Mediterranean Dinner

Tonight I decided to try Mediterranean! Great Success!! 

It was so yummy!!

Never made FALAFEL before, but I found this falafel mix box at Krogers called Tarazi.

I think I added too much water or didn't let it set long enough, whatever it was it came out as a falafel cookie! Haha~ but still the taste was the same and good!

Now for lamb meat. I used ground lamb. 

This is 1 lb of ground lamb.

Seasoning: 

• 2 tsp onion powder
•  2 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp rosemary leaves
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp thyme
  
  *The seasoning was a little salty for my taste, but then I am sensitive to salt*

More ingredients!! 

• Cucumbers and tomatoes
• Rice Pilaf from Casbah brand
• Hummus and Greek Yogurt Spinach Dip
• Wheat Flour Pita (very good for wheat flour)

Paired with a white wine called ReFresh. Love the name! 

Zombie Cupcakes

I don't know how familiar you are with the site Shirt.Woot.Com,
but my husband and I love this website!
They have the coolest shirts and for real cheap.
My husband has a shirt called the Last Cupcake.














Last year when I started getting into baking, he said I should try to replicate it.
And I've always kept it in the back of my head.
For his 31st birthday I decided to give it a shot.
Let me tell ya, it was not easy and took a lot of time to make it just right.
I had to make my own cupcake wrappers.
You can pretty much use any recipe, just change the frosting color to a green of your liking.
I made Dulce De Leche cupcakes. This is where I got the recipe. Crumbly Cookie 

This is the Green frosting I made for the zombie's.

Here are my zombies + the hero in brown

 As for the cupcake wrappers, I found a template
 online and printed it onto green paper
and then just glued
it together.
I added my own eyes on it as well.
Just have fun with it!

This is the final product.
The room was really dark. Sorry about that.

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

Christmas baking has begun (late)!!!!!
I found this wonderful recipe on GloriousTreats .
Chocolate cake with Peppermint frosting. The frosting is "cool and fresh" tasting!!
In Glorious Treats, I love how she puts red in her frosting to make stripes.
I decided to try  GREEN as well. Hope you enjoy the pictures!!

Mix-Mix-Mix

Found these cute liners at Target

Can't wait to see how they turn out

How does my green peppermint stripe look?? :) I love it!!

My red stripe didn't come out as bold... looks orange

And...Voila!! Put a dash of sprinkles and the cupcake looks complete!

Put some winter edition oreo cookies on top...
Cute snowmen, gingerbread, skates, and snowflake designs

GET IT! RED CREME OREO!
They also have a peppermint oreo! :0)

 Happy Baking! 

A Frenzy of Cupcakes

I've been so behind in posting ... It's so crazy over here!

Baked for my friends baby shower last week! The cupcakes were a hit!!

Baked Pumpkin spice cupcakes and mini white cupcakes with purple frosting!

 

Here is the lovely lay out! Isn't it fantastic? 

Sorry the picture is low quality. Only had my Iphone on me

Tonight I made two things ... My husband and I are going to a friends house for dinner and I felt like baking something. I made chocolate chip cookies using semi-sweet and white chocolate chips... They are so wonderfully soft and chewy!! Recipe from Martha Stewart.

 

 Here are the decadent cookies.

Again low quality because I'm using my Iphone.

 Ah~~ these are a beauty!!

My husband loves loves loves Guiness beer and I've been wanting to

make these cupcakes for him for a real long time. 

Finally found a perfect recipe.

The batter was really liquidy and so I was worried it wouldn't rise enough,

but these babies were rising and rising and rising!! It was awesome!! 

I had my husband taste the first batch and he couldn't really taste the beer.. maybe a hint of it, 

even though I put in a whole bottle.

Going to have to figure out how to make the alcohol come more alive in the batter. 
Also... SUPER proud of how my frosting is turning out and piping much better than before. 
Really excited to do more.

Anyway, got this wonderful recipe from this site...

http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/guinness-cupcakes/

Definitely a must try ~~ I call it the MANLY CUPCAKE ^_^

Gluten-Free Fall Cupcakes

Fall is absolutely my favorite season!!
Thanks to Starbucks's inspiration of the Pumpkin Spice Latte ~
I thought ... what would it be like to create this as a cupcake?
Of course, researching the internet, there are a lot of recipes out there!!

I've never made a gluten-free ANYTHING, but it's becoming very popular these days and a lot of grocery stores offer gluten-free products.
Yesterday I was invited to a classmates house and she was going to prepare lunch. Now I love eating desserts after any meal, so I decided to bake some cupcakes. However, one of the girls can't eat gluten and so I didn't want her to feel left out so I decided to give it a shot. It was not easy trying to find a simple recipe that I could attempt in only 3 hours. I've never had to work with gluten-free products and really didn't have any idea where to start or what to buy. Some of the recipes called for an extensive list of items that I wasn't wanting to buy just for this one time ... But I finally did find a fabulous recipe from skinnytaste.com. She had a great and simple recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with pumpkin spiced cream cheese frosting.

Here are the ingredients you will need: I found everything at Krogers. 

The Adam's Extract Pure Vanilla is gluten free.

Ingredients:

• 18.25 oz Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla  Mix
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 cup canned 100% pure pumpkin
• 1 cup water

For the Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 8 oz Philadelphia 1/3 fat cream cheese (do not use fat free)
• 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin (canned is fine) I didn't puree the pumpkin
• 1 tsp vanilla extract I still used gluten free vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 5 tbsp packed brown sugar I used organic light brown sugar

The color of the batter is so warm & inviting!

I found these awesome cupcake fillers at Michaels in the $1 section.

Unfortunately the cupcake doesn't rise very well, so I would def add more batter to the fillers.

This is how high they got :(

I used a 4B tip to get these cute little flower buds going. Just my own original idea.

and VOILA! Cute in it's lil white box~ ready to be eaten!!

"A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made.  The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air." -   Eric Sloane