Marshmallow Moments Cupcakes!

Happy Thursday, my friends!

This week I’m finally picking up on a few things I need to do despite all the work crazy going on.  Plus, today is supposedly the last day of the work week.  “Supposed” because I might have to go in to work and I believe, everyone at the office will be there also.  Either way, yesterday night, I needed to relax and after postponing actual baking for at least a few weeks, at somewhere near midnight, I decided I was not going to do it anymore and decided to improvise some cupcakes.

These Marshmallow Delight cupcakes didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I had envisioned in my head, but I think I have a way to remedy it if ever I make a second batch. Look at them, they aren’t too ugly, right?

Right out of the oven!

In case you wondered how I got the name, Marshmallow Moments is for the name of cereal I used from Sally’s Cereals.  They sell it at Walmart here in Canada (not sure about elsewhere). You could probably use Lucky Charms and it would have the same effect 🙂

How did I do these, you ask? Its actually extremely simple.

I used the recipe for Yellow Cupcakes in Betty Crocker’s The Big Book of Cupcakes and then before putting the batter in the oven, I sprinkled and nested the cereal as I liked on the top so that it would be combined together when it baked a look like little marshmallow (cereal) treasure on the top.

Here’s the recipe for Yellow Cupcakes:

Yellow Cupcakes

makes 24 cupcakes (I halved everything to make 12 instead)

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2/3 cup milk

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350F.  Place paper baking cups in each of 24 regular-size muffin cups.  Grease and flour muffin cups or spray with baking spray with flour

2. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt; set aside

3. In large bowl, beat butter with electric mixer on medium speed 30 seconds.  Gradually add sugar, about 1/4 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bowl occassionally.  Beat 2 minutes longer.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  On low speed, alternately add flour mixture, about 1/3 of mixture at  a time, and milk, about 1/2 mixture at  a time, beating just until blended.

4. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full.

5. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool in pans 5 minutes.  Remove cupcakes from pans; place on cooling racks to cool.

As usual, there are a few changes to this recipe.  While halving everything to get 12, I used 2 eggs (since 1.5 is a bit hard to achieve) and the normal amount of vanilla since it wouldn’t make a huge difference.  I also replaced the milk with almond milk (due to my lactose intolerance).  Thats all for the modifications on this one.

These cupcakes may have turned out to be a bit deformed looking.  Its only because I believe if I kept them in for 20 instead of the full 25, the marshmallows might not have melted quite so much and it would look better. As I was monitoring it, it was looking so pretty, except that if I were to make it again, I would stuff the cereal in the batter even more abundantly so it would look like a mountain of treasure hiding in the cupcake.

Aside its flawed appearance, this cupcake is really good.  The taste was well balanced and if you want less sweet, just decrease the sugar a tad because the cereal is already sugary.  I didn’t really mind because the taste was like biting into a crunchy layer on the top and then into the fluffiness of the cupcakes and I love the contrast of that feeling as I chew 🙂

“Long” weekend is coming up so be prepared, I have more baking adventures planned with a bit of an Easter theme hopefully!

What do think of this Marshmallow Moments cupcake?

And now…What’s up for 2014 here?

Yesterday, I posted up my personal New Year’s Goals HERE!  I don’t usually document most of those goals on my blog so, before I update my About page, this is whats going to go on here regarding goals for the new year! I’ll probably figure some spontaneous stuff as the year rolls on but for now, I put a lot of thinking and made some decisions.  Of course, I’d also love to hear your opinion on it 🙂

Let’s start with the stuff that will stay from 2013!

1) MOVIES!

Shitfest 2013

Movie reviews, participating in blogathons and the whole thing has really increased in the past year.  I’d even go so far as to say that it probably was the most grown part in the past year.  Writing reviews really takes a lot of time for me and I’m still finding a good balance as of how to really review movies.  BUT, I’ll do what I did last year and review what I’ve seen.  I will try my best to make it to the theatres more but I will also buy less movies and watch more on Netflix! 🙂

Aside from that, we’re looking at the same marathons going on like below:

January: Catching up with as many 2013 movies as possible (with some other older ones as well)

February 1-14: Valentine’s marathon (I already have a general plan for this)

March & August: Recommendation month (check out THIS post if you’re wondering what that is)

July: Fantasia Festival 2014

September: TIFF 2014 (I’ll try my best to make it there)

October: Halloween marathon

December: Christmas/holiday/winter marathon

I have a few months just to do some random movie viewing and I’m aiming to take it easy in general.  Nothing like daily movie reviews because that can get tiring so I’ll try for 2-3 movie reviews a week.

Any other suggestions? Marathons? Recommendations (if not I’ll take suggestions given to me over the course of last year in the comments)? 

2) Baking & Cooking

Hamburger cupcakes!

For the most part, baking is my passion.  Seeing as my goal is to improve on the appearances and decorations of my baked goods, I’m going to do a little cupcake project.  Maybe I’ll put themes to them or whatnot.  I haven’t worked out the details but I did get Betty Crocker’s Big Book of Cupcakes so I’m aiming for a little bit fancier desserts. How does Cupcake project sound?

As for cooking, I’m sorry to say that Bite of China Project was something I really couldn’t get going.  However, I do have plans with my best friend to revive it once she feels like she’s ready to blog in her life.  So, maybe I’ll open a blog with her some time down the road the bring the project up to pace.  I’m disappointed in myself for not being able to do that BUT, this year, I had thought about taking down cooking entirely but the last while of using healthier foods and substitutes for a healthier eating lifestyle, has really made me excited about cooking again.  So I’m thinking of making that into an official thing.

What do you think? Should cooking stay and exploring healthy foods/vegetables, etc? Look into healthier substitutes and that sort of thing? 

I’m aiming to get at least one recipe up every week and gradually increase to 2 or 3 as my priorities drop a bit.

3) BOOKS

Sadly, this is the one that I’ve been thinking of cutting out.  However, in the light that I don’t want to really cut it out completely, in 2014, I’m going to do small reviews  on monthly basis.  The only ones that are going to take full reviews will be when its for books written by bloggers.  Some of the best books I read this year were written by these authors.  If you do want to see more of what I’m reading, just search me up on Goodreads or drop me and email and I’ll add you 🙂

My goal is to read 40 books this year as per the Goodreads Reading Challenge.  I might change it to 35…depending on how crazy life gets 🙂 Still, not writing full on reviews will make life a lot easier.

4) WEEKLY WORKOUT ROUNDUPS

I’m not sure how many of you actually find this motivating.  This is more of a personal thing.  It gives me the illusion that I have people watching my progress so I keep going and pushing hard.  So, my plan is to stop once I reach Week 52.  However, if this does motivate this, I’d gladly keep doing it but on monthly basis, which I actually think is a pretty good idea.  Its something I’m thinking about 🙂 I’m at Week 43 right now so there is only 10 more posts to go up.  However, if you do want to join me in my quest, you could always follow me on Tribesports 🙂 It’ll be fun! If not, my workouts go directly to my Twitter feed as well.

5) TRAVEL/WRITING/DAILY PROMPT/PHOTO CHALLENGES

Other than Photo Challenges, everything else is something of a part time thing here.  I like to do it but I don’t travel all the time; I don’t do creative writing because I think I write bad and daily prompts are really when I’m inspired by the topic.  First off, I’ll try my best to keep up with Weekly Photo Challenge and A Word A Week Challenge.  I know that I’ve slacked off a bit at the end of the year but I’m ready to do well. I have a side goal to improve my photography skills and get to know my DSLR camera better. 🙂

Do you want to see more creative writing or daily prompts here? 

6) PERSONAL/VLOG/PIANO COVERS & MONTREAL EVENTS

Boyce Avenue Concert

The last section is also some new stuff I’ve implemented in 2013. Montreal Events and possibly just events around me that I go to, I’ll see cover all those things.  Its fun and I do it already.

BUT, my big question is whether you all would like to see more vlogs, piano covers and my personal posts (mostly about staying positive and stuff related to that)? How about my expanding the TV series and music obsessions? Do you like those segments? Which would you like to see more out of these?

OVERALL!

This has been a really long post, or it felt that way because it took me a span of hours to get it all down. I’d love to hear your opinion on where I want this to go. Is there something you drop by to check out? Is there something I did rarely but you want to see more of? Help me out by answering some of my questions?

Please leave me a comment, tweet, email (if you’re shy).  I’d really love to hear from you 🙂

Thanks for everything! I’ll be updating my menu and my side bar widgets this week to keep this organized a bit more.

Let’s play! My cat’s way of welcoming the New Year!

Now that this business is pretty much out of the way, I have reviews and photo challenges lined up for the rest of the week! Final note, I felt last year was a bit crazy, hence the chopping off or slowing down of certain segments and also, I was going at 2 posts a day but I’m going to gradually drop down to a post a day and maybe just round up to about 7-8 posts a week.  I’m trying to find a decent balance to match with my personal goals and not overload on stress 🙂

Christmas Baking: Shortbread!

Okay, Christmas is over but well, seeing as today is Boxing Day, I figured its not totally inappropriate to still use this title 😉 The final baked goods I made for Christmas was shortbread.

I am horrible at shortbread but every single time I do this, I change how I approach it a little and how that it’ll turn out better. This time, the taste was pretty spot on.  The cookies did not turn out how I wanted them to look though.  Hmm…I need to figure that part out. Here they are!

Shortbread!

The recipe is from Betty Crocker’s Christmas Cookbook.

SHORTBREAD

Makes about 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened

1/4 cup sugar

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon almond extract, if desired

1. Heat oven to 350F. In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon.  Stir in flour and almond extract.  (If dough is crumbly, mix in additional 1 to 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened.)

2. On lightly floured surface, roll dough into 9×6 inch rectangle, 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into 1 1/2 inch squares with knife or cut with 1 1/2 inch cookie cutters.  On ungreased cookie sheet, place squares or shapes about 1 inch apart.

3. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until set.  Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.  Cool completely about 30 minutes.

Lets start with modifications.  I used vanilla extract instead of almond extract.  Which comes to the point that I could have done brown sugar shortbread by replacing the sugar with brown sugar but I didn’t read that far until after I poured the sugar in.  What could I say? Next time, right?

Regardless, I pulled out my new bite size cookie cutters that my mom bought for me in Hong Kong on her last trip, thats why its not completely Christmas theme but there was teddy bears and stars.  I do have to say, this is the most impressive batch I’ve made which makes this pretty sad.

The taste was very delicious: a nice balance between buttery and sweetness.  It was crumbly and melted in my mouth.  I loved it! Like I said, I’m quite proud of the taste.  Only thing I need to work on is the appearance. 🙂

I still have some potluck baking in a few days so I have more baking and cooking going up.  It’ll be a fun final run to bring in 2014. So come back for more, k?

Hope all of you had a great Christmas celebrations and enjoy the boxing day sales! 🙂

Mini Crumb Cakes!

Good news is that that I finally managed to find time to bake! YAY!  I was planning on keeping it Halloween or fall-themed at the very least.  It was running a bit late so this small and quick recipe for Mini Crumb Cakes seemed like the logical choice.  Plus, it doesn’t make too many, meaning I can get around to a more appropriate and fancy recipe this weekend 🙂

Lets take a look at those Mini Crumb Cakes, shall we?

Mini Crumb Cakes

I got this recipe from my relatively newer cookbook Betty Crocker The Big Book of Cupcakes.  Its super simple and takes about 10 minutes to put together and another 30 minutes in the oven. A quick fresh out of the oven snack if you ever feel like having something sweet.

Makes 6 mini cakes

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup butter (or margarine), softened

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp powdered sugar

Fresh out of the oven!

How to Make it:

1) Heat oven to 350F. Place paper baking cup in each of 6 regular size muffin cups.  In a large bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar and butter with spoon until crumbly. Reserve 1/3 cup mixture for topping.

2) Stir egg, milk, baking powder and cinnamon into remaining crumbly mixture until well mixed.  Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.  Sprinkle reserved crumbly mixture over batter

3) Bake 20 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.  Cool 5 minutes.  Remove cakes from pan; place on cooling rack.  Before serving, sprinkle warm cakes with powdered sugar.  Serve warm or cooled.

 

These turned out to be really awesome.  It smelled amazing and it was super easy to make.  Also, the texture was very good especially with the streusel-like topping.  Its like a coffee cake streusel cupcake.  There wasn’t need for many modifications.  I did replace the milk with almond milk.  Also, I couldn’t find my powdered sugar so I didn’t sprinkle any extra sugar on the top.  It was already sweet enough for me, so I don’t really think its necessary.

Inside the Mini Crumb Cake

I had a tasting even though it was really late at night.  The texture was moist and mixed with the texture of the initial bite of the streusel topping, it had gave it a little crunch as well.  Very awesome recipe! You should try it out.  It does only make 6 mini cakes so you might want to double the recipe accordingly if you plan on making it for more company.

Happy Tuesday everyone! 🙂

 

 

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes!

After talking about it for 2 weeks, I finally opened up my new cookbook and got back into the baking world 🙂 Suffice to say, it was a very pleasant and relaxing experience for me. Man, did I miss it so much! After flipping through The Big Book of Cupcakes, I chose to do the Snickerdoodle Cupcakes! If you haven’t seen or tasted Snickerdoodles, you can head on right over HERE to check out the ones I made and the recipe if you’d like to try it out because they have heavenly!

Snickerdoodle cupcakes

The recipe is from Betty Crocker’s The Big Book of Cupcakes!

Makes 24 cupcakes

 

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

3 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup shortening or butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

5 egg whites

2 1/2 tsps vanilla

1 1/4 cups milk

Cinnamon Frosting:

6 cups powdered sugar

2 tsps ground cinnamon

2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 tbsp vanilla

2-4 tbsps milk

Topping:

2 tsps granulated sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

1) Heat oven to 350F.  Place paper baking cups in each of the regular-sized muffin cups.

2) In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon; set aside

3) In large bowl, beat shortening with electric mixer on medium speed 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about 1/3 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bowl occasionally.  Beat 2 minutes longer.  Add egg whites, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  On low speed, alternately add flour mixture, about 1/3 of mixture at a time, and milk, about 1/2 at a time, beating just until blended.

4) Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full.

5) Bake 18 to 20 minutes.  Cool in pans 5 minutes.  Remove cupcakes from pans; place on cooling racks to cool.

6) Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix powdered sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon and butter with electric mixer on low speed.  Stir in vanilla and 2 tbsp of milk.  Gradually beat in enough remaining milk, 2 tsp at a time, to make frosting smooth and spreadable.

7) Frost cupcakes.  In small bowl, mix topping ingredients; sprinkle over frosted cupcakes.

My modifications from the original recipe above! For starters, my cupcake was just a white cupcake, because of the setup of the book, I totally forgot I had to add in cinnamon.  Silly and forgetful, I know! I used shortening instead of butter and milk was replaced with unsweetened vanilla-flavored almond milk.  This helped as I ran out of vanilla during this recipe. For the frosting, I used butter and also decreased to 4 cups powdered sugar as I know it always is way too sweet (for me).  Also, I used 3 tbsp of milk approximately to make the frosting a nice texture.

 

The result was great! The frosting was a perfect sweetness balanced with the delicious and fluffy white cupcake.  The snickerdoodle taste was definitely there.  It was relatively easy to make.  I did have to make two different batches.  However, it was definitely worth it! Smelled awesome and tasted delicious!

I promise I’m back with more baking, k? Just needed to get back in the groove 😉 I already have my next dessert figured out! 🙂

Hamburger Cupcakes!

My Father’s Day baking project this year was Hamburger Cupcakes!

Summer is around the corner and my boyfriend and his dad love the grill.  Last week, when my best friend brought this up to me, I knew I had to try it 🙂

Hamburger cupcakes!

To find the original recipe, please follow this link: http://www.bakerella.com/fast-food-fun/

Prepare for these to take a good amount of time to make however, they are composed of the simplest form of baking as in using baking mixes.  I haven’t used mixes in a long time but seeing as I had an afternoon to prepare for it, I felt it was the best choice.  I used Duncan Hines baking mixes for the moist yellow cake and fudge brownies.  The original chose Betty Crocker and Pillsbury instead.  I don’t have those available here so I used what I could find and improvised 🙂

Hamburger cupcakes inside

The hardest part was making the right color icing and decorating it.  This was possibly the best control I’ve had and it still looks a bit weird.  But, when you put the top on it, aside from having very pastel colored condiments, they do look quite like burgers, right?

I ended up making 12 Hamburger Cupcakes and a piles of “fries” from sugar cookies.  I somehow forgot to take pictures of them.  I used the President’s Choice Sugar Cookie mix.  They are quite delicious 🙂 It would make for the whole Happy Meal concept but dessert style!

I had 24 cupcakes so guess what I did with the rest? I used the remaining icing (which I used as they recommended Duncan Hines Home-style Creamy Vanilla Icing) and decorated some cupcakes!

I was pretty happy with the results and everyone loved it! It seems to be a very creative and sweet hit. 🙂

Its an awesome hit! If you get the chance, maybe you can whip it up for a barbecue party or next year’s Father’s day? Whatever you want, this is just so fun to make.  Time-consuming but very fun! 🙂

Happy Monday everyone! 🙂

Deluxe Christmas Fudge Bites

Anyone lovers of fudge? I know a few people that would jump up with joy if they saw this.  However, its the first time that I’ve ever taken up the challenge of making fudge.  This year, I wanted to make a little change so I did this one: Deluxe Christmas Fudge.  I halved the recipe but poured it into a 9×9 inch baking pan so it turned out to be more fudge bites.  Still, everyone who tasted it loved it.

 

DELUXE CHRISTMAS FUDGE BITES (inspired from Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup miniature marshmallows

1/2 can (7 oz) sweetened condensed milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup pistachio nuts

1/4 cup chopped maraschino cherries

1. Line 9×9 inch square pan with foil, leaving 1 inch of foil overhanging at two opposite sides of pan.  Grease foil with butter.

2. In 4 cup microwaveable measuring cup, place chocolate chips, marshmallows and milk.  Microwave uncovered on High 3 to 5 minutes, stirring every minute, until marshmallows and chips are melted and can be stirred smooth.

3. Stir in vanilla, nuts and cherries.  Immediately pour into pan.  Refrigerate about 2 hours or until firm.  Remove fudge from pan, using foil edges to lift.  Cut into little bite size pieces or into diamond shapes.

These are absolutely beautiful.  It was supposed to be with an 8 cup microwaveable measuring cup which I don’t own so I halved the recipe.  The recipe on top is adapted to what I used and how I did it.  However, all you have to do is double everything and you will have the actual Deluxe Christmas Fudge a la Betty Crocker style.

As a side note, you could also decorate it with melted vanilla baking chips.  All you have to do is melt and drizzle on top of the fudge before popping it into the fridge.

Fudges are new to me however, I think a lot of people are quite familiar with it.  Do you like cherries and pistachios in fudge? What other ingredients work well with fudge? Other varieties?

Christmas Baking: Peppermint Swirls

I’ve been a bit silent with this Christmas baking but the next 2  days, I’ll get your mouth watering from desserts.  I promise you that.

I made myself start my Christmas baking on Saturday night with fun cute cookies called Peppermint Swirls.  Although you will see that when it comes to these cookies that need artistic touch, it doesn’t always turn out the way I want it to.  Next time I do it, it’ll be better. Still, I’d like to share them with you because despite them looking more like Peppermint Smushes, they tasted AMAZING!

I found this recipe in my Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook.

PEPPERMINT SWIRLS

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp peppermint extract

1/4 tsp red food colour

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1. Heat oven to 350F.  In large bowl, beat butter, powdered sugar and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed.  Stir in flour.  Divide dough in half.  Stir peppermint extract and food colour in 1 half.  Divide each colour of dough in half

2. Shape each piece of dough on generously floured surface into rope, 12 inches long.  Place 2 ropes, 1 red and 1 white, side by side, Twist ropes.  Repeat with remaining 2 pieces of dough.

3. Cut twisted ropes into 1/2 inch pieces: shape each into a ball.  On ungreased cookie sheet, place balls about 1 inch apart.  Flatten to about 1/4 inch thickness with greased bottom of glass dipped in granulated sugar.

4. Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until set.  Remove with cookie sheet to wire rack.

For this one, I chose to use butter.  Somehow my body is alright with that despite being lactose sensitive. Its also my first time using food colouring and peppermint extract.  The extract is the same as always but the red food colouring was the problem.  I had a hard time mixing with the dough so thats why we see a slight swirl of dough and red dough on the supposed to be red side.

Also, something to note is that if you do try this out, the dough will be a bit more crumb-ish. I had to knead the dough for maybe 5-10 minutes before they would become more like a complete piece of dough and still the side that wasn’t red was not as stuck together because it was drier.  Because of that, I had a hard time putting the ropes together and therefore, the results were more smushes than swirls.

This may not look too appealing, although after looking at it a few times, the “red” is a nice touch so it makes it look acceptable, the cookie itself is very good.  However, I covered the twisted red and normal dough piece in sugar on both sides before putting it in the oven and if you cover it with enough sugar, the taste combination is perfect.  You can smell a nice minty refreshing smell and taste mixed with sugar that melts in your mouth when you take the first bite.

This one is a bit more time consuming and if you are more skilled in the artistic decorative way in terms of baking, this one is a very good choice to make.

What do you think? Maybe someone else has done this with another recipe, what would make the dough a bit more like a dough to start off? Any ideas or suggestions?

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I promise you a lot more Christmas baking recipes coming up.  For now, I’ll leave you with this and head off to make my next batch.

Happy Christmas Eve’s Eve!