Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

I love Gordon Ramsay, and although his new show Master Chef is terrible, I watch it because he is in it. Yesterday, after watching the cupcake challenge episode, I felt inspired to comb through my cupcake books and try a new recipe. (It also helps to know that I am currently on a 5-day Labor Day weekend and can finally get to some of the items on my fun to-do list.)

I found a recipe in one of my books for After Eight cupcakes which have a very dense, but not super sweet chocolate cake with a mint butter cream frosting. 

I am not sure if I think the color of the frosting makes it more or less appetizing. I think that perhaps I put too much frosting on my cupcakes because I always have to scrape the bowl for the last one. Cupcake recipes never have the correct cake to frosting ratio in my opinion.

That's Amore!

Today was my first attempt at homemade pasta; I have been meaning to try this for a while now. It took a few hours but it was fun and tasty. 

 First, I gathered all the ingredients and setup the pasta machine.

Then, I made the pasta dough.  You have to slowly incorporate the flour into the pool of eggs in the center.  This is much harder than it sounds.  In spite of my constant kneading, the dough stayed pretty flaky.

You can see the flaky texture of the dough.  Also, it was very tough and hard to knead.  Once it is mixed it has to be wrapped in cling-wrap and let set at room temperature for 30 minutes.  It was much more cohesive after that and it had a more elastic quality.

Finally, the fun part! The dough has to be divided and rolled through the machine about 20-30 times (at different roller widths) to make long thin sheets.

The sheets are then passed through the noddle cutters and out comes fettuccine.

I found a great recipe on Epicurious.com (originally from Gourmet Magazine) for a pancetta and sun dried tomato cream sauce to showcase my homemade fettuccine.  At last, it was time to eat!  A little garlic bread...a little Pinot...yum...

My pasta making skills need some work but it was a good first try.  I feel so gourmet.  Maybe my skills will improve enough to impress my Italian in-laws. 

Twilight Party

One of the students I work with in the afterschool program is moving out of state with her family and today was her last day.  As much as I try not to have "favorites," there are always students that you connect with more than others; she is definitely one of those students.  At the beginning of the year, she started reading the Twilight series and after discovering that I am a huge Twilight fan, started waiting for me every day outside the afterschool program homework room to discuss what she had just read and to gush over the dreamy Edward Cullen.  She is well-behaved, polite, hard working and just genuinely a good kid. We were all sad to learn that her family was relocating to Oregon (although it does make her one state closer to Forks).  The other afterschool program staff members and I decided that a Twilight themed going away party was absolutely necessary.

I knew I had to make vampire cupcakes.  Since it was a bit of an experiment, I felt it was necessary to document my work. 


Step 1: I melted Wilton Candy Melts and poured the melted candy into a Ziploc plastic bag. I then trimmed off a very, very small amount off of one of the corners, making it into a makeshift pastry bag.

Step 2: I found clipart of vampire fangs and transformed it into a template for the candy pieces.  I placed the template under a sheet of parchment and piped the melted candy on the parchment.  I did all the white fangs first and then, when they were cooled, made the lips.

Step 3: I made red velvet cupcakes and cream cheese buttercream icing.  I then rolled the edges of the cupcakes in black sprinkles.  I topped the cupcakes off with the cooled, candy fangs and a little "blood" (red gel icing).

I can definitely think of ways to improve them next time, but I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

It was nice of Robert Pattinson to make an appearance.  The girls (ok me too) went crazy over him!

We ate cupcakes, took pictures, watched New Moon and had a great time but our party had a sad ending.  Our student is gone...  She will be greatly missed but I am confident that she will succeed at her new school and in the future.




In happier news....SPRING BREAK!!!   WOO!!!  I am off for 10 days! Maybe now I can tackle some of the overdue items on my wedding to-do list....