White Chocolate Cupcakes

Moist, crumbly, delectable. I couldn't help but eating several of them. These were the most time consuming cupcakes I've ever made but they were worth it. My sister is blessing her baby and I've taken over volunteered to help with the dessert table. The theme is white and I thought white chocolate cupcakes would be perfect but since I've never made them before I wanted to try them out. I had a friend retire and thought it would be a great excuse to make these cupcakes.

First I combined the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

I creamed the butter and sugar together, this part reminded me of making cookies.

Just before I melted the chocolate.

I mixed the milk and sour cream together and set it aside.

I went back to the butter and sugar and added the egg whites one at a time. This is where a kitchen aide would come in handy. Just start pouring things in, instead I have to use my hand mixer.

I added the clear vanilla.

The best part, adding the chocolate. I may have licked the spoon and bowl after that, may have.

I added part of the flour and mixed it in.

Added part of the milk and sour cream, mixed it in and then finished with the rest of the flour and milk and sour cream.

All mixed together.

This is the step I worried about, I thought adding the water was going to ruin the whole batter. Thank heaven it all worked out.

All done, now just to stick it in the oven.

The cupcakes turned out a little flat but who cares when they taste so delicious.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 egg whites
1 tsp. clear vanilla
4 oz. or 1/2 cup white chocolate
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup hot water

Directions:
Sift together the flour baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Mix milk and sour cream together and set aside.
Cream butter and sugar together. Add egg whites to the butter and sugar mixture, blend together. Add vanilla and blend together. Melt chocolate and then add to butter sugar mixture.
Add the flour and milk alternating to the butter and sugar mixture.
Once everything is added to the batter add the hot water last and mix until everything is incorporated.
Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes. Makes around 12.

Frosting:
4 oz. cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
1 oz. or 1/8 cup white chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons milk
2-3 cups powder sugar

Directions:
Soften cream cheese. Mix cream cheese and butter together. Add white chocolate, vanilla, and milk mix together. Add powder sugar and mix together.

Sweet Pickle Potato Salad

President Joseph Fielding Smith's birthday was on July 19th and I read somewhere that he liked sweet pickles, I had no idea how to incorporate sweet pickles into a meal until I thought of my mom and her recipe for potato salad that she adds sweet pickles too. So, in honor of President Joseph Fielding Smith here is sweet pickle potato salad.

I started with a stock of celery chopped.

Then I went out and pulled an onion from my garden.

I boiled two eggs and chopped those up.

I chopped up half a cup of sweet pickles, I made these ones and then fourth a cup of the juice

I chopped up my fresh onion and added the green parts too.

After I boiled my potatoes until they broke apart easily with a fork I added them to my mix.

Then I added the bacon, yummy!

Mix it all up . . .

Then I added the miracle whip, you can add mayonnaise, whatever you like best. The sour cream and the ranch. I added these just before serving.

The next time I make this I'll cut out a little of the miracle whip and sour cream.

Ingredients:
1 pound russet potatoes
3 hard boiled eggs
6 pieces of bacon
1 small onion chopped
1 stalk celery
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup miracle whip or mayonnaise
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup sweet pickles
1/4 cup sweet pickle juice
4 tablespoons ranch

Directions:
Take the skin off the potatoes and cut them up to boil them. Once they are soft enough for the fork to easily go through them drain the water. Set aside until cool.
Cook bacon.
Chop onion, celery, and pickles.
Mix everything together.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I made these for my husband's family picnic at work. We thought these might be fun for all the kids that were going to be there. I found this recipe on http://thedoctorsdishesdessertsdecor.blogspot.com/2010/09/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-cupcakes.html and thought they looked fantastic.

I sent my husband to the store and he came back with three huge tubes of cookie dough. I thought he was way off base buying three but I ended up using two but having lots of cookies left over. I guess he knows better than I do. Don't let him know that though. While I was making the balls for the middle of the cupcakes I munched on the cookie dough and even gave it to my 14 month to eat. After I made the cookies I sat on the couch and munched on the cookie dough some more. It wasn't until I was putting it in the refrigerator that I noticed in big letters, DO NOT CONSUME RAW COOKIE DOUGH. Ooops.

I made the cookies the night before so that I wouldn't have to do everything all at once, plus it spread the dishes out.

Time for the will power.

For the cupcakes I used one yellow cake mix with the pudding in the mix. I added 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt (it was an organic natural sugar kind from Nancy's), one cup of milk (not pictured, I like to claim that the children steal brain cells), 3 eggs, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and one teaspoon vanilla.

I wanted to try the yogurt since I've never tried it in a cupcake before plus we have two huge containers in the fridge that need to be used (that's probably the real reason).

Not pretty.

Here's where the cookie dough comes in, I took the idea from Cupcakes! from the Cake Mix Doctor. She suggests you freeze the cookie dough and then put it in the middle. I tried this and couldn't figure out why it mattered, all the cookie dough ended up on the bottom. Freezing it was a good idea though, after cooking the cupcake, the cookie dough doesn't get cooked all the way and is gooey and delicious.

One the right is the cookie dough just placed in and on the left is the cookie dough covered.

This is what it looks like after it was cooked.

See, all at the bottom.

Time for the frosting. I got this recipe from the http://thedoctorsdishesdessertsdecor.blogspot.com/2010/09/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-cupcakes.html same website as before. It was a different recipe than I'm used to. Definitely interesting. Not a huge fan of the frosting, it ended up being grainy with the brown sugar. It wasn't a very sweet frosting either with the flour.

I used one and a half cups of butter Crisco instead of butter, so they tell you to add some water, that's why there is water in the picture.

Creamed the two together.

Added some powdered sugar.

All done.

Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix with pudding
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tubes chocolate chip cookie dough

Take one tube chocolate chip cookie dough, form 24, 2 inch balls and freeze.

Mix everything together except the chocolate chip cookie dough. Put batter in cupcake pan and cook at 350 degrees for 22-25 minutes. Cool before frosting.

Frosting:
3 sticks butter or 1 1/2 cups butter Crisco
3/4 cup brown sugar
3-4 cups powder sugar
1 cup flour
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla

Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add the powder sugar and combine till smooth. Add the flour, milk and vanilla. Mix together until smooth.

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Huckleberry Syrup

Last Fall we went huckleberry picking. The Idaho state fruit and since I'm from Idaho it fits. I froze some and decided I needed to use them up. I'm saving the other ones for when I make raspberry huckleberry jam.

I took the huckleberries and put them in the blender with 1/4 cup of water to make a smoother mixture.

Then put them in a pot and turned the burner on to medium-low. I then added 1/2 cup sugar. I took 1 cup water and 2 Tablespoons corn starch and mixed them together to thicken the syrup. Then I mixed it all together until it thickened.

Ingredients:
1 cup huckleberries
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 tablespoons corn starch

Directions:
Combine the huckleberries and water in blender until smooth. Put in saucepan on medium-low heat.

Add sugar. Take water and corn starch and combine. Add to huckleberries. Stir until thickened.

BBQ Chicken

My kids asked for seconds of this chicken! My kids usually don't eat meat. It's always a struggle to find a meat they'll eat but they both wanted more of it. My toddler squealed for seconds and with each bite I kept saying, "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" (Man versus Food anyone?)

It's summer and I love grilling. One of the best parts about summer. It also helps that there is less clean up involved with grilling. Big plus for those of us who have to wash dishes by hand.

I was exploring some blogs a friend recommended to me when I came across this recipe on http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ I love her site! The pictures made it impossible for me to turn this one down.

I grew up on homemade BBQ sauce, I don't remember ever buying it as a kid. My mom was old school. Now that I have a family of my own I have always just bought it. A lot easier to get dinner ready when you just have to open a bottle and pour. This recipe inspired me to make my own.

The Pioneer Woman has done her recipe using the oven but when it's hot outside I try to avoid it, so I opted for the grill. I also adapted her recipe a little.

I love chicken legs but my husband loves chicken breasts, I sacrifice for him. I used boneless skinless chicken breasts and switched out the canola oil out for olive oil, just a little healthier. I also didn't have the adobo sauce so I threw in a little cayenne pepper.

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 of a whole onion
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
1 2/3 cup ketchup
1/4 cup brown sugar
plus 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
4 Tablespoons vinegar
1 Tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup molasses
pinch of salt
pinch of cayenne pepper

Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onions are transulsent, about 5 minutes. Be careful not to burn them.

Reduce the heat to low and add the remaining ingredients and stir. Allow to simmer.

Preheat grill. Put chicken on grill, cook for about 7 minutes each side. Once chicken is done dip the chicken completely in BBQ sauce, return to grill. Continue grilling for another 3-5 minutes. Brush more BBQ sauce on if desired. (I cut my chicken up and started dipping it in the BBQ sauce.)

Caramel Apple Pie Cupcake

I know this is a little late, the 4th of July was last week but life gets busy and I'm just now getting around to posting about the cupcakes I made for the 4th. I looked all over the internet for ideas for 4th of July cupcakes and I came back with everyone doing red, white, and blue. Very festive of course but I wanted to go for something a little different. Normally I make an apple pie for the 4th since I equate America to baseball and apple pie. (Now it's more like hamburgers) So, I took that idea and make a caramel apple pie cupcake. I made pie crust stars to help incorporate the apple pie feel.

I used a yellow cake mix, one can of apple pie filling and some caramel. You could make your own caramel but I decided to keep it a little easier.

My daughter couldn't keep her hands away from the caramel, after this picture was taken we ended up sitting next to the caramels, unwrapping a few, or a lot, and eating them. My 14 month old walked around smacking her lips.

For the cupcake I wanted to have some apple in the cake but I didn't want it to be too overwhelming so I used 3/4 cup apple pie filling in the cake mix. I used 1/2 cup apple cider instead of water or milk to help bring out the apple flavor. I added 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 3 eggs. I also added 1/2 tsp cinnamon but next time I think I'll bump that up to 1 tsp.

I unwrapped 25 caramels and added 1/4 cup of milk to them and melted them in the microwave. Then I took 1/4 of a cup of the melted caramel's and added it to the cake mix. Using the blender helped crush the large apple pieces so when you ate the cake they weren't prominent.

For the pie crust I used a basic flaky crust recipe I found on allrecipes.com. I wanted it to be a little fancier so I added 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tablespoon sugar but in the end I couldn't taste the cinnamon or sugar, next time I'll bake the pie crust and then dip them into some cinnamon and sugar or I'd go with a sugar cookie dipped in cinnamon and sugar.

I wanted the frosting to be a caramel frosting but I ended up with a butter pecan taste instead. I used the rest of the caramel about 1/2 a cup and I used 3/4 cup butter flavor shortening (I think this is where I went wrong) and 3 cups powdered sugar.

I hollowed out the middle of the cupcake and cut up the rest of the apple pie filling I had then added the rest to the cupcakes. Helped tie in the apple pie feel.

I added some melted caramel over the cupcake and unwrapped about 10 more and added a few tablespoons of milk. I heated in the microwave and then drizzled it over the cupcake.

Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix
3/4 cup apple pie filling
1/2 cup apple cider
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1/4 cup caramel
1 tsp cinnamon

Melted caramel:
25-35 caramels
1/4 cup milk

Pie Crust:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening, chilled
3 1/2 tablespoons ice water

Frosting:
3/4 cup shortening
3 cups powder sugar
1/2 cup caramel
3 tablespoons milk

Bake at 350 degree for 18-20 minutes.

Applebee's Blondies with Maple Butter Sauce

Last weekend I was in Utah visiting my sister after she had her first baby. She was coming home in the afternoon and my mom and I were talking about what we should make her. She loves brownies and I was perusing bakerella's website to see if she had anything when I came across these and had to make them. http://www.bakerella.com/dining-out-dessert/ Plus my sister has a dishwasher and my mom was there to do the dishes. I could bake and make a mess but avoid the consequence of dishes. Bakerella found this recipe from the Secret Recipe Blog http://www.recipesecrets.net/blog/recipes/copycat-applebees-walnut-blondie-with-maple-butter-sauce/, here's the recipe. These are supposed to have walnuts in them but unfortunately some people aren't fans of walnuts so I had to leave them out, plus I'm not sure my sister had any. So if you're a fan of walnuts you should definitely add them!

First I gathered all the ingredients to make sure I had everything. You never know when baking at a different house. Now the original recipe calls for white chocolate chips but all I could find were milk chocolate until my sister came home and told me she had them. Of course they were sitting right where I could see them, Murphy's law I guess.

First I mixed all the dry ingredients. Normally I just throw everything in together but hey, I wasn't doing dishes.

I took another bowl, melted the butter and then added the brown sugar.

I mixed them together and got the egg to put in. I thought the egg was being pretty difficult to open when I finally got it to break apart this is what I found.

A hard boiled egg! I was pretty surprised.

There we go, a non hard boiled egg, that works better. I added the vanilla and . . .

Mixed.

I slowly added the dry ingredients and . . .

Mixed. This time I had to grab a spoon.

Now for the good stuff, the chocolate! I wish I would have used the white chocolate I think it would have been better, not that the milk chocolate wasn't heavenly.

Then I found a 9 inch pan and baked it.

While they were baking it I made the maple butter sauce. I found some maple syrup, the recipe says to use pure maple syrup but I didn't have that so I used regular and it turned out fine. I also used lite butter which worked well. Next time I would cut a little of the butter out.

Then I tried to patiently wait for the blondies to finish.

Finally!

I had to drive the 3 hours home after eating these and I couldn't stop thinking about them. I will have to make these again.