Lemon Drop Cupcakes with Meringue Buttercream Frosting

The world is currently in a craze for cupcakes. I thought I would join in. Last Christmas break my husband and I escaped to San Jose, California to visit my brothers family and just to get away from the cold for a while. We stopped by Santana Row to window shop and found this little cupcake shop called Kara's Cupcakes and had a Meyer Lemony Lemon cupcake for breakfast (breakfast of champions). Well, the cupcake was to die for! The frosting that they topped the delicate cake with was one of the best frostings I have ever tasted. I'm not even sure how they got it so light and fluffy but it was so good. Here is a picture of it... yes it was so good it was picture worthy.


Well, I attempted a lemon cupcake a few days ago and it turned out pretty good. I would definitely say worth making again and maybe again. I changed a Martha Stewart recipe and combined a different frosting to get the texture I wanted. Here she goes.

Lemon Drop Cupcakes with Meringue Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose Flour
1 Tbs Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, room temperature
2 cups Sugar
4 large Eggs, room temperature
2 tsp Lemon juice
1 tsp Vanilla
1 cup Buttermilk ( I just put a Tbs of lemon in a cup of milk and let sit until curdled to create the buttermilk)
~2 cup Lemon Curd

Directions

Sift together the dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar until pale yellow adding eggs one at a time until just mixed. Add vanilla and lemon juice. Alternate adding the dry ingredients (three times) with the milk (two times) until just mixed.
Spoon batter 3/4 the way full into lined cupcake tins. Add one Tbs of the lemon curd to the top center of each cupcake. It will drop to the center of the cupcake while baking.
Bake at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes.
Cool completely before frosting.

Meringue Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups Sugar
5 large Egg Whites
2 cups Unsalted Butter, cut into pieces (next time I make this I am going to decrease the butter to one cup just to see and taste the difference)
1 tsp Vanilla extract

In a double boiler whisk egg whites and sugar with an electric mixer until they are very warm (about 3 minutes).
Remove from heat and continue whisking until it has completely cooled (about 10 min).
Begin adding the butter (continue using the whisk attachment) a little at a time and it may look curdled but just keep mixing, it will smooth out. 
Beat with the paddle attachment on low for a few minutes to release any air pockets Add vanilla and you are done!

Decorate as you wish :)

Peach Cobbler

I have been away from the blogging world for a while, but I have been reunited and thought I would post a terrible picture with the delicious matching recipe that completely hit the spot one night. I now have a fear that this blog will turn into just a sweets, cookies and dessert blog but don't you worry, I will try to keep a variety of recipes on here!

My husband and I love to make cobbler in the dutch oven when we go camping. Who am I kidding- He cooks with the dutch oven, not me! We had an interesting experience while camping in the Nevada desert with some Spaniards, who bicycled from Argentina all the way up to Nevada and were making their way to Canada! Extreme. Well, we had plenty of leftover food and cobbler and thought we would offer our neighboring campers a warm meal (since they had very little room to pack any sort of comfort food on their road worn bikes). They curiously wanted to try this dish we called cobbler and a peach dessert sounded great to them so the came to our campsite and we served them their first taste of dutch oven cobbler. They loved it and dug in for seconds while asking how to make it. After we explained the process, which included a giant can of peaches, a cake mix, can of Sprite and butter one man asked in a thick Spanish accent, "What is, can of Sprite?" We loved this simple question and now quote the man whenever we drink the fizzy, citrus drink. One of my favorite memories since being with my lovely husband, camping in the barren Nevada desert while feeding some bikers from Spain.

This recipe definitely doesn't require a can of Sprite! This comes a little tweaked from one of my favorite line of cook books from Williams-Sonoma American.

Peach Cobbler

Ingredients

1 c. Heavy Cream
2/3 c. Sugar
1 tsp Cornstarch
5 lbs Ripe Peaches- sliced into wedges

Dough:
2 c. Flour
2 Tbs Sugar
1 Tbs Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
Pinch of Salt
6 Tbs Cold Unsalted Butter, sliced
2/3 c. milk
1 egg
1 tsp Vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a 9x13 in. pan.
Whisk cream, sugar and cornstarch in the baking dish. Stir in peaches carefully.
Stir together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter with a pastry blender or fork until it creates small pea size crumbs.
Combine the remaining wet ingredients in a small bowl then add to the flour and butter mixture but only enough to make a soft moist dough. You may not need to add all of the wet mixture.
Don't over mix the dough.
Divide into 8 sections and place on top of the peaches and cream.
Bake until topping is golden brown and the inside bubbling- About 50 min. Let cool for 10 min and enjoy with vanilla ice cream!

Berries and Cream Shortbread

I didn't have any eggs but was craving some kind of sweet baked good. I read through one of my cookie books (Better Homes and Gardens The Ultimate Cookie Book) and found the perfect recipe, although it was a Pineapple Macadamia Nut Shortbread, (There is no way I had candied pineapple and macadamia nuts on hand if I didn't even have eggs!) so I just left out the extra ingredients. I did, however, have some frozen blueberries and some whipping cream. The combination of berries and shortbread satisfied my craving, and then some (and they look quite patriotic).

I made these at like 9 pm so there was no way I was going to get a good picture. I will see if I have time to take another one today to replace this sorry photograph with a slightly less shadowed one.

Berries and Cream Shortbread

Ingredients

2 1/2 c. Flour
1/3 c. Packed Brown Sugar
1 c. Cold Butter
1 or 2 Drops Orange Extract (optional)
Berries and Whipped Cream

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Stir together the flour and brown sugar.
Cut in the butter with a pastry blender until the mixture forms tiny balls that start to stick together.
Add orange extract and stir in well.
Form into a ball and knead a couple times.
Roll out about 1/4 in. thick on a lightly floured surface and cut out dough with cookie cutter. Only re-roll the scraps once.
Place on a baking sheet and cook about 15 minutes or until golden brown on the edges.
Let cool and top with berries and whipped cream. yum.

Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce

First off I would like to apologize for the quality of the pictures I have been posting; this one in particular. I have been getting home a little later from work and barely have enough time to take a picture before all the natural light goes away. I can't wait to get a new camera but it is just one of those things that is on my list to do, but you know, may not actually get around doing them!

Well, this recipe is so easy! Thank you to my mom for making life easy peasy. I made this sauce with out any protien (chicken, sausage...) just for an extra easy meal. You could add practically anything to this sauce and it would be delicious; artichokes, olives, squash, zucchini, chicken, sausage, pesto, Italian cheeses -I could go on and on.

Mom's Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce

Ingredients

1 1/2 c. Cream or Half and Half
1 tsp Dried Thyme
10 Sundried Tomatoes (in a jar in oil)
1 c. Chicken Broth
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

Bring cream and thyme to a boil then simmer for 10 min then let sit to cool a little for 10 min.
Press the tomatoes between some paper towels to get most the oil off.
Puree the tomatoes and with half of the chicken broth.
Strain the cream through a sieve to get the thyme out and put the cream back into the pan.
Add the pureed tomatoes and the rest of the chicken broth to the cream and simmer for a few minutes.
Salt and pepper.
Serve over pasta.

S'more Bars

These bars were inspired from a campfire on the beach with some of our friends. It had been quite a while since I had had a s'more and after the delicious experience on the beach, it's all that I wanted for about a week after we got home. I thought there had to be a way to make s'mores the same way you make rice crispy treats. I tried it and it turned out so good! I did notice that the graham crackers got a little soft so I decided to put a little bit of a crispy rice cereal in it to keep the crisp factor up. I think in my childhood I had some type of these but made with Golden Graham Cereal. I remember the graham flavor of the cereal was too strong for me, but I think they could easily be substituted. These bars bring part of the camping experience to your kitchen.

S'more Bars

Ingredients

1 cube Butter or Margarine
1- 16 oz bag of Mini Marshmallows
2 pkgs Graham Crackers
1 1/2 c. Crispy Rice Cereal
1 c. Chocolate Chips -melted

Directions

Break up the graham crackers into a bowl with your hands into small bite size pieces.
In another large microwaveable bowl, melt the butter.
Add the marshmallows to the butter and coat evenly. Microwave the marshmallows about 30 seconds stirring very well after each. When they start melt and just start to string when stirring you know you are ready. *You don't want to over cook the marshmallows, this will make your bars hard.
Stir in the broken up graham crackers and the rice cereal. This may take some muscle.
Pour mixture onto a baking sheet with parchment paper or wax paper on it. Lightly wet your hands and smash and squish them flat to spread them around the pan. Make them as thick as you like.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Heat the water in a pot to a boil and turn down to simmer. If you don't have a double boiler you can use a large glass bowl. Set the bowl with chocolate on top of the pot and stir till melted. Spoon the chocolate over the graham crackers and marshmallows.
Let it set for a few hours (I sometimes cheat and throw it in the freezer for a few minutes) and eat!

Yummm.