Strawberry Ricotta Cupcakes

I love holidays and even holidays that I don’t celebrate because there always is an excuse to bake something delicious!

I wanted to make cupcakes and try something new, but not too new because I’ve never messed up cupcakes before and didn’t want to start now! Trust me, I have a never-ending baking bucket list that includes all kinds of crazy cupcake ideas, but after reading so much of Mark Bittman’s books, I think his “simple is better” edict is starting to sink in and I chose not to make the crazy stuffed cupcakes I had in mind originally.

The BEST Thumbprint Cookies

I need to practice “filling” the thumbprints. Badly.

For my family Pre-Passover dinner, I volunteered to make dessert. My mom makes the best Matzah ball soup that I’ve ever had and a mean brisket so I was glad to leave the cooking to her and stick to baking cookies!

I wanted to try something from How to Eat Everything but ended up getting stuck on the idea of thumbprint cookies. So too Google I went to find out how Mr. Bittman makes them. This is his cookie recipe, but the fillings he suggested were way beyond my family’s comprehension. Most of them like good old fashioned chocolate with nothing fancy added. But I was feeling a little daring and made a few salted caramel cookies, too (which were MORE of a hit than the plain chocolate–it was a shocker, trust me).

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

These are the easiest and best peanut butter cookies I have ever made. It’s been a while since I made peanut butter cookies, or at least ones worthy of sharing on this blog, but these are cookies that everyone who loves baking cookies/loves eating cookies should know! The recipe is too easy and they taste too amazing not to try this one at least once.

The recipe is from the Five Ingredients Fix show on Food Network. I had my doubts,  but the reviewers all seemed to love the cookies, so I gave it a try. And now, I have a new go-to cookie recipe. The absence of flour makes the peanut butter flavor really come through, and the sea salt on top is the perfect touch.

Pignoli Cookies

Making pignoli cookies for your Valentine…not the quintessential Valentine’s Day dessert, but I think that makes it even more special! I could have whipped up a red velvet cake no problem,  but this was a true baking challenge and was more than worth it when he couldn’t stop eating them throughout the night!

I don’t know from a pignoli cookie. I’ve only tried them one time and it was at one of the best bakeries in Philadelphia: Isgro’s, so I knew mine wouldn’t be nearly as good as their’s. But I’m told by my pignoli cookie lover that they were amazing nonetheless. So in my mind, this was a success, even if they didn’t turn out quite like the traditional Italian cookie.

Making Almond Paste aka Complete Madness

My boyfriend hinted requested that he wanted Pignoli cookies for Valentine’s Day. And I love a good food challenge so I obliged! Then I saw the recipe called for almond paste and apparently no supermarket in my five-mile radius carried. So I made my own because the recipe to do so seemed simple enough and I later found out almond paste is super expensive so this might have been a money-saving blessing in disguise.

First of all, when it says “peeled almonds” don’t get out the vegetable peeler like I did. I don’t know what my problem is half of the time in the kitchen but I believe it has something to with the fact that I just don’t THINK AT ALL. When I told people I did this, they laughed at me like I was an idiot…which is deserving because I really was an idiot. Don’t worry, I only peeled 5 or 6 almonds and cut myself with the peeler  just a few times before I said “Forget it!” and stormed away from the kitchen in a huff and decided to Google how to peel almonds. Surely there was a better way. And DUH there was. Boil them for 60-90 seconds and these babies literally FLY out of their skin. I’m not kidding. It was like the fucking fourth of July in my kitchen with almonds shooting everywhere, bouncing off of the ceiling. Madness. I’ll be finding naked almonds in my place for the next few weeks…

I think I lost my mind with this one: Deep fried cookie dough Oreos

This is the most insane, ridiculous, but also dangerously delicious idea that I have ever had.

I was trying to think of something out-of-the-box to make as a Super Bowl snack. I had stashed away something I saw on Chrissy Tiegen’s blog: Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. I thought that sounded like the coolest, most novel dessert idea ever! But it still seemed too safe for the dangerous food I had envisioned making.

So I was thinking…what’s like a crazy dessert people go nuts for? And since I had Oreo cookies on the mind, I thought of the Jersey Shore boardwalk and how you can’t walk a foot without seeing a few food stands selling deep fried Oreos. I could make my own deep fried oreos!

But don’t worry, I wasn’t about to nix the cookie dough part of the idea. I instead, just decided to do it all. Make the Oreo-stuffed cookies and then deep fry them.

Cue brain explosion.

Cheesecake Brownies

If you want to see what these brownies should have looked like, click here. I messed this one up. Bad. They still tasted OK in the end, but when you forget to add half of the ingredients and only realize it midway through, “ok” tasting brownies are better than nothing…

I was really excited about this recipe since The Food Network website lauded these as a healthier dessert option and it got great reviews. If I hadn’t forgotten to add the melted chocolate, butter and canola oil that was sitting in a bowl on the other side of the kitchen then maybe I’d be able to agree with the reviewers!

Fig Spice Cupcakes with the Best Buttercream Ever!

I love using lots of spices during the colder months. It just feels good to enjoy some good spices–cinnamon, nutmeg, etc on a chilly day, whether it be in your coffee or in your dessert. I made these cupcakes as a Christmas gift and they are great–albeit the texture wasn’t what I was planning on. It was more like a scone-consistency, which wasn’t bad, just not what I had anticipated. But the flavors were all there!

I used fresh whole figs, diced up and…yummm. I forgot how much I loved figs!  Their grittiness and sweetness made the cakes so much more pleasing than I could have hoped!

FIGS

But what I really want to talk about is the buttercream frosting. I am going to try to use this anywhere I can in the future. I’m a sucker for cinnamon so if a recipe calls for a 1/4 tsp of it, I double or triple it. Honey cinnamon buttercream. How could it be bad? But how could it be soooooooo good!?

The recipe is from Love and Olive Oil. This is a good one, guys. Promise!

I didn’t use the almond meal as stated in the ingredients–because it was like $13 for a bag of the stuff and I just couldn’t spend that much on something that required only 1/4 cup for the recipe. I just added flour in it’s place–I think I used 1 cup of flour in lieu of it. I’m sure the almond meal would really add some amazing depth of flavor to the cakes if you happen to have some or are willing to shell out the money for it.

Ingredients: 

Cupcakes
1 1/8 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup almond meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup finely diced fresh figs (about 2 whole figs), or 1/3 cup chopped dried figs

Frosting
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, room temperature
3-3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons raw dark honey
pinch cinnamon
2-3 tablespoons milk or cream, as needed

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt.Whisk together coconut milk sugar, oil, and extracts. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix until relatively smooth. Fold in fig. Fill cupcake liners with about 3 tablespoons of batter (cups should be just under 2/3 of the way full). Bake for 22-25 minutes or until set, and toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

For frosting, cream butter in electric mixer for 1-2 minutes until fluffy. Slowly add 1 cup sugar and beat until smooth. Add honey and cinnamon and mix until combined. Add remaining confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, and beat until well incorporated. Add 1 tablespoon of cream at a time, and mix at medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add more cream or sugar as necessary to achieve proper consistency. Pipe or spread onto cooled cupcakes.

Black and White Cupcakes

BIG MISTAKE. Sorry. Didn’t take a picture of the cupcakes fresh–so this is what they looked like a day or so later…after spending time in a zipblock bag. I feel like a bad parent!

It all started last week when I was planning what to bake for my family’s Hanukkah dinner. I knew I wanted to make cupcakes but I really wanted to make them in a Hanukkah theme. Short of putting Star of Davids or little Maccabees on top of them, I couldn’t think of anything that screamed Hanukkah besides some blue and silver icing. No fun.

My boyfriend, Andrew suggested I make Black and White cookie-style cupcakes. Great idea? I didn’t think so!!! I believe I told him the idea was “stupid” among other things. Just because they sell black and white cookies at Jewish delis doesn’t make them Hanukkah desserts!!!

Baking for the first time sans box mix! I don’t feel like such a bad “parent” anymore!

Fast forward to a few days. My friend Heather came over to help me bake. I had decided on vanilla cupcakes and would make half with vanilla icing and half with chocolate fudge icing with no intention of mixing the two together. That’s when Heather had the BRILLLIANT idea to make black and white cookie cupcakes! The vanilla icing had turned out more like a cookie icing than a cupcake icing and this sparked her creative thinking.

My first and only reaction was just to laugh. If two different people, unbeknownst to each other come up with the same conclusion to a baking dilemma…then they are probably on to something. Of course, I now have to live with the fact that I’m like all of the record labels that passed on someone who is now a big, huge star. Like, I kinda didn’t think Taylor Swift would ever make it big and now I have to see her on TV and hear her on the radio all the time and think about the millions and millions of dollars that could have been mine….or whenever someone told me that a B&W cookie cupcake was an amazing idea….

The gooey messy mix…one of my fave parts of baking.

Sometimes, you just have to admit your  when wrong and uncreative and do not have the foresight to see a good idea when it’s presented to you the first time.

So bake these vanilla cupcakes and think about that. I found Amy Sedaris’ while searching on Yummly for a good vanilla cupcake. I used her frosting, but definitely listen to the reviewers who said it was too runny! And the chocolate fudge frosting was from the Joy of Baking.

Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 lb confectioner’s sugar
• Half and half
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, two teaspoons vanilla, salt and baking powder. Add flour and milk in batches, starting and ending with flour. Stir until batter is smooth and satiny.

Fill paper-lined muffin tins with batter. Bake at 375° for 18- 20 minutes.

For the vanilla frosting, whip together the box of confectioners’ sugar, half-and-half, and one teaspoon vanilla until smooth and fluffy. Allow cupcakes to cook for 45 minutes before frosting.

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

• 4 ounces (120 grams) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 2/3 cup (150 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/3 cups (160 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Eggnog Pound Cake

Being a nice Jewish girl, I had never known what exactly eggnog was or tasted like, let alone tried it. I had never even tried a baked ham until a few years ago! But since it’s the holiday season, I wanted to make some festive treats. I saw this recipe and thought it would be a perfect, easy snack (that could double as breakfast!).

I would have made my own pound cake, but I saw I needed like 9 eggs and it just seemed excessive and dumb because I had no idea if I was even going to like eggnog. I wasn’t going to waste my money buying all the ingredients when I can go all Sandra Lee and Semi-Homemade. Seriously, don’t even get me started on Sandra… this is the one and only time I will ever reference that CRAZY lady.

The good news is the pound cake turned out pretty well! The better news: Jews can enjoy eggnog too…in cake form, that is. I found the actual eggnog to be way too sweet and thick for my liking, so I’m going to stick with my latkes and kugel and leave the eggnog to the Christmas lovers…save for this delicious pound cake!

Tree at Headhouse Square, Philadelphia

Ingredients

• 1 (16-oz.) package pound cake mix
• 1 1/4 cups eggnog
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Beat all ingredients together at low speed with an electric mixer until blended. Increase speed to medium, and beat 2 minutes. Pour into a lightly greased 9- x 5-inch loaf pan. (I used 11 x 5)
2. Bake at 350° for 1 hour to 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a long wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 minutes. Remove from pan to wire rack, and cool completely (about 1 hour).