Split Personality...

Back before the Fall Semester and the horribleness that is math started, I was baking pretty regularly. Mainly, I was making cupcakes; experimenting with different ideas and flavor combinations. During that time, I came up with my Split Personality Cupcakes.

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of these cupcakes, along with the recipe, for a while. And since I was thinking about it and can actually get to the pictures (they are in an online album of mine) without having to wait for my computer to be fixed, I thought that today would be the perfect day to share!

First, I have to thank my long time friend, Brandi, for coming up with the name of these cupcakes! They’re half vanilla, half chocolate, deliciously sweet and spicy at the same time. So, I think the name totally fits!  It's perfect Brandi, thank you.

A recipe that I saw for half vanilla, half chocolate cupcakes is where it all started.  I wanted to make them because they looked pretty cool and I figured I could do just about any flavor combination with the half and half cake.  So, I played with ideas for the icing and toppings and decided on a sweet icing and a spicy topping.  I was very pleased with the result...

Here's the recipe:

For the cupcakes:
* I copied this directly from The Busty Baker, where I got this recipe. It's Martha Stwert creation, I believe. If you keep reading past the cupcake recipe, you will see a recipe for Strawberry Buttercream icing which, with a strawberry slice on top, completes her very yummy looking Neapolitan Cupcakes!*

Vanilla Cupcakes

Makes 12

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk

Chocolate Cupcakes
Makes 12
Follow instructions for Vanilla Cupcakes below, but reduce flour to 1 1/4 cups, and add 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder. Whisk into dry ingredients.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 2 standard 12-cup muffin pans with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

2. With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; add vanilla, and mix until combined. On low speed, beat in half the flour mixture, followed by milk; end with remaining flour mixture. Mix just until incorporated (do not overmix).

3. Fill muffin cups with 3 tablespoons of each batter, side by side. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 17 to 19 minutes. Cool cupcakes in pan, 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the icing:
*I just used a basic buttercream recipe. *I have the link on my other computer (the broken one) so, I can't remember the one I used.  But, they are all pretty much the same.  I found this one on one of my favorite foodie sites, Epicurious.

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the spicy topping:

I selected a spicy chocolate by Chuao Chocolatier called "Spicy Maya".  It's a dark chocolate infused with pasilla chile, cayenne pepper and cinniamon.  I simply graded the chocolate (after putting it in the freezer, to firm it up, for half an hour or so) over the first batch of cupcakes once they were frosted.  However, I found that the spice didn't pop like I had expected it to. So, for the second batch  I chopped the chocolate into big rough chunks and placed them on top.  As a result, the spice was definitely poppin'!

If you try these cupcakes, or make your own creation, let me know.  I'd love to hear about it!

I was hoping to have time this weekend to do some cupcake baking, but we have a pretty full weekend planned already and I'm not sure I can fit it in.  Tonight, Madison and her choir class will be singing the National Anthem at the Belton High School football game. So, we'll be spending our evening there.  Tomorrow morning Jack, Madi and I are going to the food markets in Belton and Austin.  Then in the afternoon Madi and I  are going rock climbing with her swim team.  Finally, on Sunday, we are going to see Jack's grandparents in Palestine, Texas, for the day.  It's going to be a busy weekend, but I'm really looking forward to it ~ even though I wont get to bake and enjoy some cupcake yumminess!

Wish Madi luck tonight!  She gets pretty nervous singing in front of lots of people.  She's going to do fine, I'm sure and boy are we excited to see her singing on that football field!   I'll take pictures if I can and post them later.

Enjoy your weekend!  It's actually a long weekend for some (hopefully YOU)- yippee! 

Bouncing Back!

As you may remember from several of our previous posts, we've been pretty worried about our Mexican Plum Tree for months.  Six months actually!  Well, check this out....

Jack's hard work, research and patience have really paid off! We're finally seeing signs of life as new growth have started to sprout from the branches and the trunk itself is looking healthier. What a relief!

Jack and I planted the tree back in April and for about a month and a half, we watered it twice a day, every day. Our watering unfortunately tapered off as the temperatures climbed and apparently even native and hardy well-adapted types of trees for Central Texas can really suffer when enduring long periods of temperatures in the 100's with little to no rain. The plum tree is in a raised bed that we built to house it and some other heat and sun tolerant plants in the back yard along the fence. It slowly but surely lost most of its leaves and by the end of May the tree just looked pitiful. The bark on the trunk and branches turned a charred blackish color and most of the leaves and plums had fallen off. We just couldn't understand why it was in such bad shape.

Jack researched possible causes and talked with Oma from Oma's Garten Pflanzen in Killeen, Texas. She told him that even tough trees need supplemental water during the hottest times of the summer and that as a young tree, our little plum needed a good soaking at least once a week. Now, a good soaking means a soaker hose or a steady drip from the water hose for long periods of time – preferably over night.

*Ok, I'm going to let Jack take if from here to explain what else he did for the tree. It's best to let the guy with the green thumb talk about this part. I'm clueless!*
I tried the full sick tree treatment recommended by Howard Garret, The Dirt Doctor and other respected local natural and organic gardening experts in the area. Every week the trees leaves, trunk and root zone were sprayed with a mix of liquid seaweed, fish emulsion, molasses, and orange oil. Sometimes a drenching of alfalfa meal tea was also added. I also tried adding compost to the root zone of the tree heavily and more recently, added some organic fertilizer, Texas greensand and dry molasses to the bed surrounding the tree as part of our fall fertilizing regimen.

Honestly, I think all of this may have helped the little guy limp along but, only after a really drenching rain of 6-12" and a couple of weeks of considerably cooler weather did the tree bounce back in any noticeable way. We will do the best we can for it over the winter months and will likely cut back some of the upper branches during its dormancy. Hopefully, we will be rewarded in the spring with lots of flowers and new growth. I know that we will be sure that the bed is watered routinely and deeply throughout the summer next year and hopefully it will do much better. If nothing else, it will be a year older and a year tougher after this experience!

*Yeah, what he said! :) Seriously, do you see why I asked him to write that part?!  So anyway, we're obviously really excited that our Mexican Plum is bouncing back!

Well, hopefully we'll get our desktop computer back soon so that I can share the pictures of Madi's recent swim competitions and the other events I mentioned in my last post. But, in the mean time, I do have some pictures that I took in Austin on Tuesday while Jack and I were "playing hooky".  He took the day off from work and I took a break from school so that we could spend some much needed time together, just the two of us. We'll write a post about it as soon as I get the pictures loaded (onto a different computer and then backed up onto a portable hard drive, of course!).

Have a great rest of the week! The weekend will be here before we know it, thank goodness!

Ramblings...

I've been itching to write a post for a while now.  Mainly because it's been well over a month since my last post, but also because there's a lot to write about.  

Things have been crazy busy for us since Madi started back to school and I started my Fall Semester. Granted, I only have two classes, but one of them is math.  Math is not my friend.  Math sucks all the fun out of my life and gives me little free time for things like writing a post.  Madi also brings math homework home every night - even on the weekends.  Jack contributes by trying his best to help us both with our math work. This keeps all three of us from doing other things around the house, going fun places and generally having a life. Honestly, we are all sick of math!

Madison's Swim schedule has kept us busy the last two weekends.  She participated in the Round Rock Unclassified Meet last Sat., Sept.25th, in Round Rock, Texas. And yesterday, she swam in her first ever Middle School swim competition - Belton Middle School vs. Lake Belton Middle School.   I would love to share pictures from both of these events, but I can't.   The computer that I loaded the pictures on crashed (again) last night and so, I can't get to any of my pictures. Ugh!

I also have some pretty good shots of our nephew, Jason and his middle school football team, The Cavaliers, during their football game this past Tuesday night.  I can't get to those pictures either!  Once the computer is fixed (and hopefully it can be fixed) I'll post the pictures from all these events.

My Mom and sister, Virginia, both celebrated a birthday the week before last.  I have pictures but again, I can't get to them. Pretty darn frustrating!

Jack's Mom and Dad celebrated their 40th anniversary on the 17th but, we have no pictures for this historic date but, congrats to them, again.

We also have an update on our Mexican Plum tree. That will have to wait too I guess.  

So, all the above ramblings are my excuse for not updating our blog before now. Well, that and the fact that my husband is absolutely worthless when it comes to updating this blog (he wrote that so, it's okay)  :)  Hopefully, I can share pictures of everything in the next few days or in the next week.  Depends on the computer situation.  I could really kick myself right about now for not listening when Jack tells me to back up my pictures!  As much as I hate to admit it, he was right!

Yesterday evening I found a beautiful lacewing butterfly hanging on the underside of a Okra leaf and snapped a few pictures of it.  Luckily, I had not loaded these pictures on to the computer, so I do have a few pictures to jazz up this post a bit! 

Hopefully, I have redeemed myself somewhat at this point.  Y'all enjoy this beautiful Sunday!