Animal Housewife

This time last year,  I was in and out of the doctor’s office and hospital, having biopsies and wondering what was wrong with me.  I practically lived in my pajamas.  I slept every night on the couch with the TV on. 

That was last year.  Merry Christmas everyone!  I’m happy and healthy.

Last Christmas my friend Amy gave me  a subscription to Bon Appetit magazine.  The cover photo on the very first issue I got was of the most fabulous cake.  My sister-in-law mentioned that she wanted to try it sometime.  I filed that in the back of my mind for later.   Well, her and my brother’s birthdays are close, so I decided to make it for the both of them at the same time.  I would say it was a success.

As I was adding the layers of cake, ganache, and cream, I grew amazed at the beauty of my creation.  I absolutely had to take a photo of the beautiful layers before covering them with the peppermint frosting:

The frosting itself was a thing of wonder - a sticky, almost marshmallow-y frosting with a cool peppermint flavor:

Here is the majestic creation after slices were cut and served at the birthday celebration:

I took this recipe from Love and Olive Oil, a great cooking/baking website. For the caramel filling, I used caramel that is packaged and sold for the purpose of dipping apple slices. The caramel, being pretty dense, slipped right into the holes that I cut into the cupcakes. Its density, however, did tend to make the cake crumble a little bit, so I kept the finished product in the refrigerator, which solved the problem. They tasted great cold anyway. The dark chocolate buttercream frosting is one of the best frostings I’ve ever made.

I made sugar cookies this weekend. I stole this recipe from my husband’s grandma, Gram. I use it every holiday. These cookies smell and taste like butter and sugar and a hint of vanilla and almond. They are delicate and sweet. I made icing for them out of powdered sugar and vanilla and milk. They didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I wanted them to, but I guess they’ll do for now.

This is a great recipe. They’re easy to make and were extremely popular. They’re richer than most of the other cupcakes I’ve made so far, but honestly - what chocolate peanut butter recipe isn’t rich? I’d recommend pouring yourself a tall, cold glass of milk to go with these.

I have been trying out different cupcake recipes lately.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

These are vanilla bean cupcakes.  It’s the first recipe I’ve ever used that calls for real vanilla bean seeds.  It was a fun recipe to make and they tasted delicious - like sugar and vanilla and butter.  They were sweet and simple and really very lovely.  Pretty, too!

Weeks ago, I tried a recipe for chocolate mint cupcakes.  The frosting was  a bit of a challenge because you have to put two different colored/flavored frostings side by side in the piping bag for the swirled affect.  My handiwork wasn’t perfect, but they still looked pretty cool.  These were VERY tasty.  The cake part was vegan, which I was very skeptical about, but it was moist and chocolatey and I honestly don’t think I would have known that they were vegan had I not made them myself.