)

The cream cheese cupcakes were a big hit last week and I have a feeling these red velvet cupcakes will be well received as well. Unfortunately my red velvet was more like pinkish brown velvet. Whatever. If you want to see the recipes, head over to the Baseball Cupcakes blog.

***Update: Everyone ADORED the red velvet cupcakes. So many people asked me for the recipe. I had to turn a blind eye to certain returning customers who came back not once, not twice, but three times to steal another yummy cupcake.

TWD: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters

Whew... that title is a mouthful.

Like I said last Tuesday, I am totally getting this done on time. I am actually writing this on Wednesday the 27th and setting it to post at 12:01 AM on Tuesday the 2nd. Hooray for me. Enough back patting for me though.

I really enjoyed this recipe. It was so simple to make, but then again, most of Dorie's recipes are. If you can keep everything you need for the recipe close by, most recipes whip up in a matter of minutes. I can't really say the same thing about the pies and such, but oh well. Anyway, Glenn just opened the fridge and went, "Mmmmm... Cookie dough!" As he went to reach for the bowl, I quickly informed him that there's oatmeal in it. As soon as I could finish speaking he looked at me all disgusted like and says, "Why do I let you buy oatmeal? Never again, that's nasty!" In case it wasn't obvious enough, Glenn doesn't like oatmeal. Whatever, I don't make stuff with oatmeal all that much, and when I do, he doesn't need to eat it. It's not like I don't have an alternative form of sweets! The chocolate banded ice cream torte is sitting in the freezer right now, not to mention he just finished a piece of it. He boggles my mind sometimes, but I love him. I'm a major p.i.t.a. for him so I suppose we are even.

Anyway, now that one cookie has made it from bowl to oven to my mouth, I can officially say that I really like these cookies. I made a couple minor changes. First, I used half peanut butter chips and half chocolate chips and second I used dark brown sugar instead of light brown. Both changes made a big difference. Well I don't actually know that, but they sure are enjoyable cookies. They have that deep warmth and richness to them, if that makes any sense, but they feel good to eat. I suppose that's why they, whoever they is, coined the term "comfort food." Since I like my cookies on the chewier side, I baked mine at the minimum time, but I would suggest a minute or so less. I'm really glad I made these despite Glenn's protestations. This week's TWD in one word: warm