This is more of a how-to. Our family LOVES root beer, so I thought a perfect combination for dessert would be root beer float cupcakes.

First, I used Baked’s recipe for Root Beer Bundt Cake, BUT made them into cupcakes. I only made 12 cupcakes (half the recipe) and with the rest of the batter…

I made a just made a small cake for munching. Yum.

Then I topped them some homemade root beer sherbet and some whipped cream. Since the cake was so heavy, the very flavorful root beer sherbet was just what was needed to make the perfect ice cream cupcake combo.

So I saw this Martha Stewart recipe for ‘strawberry bread‘ – but the recipe needed that little, somethin’ somethin’…which is mochi, of course. So I adjusted the recipe…a lot. So much so that it doesn’t seem like ‘bread’ to me, it’s more like a loaf cake which OF COURSE, I turned into cupcakes. Yes – the Hello Kitty liners make them taste better…

ingredients:
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 pint strawberries (rinsed, hulled, quartered)
1 cup flour
3/4 cup mochiko
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.

If you don’t know what mochiko is, it’s a rice flour that give a nice flavor and chew – especially to baked goods. You can find it in an asian supermarket.

In a small saucepan, bring the strawberries to a boil over medium heat – just about 2 minutes – you want them to look like this:

Set the strawberries aside.

In a medium bowl whisk the flour, mochiko, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs until light and fluffy. Alternate the flour mixture with the milk, adding the vanilla in at the end. Fold in the strawberries.

Pour into prepped liners. This recipe will fill 12 cupcake cups. Bake for 20 minutes depending on your oven, testing with a toothpick. Let cool on a wire rack. These are great plain, with a little powdered sugar on top, but also fantastic with a vanilla buttercream frosting.

Warning – this is my recipe. Meaning, NOT authentic carnitas which traditionally use lard to fry ‘em up – which is surely tasty, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it!

ingredients:
3-4 lbs pork shoulder
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon black pepper
pinch of salt
4 tablespoons minced garlic

Put the pork shoulder in your slow cooker.

Mix together the orange juice, lime juice, olive oil, pepper, salt and garlic and pour over the pork.

Set the cooker to low for 8-10 hours.

Take the pork out of the crock pot and chop into small pieces. Serve with corn tortillas, pico de gallo, fresh guac, whatever you like!

When I visited Tartine in San Francisco, I found perfection in the shape of a so called ‘morning bun’. I found the recipe online, but realized that I was in no mood to make croissant dough. So I took the Barefoot Contessa idea of using puff pastry as a shortcut. What I got, was next to amazing. Sure it didn’t have that same doughy bun taste, but the flavor – WOW. These had the same quality, albeit with a little extra crunch.

ingredients:
melted butter and sugar to prep pan
1 package puff pastry (2 sheets)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
Finely grated zest of two oranges
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 stick of butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Defrost your puff pastry, set aside. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan with butter, sprinkling each cup with a little bit of white sugar. Set aside.

In a small bowl combine the brown sugar, white sugar, orange zest, cinnamon and salt. You can even freeze this for up to a month, if you want to make buns on a moment’s notice. (Who doesn’t.)

Once your puff pastry is ready, take ONE of the sheets and lay it out. I like to use a silicone pastry brush – brush the melted butter on BOTH sides of the pastry. Take HALF of the sugar mixture and spread it over the top of the pastry.

Carefully roll into a log shape. Cut the log into 6 pieces. Place the cut pieces upright in the prepped muffin pan. Repeat this process with the second sheet of puff pastry.

Bake for 20-22 minutes until the puff pastry is a golden brown. Pull the buns out of the pan, and plate. I like to eat these right away – they taste best warm and gooey. Perfect for a Sunday morning.

Quite obviously this is not a recipe. Just an idea of how to make your kids get interactive with meal time. One of the kids favorite books, “I will never, not ever eat a tomato” featuring Charlie and Lola, is all about picky eaters. In order to get Lola to eat Charlie comes up with fantastical ideas of what the foods could become. I took his cue and made race cars out of carrots.

I was making two race cars, one for each kid.
ingredients:
two carrots,
a radish
two sliced olives

Then I printed out teeeeny tiny little Charlie and Lola to sit in my carrot mobile.

The sliced olives were the steering wheels, and the sliced radishes were the tires. The kids were so excited to see race cars on their dinner plates, the Baby ate the whole thing!

‘Moffles’ are mochi thrown into a waffle maker, thus calling themselves…moffles. While that’s all well and good, I wanted to make an actual WAFFLE. So I made up some waffle batter but changed the ingredients to add mochiko. What I got was a crispy waffle with a mochi chew, not too far off the weirdness path and perfect for brunch. (It tastes better in a Hello Kitty waffle maker, for sure)

ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup mochiko
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 cups milk
2 eggs

Prep your waffle iron by buttering it up. The mochiko makes this batter pretty sticky, so you want to make sure you can get them out.

Combine all the dry ingredients, then add the wet. Mixing until just combined.

Pour into your waffle maker, and wait til they come out a nice crispy brown.

You’ll notice the familiar mochi chew. Great with fruit and syrup – something different for your morning breakfast.

All the coffee lovers in the house say HEY…HO! I LOVE coffee. I thought it’d be cute to make Coffee+Donuts Cupcakes, using the coffee cupcake and frosting as a nice flavorful base. I know not everyone has a Mini Donut Maker, so here’s just the recipe for the cupcakes. They are really excellent on their own.

ingredients:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick) softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup strong brewed coffee
1/8 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

(coffee frosting recipe, below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Combine the coffee and milk, set aside.

Alternate the flour and the coffee mixture into the butter mixture, beating until combined.

Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for about 15-20 minutes depending on your oven. Let cool on a wire rack.

The cakes become more coffee-vescent the longer they sit. These make a really nice cake as is. The coffee frosting is just a nice touch.

Coffee Frosting:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
2-1/2 Tablespoons coffee
1 Tablespoon milk (as needed)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In the bowl of an electric mixer cream butter, carefully adding the sugar, coffee, and vanilla; mix until light and fluffy. Add a little of the milk at a time to get the right consistency. Turn the mixer up to high and beat well.

Quite obviously, if you have a donut maker OR a tiny sous chef to help sprinkle the donuts: top these with a donut to make coffee+donut cupcakes. Or just buy mini donuts from the store, they make a really cute presentation.

Then you can just top these with a donut to make coffee+donut cupcakes. Or just buy mini donuts from the store, they make a really cute presentation.

This is my version of the Baked brownie because – like most of my baking endeavors – I decided to make these late at night and I could only work with the ingredients I had on hand. It didn’t matter. They were fantastic.
Here’s the original.

ingredients:
1-1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons Valrhona cocoa powder
11 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips
8 ounces butter (2 sticks), cut into 1 inch cubes
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment. Use some melted butter and butter the parchment, this will be good for easy lifting later. Trust me.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, the salt, and cocoa powder.

In a double boiler, place the chocolate, the butter, and the instant espresso powder and watch and stir and watch and stir until melted and combined. Carefully take the top bowl off the heat – I place a towel on the counter and set it on that. It keeps the bowl steady and dry.

Add the white sugar and brown sugar. Whisk until completely combined.

Add three eggs and whisk until just combined. Then add the other two. Stir in the vanilla. per the origincal recipe: Do not over beat the batter at this stage or your brownies will be cakey.

Sprinkle the flour/cocoa/salt mix over the chocolate. Using a spatula (DO NOT USE A WHISK) fold the dry into the wet – you are only combining people, don’t go nuts with the stirring, you’ll regret it.

Pour the mixture into the pan and smooth the top with your spatula. Bake the brownies for approx. 30 minutes and check to make sure the brownies are done with the toothpick test. You always want crumbs on the pick, not a totally clean pick. If it comes out clean, you’ve got just slightly too far.

Cool the brownies completely. This is where the lovely buttered parchment comes in handy – lift the brownies out and cut. You will thank me for the parchment idea.

Give these away as soon as possible. Or else you will eat the WHOLE pan. You’ve been warned.

These mini peanut butter cups from Trader Joe’s are too adorable. Great on their own, I used these instead of chocolate chips in my muffin recipe. Fantastic when it’s nice and melty right out of the oven!

ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/3 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups (almost one container) Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Prep a muffin pan with liners.

In a bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Add the egg, milk, oil and vanilla. Stir til combined, don’t got too far, just until it’s mixed, or you’ll get a rubbery muffin. EW.

Now stir in the mini peanut butter cups. Spoon into your prepped muffin pan. Bake for 15-17 minutes.

When you bite into them the flavor combination is soooo good. Don’t eat them all.