It worked

I'd been wanting to try my mother's carrot cake recipe and bake them in muffin pans ever since I'd discovered cupcake making. Well, I got my chance yesterday.

Right out of the oven

This is a recipe she got from a professor visiting from the US, and she's had it since the late 70s. I followed the directions to the letter, except for the frosting, which I'd adjusted to suit my taste.

On the rack, with and without frosting 

The cake itself is good enough, and in fact my mother bakes loaves of these to give as gifts at Christmas, but the cream cheese frosting makes it "to die for," as my sister said (and our father agrees).

Best I've ever made, according to my father and sister

And so... another cupcake experiment stamped with the family seal of approval. :)

What I've been up to

My family has gotten so used to me baking every weekend that they've started expecting me to produce something by the time Saturday rolls around. My niece is my Number 1 taste tester, and she's even coined my goodies Weekend Cupcakes. :-) It was her birthday last June 12th and she requested chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Here she is with her mom:

Great looking cake from Shoppersville

The following Sunday was Father's Day and I thought of trying a butter cupcake recipe I found and then dipping them in chocolate glaze. The cupcakes tasted good but unfortunately I had absentmindedly opened the oven door 10 minutes after I put the muffin pans in (I put the excess batter in a loaf pan and wanted to bake them all together). This caused the cupcakes to collapse. And then the chocolate glaze I used was too thin and ended up running over and being soaked by the cupcakes.

Chocolate glaze running all over the place

And then this afternoon I made chocolate chip banana muffins. I loved the taste of bananas and chocolates together, and they reminded me of a favorite chocolate chip banana cookies recipe I also love.  The muffins were very easy to make and ended up quite as moist as banana cake. I must make more than one recipe next time.

Not the healthiest muffins on the block

And in between all that, I've also been obsessing over getting my OS X upgraded to Snow Leopard. Yes, I'd waited all this time to upgrade, and I hadn't really planned on doing it because I thought I'd wait for the next big OS X upgrade. But then when news of the Lion release came out, I found out that I wouldn't be able to "skip" Snow Leopard because I'd need Mac App Store to purchase a Lion upgrade.

Image from Apple.com

Anyway, my problem now is that none of the Apple resellers here have Snow Leopard stock. I'd already left my contact details with a reseller with instructions to contact me as soon as new stocks arrive. If worse comes to worst, I'll order from the local Apple online store. :-)

Muffin day

Yesterday was muffin day and today was supposed to be cupcake day. But I hadn't realized that I had used up my paper liners, so no cupcakes today... which is a darn shame because I was supposed to try making butter cupcakes too, using Lola Tentay's chocolate icing recipe as glaze.

I got my muffin recipe from this site and since I've missed muffins from French Baker I decided to make them. They weren't complicated to make, and in fact the directions are similar to making pancake batter. They came out cute -- like real muffins! :)

They were all gone in 3 hours, and my brother-in-law even set aside one for himself for the next day. I must make them again and this time triple the recipe!

"I'm never going to be average."

I read Baby Blues in the paper everyday and I've even subscribed to its RSS link so I can read the ones I liked again. This is one of my favorites.

Source

Cupcake experiment Part 2

Because of last week's frosting "disaster," this week I decided to make the same chocolate cupcakes but use a peanut butter frosting instead... and they turned out great! Everyone in the family said they tasted good and was much better than the ones I made last week. Well, everyone except my brother-in-law, at least (who said that peanut butter and chocolate don't go together -- he must be nuts).

I loooove peanut butter so it's no wonder that I loved the frosting.

P.S. The boys loved "decorating" them with candy sprinkles.