MDBD - More Cupcakes

This past weekend's MDBD was cupcakes once again. We actually ended up making two different kinds of cupcakes because I was having one of those days where I just couldn't pick which recipe to try. It actually worked our well because both recipes only made 12 cupcakes a piece.

The first one we tried, which was actually the only one Zoey helped me make, was originally pinned because Scott loves peanut butter, so I tend to pin anything peanut butter related. This particular recipe is for Peanut Butter Banana Brownie Cupcakes and the it came from Creative Outpour

Peanut Butter Banana Brownie Cupcakes

Ingredients for Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS:
1 banana
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder


INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

 Fill 12 cup cupcake tin with liners
Smash the banana with a pastry blender

 Stir in sugar, eggs (one at a time), and vanilla

  Add in cocoa, flour, salt and baking powder

 Add batter to cupcake tin with an ice cream scoop
Bake for 20 minutes

Cool for 15 minutes before adding frosting

Monkey joined us today for MDBD

 Now it comes time for the peanut butter part of this recipe, the frosting. Frosting recipes and I are not friends. They almost never turn out. So needless to say, I was worried about this one. I probably wouldn't have even attempted to make it except for the fact that I didn't have to use butter in the recipe (I feel like all the other frosting I've made have tasted way too much like butter). I went ahead and gave this one a shot, and I'm glad I did. It turned out so good. 

Ingredients for frosting

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup butter, olive oil, or coconut oil (pick which one you want to use. I went with olive oil)

3/4 cup peanut butter 

3 Tbsp milk

INSTRUCTIONS:

 Combine all ingredients in bowl

  Blend with hand mixer until creamy, but don't over mix because it will start to break up

Put into piping bag and pipe onto cooled cupcakes

Finished product (My piping abilities are improving)

Final Ranking (1-10)
     1= Throw Directly in the Trash
     5= Not Bad, but Not Great
     10= Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

Scott: 7.5 (Banana was subtle. Frosting very peanut buttery and tasty)

Kristin:8.5 (I really liked these. I thought they were a good mix of flavors and the frosting was awesome)

The second cupcake recipe that I made was Indoor Smores Cupcakes from Taste's of Lizzy T's. I picked this recipe purely for the look of the cupcake. As I mentioned last week, the theme for Zoey's party is the Lorax. These cupcakes reminded me of the barbaloots and their love of marshmallows. 

 

Ingredients

The recipe linked above was less of a recipe and more of instructions for decorating the cupcakes. It calls for chocolate cupcakes and chocolate frosting, so you could use any recipe you want for those. I went with the boxed mix pictured above. It was a combo that had the cupcake mix and the frosting mix in one box. I hoped this would help with my previously mentioned issue with making frosting. In addition to the cupcakes and frosting, you need marshmallows (one for each cupcake) and Teddy Grahams. You could use any flavor Teddy Grahams you wanted. I went with chocolate (much to Scott's displeasure) because I thought they looked more like barbaloots. I did not add the chocolate pieces that were in the original recipe.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Make your cupcakes and let them cool

 My cupcake liners are apparently smaller than average, so I had more batter than would fit in 12 cupcake liners. As a result, I overfilled them and ended up with domes on my cupcakes. I just used a bread knife to level them off. This worked out well because the little tops were perfect size for Zoey to eat. 

Frost your cooled cupcakes with a small amount of frosting

Place the marshmallows on a baking sheet and bake them in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes, or until lightly browned. If needed, broil them for just a minute to get them the color you'd like, but watch them carefully

After you've removed the marshmallows from the oven, place one marshmallow on the top of each cupcakes and follow that with a Teddy Graham

Final Ranking (1-10)
     1= Throw Directly in the Trash
     5= Not Bad, but Not Great
     10= Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

Scott: 4 (Marshmallows not that great)

Kristin:3 (I think these turned out cute, but the marshmallow was not a good addition. I didn't even finish eating one)

MDBD - Dreamy Orange Cupcakes

Our second cupcake in our experiment to find the perfect cupcake for Zoey's birthday was Dreamy Orange Cupcakes from Recipes, Recipes, Recipes. I picked this recipe because the orange color reminded me of the Lorax, which is the theme for Zoey's party this year (Don't tell anyone. It's a secret. LOL).

Dreamy Orange Cupcakes

Our Ingredients

1 package orange cake mix
3/4 cup Miracle Whip
1 envelope dry whipped topping mix
3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (approx 3 oranges)
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons grated orange zest

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees 

Line 24 muffin cups with liners

Juice your oranges

Don't use your mouth. You need a juicer

 Beat together the orange cake mix, Miracle Whip, whipped topping mix, orange juice, eggs, and orange zest in a large bowl with an electric mixer on low speed until mixture is moist, about 1 min.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, then increase speed to medium and continue beating until well blended, about 2 mins

 Fill the prepared cupcake cups about 2/3 full of batter.
Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes

Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack before frosting

The original source for this recipe also had a recipe for a cream frosting and an orange butter cream frosting. However, as I've noted in other posts, I've never had luck making my own frosting, so I took the easy way and bought some orangesicle frosting. 

 I am working on improving my piping skills. I think these turned out a little bit better than the last attempt. However, I kind of rigged a pipping bag out of a ziplock bag, and I was using some weird piping tip I found in a drawer. I think it might have been meant for a cookie press type contraption. About halfway through frosting the cupcakes, my ziplock split and frosting started coming out everywhere. I gave up at that point and just frosted what I had left with a knife. 

Finished Product

 Final Ranking (1-10)
     1= Throw Directly in the Trash
     5= Not Bad, but Not Great
     10= Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

Scott: 8 (No comment. People at his work liked them)

Kristin:7 (I didn't really think they had very much flavor, but they were still good)

 

Zoombezi Bay 2013

One of the perks of living in a city like Columbus is that there are lots of fun family activities to do. One of our yearly traditions is a trip to Zoombezi Bay. This was our third year going. The first year we took my niece, Shaylin, who was visiting over the summer, and the second year we went with my best friend, Amanda, and her little boy, Colin, who were visiting from Utah. Both of those years, Scott's mom and step dad came with us. This year we didn't have any visitors, so it was just the five of us. We have always rented a cabana because it's nice to have somewhere out of the shade where you can leave your stuff and come back to relax out of the sun. This year, we really didn't need the shade because we ended up going on a pretty overcast day and the temperature only got to the mid 70's.

Going into this year's trip I was a little nervous about how Zoey would do. Just a few months ago she would freak out when it was bath time and hated getting wet. However, this appears to of just been a phase for a few months because she once again absolutely LOVED Zoombezi and the water slides. Zoombezi has a great kids area and Scott took her down the slides there over and over and over again.

While the slides were her favorite by far, Zoey also enjoyed the lazy river. It's crazy how she is now tall enough to touch in the lazy river, as well as the wave pool. In the wave pool she was a dare devil and kept trying to take the waves head on. She'd get knocked back by them and just keep going.

It was yet another full filled, yet exhausting day at Zoombezi. I can't wait until next year. Here's a pic from each previous year. Zoey just keeps growing!!!

MDBD - Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

As I was thinking of writing this blog, I was trying to come up with some witty title for the blog. Something like MDBD - The Great Cupcake Experiment. However, the sad fact of the matter is that I am not witty, so I guess we'll just stick with the name of the recipe. LOL!

Anyhow, anyone who knows me, or sees my Facebook page, knows that I start planning Zoey's birthday party pretty much as soon as her last party ends. Since it's in November, it makes sense that I am now planning the menu. I have already ordered her cake, but I am doing a small cake and then making cupcakes to supplement. I decided to use MDBD to experiment with different recipes. Our first experiment came from Bird On A Cake and was for Cherry Limeade Cupcakes.

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

Our Ingredients

 Ingredients

Cherry Cupcakes

• 1 box white cake mix
• 1/2 cup maraschino cherry juice
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/3 cup oil
• 3 eggs
• 10 oz. jar maraschino cherries (cut into quarters)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line a cupcake pan with liners

I was experimenting with liners as well. I have some paper, and then both sizes of the silicone ones I have

Drain cherries, place juice to the side, and cut cherries into quarters

In a large bowl, combine cake mix, cherry juice, water, oil and eggs

You should see this kid spin a bowl. She is awesome at it

Mix until well blended

Fold in maraschino cherries

I taught Zoey all about folding ingredients in

Pour batter into prepared liners

Here are the ones I put just in the silicone liners on a baking sheet

Bake for 18-20 minutes

Frosting

 Over at Bird On A Cake, she made the lime frosting herself and you can see the recipe over there. However, when I tried to make frosting a few MDBDs ago, it was horrible. It had this terrible butter after taste. So I decided to take the easy way out and buy frosting. I was hoping to get the Duncan Hines Frosting Creations packet in Key Lime. However, they didn't have it at Walmart, so I instead went with a can of Pillsbury Key Lime.

I put it in a piping bag and attempted to pipe it onto my cupcakes. I found out that I need a WAY bigger star tip, and was also reminded how bad I am at frosting things. Hopefully practice will improve my skill. 

I left a few up frosted in case Zoey didn't like the frosting

This is how it's supposed to look

 Final Ranking (1-10)
     1= Throw Directly in the Trash
     5= Not Bad, but Not Great
     10= Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

Scott: 6.5 (Good but frosting had a slight aftertaste and cupcakes were light on cherry flavor if the bite didn't actually have a chunk of cherry)

Kristin:7.5 (I thought these were actually pretty good. I agree with Scott that there wasn't a huge cherry flavor, and it didn't really remind me of a cherry limeade. However, I still thought they had good flavor and were moist)

I normally don't list a rating for Zoey, but I don't think she was a huge fan. The first one we gave her, she picked all the cherries out and fed them to Tempe. She also didn't finish her cupcake, which is kind of big deal cuz the kid doesn't have a hunger turn off switch and will eat anything she likes. I don't think these will make the cut for her birthday, but I will keep the recipe in the "Things I made that kind of turned out" file.

Cooking as a Family

Anyone who reads this blog (which I think is just Scott, my mom, and my friend Tasha), I bake with Zoey once a week for Mommy Daughter Bake Day. However, I have also been doing a lot more cooking lately as well. Now that Scott actually works more then I do (being partially unemployed has that effect), I am in charge of dinner all but one night a week. I like to try recipes I find on Pinterest, and honestly most of the time they don't turn out.

A few weeks/months ago I came across a simple recipe for Pepperoni Roll Ups and told Scott I was going to make it. For various reasons it just ever happened. First I didn't buy enough crescent rolls, then by the time I got another can I had given Zoey all the cheese in her lunches, then there were nights that I just didn't feel like cooking. Well, Friday night I actually got around to making them.

I figured they were easy enough that Zoey could help out, so I pulled out her beloved learning tower and got things underway.  Scott id very good at helping out and next thing I knew we were making dinner as a family. Zoey helped place the pepperoni on the crescent rolls, after she took a bite out of a couple. LOL!. She also helped Scott cut the string cheese in half, and then took a bite to make sure they were good.

For being a pretty simple recipe, they turned out to be pretty tasty.

MDBD - Peach Cobbler

As I noted in my previous post,we recently went peach picking at a local orchard. As a result we were left with way more peaches then I thought we could eat, so I decided to find a recipe that called for fresh peaches. Pinterest actually let me down here. I couldn't find anything that called for fresh peaches. Everything called for canned instead. So I did a Google search and came up with this recipe/page

Peach Cobbler

Our Ingredients

 2/3 cups sugar
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 cup of water
4 cups of fresh peaches, peeled and sliced (5-6 peaches)

1 stick butter (melted)

white cake mix

Instructions

Peal peaches (It can be helpful to blanch them before peeling)

Cut and pit the peaches, slice them in thin slices

Place in sauce pan with sugar, water, and corn starch

Cook and stir until mixture is thick and bubbly

Pour into 8 x 8 pan

In separate bowl, cut your melted butter into the cake mix with a knife until mixture is crumbly (My grandma taught me to use two knifes with your finger creating a space between them)

I tried to teach Zoey the cutting techniques, but she just wanted to lick the knife (Note the awesome TMNT shirt I got for her)

Top peaches with cake mix

Cook at 400 for 20 to 25 minutes

 Final Ranking (1-10)
     1= Throw Directly in the Trash
     5= Not Bad, but Not Great
     10= Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

Scott: 8 - "That was a pretty good cobbler" - He also noted that in fruit deserts he prefers a crispy top rather than cake like, but he still thought this was good.

Kristin: 8 - The cake mix added an extra sweetness you don't normally get with cobblers. I was a fan