Friday, September 23, 2011

Strawberry Stuffed Cupcakes

Well, this isn't the first batch of strawberry stuffed cupcakes I've made; but every time I try something new, I always think it's my new favorite.

My first batch was last week - for Marge's 93rd birthday.


White cupcakes.  Strawberry stuffed inside.  Strawberry icing.  Pink melted/molded candy flower on top (which I made, too).

Tonight's batch ( I don't know why I always make cupcakes at 10:00 p.m.)...


Yellow cupcakes.  Strawberry stuffed.  Chocolate Cream Cheese icing.  A sprinkle of mini chocolate chips.

This is how I did it...  I cut out a small "cup" shaped piece from the top of each cupcake.

Then I took a fairly firm strawberry, pushed it into the cut out "cup", and twisted it so that it would go down farther into the cut out.

Some of the strawberries were rather large, so when I stuck them down into the cupcake, the cupcake split; but icing covered that up well.

Here are a bunch of the cupcakes ready to be iced.  

You can see that some of the strawberries went farther into the cupcakes than others; but, really, that is because the strawberries were taller than the cupcakes were deep.

The little "caps" are placed on top of the strawberries so that you don't have to eat them all.  :-)



With the strawberries sticking out a little bit, and with their little caps on, the icing on the cupcakes takes on sort of a "cone" shape.

I used my brand new 1A tip to pipe the icing on these cupcakes.  I LOVE the new tip!

You need to sprinkle your decorations onto the icing as soon as you pipe it so that the decor sticks.

I think the mini chocolate chips kind of detract from the swirled icing, but I needed to try something new for a change.

So, we cut one in half again for you to see the inside.
And then I had to get Phil to eat the evidence.







Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Plague of Frogs - and Pigeons

This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.
 
Exodus 8:1–4
 
Today when I was doing some housekeeping with my plants, this is what I discovered in one of the drip catchers under my plant pots:

It's a little frog!  What is strange is that, last June 2010, Phil found a frog in the house.  A tiny frog.  It's size was less than the first joint on his thumb.  And he said he found three frogs in the house at that time.  So... has this frog been trapped under my houseplant pot all that time?  I know it looks like he's coming up for air... but believe, me he is NOT.  
This frog is just SO DISGUSTING!

And so is this:

 
Not sure how well you can see the pigeon print on the window dust on the outside of the window, center of the photo - look really hard, kind of like those 3D images that are just dots until you stare at them just right. 
 
Apparently, the stupid pigeon overate at our bird feeder and was in a food coma when it tried to fly away and aimed for our window instead.  The only thing more disgusting would have been if we'd found the pigeon on the deck.  

Maybe the fox came and took it away during the night...

Friday, September 9, 2011

Things I Learned From Pisatachio Pudding

1.  It's probably best to not start making cupcakes after 10 p.m.  Really.  We didn't even have enough milk to make pudding, or shortening to make buttercream frosting.  Phil got a good idea:  

 
Use instant breakfast powder to create "milk" by adding water to it.  But... the only pudding I had left to use for cupcake filling was pistachio pudding mix. Not my first choice for cupcake filling.  I thought it was kind of unusual.  And green.  I made a chocolate frosting using a non-meringue recipe.  A good tasty frosting, but not super for piping on fancy cupcakes.

2.  If you are going to use pistachio pudding mix as a cupcake filling, strain it first.  I didn't.  I thought that maybe the pistachios in the pudding mix (are they REALLY pistachios in pistachio pudding? or do they call it "pistachio" because it's green?) would be small enough to go through my Bismarck pastry tip.  They weren't.  

The first couple of cupcakes filled okay - but then, as I feared, a nut clogged the end of the pastry tip.  Try as I might, squeezing the pastry bag only succeeded in the pudding escaping from the top of the pastry bag, not through the tip.  Simple pressure wasn't going to dislodge the nut from the tip.  So, I got a bamboo skewer and poked the nut back into the pastry bag.  Squeezed again.  Same thing.  No amount of bamboo skewer pushing was going to be enough, but I kept trying.  Until finally - one really good squeeze succeeded in forcing the ENTIRE PASTRY TIP - OUT of the pastry bag, and spraying (does pudding spray?  not really)... no, SPLOPPING green pudding all over the counter top and everything else in its way.


3.  STRAIN THE NUTS OUT OF THE PUDDING!  Then, scrape up what you can off the cupcakes before you decorate them.


My pudding was a little bit runny, so it left the cupcakes pretty messy even without the splopping of pudding from when the pastry tip burst out of the pastry bag.  But, after scraping off the exposed pudding, I covered the cupcakes topped with swirled chocolate frosting, deep chocolate sprinkles and a handmade chocolate candy placed in the middle.  

4.  Take at least one final cupcake photo.  Sorry.  I didn't take any photos because the kitchen was too messy, I had sticky green pudding all over me, and I was tired and needed to clean everything up before going to bed.  But, the cupcakes turned out very nice and were devoured in short order at the ladies' salad supper at church.  No one even suspected they were sealed beneath the icing with smeared pudding. (Of course, now they will!)

5.  Learn from your mistakes.  And then go on to more cupcakes another day.

Yellow Heads Leaving Town

Last week the yellow-headed black birds - and probably the red-winged black birds, too - started leaving town for the winter.  This is one of the lasts ones we saw... sitting in our aspen tree that did manage to get a little taller this  year.  The weight of the birds that sat in it this summer caused the top of it to bend over.


Summer is so very short - mosquitoes were miserable this year after all the rain and flooding we had.  I don't think we planted a thing this summer.

There are leaves on the trees now, but they are beginning to fade, and the grass has been brown for weeks.  Haying has been done in the fields to the west of us.  Things are winding down.  I hope winter isn't too long this year...

Early September Sky View on My Birthday

The morning of my birthday, when I woke up and looked out the window to the west, this is what I saw.


A rainbow!  I quickly grabbed my robe so that I could run outside to take a photo of it without getting the window screen in the picture.  When I turned around to come back into the house, I saw this:


Wow!  What a glorious sunrise!  Usually we see rainbows in the east and sunsets in the west.  And, unfortunately, it only took about an hour before the rain got to Laramie and stayed here for two solid days.  Sometimes we forget that rainbows usually involve some rain along the way...

(And the black trailer is pretty much a landmark in all my sunrise photos...)