Frantic! Lemon Cupcake Fail, Now What?!

Up and at 'em at 7:30am, due to my heinous anxiety, I was baking and researching recipes by 8:00. Coffee in hand, I remembered my awesome Grandma had given me a brilliant idea. Peanut Butter Bars. Delicious bar shaped chocolate, peanut butter, coconut, graham cracker goodness. We always make them at Christmas, I usually go the extra mile and make them into balls, but it's so much more work rolling them and dipping them in the waxy chocolate... and I was in a hurry. After I put the pan in the fridge to cool, I realized I had to do something else. That wasn't enough! That's not a winner!

Pumpkin cookies. Delicious, light, fluffy, and so fall. I made them in a hurry, threw some icing on the top and called it good. I was on my way out the door to our picnic and this dreaded contest with way too many things to choose from.

Iced Pumpkin Cookies sprinkled with cinnamon

Cooling Peanut Butter Bars

More Pumpkin Cookies

Edible sized Peanut Butter Bars

Version 8,020 of Lemon Cupcakes

Determination! Lemon Cupcakes... Again

Determined to win our Dessert Competition for our company picnic on Saturday, I rushed home, cake flour in hand, to remake the lemon cupcakes that just couldn't hold up on Wednesday. I assumed my problem was that I hadn't used cake flour, as called for in the recipe. They were so dry! I was extremely disappointed, I love making cupcakes from scratch. 

I made a brown sugar lemon cream cheese frosting, and a traditional cream cheese frosting. Both pretty decent, but the regular cream cheese frosting held up quite a bit better. After realizing how dry the cupcakes were, I attempted to "help" them by using some organic strawberries, sugar, and cornstarch and making a raspberry filling... Helped, but not quite enough. Some cupcakes came with some flowers made of fondant on the top, some had lemons. It was quite the feat. They just couldn't quite cut it, so I gave up for the evening.

Lemon Cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting

Fully Equipped with homemade Raspberry Filling

Pretty sure the muffin "wrappers" were my favorite part. Frosting was pretty decent too ;)

JE-LL-O ... Shots

I work at a pretty awesome company... We're having a company picnic on Saturday (as you may already know) and I was requested to prepare my delicious jello shots! All you need is: One bottle Vanilla Vodka, one package orange jello, one package raspberry jello (or any flavors you choose), and 2 oz. plastic cups, I prefer mine with lids. Substitute the 2 cups cold water for 2 cups vodka, and you are sure to have a happy company picnic! Cheers!

In between making jello shots and prepping another set of lemon cupcakes (see pictures from yesterdays blog) I did happen to whip up some chicken taco salad for the boys, who have had to fend for themselves all week. It was awesome with some kidney beans, onions, jalapenos, chicken... etc. I had almost a whole avocado on mine. YUM!





I was also nice enough to make them their own desserts, for all the ones I had been making, either went to work or in the trash. As Ollie said, "you're not baking with love! You're baking to get your mind off things." True... Very true.

Stress Baking

After a night in the hospital with my Mom (she's fine now! Gallbladder surgery), I had to distract myself by baking. Everything and anything.

The day started off with banana bread, applesauce oatmeal cookies (which were amazing, and absolutely the best oatmeal cookie i've ever had!), lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting [the cupcakes tasted like muffins :( too dry!] prepping baked zucchini, sweet potato fries, and turkey burgers. I ended the day making brown rice, baked chicken, homemade teryaki sauce from a barrage of things in my Mom's fridge (who doesn't have teryaki sauce?!)... steamed vegetables and of course, no bake cookies for Dad. Phew.

Burned x2

My poor manic brain hasn't let me post recently - my apologies. See my other blog Never Ending Ailments for a more clarified reason. 

Anywho! Here's a short recap on this week in the life of "Kelcie's Kitchen" .... 

Sunday: Once again, roasted mesquite chicken, with a homegrown jalapeno and onion shoved inside. Turned out delicious, perfectly moist and tender... still hate the word "moist".Since the chicken would take forever to roast, and I was scatter brained, we had ground beef nachos, the way my Momma used to make them, for dinner. Yum, yum! I love anything covered in cheese.  

While I was making dinner I was also attempting to make sugar cookie cutouts. Haaaaaaaaa. I don't know when I stopped knowing how to make cookies. Apparently it was recently. I am, however, putting some serious blame on my Air-Bake cookie sheet... Every time I have baked with it, I've burned something! Last night (Monday) I baked the remainder of the sugar cookie dough I had with a different cookie sheet, and didn't burn a thing. I used whipped frosting instead of the good frosting the night before. Ugh. Fail!

Sunday the cookies I made were with vanilla frosting (delicious) and decorated with my new tip and pastry bag. Need some work with that, but I can see potential! I also added some fondant on a few, and I can say, rolled thin the fondant was much better. Woohoo! Happy Birthday Jason.

 

While baking these .... cookies (not good, not bad, just cookies) I proceeded to give myself a wonderful scar: 

Monday: For my love of all things salad, we had Caesar Chicken Salad, making good use of the roasted chicken. I added freshly grated Parmesan, avocado, and croutons... and some bread lightly warmed in the oven with butter, oregano, Parmesan and garlic. Holy delicious. Sometimes I forget how much I love salad... and creamy dressing. 

Sorry, no pic, I ate it all way too fast. 

Tonight: Chicken something for dinner... Ideas? ... and a recipe test: S'mores cupcakes... Torched and all. We'll see how they turn out!

Sunday Bunday?... Funday... Too close to Monday

Sunday

S'mores cupcakes... fail. I need a standing mixer! The S'mores cupcakes had a graham cracker crust, with chunks of chocolate and marshmallows on the bottom, and a homemade chocolate cake mix. They were slightly bland, but I had hoped the frosting would make up for it. A meringue frosting that would be toasted with a cigar torch I was given from a friend. Kitchen torches are so expensive! Unfortunately without a standing mixer, or lots of patience, my meringue fell flat. I made some coconut pecan frosting and threw it on. After my unfortunate disaster with these, I moved on to a new idea... See Monday's blog for more...

Chang, Chang, Chaaaaaaaang's

Yesterday I went to lunch with my sister (Wine Induced Eats), and our close family friend, Anya. FYI: Anya loves food as much as we do, and is just plain awesome so it was definitely a wonderful lunch.

We settled on Chang's Mongolian Grill, where you get bowls and fill them up with your favorite meats, vegetables, oodles of noodles, pineapple (yeah, it's the only fruit), and a DIY sauce area. You put your bowl, or in my case, bowls, on the counter and the chefs grill it up on this giant grill. Ahhh YUM.

After our delicious meal, and my seconds, we had ice cream... and seconds of that as well. Mmmm!!!!! It was so worth the pain I felt when my pants pushed against my stomach so hard I seriously thought of unbuttoning them.