candy bar cupcakes part 1

Some time ago I found a feature in Food Network Magazine on cupcakes that replicated the taste of classic candy bars. I ripped out the pages of course, and requested the chocolate peanut butter Reeses impersonators for my birthday cupcakes. Recently I went back to the list of recipes and made the Almond Joy and Snickers rip offs - one for a party and another for my dad's birthday (the king of all Snickers lovers). Here are some pics of the Almond Joy cupcakes in process. (I'll cover the Snickers ones in a second post.)

Humor me while I learn my camera. You'll notice that the Almond Joy pictures are darker due to the horrible tungsten light in my old kitchen. The Snickers cupcakes were the first I made in our new house, so in a way they christened my oven for future baking endeavors.


I had never used cream of coconut before. These cupcakes had three forms - regular shredded coconut, cream of coconut, and coconut extract.


(Love me some wall-e cupcake wrappers.)


The eggs have different shell colors because of the different heritage breeds of chicken they come from. We get our eggs from a local farm that does delivery drop-offs in Pittsburgh and also has a booth at the Pittsburgh Public Market (love!). They are on the pricey side, but crack them open and the yolk is a vibrant yellow (from the chicken's diet, not from the dye in your typical grocery store eggs).



(Eggs and cream of coconut about to be whisked with a Rorschach pattern of vanilla.)

That gets set aside to deal with the dry ingredients and butter. It should have a crumby consistency.


Beat in your egg mixture, and it starts to look something like this.


Side note. I have a habit of using a random coffee mug from my way too large collection to hold spatulas between scrapings. I'm going to try to start documenting them as part of the process. Here is one of my beloved Pittsburgh mugs, doing its duty.


The cake portions go in the oven...


...so that you can work on the coconut candy topping. It is basically cooked milk and coconut. This is Mark's awesome measuring cup that I smashed to smithereens when we moved. Sad face.



Cupcakes are done!


Time for some chocolate.


Get the coconut topping off the stove and cooled for quite awhile. Then start assembling.



I had a ton of leftover coconut for 24 cupcakes, so unless you want to dig in to the bowl with a giant spoon afterward, you'd probably be safe halving the coconut topping portion of the recipe.

a house to call home

It's a good thing I didn't actually make a resolution to write more. Or else I'd feel guilty for not writing more. But, things have been busy around here.

For one thing, I got a new camera, which enabled me to take photos of things like Mark's cat Maggie:

You can see she's really personable from that photo. Or maybe she didn't like me laying on the floor with a big camera in front of her face.

Also, some banana bread that Mark made.


Some other miscellaneous assignments for my photography class (like water bottles and more Maggie scowls) were captured. But finally, this is the most important one. The one that's been keeping us busy for the past 4 months...


This is a piece of the sign that blew off in a recent windstorm which previously stood in front of the house we just purchased and moved into. Yep, a house. We moved to Carnegie, slightly west of the city and home to Papa J's restaurant and a one block walk to the bus for me and a ten minute commute for Mark. We are beyond thrilled to finally be living somewhere without the stomping of drunk neighbors above or the smell of pot smoking hippies below. It's peaceful, spacious, and perfect for us. There's even an old brick church next door which is where Honus Wagner used to attend when he lived in Carnegie.


I have no idea why I took shots from every angle inside the house, but never took one of the outside. The photo from the real estate listing will have to suffice.

So that's the big news that has kept us occupied for months now. I did do a little bit of baking in that time, and finally took photos with my new camera on one of the projects which I will update another time. But for now, I'm alive and a homeowner. And I have a shower curtain to put up.

back at em

In lieu of resolutions this year, I'm making an effort to work on my 30 before 30 list. I turn 28 this week, so I have just about 2 years to complete my list, which includes everything from mastering puff pastry from scratch to buying an SLR camera and beating Mark at a lot of types of Trivial Pursuit. One of the items is to update this blog at least once a week, but that also requires me to have something to say or a photo to post. I'm hoping to buy my new camera in the next several weeks, so I'll hopefully be posting some better quality photographs as I learn the ropes of the camera's settings.

Here's a general recap of the last 6 weeks or so in baking and cooking around these parts.


Gingerbread House 2010 - the first ones with the Stone sign out front. :)


A combination flourless chocolate cake and cheesecake with candy cane pieces and furiously- dumped-on milk chocolate.

Mark preparing Shirley, the goose we roasted with the de Almeidas for New Year's Eve. Shirley was greasy, yet delicious.



Carrot cake cupcakes with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting for Erin's birthday!



Amazing chocolate peanut butter mini cupcakes that Mark made for my birthday dinner this weekend. They were rich and divine.

I'm reading a few food books this month, so hopefully I'll be able to share some of those soon as well.

a belated Thanksgiving feast

Last night we (Mark, Amber, Anthony, and I) put on a thank-you belated Thanksgiving dinner for special friends of ours that have been a blessing to us this year. Everyone went home full and blessed. Here's a few highlights.


Here's Mark with Lil' Wayne, our turkey that he butterflied and made with the greatest glaze I've ever had on a turkey.


Our googly turkeys made from Oreos, PB cups, Whoppers, and candy corn.


The feast! We each took parts of the meal and cooked all day.


Dessert #1 - Pumpkin bread pudding with vanilla creme anglaise and spicy caramel apple sauce. (This is the dessert Bobby Flay made in his Throwdown with Pioneer Woman. It was delicious!)


Chocolate caramel bourbon pecan tart. Delicious, except for the fact that the caramel bubbled over the tart in the oven and burned around the edge of the tart pan. (And also set off the fire alarm and dripped in their oven.)

nintendo power

Our friends Theresa and Andy got married last weekend, and Mark and I made Nintendo cupcakes to contribute to their cookie table. I made the red velvet cake with white whipped frosting, and Mark did the fondant designs. (I can't figure out how to flip some of these photos, so bear with me.)

the last few months

Here's what I've been doing/baking/making the last few months.

Mexican hot chocolate cookies (chocolate, cinnamon, and chili pepper)

Raspberry Lemon Cake (a wedding cake flavor test)

An AMAZING German chocolate cake for Mark's 31st birthday

Star Trek sugar cookies with the custom cookie cutters I had made for his birthday.

Cupcakes for my bridal shower - lemon with lemon cream cheese frosting and white cake with toasted coconut buttercream and chocolate filigree hearts

Sugar cookies for Amber's bachelorette party

Mark and I also did an entire practice run of our wedding cake, which was a two day ordeal that I'll recap at some point with photos of the actual cake.

But if you want to see some professional photos, from the wedding, you can click here. The great photos make us look more sophisticated than we actually are, but the smiles on our faces are totally real.

still here

I've obviously neglected this blog for awhile, which I promised myself I wouldn't do. I blame being generally busy with large life changes for my lack of updates. However, I've been busy with baking during that time period as well. So to start yet another phrase with "once the wedding is over," I promise to fill you in on the in between time when I can.

In the meantime, here's something to tide you over. We'll be baking our own wedding cake starting tomorrow morning. These photos were from the practice in July. Tomorrow it's on for real...and when I return to the blog, I will have made a three tiered wedding cake and married my love, the icing to my cake...









(These photos are by One Way Street Production. A great photographer couple that really humored our awkward non-photogenic selves.)