Strawberry Perfection

I've been having trouble finding a good strawberry cupcake recipe that uses real strawberries instead of strawberry extract. Well, I did find one, and it's delicious, but it's more like a strawberry muffin than a cupcake. Today I decided to wing it and make my own strawberry cupcake recipe. I think it turned out pretty awesome, especially for a first try. I started out by thawing ~4 cups of frozen strawberries (it was a little less than three cups once they thawed). Then I pureed them in the blender. I reserved 4 tbsp. of the strawberry puree for the frosting and put the rest in a big mixing bowl (~1 to 1 1/4 c. of puree). Here's the recipe as I made it today, and it was delicious, but next time I might add a bit more strawberry puree to enhance the strawberry flavor (or scale down the rest of the ingredients to just make 12 cupcakes but still use 1 c. of puree). As is, this recipe made 18 cupcakes: Strawberry Cupcakes 1 c. strawberry puree 1/4 c. melted butter 1 c. sugar 1/4 c. vegetable oil 2 eggs 1/2 c. vanilla yogurt 1 3/4 c. all purpose flour 2 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. salt

• Preheat oven to 350F.


• Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl.


• Mix strawberry puree, sugar, butter, and oil with a whisk or a hand mixer.


• Add the eggs and mix well.


• Add the yogurt and mix well.


• Slowly mix in the dry ingredients.


• Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners and fill 1/2 - 2/3 full of batter (don't overfill).


• Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.


• Frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting or strawberry frosting (see my recipe below).

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting (this makes a lot of frosting, enough to pipe a good amount of frosting onto 18 cupcakes; if frosting with a butter knife, I would halve this recipe) ~Another note on the frosting: 4 tbsp. of puree was probably too much, since the frosting was a little runny (consistency is fine if you refrigerate the cupcakes). Next time I'll try using 3 tbsp.

• 4 tbsp. strawberry puree (see note above about using less)


• 4 tbsp. softened salted butter


• 2 tbsp. softened cream cheese


• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract


• 3 1/2 - 4 c. powdered sugar

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth, then add 1 c. of powdered sugar and the vanilla. Beat in the strawberry puree, and beat in powdered sugar 1/2 c. to 1 c. at a time until it reaches the desired consistency (it will probably take about 3 1/2 to 4 c. of powdered sugar since there's so much liquid from the puree).

Good Things Coming Your Way

I have recently become completely obsessed with baking. Today I am doing a little experimenting. You see, I really want to be able to make amazing cupcakes from scratch. Not from a box. The problem is, there's something Not Quite Right about every recipe I've tried.

Last weekend I pretty much perfected strawberry muffins, and today I think I've nailed chocolate cupcakes. I just need to scale up the recipe and bake a test batch, then I'll be ready to share, I think.

Stay tuned.

The Most Perfect Cornbread Recipe

Seriously. I've tried a bunch, and mostly they were good. But not, you know, The Best Cornbread I Ever Ate. So I took a couple of ok cornbread recipes and modified them until I came up with this:

The Most Perfect Cornbread Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk (I use skim, but pretty much any milk will work I think)
• 5 tbsp. melted butter (~1/3 cup)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium-size mixing bowl with a whisk. Add the milk, melted butter, and beaten egg. Stir with a spoon just until moistened (there will be some lumps, and that's ok). Pour batter into a greased baking dish (I use a glass 2 quart 8x11 casserole dish), and bake for 20-25 minutes depending on the size of your pan and your oven (23 minutes is perfect for me). You could also make corn muffins with this recipe (makes 12 muffins), just bake the muffins for ~15 minutes.

Go ahead, try it. You won't be sorry.

Nachos: McGuire's Style

i have been cooking up a storm over the last couple of weeks. i don't know what's gotten into me. one day i just caught the cooking bug, and i've been deviating from our usual tacos-spaghetti-pizza-sloppy joes-something from a box or the freezer dinner routine.

it all started a couple of weeks ago when i started itching to make nachos. mcguire's style nachos, that is. for those who aren't from around these parts, mcguire's is a very cool irish pub style restaurant in pensacola and destin, fl. they serve traditional irish foods plus the standard american fare (burgers, steaks, etc) - and there's a brewery right in the restaurant, so that's pretty cool if that's your thing. a lively round of "kiss the moose [crotch, ass, etc]" with the singer in the entertainment/bar area is also quite entertaining on weekend nights.

anyway, back to the point. nachos are one of the features on the appetizer section of mcguire's menu. but don't let that 'appetizer' thing fool you. when you order mcguire's nachos, you are served a veritable tower of food - literally. you get a tower of chips and yummy nacho toppings (meat/beans, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, various peppers, cheese, etc) approximately a foot tall. it takes five hungry 20-somethings to take down a tower of mcguire's nachos. not bad, feeding 5 for the low, low price of $9.99.

i love mcguire's nachos. chad and i frequently order them and nothing else and still take a mountain of leftovers home. well, we haven't been in pcola lately to sample this mountain of chippy, cheesy goodness, so i decided to try this at home. my effort is pictured above. it was pretty good, if i do say so myself. only i decided not to go for the messy tower. instead, i spread out the chips and toppings on a huge serving platter.

following the nacho success (and a few other food-related triumphs), chad coaxed me into making buffalo chicken fajitas for father's day. shortly before this, i had tried my hand at meatloaf. while it was tasty, it took forever, so a week or so later i did the meatloaf thing again, only i made four tiny loaves instead of one big one, which was way better time-wise. while grocery shopping this weekend, i got a wild hair and decided to make a chicken pot pie. it was tasty and quite easy. i have a recipe that calls for frozen veggies, but i wanted to experiment with different fresh veggies, so i just used potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions in the filling, and it was delicious.

oh, but the food madness isn't over yet. last night i was really craving good, homemade mac and cheese. so i made some. now, i have tried the mac and cheese thing before, and it turned out ok but not spectacular. something about the cheese sauce just wasn't quite right. so last night i threw the recipes out the metaphorical window and followed my amazing cooking instincts and made, like, the best mac and cheese ever. well, not mac and cheese, per se. i used penne rigate instead of macaroni, but you get the idea.

i also figured out the problem with my first attempt at the mac and cheese - my roux was too thick. instead of using equal parts butter and flour, i cut down the flour a bit (3 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp flour). after combining that with 1/2 cup half and half, 3/4 cup skim milk, and one 5 oz can of evaporated milk (i was going with what i had, people) then simmering it for about 5 minutes, it made a wonderfully thick (but not too thick) white sauce. then i added three huge handfuls of sharp cheddar, a little garlic salt and pepper, poured it over cooked penne rigate, topped it with more shredded cheddar, and baked it for 20 minutes at 350 deg. you should try it. best fake mac and cheese ever. but next time, i will plan ahead and just buy whole milk for the sauce.