Cupcakes! Champagne and Strawberries

I haven’t made cupcakes in a looooooong time, but I was asked to donate some for a fundraising auction at work so I got excited to try a new recipe. The auction winner chose Champagne and Strawberries, yum.

First things first, making the chocolate covered strawberries. I never use anything but Ghirardelli baking chocolates. It is one thing to splurge on, like real vanilla extract, pure cane powdered sugar, etc.

So start by setting up a double boiler- I fill a small saucepan halfway with water and set to boil. Then set a heatproof bowl on top of the saucepan. (Pyrex works great) You are supposed to chop up the chocolate, but I just break it up and put it in the bowl to melt.

I did 2 dozen small strawberries with just 6 oz of semisweet chocolate. Wash and dry the berries, dip in the melted chocolate, set onto a sheet of waxed paper to cool. Easy peasy. If you want to get really fancy, melt some white chocolate, and use a piping bag to drizzle it over the top.

Next I set out to make the cake part of the cupcakes. I’ve made a pink champagne cake before, so this was familiar. I tried a new recipe though, and modified it a tiny bit. It called for 7 egg whites, and 7 yolks- crazy. So I cut out 1 egg. The whites made a mountain of meringue. This was folded VERY carefully into some sugar, the egg yolks, vanilla, red food coloring, cake flour, baking powder, salt, and 3/4 cup sweet champagne. Then divided evenly into 36 lined muffin cups.

They are very light and fluffy, on account of all the egg whites. Which had me thinking about a lighter and fluffier frosting than just a basic ganache which the recipe called for. In December’s issue of Martha Stewart Living there was a whole article on ganache- including a whipped version. I thought it was brilliant, but it took forever to make. I thought it was just never going to whip up:

then boom- after about 7 minutes with the mixer it finally went from a very liquid state to a light airy mousse. This then went on the cupcakes like a frosting, and I topped them off with the chocolate strawberries. I even went and put them in nice bakery box.

 

And yes, that is a box with 24 cupcakes, when I made 36. I ate the other ones while testing out the champagne glaze v.s straight champagne brushed onto the cakes before the ganache. I went with a mix of both. The glaze was simple too, stick of butter, cup of sugar- melted, reduced down  and mixed with some bubbly.

Finished product, so yummy:

 

Knitting is fun………Flower Headband

I am super excited, because I have just completed a project I have been wanting to do since last year. My bestie Jess and I went to NYC, and these pretty flower headbands were EVERYWHERE. I figured I could make one myself, so I didn’t buy one. Mistake. I didn’t really know how to knit until about 3 weeks ago. I have known crochet for about 18 years (crap that makes me feel old, but Grammy taught me when I was 7) and while I could have done one in crochet, I also have this problem where I start projects, get bored, and don’t finish them. So I nearly forgot all about it, and then I got this idea to knit a baby blanket for a friend. (almost done, just weaving in the ends, pictures later) And long story short, I remembered I wanted to make one of these:

TADA!!!!! I finished something!! I used a pattern from Ravelry.com and she had helpful videos on youtube which was good because I could hardly make sense of the pattern to save my life.

Skye was a great little model too, but it’s meant for a grown-up size head. So when I finish the baby blanket, and make the matching baby bootie for some cute little baby girls right foot, I’m going to try and make a smaller one.

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Here Skye is on the rope bridge at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo in the Rainforest Dome. We took my mother-in-law there for a few hours before she had to get back on the plane for Texas. The Rainforest Dome is one of the kids’ favorite zoo spots, because of the bridge and “vines” they are free to play on.

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Can it!

Totally excited about this new-to-me world of canning. I was invited to help my friend Chuck use up some of his abundant garden produce via homemade salsa while his girlfriend (one of my besties) was in town for the weekend. So I brought over some jars and lids, and we got to work.

First, he set all the kids to work planting garlic. 

This was interesting in itself because I had no clue you could just plant garlic like that. I grew up with vegetable gardens, and we even had one ourselves when we lived in Shreveport, but never had my own garlic. I WILL have a big garden and I WILL plant yummy garlic when we get to our new house in Delaware. This project was a big hit with the kids, on account of the playing in dirt I’m sure.

I wish I’d have gotten a picture of his garden, it was decimated in a hailstorm a little while back. But he still got a ton of tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc. I guess from the gardens out at his cabin. The cabin where he has bee hives.

First was all the prepwork. The tomatoes were set to boil so we could remove the skins and cut out any bits of imperfection. The green peppers were seeded, the tiny onions were disproportionately pungent so we mostly used a food processor, I thought I might go blind they had our eyes burning so much. He used some jalepenos and habaneros for the kick.

Once everything was prepped, the ingredients were combined into a large stockpot with some salt.

The jars were filled to about an inch from the top.

I think there was at least 3 gallons of yummy salsa, six jars of which I got to claim as my own. Here is Natalie’s daughter showing off the nearly finished products!

Now the part which I had been waiting for. The mystical canning/sealing process. Chuck used his turkey fryer out on the front lawn and got the pot boiling. The water level was just below the lids of the jars. He had some nifty grabber tools specially made to fit the jars, I have to invest in some for myself.

After about a half hour or so, we pulled the jars from the pot, and carefully but quickly, Chuck used his secret can sealing trick. This was to swiftly release the lid just a quarter turn then twist it back on tightly. Then we sat back and listened for the lids to “pop”. One, two, three, four, “was that one”, “yup”, ok five.

Afterwards we got a hankering for applesauce. So we headed out to the local pick your own, and came back with a few bushels of assorted apples.

 

There was less picture taking for this process, as it was getting late and I now found myself making enough pâte brisée to churn out 3 double crust apple pies. Chuck fed us all some farm raised pork tenderloin (AMAZING) and Natalie made sweet potatoes (of course, from Chuck’s garden) on the side. The peeled and seeded apples burnt a little bit because we used a giant stock pot which made it difficult to stir them. But from what I hear it turned out ok, although I wouldn’t actually know as I didn’t get a sample.

Next up, my mom has to teach me how she made all that raspberry jam. So I can try my hand at canning it.