A Cupcake For My Mom

My mom can't eat a regular cupcake because of a gluten allergy. I have been work on a project of trying to work with gluten stuff for baking and I have learned that the best way is using a box mix. I never like using the but when it comes to working with gluten free stuff it is the easiest at home way to make them. We had a BBQ last weekend and I make one of my mom favorites favorite things into a cupcake. My mom loves Smores more than anything at a cook out. She always had the stuff to make them on hand all the time growing up as a kid and I even have the stuff to make them whenever I want. What I did was take a gluten free box mix and made it in to chocolate cupcakes and as soon as the came out of the oven I put a Hershey kiss right in the middle of the cupcake.

After I put the kiss in the middle I let them cool. This makes it so it has a nice soft middle and gives you that chocolate bite of a Smore. Then to fill in that hole I made with the Kiss I put gram cracker to fill in the hole. You can buy gluten free gram cracker at stores it depends on the stores around you. I forgot that gram crackers had gluten in them, so if you are making them for some who is gluten free make sure you get the gluten free ones. Oops sorry mom!

Then I top in with marshmallow fluff on top of it. I made a frosting out of a bottle of fluff a stick of butter and two cups of powdered sugar to put on top of the cupcake.

 I hope you enjoy a Smore made into a cupcake in a gluten free way. It can also be made in to a gluten cupcake as well I posted a chocolate cupcake recipe in my Calli cakecup and then use the gluten gram cracker.

-Half Pint :)

25 Things About Me!!

1.       My father showed me how to bake. My mom hates being in the kitchen, so my father did most of the cooking when I was growing up.

2.       I have weird eyes. They are blue with yellow around in the middle. It is almost like I was going to have green eyes but it never happened.

3.       I want to own all of the Revlon Lip Butters because they all have food names. I have nine as of right now.

4.       I love playing food games on my DS or on my phone. I even will download them to my computer to play them.

5.       My favorite time of year is fall and I love Halloween and I love my headless cupcake tee shirt.

6.       I have a thing for anything that is Tim Burton feel to it like Don’t Slave which is a computer game, Gloom that is a card game, and nothing Tim Burton makes I love.

7.       I wanted a red Kitchen Aid mixer since I started baking.

8.       My first baking job was for a dentist office.

9.       I will pay candles that smell like food any other candles I don’t like.

10.   I worked at a Cub Scout Day Camp for 8 years and I worked in the shooting sports area teaching BB guns, Archery, and Slingshots.   

11.   I am a nerd and I am okay with it.

12.   I know every word to all the song in Pitch Perfect.

13.   I am 5 feet tall and my brother is 6’7 ish.

14.   I will only eat one of something I make to make sure it taste good and then I don’t eat anymore.

15.   I spend hours looking at animal pictures and videos to make myself laugh if I am having a hard day.

16.   I put a lot of thought into a cupcake before I try a new favor and when I get stuck I call my dad and he helps me think things through.

17.   I have played hours of words with friends with my mom and I have only won once and I got help.

18.   I have re-watched every season of Hell’s Kitchen and I know everything and everyone in each season.

19.   I am getting married in October 12, 2013 and I didn’t pick my wedding date my dad did. He wanted me to get married on his birthday which is the 13^th but it is a Sunday during a school year, so we moved it to Saturday the 12^th.

20.   I have a tattoo of my dog’s paw prints on my back because I love her so much I wanted to have her with me no matter where I am.  (They are hers because my mom and I inked her paws like figure prints and I took it to a shop and had them tattooed on.)

21.   I don’t call my mom, mom I call her Lady, because my favorite show as a kid was Animaniacs and the little girl Cindy called her mom that and I have called my mom that ever since.

22.   I fall asleep when I hear the theme song from MASH, because my mom would rock me to sleep as a baby to the theme song and then I would go to bed.

23.   When I was three my favorite show was Tales from the Crypt and my parents would let me stay up and watch it before bed. That year I wanted to go as the Crypt Keeper for Halloween and my mom dressed as a cute skellington and tricked me into thinking I was the Crypt Keeper.

24.   I played Saxophone in middle and in high school.

25.   I love learning random facts to share with family and friend no matter how weird it is.   

Jannelle's Cupcake

My best friend Jannelle and I have our own them song and it sounds silly, but we love this peanut butter and jelly song. We worked at a day camp together for about two years and we would walk around singing this song all the time. Even now when I heard the song I think of her and how much we love that song and we both love PB and J’s a lot. This is a peanut butter cup cake with grape jelly in the middle with a grape jelly 

butter cream.

Peanut Butter Cupcake

½ cup butter                                        1 ½ cup flour

1 ½ brown sugar                                 ½ tsp salt

½ peanut butter                                   2 tsp baking powder

1 tps vanilla                                         2/3 cups milk

2 eggs beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degree. Add butter soften and sugar and cream together. Add peanut butter and mix till creamy. Add vanilla, eggs, and milk beat until combined. Add flour little by little. Bake 15 minutes.

*fill middles with jelly any kind you like.

Jelly Butter Cream Frosting

1 cup unsalted butter

4 cups of powder sugar

½ cup of jelly

Mix butter and jelly till creamy then add sugar a cup at a time.

-Half Pint

What Happens Next

Like most Juniors in high school I picked out my dream college to go to. I couldn't wait to go and I applied as soon as I could and worked my hardest to do go in school and go to my dream college. At the beginning of my Senior year of high school my dad took me to visit the school. It was amazing I fell in love and didn't want to leave. I had gotten home after see the school and got a letter from them saying I didn't get in. I was heart broken and didn't know what to do next. I applied to other schools, but it was my dream college. I ended up going to the community college near my parents house. As many college kids they aren't always a hundred percent sure on what they want to do. I knew I wanted to work with food, but my family worked in education and I for the longest time thought I had to work in education as well. I finally told my parents I didn't want to be a teacher anymore and I wanted to one day open my own bakery and my parents didn't care what I did in life as long as I was happy. Now I am working to getting my dream and hopefully one day I can open my own shop.

Happy Birthday Brother!

This weekend will be my brother’s birthday and I made him a cupcake that he would enjoy. We may be 8 ½ years apart from each other but we get along very well. We have had some up and down in the years, but what siblings don’t. Even though we are both out of our parents’ house we still see each other a lot. We have and always will be close.

My brother and I after I graduated High School. 

The cupcake I make is a chocolate cupcake (the recipe can be found in my Calli cupcake post), inside is a chocolate mousse, with a chocolate ganache, and topped with candy bacon. When it comes to the chocolate mousse I wasn’t too happy with it. Finding one that works best of the skill level is best the one I was use took more time than I thought it would take. The chocolate ganache was simple.

Chocolate Ganache

8 ounces of semisweet chocolate (bar or chips)

½ cup heavy cream

Cook the chocolate and heavy cream in a double boiler over water till smooth and warm.

To make a homemade double boiler take a pot and fill with water and place a glass bowl on top of the pot, but don’t let it fall in the pot.

Candy Bacon

Cut bacon into pieces and put in sugar, then let it cook in a non-stick pan. Let it cook till it is brown. Be careful when working with sugar it gets hot very fast and can hurt if it touches the skin. I hope you enjoy this cupcake I know my brother will.

-Half Pint    

TBT!

My summers when I was a kid were always fun going to see my grandma. My dad and his family built a house from the ground up right across from a lake to go fishing in and down the road from a beach to go swim in. My father and I would spend hours fishing on the lake. One of my favorite memories is my dad and I had come home with a lot of fish. I think at the time I thought it was buckets full, but it wasn’t. When we had bought the fish back to the house my grandma and dad started to clean the fish I was too young at the time to clean the fish, but my brother wanted to help kill the fish before they would get clean. The fish would still be moving on the counter and my grandma would take the back of the knife and hit the fish in the head. My brother wanted to hit the fish in the head, but she wouldn’t and he drove her crazy that night. That night we had a lot of fish for dinner and ever since then I have loved fish. Getting right from the lake, knowing how to clean the fish, and learned how to make it in different ways and now whenever I eat fish or make it takes me back to when I would go up to my grandma’s house and spend time on the lake.

Monday!

My Monday was spent with one of my good friends, because she is on vacation this week. Her and her mom are members of a wine club by us and they go about once a month to go taste the different wines. I went wine tasting once right after I had turned 21 years old and had been wanting to go again. All three of us went wine tasting Monday afternoon. The tasting menu is made up of three whites and then three reds. I am more of a red wine drinker over white wine. Two of the three white wines were the best but the red wines were great I even bought a bottle of one of the wines that was the best one I enjoyed the most of that day.

 I don't know to much about wine but I am learning each time I drink it or use it. One way I found out how to put it in with baking. The fruit wines are a good replacement for water in a cake. Talking to my friends mom about how she took a raspberry wine and put it in a chocolate cake sounded amazing and now I want to try and make a cake with wine. It was a lot of fun going out wine tasting and spending time with people who love food it was a nice way to find new ways to make food and a great day spending it around wine and food.

-Half Pint