Sequoia National Park

I promised when I did something exciting, regardless if it pertained to food or not I would update you. Well here you go! Yesterday I took a much needed mental health day and Chris planned a day trip to Sequoia National Park and California Hot Springs. We stopped off at Trader Joe's before we left and picked up munchies for the day. If you haven't tried it, go buy their hummus party platter, or something to that effect. It's 4 different hummus..es.. original, garlic, tomato basil, and spicy (which is out of this world). Get some bagel chips and go to town! We also got some bread and cheese and dark chocolate almond lacy cookie type things, oh a some salted cashews. Delicious spread if I do say so myself. Once we got up to the big trees we laid out a blanket and had a picnic. We then went on the trail of 100 giants and had fun looking and the trees and even crawling inside some of them. Afterwards we drove to the Kern River and walked along the edge for a bit. It oddly starting lightly raining, weird. We then went back to California Hot Springs and went swimming and ate ice cream. Then we zoomed home for Chris' softball game, which they won by the way. Great great day. Hopefully this is the weekend for cookies and cream cheesecake cups!

Here are a few pictures from the day!

Birthday Cake

I'm sad to report that the cookies and cream cheesecake cups have been postponed. More important matters were brought to my attention. This past Saturday was Chris' mom (Jill)'s birthday. Clearly this required cake. The solution, the ultimate lemon cake. The cake was devoured before I got to take a picture, I'll check with Chris' family to see if they took one and I'll post it if they do. Let me tell you a big more about what an ultimate lemon cake is: white cake split into 4 layers with lemon curd between each layer, frosted with a lemony white chocolate cream cheese frosting and decorated with white chocolate shavings. I mean come on! White chocolate, lemon and cream cheese! What more does one need? It may be one of the easiest cakes I've ever made as well! Alright here we go, believe it or not, I started out with a box white cake mix. I don't believe in box cakes but this made things so much simpler and I dare say you couldn't taste the difference. If you had it and are reading this, did you know? Exactly! Okay with the mix use the recipe that only uses egg whites. This makes the cake so much lighter and even a smidge healthier! Prepare the cakes as normal and bake as directed in 2 9in. round cake pans. Once they have cooled completely cut each round in half creating 4 layers. Stack the cake putting a layer of store bought (I suppose you could make your own) lemon curd. I get mine at Trader Joe's, it's fantastic. I ended up using nearly 2 jars of lemon curd in this cake. Use as much or little as you would like. I'm a lemon freak so I went pretty heavy on the curd. The only real recipe I used was the one for the frosting:

Lemony White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
6 ounces white chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 package (8 ounces)cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1. Place the white chocolate in a small glass bowl in the microwave oven on high power for 1 minute. Remove the bowl from the oven and stir with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula until it is smooth. Set the chocolate aside to cool.
2. Place the cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until well combined, 30 seconds. Stop the machine. Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, and melted white chocolate, and blend on low speed until just combined, 30 seconds. Add the confectioners' sugar and blend on low speed until the sugar is incorporated, 30 seconds. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat until the frosting is fluffy, 1 minute or more.

Topping the cake only used about 3/4 of the frosting. With the remaining frosting I added some pink food coloring and piped around the top edge and base of the cake to make it look a little more fancy and girly. I then shaved some white chocolate onto the top of the cake. I also added some pink food coloring to some melted white chocolate and piped "Happy Birthday Jill!" onto a piece of wax paper and put it in the freezer. I just peeled off the wax paper and set the chocolate writing on top of the cake. This was a million times easier than trying to write with frosting. If I messed up writing I could just start over and I could evenly place it on the cake without messing up everything. I would definitely recommend this if you aren't confident in your frosting writing skills! You have to try this cake!!!

Tripple Citrus "Cupcakes"

Let me start off by telling you that the photo above looks nothing like the photo in the recipie book it was found in. Though they were tasty they are not the thick frosting-y lovely cupcakes I imagined them to be. In fact, they weren't cupcakes at all. The Martha Stewart 175 Cupcake book is a big fat liar, these are muffins! There is no way in any far off galaxy that they would ever be cupcakes. You're a liar Martha, who saw that coming? All that aside, they were delicious MUFFINS.

Ingredients for Muffins
3 1/2 cups all- purpose flour (I preffer to use cake flour)
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 3 lemons)
3 tablespoons finely grated orange zest (from 2 oranges)
3 tablespoons finely grated lime zest, plus more from garnish (from 3 limes)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
9 large eggs, room temperature

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour and salt.

2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, scraping down sides of bowl every few minutes. Add citrus zest. Reduce speed to medium, and add vanilla. Add eggs, three at a time, beating until incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Reduce to low. Add flour mixture in four batches, beating until completely incorporated after each.

3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full; tap pans on countertop once to distrubute batter. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer times to wire racks to cool 10 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored up to 2 days at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.

4. To finish, make a basic glaze of powdered sugar and lime juice to desired consistency. Dip tops of cupcakes in glaze, then turn over quickly and garnish with zest. Cupcakes are best eaten the day they are glazed; keep at room temperature until ready to serve.

Overall, the muffins were a hit! They were nothing like I expected them to be. The lime glaze was sour and soooo yummy. These muffins would be great topped with some lemon curd, or lime curd (one of my next adventures I plan to make). The next desert scheduled is cookies and cream cheesecake cups. Probably some time this upcoming weekend!

Welcome Back!

Since I quit my previous blog I've received nothing but complaints from my family. I finally caved in, I'm back okay. Stop your whining! Here's the catch with the new one: I've recently become infatuated with baking blogs (thanks Chris) so I've decided to do the same. I'll be posting photos and recipes for all my baking creations as well as posting links to recipes I find and would like to try. You get the idea. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure among all the food there will also be fun pictures and video of events besides food to so you can all get your fix of my entertaining life. So Mimi, Mom and Deba here you go. You may be the only ones who ever look at this, so this is for you! Once I get my page all customized and cute again I'll be posting about yesterdays "cupcake" adventure. Stay tuned for Triple Citrus "Cupcakes", and those quotes are there for a good reason, just wait.