Banana Custard-filled Chocolate Cupcakes w/ PB Frosting. Yum.

"You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it all about!" This cupcake made me want to do the Hokey Pokey! No, seriously! I don't even like the Hokey Pokey. Come to think of it, I don't like banana and peanut butter together either, much less with chocolate (because they would just be tainting my chocolate anyway!) But this, oh THIS was an exception!!!!!!!

I read a certain column in the food section of the newspaper every week because I like to criticize it. (I'll be honest.) But this week it was actually a bit inspiring. Inspiring as in "I can do better" =)  It was a recipe for homemade pudding, both a vanilla and a chocolate version. I decided to make the vanilla into banana, and more like a custard. And, the only logical conclusion was to make that a filling for a delicioso chocolate cupcake!


Homemade Banana Custardy Pudding, adapted from Anna Thomas Bates's Vanilla Pudding

WHAT YOU NEED:
2 Cups Half & Half
2 tsp. Pure Vanilla Extract (Penzey's in BEST!!)
1 Cup Sugar
2 TBSP. Cornstarch (I used Arrowroot Starch and it was runny...)
1/4 tsp. Sea Salt
1 Egg + 1 Yolk (I think next time I'm going to try yet one more Yolk! Yum!)
1 Overly-Ripe Almost-Rotten Banana

HOW TO:
Heat half & half over low heat. Stir a few times - do not let it boil over! In fact, don't let it come to a boil at all. Add vanilla and salt.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugar and cornstarch, then eggs, until smooth.
Ladle about a 1/4 cup of the warm milk mixture into the bowl with sugar mixture. Use a hand-mixer to whisk the mixture as it comes together. You do not want the egg to cook from the hot milk. Repeat 3x.
As it is now tempered, you may add the entire mixture back to the saucepan - slowly, and continuously stirring. (I used the hand-mixer the entire time, even on the heat!)
Increase heat to medium. Continue to stir/mix for a couple of minutes, until blended smooth and actually starts to look thicker like ...a ...pudding. (Trust me, this feels like forever, but it only takes a couple of minutes.)
Let pudding cool in a large metal or glass bowl (you will be storing it in), and chill. To cover, place a large piece of plastic wrap over the pudding, pushing it down on top of the pudding, so that it does not form a film (...cause ewww!) To make it even more air tight, wrap in yet another piece of plastic wrap over the bowl, like you'd normally wrap up a bowl =)

As always, ENJOY!!

Peanut Butter Mocha Cupcakes

My husband got scheduled to work on Mother's Day, but two of his wonderful co-workers split his shift so that he could spend it with me as he promised! SO sweet! So, he asked me to make them cupcakes in return. And I gladly obliged =)

Now, if you've read many of my other posts by now you've probably realized that I have a strong belief in healthy food, and a vibrant passion for making food for others... But, sometimes they conflict... And the bad-for-you-but-oh-so-yummy food wins. This time, cupcakes won!

And, they were winners with everyone at my hubby's work!! But, of course, maybe that's because I used a recipe off the Food Network's website -- winning cupcakes from Cupcake Wars! Which is hilarious because one co-worker actually said that they were worthy of Cupcake Wars! Oh, little does she know =)

(Ok, so here's the link to the Cupcake Wars chocolate cupcakes recipe.)

(And here's the recipe for the frosting.)

But the fun little surprise in the middle was a simple Ganache... Just hollow out the center of the cupcakes when they cool a bit, and inject some creamy amazingness =)

Sunflower Cupcakes

I've never understood the fascination with cupcakes... I mean, they're cute, but I would never stand in line at 3:00 in the morning to buy a cupcake from some cute little brand new boutique. To me, they are pretty much just an avenue (and excuse) to eat a lot of frosting!

And then I started watching Cupcake Wars. I don't know if you're like me or not, but when I get new music or a new movie, that's pretty much all I watch or listen to for... umm, a sickening amount of time. Right now, I'm obsessed with Cupcake Wars! So, you can probably tell that's where this post is coming from! I watch a lot of CW and want so bad to make everything they're making!!!

I'd love to own one of those cute little boutiques that used to make me sick, I want to charge $4 a pop (you do realize it costs them like 80 cents to make the whole batch, right!?!?), and yes, I want to go on Cupcake Wars!!! And I'm not even competitive! I generally feel rotten if I win at a game with friends, because everyone else cares so much and I care so little about winning! But I think if I went on CW I could kick some butt =)

So, I started practicing! Haha! You can totally laugh at that statement, because even if I wanted to start my own cupcake bakery, the show wouldn't be on anymore by that time! But, anyway, here's what I did today - I had fun!

I made a really basic vanilla cupcake. I found the recipe on someone else's blog, and replaced the vanilla bean with dried orange peel and candied ginger.

You can see some orange specks on top in the photo at Left.

The sunflower idea came from an incredibly dorky (yet informative) youtube video I saw from some Canadian named YoYoMax12.

I made a chocolate buttercream, and piped little sunflower seeds......

Then, the petals... which drooped pretty badly! I need to work on consistency apparently!

On the video, she put two different colored frostings in the same piping bag... But my first cupcake was pretty much only yellow, and by the end the colors mixed so much that I just had pinkish-orange petals =(

At Right, you'll see flower #1 -- I was ambitious and made two layers of petals. Then I realized that I might run out of frosting pretty quickly, so I just did one layer on the rest of them =)

And at Bottom........ the finished products!!! The ones at far left were the first ones, then progressing to the right were the latter ones. The last ones were actually really droopy and pitiful! I'm most pleased with the middle cupcakes =)  But honestly, I felt like I did a FANTASTIC job for it being my second time EVER to decorate cupcakes!!!! And, with no one (besides YoYoMax12) to teach me =)

Old News

Well, this is old news, but a great way to start off posting! So.... I have to be honest, my food never LOOKS all that appetizing... My sweet husband would disagree, but I need to show you what I mean:

THIS was my first attempt at decorating sugar cookies this past Christmas. When my husband saw them, he said, "Oooh! Is it Santa?!?!" At this point I could've cried. Or sulked. But I laughed! "No! It's not Santa! They're supposed to be trees!!!"

But honestly, no matter what professional cake decorators everywhere are going to think when they view this next concoction, I am very, very proud! For my child's first birthday party in November, I made this Elmo cupcake cake... You may gasp in horror, but it was my SECOND attempt at decorating!!!

My husband and I worked on it until 10:00 PM the night before the party. I had bought several different brands of red icing (whatever was on sale), and boy was that a stupid idea! They are all different shades and textures, some sparkly, some not, so we ended up dumping them all into a zip-top bag and squishing them into one paste, then cutting a hole in the end and inserting an icing decorator's tip... thingy... 

We didn't have enough black icing, so I was happy I had chosen a dark chocolate cake - it all kinda blended together!

And, since there were extra cupcakes I didn't want to waste, and didn't want to stick the candles in Elmo's head, I opted to use the extra cupcakes as candle holders.

Honestly, everyone at the party loved it! The were all super impressed! And, more than anyone else's opinion, my sweet child's face lighting up to see her favorite character was praise and reward enough. I was sad to see it eaten.