Ten Food Blogs I love

I got tagged by a fellow blogger friend, Lucy of Mes Pensees et Reves, to do a post on "ten things that I love." (Lucy, how the heck do you get those crazy accents over the E's to show up?? lol.) She recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl (her first!) and blogged about the most amazing and inspirational birth story ever! She'll make you wanna do a natural birth, too. I know it has nothing to do with food, but it's definitely worth reading!

Anyway, I thought that it would be fun to do a "ten of my favorite food blogs" list, since food is my life! =) I subscribe to a giant list of food blogs through Google reader and I always look forward to it at the end of the day- sometimes I'll have up to 50 new posts! I always get so excited about this part of my day because I get so much of my inspiration from these blogs. It was hard to narrow it down to only ten! But here they are, in no particular order.

*Bakerella*

The most amazing food art EVER: cake pops! I'm sure everyone and their moms have seen these beauties, but I just had to mention it. Her extremely detailed creations never cease to amaze me! In fact, her food blog was the first one I had ever seen and it was what got me into food blogging! She inspired me to start my own! And here I am today- aspiring to be as good as her one day.

*The Pioneer Woman Cooks*

Equally as amazing as Bakerella. She lives on a ranch. Her hubby is a real live cowboy. She home schools her beautiful children. Takes amazing photographs. Published her own cookbook. AND she has time to blog. She's basically superwoman. I am always inspired by her creations!

*Une-deux Senses*

Food and Fashion, all in one blog! Need I say more? =)

*Greedy Gourmand*

I like that she rates all the recipes for you and tells you whether or not she'd make it again, along with how much time it took to execute.

*Tartelette*

She's the macaron queen! She always posts the most amazing maracons ever! (among other things.) She makes it look easy.

*17 and Baking*

This girl's amazing! She's only had her blog for about a year and it's been wildly successful! She's in high school and has some mad photography skills! She's also from Seattle! Wouldn't it be cool if I actually met her one day??!

*Mike's Blog*

Mike bakes every night. I kid you not. Yes, he is just that passionate and dedicated! His posts are short & sweet, and features great recipes, along with fabulous photos! Plus his blog layout is one of the most creative and unique ones I've seen!

*6 Bittersweets*

This girl likes to "bake outside of the box." She always has really unique, interesting, and super creative recipes/entries! I never get bored of reading her blog! Example 1: apple cupcakes with brie frosting! She's also done a lot of vegan recipes in the past, for those of you who are interested. Not to mention- awesome, mouthwatering photos!

*Delicious Delicious Delicious*

Run by P, my favorite Brit. (Ok, maybe he's the only Brit I know, but still my favorite). I always enjoy reading his entries because they're so funny and witty! lol. Plus, he's recently started a series on Rome. It's a food guide for those of you who are lucky enough to travel there and would like to know where your stomach can go to have a good time! Apparently, P travels there so often that he's become a good authority on such matters. SO jealous.

*ButterYum*

I save the best for last! Patricia of ButterYum is the ultimate authority on...well, everything when it comes to kitchen matters! She's especially gifted in the baking department and has become my cake decorating guru. The woman knows everything there is to know about baking & decorating cakes. In fact, she's featured some pretty impressive wedding cakes on her site! So if you ever have any baking questions, you know where to go! =)

Alright, there you have it. I hope these blogs will inspire you, too!

Since this is a food blog, I don't want to leave you without posting some food photos. =) Here's a sneak peak at some of the items I have queued up!


The most amazing spice cake EVER. With a special ingredient- and you'll NEVER in a million years guess what's in it if you tasted it! Yup. It's exactly like that bean cake I featured a while back. And for those of you who have tried it, you know what amazingness I'm talking about!


I keep saying that I don't like cookies, but now I'm beginning to think that maybe I've just never had a good home made cookie until I started my blog! hehe. These were to die for. My friends kept raving about them! Dark chocolate cookie, with milk chocolate chips and toffee bits! Mmmm. Get excited for this one!


A classic. And a must-try recipe for lemon fans like me. Bite sized lemon blueberry tartlettes!


And make sure to check out last week's post if you missed it! Sugar cookie cupcakes. Aren't they adorable?

I'm excited to share these recipes with you in the coming weeks! I don't have a kitchen, but at least I can still blog. Takes the edge off, for sure. =)

And for the "Ten Things that I Love" blog post, I tag:

Bryn of Live from the 925
Mariko from Crafty Mariko
Alyssa from Alyssa's Two Bites

Sugar Cookie Flowers...um, Cupcakes

Wow, the title of this blog post was hard to come up with! hehe. I didn't know whether to call them cookies or cupcakes because...well, see for yourself. =)

Here are the cupcakes...

Here are the decorated sugar cookies...


And these beauties are the finished product!

See what I mean? I promise the next post will have a less confusing title. hehe. Anyway, I thought these cookies/cupcakes would be a good way to celebrate Spring! It's officially here! Although, I'd have to say that I've been quite confused about time-of-year since arriving in SoCal last week. The temperature has been around 80-85 degrees F this whole time! It makes me feel like we should really be celebrating summer! I have to keep reminding myself that it's only March. =)

Anyway, more about these cookies/cupcakes...I saw them in Martha Stewart's Cupcake book last month and knew that I had to make them. The cuteness was irresistible. I have a major weakness for aesthetically pleasing food.


And since the cupcake-shaped Sugar Cookie Pops I made last month turned out to be such a big hit, I knew these would be awesome!

(1) The Sugar Cookie Pops

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on how to make these because I already featured them in the cupcake-shaped pops entry. You can reference it for tips and step by step photos.

Just make sure your flower cookie cutter isn't too big. Something around 2-3 inches in diameter would be perfect. And get the 6 inch lollipop sticks.

Here are some additional helpful links that I mentioned in my previous post:

Click HERE for Our Best Bites' Sugar Cookie Decorating Tutorial
Click HERE for Our Best Bites' Sugar Cookie Pops Tutorial
Click HERE for Our Best Bites' Basic Sugar Cookie Recipe


Decorating these was really fun! I picked out three colors: white, pink, and yellow. Perfect shades for spring!

I outlined them in white and used yellow for the centers.


Then I very carefully filled in the pink petals.

Allow the icing to dry. Let the cookies sit uncovered for about 24 hours.


(2) The Leafs

These were really easy to do. All you need is some gum paste, a small leaf-shaped cookie cutter, and green food coloring.


Color your gum paste and roll it out. If your gum paste it too sticky, you can use corn starch to dust the surface of your work area.

And there you have it! Easy peasy.

I like to stick the leafs on right away, before they have a chance to harden. When it's soft, you can bend it slightly in the middle to mimic a real leaf. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...

(3) The Cupcakes

Use your favorite cupcake recipe. Chocolate cupcakes would be awesome too! In retrospect, chocolate probably would've been better, huh? hehe. Oh, well. Maybe next time. And use whatever frosting you like! What about cute liners? Maybe green polka-dotted ones! My point is: you can get super creative with these! Go wild!

For the frosting, I used Wilton's grass tip. Here's a good tutorial on how to pipe it. I thought it was going to be way hard, but it actually turned out to be quite intuitive! You'll know what to do when the time comes. hehe. I didn't like for the grass to be super uniformed. So instead of pulling straight up, I pulled every which way, to make it look more real. Because grass never just grows straight up, you know? It's more like "artistically messy," I'd say.

(3) Putting it all together

No explanation needed, really. Stick the cookies in the middle of the cupcakes, then add leafs. Some of them had one, some had two. I'm very unpredictable like that.

Wouldn't these be cute for a baby shower?

Ok, and here's one more picture. Because I couldn't resist. =)


Happy Spring and Happy Baking!

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Wow, it feels like ages since I last blogged, but in reality, my last post was only a week ago. I really don't like this once-a-week-blogging thing. It makes me feel like less of a blogger. hehe. I'm definitely going through a little bit of blogging withdrawal and need my blogging fix more often. Oh well, I better get used to it, I suppose. This is how it'll be until June. So sad. (Click here if you're out of the loop and have no idea what I'm talking about. hehe)

In other news, I'm happy to report that in my mad baking frenzy last week, I was able to queue up enough posts for at least once a week from now until June! Yay!

I only have a few more days here in Seattle (through the end of this week), and I still have so much to do! I'm kind of up in a panic these days, actually. I experienced a few bumps in the road this past week that put me behind schedule on my packing...the main one being the fact that I had a slight dislocation of my left shoulder! That put me out of commissions for a couple of days. Luckily, I'm back on my feet today, or um...arm, rather and am able to type this entry! hehe.

This is the March recipe for the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. I really like all things lemon, so I knew immediately that this cupcake and I would be BFFs.


It's a lemon cupcake, filled with lemon curd and topped with a light meringue frosting. Deeeeelish!

(1) Lemon Cupcakes

Sift together the dry ingredients.


Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs.


Beat in lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla.

Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk and lemon juice, and beating until just combined after each.

Bake at 325F for about 25 minutes.


(2) Lemon Curd

For step by step instructions and photos on how to make lemon curd, click HERE.

After the lemon curd had a chance to chill and set, I spooned it into a piping bag with a large round tip.


Then I used it to inject the lemon curd into the cupcake. This way, it'll have a nice lemony filling! (The recipe says to just spread the lemon curd on the cupcake, then follow with the frosting.)

(3) The Meringue Frosting

Sorry, I don't have step by step photos for this, but it's a lot similar to the IMB, only minus the butter step. You can reference this entry for detailed photos on IMB.


I really like this frosting! It's exactly the same as IMB, only you don't add any butter what so ever. You whip up egg whites until soft peaks, then pour in hot sugar syrup. For people who complain that there's too much butter in the IMB/SMB, this is a really good alternative. (Bryn, you'd like this one!) It comes out SUPER light and fluffy.

It stiffens up a little bit if you leave it out. So you have to pipe it on immediately. It will hold its shape really well- awesome swirls, but you have to work quickly. This is not to say that it's stiff or hard when you bite into it. It's still super soft, airy, and delicious!

A really interesting frosting. Definitely worth trying.


You can see more clearly in this picture that the frosting holds its shape, even when it's half falling off of the cupcake. Weird, huh? Weird, but fabulous! Mmmm... look at that yummy lemon filling!

You can also fire up a kitchen torch and brown the edges of the frosting, kinda like what you'd do for marshmallow. I didn't have time for it, but it would've been really pretty.

Since I'm short on time these days, I'm going to wrap this up quickly. Simply put, there's my opinion on these cupcakes:

(1) Must try, especially if you're a lemon fan
(2) Super delicious flavors, with a very unique frosting
(3) Would definitely make these again
(4) One of my favorite cupcakes

Ok, see you all next week! I'll be in Cali by then! =)




Click HERE for the recipes.

Peanut Butter Cookies - Surprise!

First off, I want to thank everyone for the flood of supportive comments and emails that I received about my last entry! I really can't express how much all of your warm wishes means to me. This blog has been a huge part of my life ever since starting it about eight months ago. It's brought me so much joy and happiness. I've never been so passionate about anything before in my entire life, and I'm sad about having to put it on the back burner for a while...

But I assure you that I am trying very hard to queue up some posts so that I can still continue to share recipes with all of you while I'm away. So, please don't think that I'm going to abandon blogging all together until June. The posts will be sporadic and less frequent. But I promise that I'll be posting here and there, so not to worry! I'm sorry if I scared some of you into thinking that I was going completely MIA for three months straight! It's true that I won't have a kitchen and won't be able to cook, but I'll have recipes/pictures saved up so that I can still blog occasionally while I'm in Cali. =)


Ok, so onto today's recipe! These look like any boring old peanut butter cookies, right? Wrong! They're what I like to call "Peanut Butter Cookies Surprise!" What's the secret ingredient, you ask? Tee hee. You'll never guess! And you probably won't even believe me until you see the step by step photos for yourself, but it's none other than:

KETCHUP!

Bet you did a double take, didn't you? =) And I bet the first thing that came to mind was "yuck!" hehe. Because I know that's exactly what I thought, too, when I first saw the recipe.

Ok, so here's how this whole peanut-butter-ketchup-cookie thing came to be: last week, a fellow blogger, Mike of Good Things About Living out West, emailed me a photo of the following ketchup bottle that he came across while grocery shopping:


I was instantly intrigued and went to the website to check out the recipes. WOW. Incredibly, they put ketchup in a lot of popular desserts! I'm talking: apple pie, cookies, and cakes! The PB cookies were so especially disgusting sounding that I had to bake them immediately- just to, you know, prove that they were disgusting. lol.

So Mike and I decided to do a collaborative blog project where we'd both try one of the ketchup cookie recipes and post on the same day! That way, we can let our readers know how TWO ketchup dessert recipes panned out! Fun! So make sure to check out his blog for Spice Ketchup cookies.

Ok, here goes nothing! In the spirit of weird kitchen experiments, I give you: PB Ketchup Cookies!

It started out innocently enough. Combine the dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl, cream together butter, sugar, and peanut butter.

Now comes the secret ingredient! And an egg. Eww. I was definitely feeling thoroughly disgusted at this point! hehe. =)


But it all mixed together quite nicely, and I couldn't smell the ketchup anymore. I took it as a good sign and moved right along.

Combine the dry ingredients until well incorporated.

Place rounds onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.


Dip a fork into some flour...


...then press it into the dough.

Make little "tic tac toe" lines on the cookies with your fork. Then pop them into the 375F oven for about 8-10 minutes.


When I tried these, I really cautiously put 1/4 of a cookie into my mouth. As did Hubby. We were expecting it to be entirely disgusting, but to our surprise, it wasn't! =)

They actually tasted like any old PB cookie and you really couldn't detect much of a difference unless you knew it was there. There was just a sliiiight hint of something, and it tasted more like a spice than anything else - not like ketchup anything!

The crumb of the cookie was nice, though! It was super soft and had a great texture. Wow, who would've thought to put ketchup in a PB cookie!

Are these better than regular PB cookies? Probably not. They're delicious cookies, but not superior in any way. But wouldn't it be fun to bake up a batch and have your friends try to guess what the secret ingredient was?? I know I had fun doing so! They'll be in so much shock when you tell them that you just fed them a cookie made with ketchup! =)

All in all, it was a pretty fun experiment! And they were pretty yummy, as all PB cookies are. Give it a whirl just for fun!


Click HERE for the recipe.