Thursday, October 14, 2010

COOKIE DOUGH + CUPCAKE = WOW

My officemate loves cookie dough not cookies but cookie dough. For my birthday she made me one huge cookie and undercooked it since she loves the cookie dough taste. So for her birthday I decided I had to do something involving cookies and my usual cupcakes. I just got back from 5 months in Japan so my officemates were salivating/demanding my chocolate peanut butter cupcakes but I told them it was time to expand our horizons and boy were they happy to! These were a huge hit and were excellent! I made the cookie dough the nite before and left them in the freezer until the next nite. I don't usually like using box cake but I figured there was enough "homemade" stuff that it was okay. I used tried and true chocolate frosting!







CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH CUPCAKE

(Source: allrecipes.com)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

1 (18.25 ounce) box yellow cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/3 cup canola oil
3 eggs


DIRECTIONS:

- Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and sea salt; set aside. Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Add 1 egg and the vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate chips; mixing just enough to evenly combine. Form the dough into tablespoon-sized balls; place onto a baking sheet, and freeze until solid, about 2 hours.

- Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners.

- Beat 3 eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer to break up. Add the cake mix, water, and canola oil; continue beating for 2 minutes on medium speed. Spoon into the prepared cupcake liners, filling each 2/3 full. Place a frozen cookie dough ball on the top center of each cupcake.

- Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the cake portion of the cupcake (not the cookie dough ball) comes clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.


CREAMY CHOCOLATE FROSTING

(Source: allrecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS:

2 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
6 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons evaporated milk (I used regular milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

- In a medium bowl, sift together the confectioners' sugar and cocoa, and set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream butter until smooth, then gradually beat in sugar mixture alternately with evaporated milk. Blend in vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. If necessary, adjust consistency with more milk or sugar. ( I used more milk)

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

An Excuse and Travel Food!

Okay so I have been an AWFUL baking blogger lately, okay for awhile. It is a two part excuse, one part I have no idea maybe I haevn't been baking as much maybe I am lazy?!?!! The other part of the excuse is real......I was in Japan for almost 5 months and while I was there I baked a little (mostly old favorites) and I promise I will blog about the new recipes soon. But I was also doing a blog for my family and friends about my travel and that just took a longggggggggggg time. Now that blog is done, so is my trip, so maybe I can concentrate on this blog again!

Here is a food post from my travel blog.


Seriously why has it taken me so long to do this post. Unfortunately, not all the food I love is featured here but needed to show a few things. I will be honest and say that I have packed on a few pounds since I have been here; actually, every time I have lived abroad I have gained weight and I think that is because of being a vegetarian and compensating with carbs. Being a vegetarian can be hard, think about it if you aren’t eating meat what are you eating when you travel? In the states I have the lovely Whole Foods (or Whole Paycheck as my dad calls it) but I always have difficulty outside of my comfort zone. Now this is where I could get extremely frustrated because my pants just don’t fit but I recently read something in a magazine that put it all in perspective (parphrased) “Instead of worrying about those last 5 pounds think about all the fun you had and the great food you ate to gain those 5 pounds.”

In Kyoto - I had some fantastic pees that were in this crunchy dough and some fantabolous dried fruit, seriously dried kiwi and strawberries!





OMG the fruit in Japan is HUGE! This asian pear was the size of my head, their peaches are the same way. The really cool thing is that they are sold with a foam protector.

On my last day of work in Sasebo Kaori bought me this awesome mini cake (even had its own ice pack with it!)


When I was in Korea Ryan and Holly introduced me to Tom n Toms Coffee, it is a Korean chain and o.......m...........g.............. this might be better than Starbucks! I know blasphemy but they have these pretzels that are made to order and the one below was sweet potatoe and cheese - I am salivating just thinking about it!

One nite when we were going back to the hotel Ryan, Holly, and I decided to stop and get a snack. Well I saw this ice cream that was "Sweet Corn" and I just couldn't say no because I was so intrigued. It tasted just like frozen sweet corn but honestly, I could not decided if I loved it or hated it and Holly was the same way. We both kept taking a bite and going hmmmmmmmmmmm not sure let me try it again!