Chocolate Cupcakes

So!  I finally was able to go home and bake this weekend!!  I was so excited.  Not so excited that I won't be home until Thanksgiving, but still excited enough to bake!  So I make chocolate cupcakes with traditional buttery frosting.  I decorated them with green colored frosting and mini pumpkin peeps- yup they have mini pumpkin peeps!!  These cakes are moist, chocolaty and delicious!!

This recipe as written makes 22 cupcakes:

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk; beat well. Fill the muffin cups 1/2 full. (if you want to decorate them)
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Frost with your favorite frosting when cool.

The frosting is simple but you will definitely want to use a stand mixer.
1 cup butter
1 cup Crisco
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 lb bag of powdered sugar
1/4 cup of more of milk

Beat the butter and Crisco together until smooth.  Add vanilla and beat until mixed. Alternately mix in powdered sugar and milk.  The resulting consistency should be easily spreadable or your desired consistency.

Crockpot Pulled Chicken

Slow cookers are, by far, one of the best inventions in the field of cooking.  Talk about a perfect lazy Friday night, when you don't feel like cooking and just want dinner to be made already!  We made this last weekend and it was fabulous.  It may be blasphemy to say this, but I think I liked the chicken better than the pork. I know. It's that good.

One package of bone-in chicken thighs. (however much you with think you will need)
1/4-1/3 cup chopped onion
1-2 cloves of garlic
Barbecue sauce (we like Sweet Baby Ray's)
Grilling seasoning (we used Apple wood seasoning but you can use whatever, or make your own)

Chop up the onions and garlic and add to the crockpot.  Place on high.

Take the skin off of the chicken thighs.  Lightly coat the chicken thighs in the grilling seasoning and rub in.  Place the chicken, one layer at a time, into the crockpot.  Between each layer, cover with a generous amount of barbecue sauce.  Continue this process for the rest of the chicken.  Let it cook for about 4 hours on high, or until you can easily pull off the bone. 

When ready to be pulled, take a ladle and spoon of about 1 1/2 or more of the liquid. This is mostly fat or unnecessary liquid that will make your chicken soupy. When tender and falling off the bone, take each piece out and pull the meat off the bone with a couple forks.  Do this until all thighs are pulled.  Put the meat back into the crockpot and add one cup of the barbecue sauce.  Put on low for about 15 mins to a half an hour.

Enjoy!  Especially good paired with sweet potato fries :)

Apple Pie

Apple picking again, this long weekend!  For those of you who don't know about my passion for apple picking are in for a treat with this new recipe!  We combined cortland and macintosh apples but you can use any good bakng apple that you usually use.  This is an older recipe that my mom has been using since I was born, and probably much before then as well.  It comes from The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. It is probably the best cookbook hands down for traditional cooking.  Our copy is well worn, having it since 1980, it should be. 

Now this recipe, I will not ever change, try to sub the necessary fat, exchange whole wheat flour or anything else.  You can if you want to but this is the best, no substitutions.  So, if you do, don't say I didn't warn you!

For the crust:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons Crisco
6 tablespoons butter
5-6 tablespoons or more of ice cold water

(It's important that all ingredients are cold for this to come together properly.  I suggest putting the Crisco in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes before starting it.)

In a medium bowl, measure out flour and salt.  With a pastry blender or 2 knives, cut Crisco and butter into the flour until the mixture looks crumbly.

Sprinkle in cold water, a tablespoon at a time, mixing gently with a fork until the dough just hold together.

Shape into a ball and divide into two equal portions.

Take one dough ball and roll out on a flour surface until large enough to cover the bottom of the greased pie plate. Trim off extra overhanging dough.  Fill with the pie filling.

Roll out other dough ball and repeat process for making the top pie crust.   Make sure to seal the crust by folding around the edges and pressing in with a floured fork. 

Slit holes in the top, Brush with milk or cream and sprinkle with sugar.  Bake according to directions of the pie recipe.

For Blueberry Apple Pie Filling:
2 pie crusts
2/3 to 3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice
6-7 cups thinly sliced, peeled, and cored cooking apples
1 tablespoon butter
3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or well rinsed frozen
milk

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel and juice, apples, and blueberries in a large bowl.  Mix until well incorporated. 

Dish into pie crust. Cut up butter into small pieces and sprinkle over top of filling.  Top with second pie crust.  Slit top crust and brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar.

Put in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, lower oven temperature to 375 and bake for another 40 minutes or until golden brown and syrup has a thick consistency.

Fluffy Blueberry Pancakes

It is fall and although I really cannot get enough fall flavors, I had to go for some old fashioned blueberry pancakes today.  After a brief search I found this recipe and did a tweak or two to it.  They were AMAZING.  I have never had a fluffier pancake. Ever. Period. So I decided to make these and it was my plan to take a few pictures and to finally get some photos of my food on here, but alas, no such luck.  They were gone before I had even finished cooking them.  So!  Here's the recipe:

2 eggs, separated

1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 tablespoons butter, melted

2 teaspoons canola oil

1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen, thawed

In a small bowl, beat egg whites until stiff; set aside.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Beat egg yolks in a medium mixing bowl and add milk and melted butter. Stir egg mixture into dry ingredients; mix until batter is smooth and stir in blueberries. Fold in beaten egg whites. Bake on hot greased griddle. Serve with warm maple syrup. 
For big crowds, I suggest a double batch!

It actually called for three tablespoons of butter, but I only had about one and wasn't going to the grocery store until later so I just added two teaspoons of oil and it was still delicious and probably not needing of the extra.  You could also make these any kind by substituting the blueberries for chocolate chips, apples, cinnamon chips etc. Anything works! 

Hope you all enjoy the rest of the long weekend!  Perfect pancakes to make on a day off!  Sometime soon, I'll also be posting recipes for a wonderful pie crust to go with an awesome blueberry apple pie.  It's actually in the oven right now :) See you soon!

Long Weekend!

Isn't that exciting!  I absolutely adore long weekends!  All the more time I get to spend with the family and, of course, cooking and baking :)  I don't know what we will try this weekend, though I'm still in sort of a pumpkiny mood! Going to have to make plenty, whatever it turns out to be! I'm not going home for a couple weekends after this one... I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I get to get some homework done and hang with friends, on the other I miss my family and my kitchen...We shall see!

So one of the things I can get involved in up here at my home-away-from-home are bake sales :)  How I love bake sales!!  One way to bake and have fun and still stay relatively healthy: Sell what you bake (you know, except for the samples!)

Wednesday (And a Giveaway)

So ever since I started blogging, I have been following a number of other blogs about cooking and whatnot.  One of my favorites is Lovin from the Oven  She is awesome and has tons of wonderfully delicious looking recipes as well as many various other posts.  So she is running a giveaway and this is the Link for the contest if you all would wanted to apply!  The prize is a $50 gift card to drugstore.com and I'm pretty sure you can get anything you need there.  Good Luck! :)

Turkey Chili Soup

Arg! Forgot to post this yesteray, but here you go!! Ok so this weekend, we did a lot of cooking obviously... This was one of the best soup/chili recipes we have tried.  It was a pretty basic recipe at first but we added to it and it was perfect, especially for a rainy day like there was plenty of last weekend.  Oh, by the way, I LOVE spicy food, so if you like things a little more mild, I suggest you use a bit less spices originally and add from there.

Ingredients:
1 lb. lean ground turkey
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 cans white or black beans, drain and rinsed
1 tablespoon chopped chilies
1 can chopped tomatoes with green chilies mixed in
1 can chopped tomatoes (plain)
1 small can tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
2 tablespoons beef bullion
4 cups water
1 teaspoon chili powder (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon cumin (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder (or to taste)

A dutch oven or a large stockpot works well for this. 
Spray and heat up the inside of the dutch oven or pot with PAM original spray or just coat with a little olive oil.
Brown the turkey meat and add in the garlic and the onions to the pot. 
After the onions are slightly caramelized, you can throw in all other ingredients... how easy is that??
Bring to a  boil, then let simmer for about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Super simple recipe and super delicious!  I love it spicy so again, use the spices to your taste!

Cinnamon Roll Sunday

To brighten up this rather rainy day, my mother and I decided to make cinnamon rolls.  We actually found the recipe on Allrecipes.com and decided to change it up a little bit from there.  We subtracted the raisins, walnuts, and the white sugar from the original. Instead we added brown sugar, pecans, dried cranberries and diced apples. 
Dough:

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons butter

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/4 cup white sugar

1 egg

Filling:

3 tablespoons softened butter

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup dried cranberries (optional)

1/3 cup chopped pecans (optional)

1/3 cup finely chopped apples (optional)

Icing:

1 cup confectioners' sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 tablespoons milk

Put wet ingredients in the bread machine first, then add the dry and select the right dough cycle. 

Once Dough cycle is complete, remove the dough from the bread machine and punch down. On a floured surface, roll into a large rectangle. Smear with the softened butter. Combine the cinnamon and 1/3 cup sugar. Sprinkle over the rectangle. Generously sprinkle the raisins and/or chopped nuts over the top.

Roll the dough up into a log starting at the long side. Cut into 12 slices. Place the rolls cut side down into a 9x13-inch greased baking pan. Cover, and let rise in a warm place until almost doubled, about 30 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). For the icing, combine the confectioners' sugar, melted butter, vanilla extract, and milk into a thick frosting; set aside.

Bake rolls in preheated oven until golden, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from oven and cover with the frosting and allow to cool 10 minutes.

These were amazing! Perfectly moist and warm and fluffy and just absolutely delicious!  Might be the best we have made.  I hope you all enjoy!! :)

A Fair Saturday

Hello All! 
How are your weekends going so far? We went to the Deerfield Fair today in New Hampshire. Talk about a food overload! Though, I justified it by walking for a while, and the fact that I haven't had good fair food in about three years.  Split three ways between my parents and me, not too bad I suppose. 

So,coming back today, I decided to make something pumpkin! I found a recipe in passing a few days ago that looked promising and surprisingly healthy. I changed a few things during my version but I will give you the origional recipe from http://www.fitsugar.com/

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (or half wheat flour and half all purpose)
1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1/4 cup lowfat milk
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

I also added in 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds and 1/2 cup dried cranberries.
For my version I used only 1/2 cup brown sugar and it was plenty sweet with the add-ins. I didn't use the walnuts but that's just my taste. I used the pumpkin seeds instead. Raisins and diced apples might be good as well!

Preheat oven to 375.  Line muffin tin with liners.
Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  In a medium bowl mix wet ingredients.  Combine the two and stir until will mixed.  Fold in the add-ins you want. 
Fill the liners with the batter evenly.  I would fill them to the top if you want larger muffins.  Because of the add-ins and so many oats, the batter seems to not fluff up as much as other recipes. 
Bake for 18-25 minutes.

These are really quite good!  The did not puff up as much as  I would have liked for a muffin, but the flavor is really good and filling.  I can see grabbing one of these with an apple in the morning and being quite satisfied.  

Enjoy! :)