Cupcakes on my mind (C's fault!)

I was (am still) afflicted with a serious case of cupcake fever at the end of 2008, thanks to my friend C, though she denies it and says I found the knitted cupcake pattern all by myself! Maybe, maybe not! I am not saying either way. It all started when I decided that I would try to take up knitting again.... something that I had done as a teenager and as a young adult but dropped in favor of crochet. I remember making many mistakes, dropping stitches only to discover it far too late. Besides, I found most knitting patterns to be frumpy and what young woman wanted that? Crochet came easy to me. I earned a fair bit of money making fashionable crochet cloches, caps, scarves and pretty tops for my friends and their friends. I even made custom orders for tops and dresses which the yarn shop owner commissioned for me. Hey, when you can crochet and watch tv at the same time and make money, you do not want to struggle with knitting.

I digress but that is the intent of this blog. For me to remember and record my memories and to capture memories in the making. I wanted to take up knitting again to prove to myself I can do it and to spend a bit of time with my friend C and tap into her knitting skills. Besides, I have been feeling cold and yarn in my hand feels good. Also, very important I am hoping to make something for my little nephew M. Simple sweet baby stuff.

Anyway, I cannot shake this desire to make one of these adorable knitted cupcakes. I did explore the crochet ones but have to say that I prefer these knitted ones. They however, involve tricky double ended needles! I will not be defeated. Sadly, my friend C the knitting diva is not so excited about them cupcakes. How are you going to motivate me to knit if you don't help me make them and get me hooked on knitting???

So Mom, if you are reading this please try to make these cupcakes and get sister S to email me pictures! My Mom, of course can knit, crochet, sew, bake, cook, bead,sculpy, batik - you just name it and she can. Martha Stewart has nothing on my mommy! Just a little of it rubbed off on me.

Okay, back to cupcake. It had me spending days on the internet and on blogs. I see that I am not the only person with this obession. I came across many websites selling them, free pattern etc. My favourite are of course the original OneSkein that started this hankering at http://www.oneskein.blogspot.com/

and Mrs. Darcy's cupcake at http://www.darcyscrossing.com/knitted-cupcakes/

It eventually lead me to the most creative knitted cupcake site - actual cupcakes with knitted decorations. Interestingly enough the blogger Lolo was featured on Martha Stewart's show. Catch the episode on her blog at http://veganyumyum.com/2007/06/knit-night-cupcakes/ . Now that is what I like marrying two interest together- knitting and cooking.

So friends and family, this will probably not be the last you hear of cupcakes. See you in the kitchen or the craft room.

Spaghetti and Meatball Cupcakes

Ingredients

1. 3 cups of flour
2. 2 cups Swan Down Cake Flour
3. 2 cups sugar
4. 2 tablespoon baking powder
5. 3/4 teaspoon salt
6. 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter,cut into 1 inch cubes. Essential that the cubes are soft and at room temperature
7. 4 large eggs, room temperature
   
8. 1 cup whole milk, room temperature
9. 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
10. Strawberries hulled and cut into halves
11. Duncan Hines Vanilla Whipped Frosting, 16.2 oz
12. Yellow and Brown coloring
13. Ferrero Rocher hazelnut chocolate
14. Smuckers low sugar strawberry preserves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line cupcake panes with while paper liners.

Combine wet ingredients 7 through 9 in a large glass measuring cup and whisk to combine.

Combine dry ingredients 1 to 5 in bowl of electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until combined. Slowly add soften butter cubes, increasing to medium speed as mixture combines. Mix until just coated with flour.

With mixer at medium speed add wet ingredients in 3 parts, scrapping down sides before each addition. Beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat.

Divide batter evenly among liners with cookie or ice cream scoop. Fill liner 1/3 full, top with half a strawberry and top with batter until the liners are 2/3 full. Bake in oven until a cake tester inserted in middle comes out clean, about 17 to 20 minutes depending on oven. Cool.

Cake Assembly
Tint the whipped frosting with tiny bits of yellow and brown food coloring until you get pasta color. Be careful to add color bit by bit or it will be too yellow.

Arrange cupcakes close together in a lasagna pan. Spread a thin layer of frosting for on the cupcakes. Put remainder tinted frosting into a zip lock bag. Press out the excess air and seal the bag. Snip a 1/8 inch corner form the bag. Pipe frosting all over the cupcake to make spaghetti, piling it high and allowing some of the spaghetti to hang over the edges.

Unwrap the chocolate and toss with strawberry preserves. Spoon meatballs over `spaghetti' and drizzle extra sauce over.

Special Birthday Cake

Trying to come up something unique for my daughter L's 18 birthday, I decided to make a Spaghetti and Meatball cake, egged on by my friend C, especially after daughter choose the same cake from the book. However, I was not happy with the cupcake from the box as suggested by my friend. Too sweet and ordinary.That's the last time I listen to you C.... nothing but the best for my daughter!

Of course, I had to have the best so I went to Martha Stewart's website. There I found a recipe for Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla cupcake - a bakery cupcake winner. I watched the video, printed out the recipe and then happily measured out the ingredients, noting that there was some discrepancies between the video and the recipe posted notably the amount of baking powder and the quantities and type of flour. At this point the 2 tablespoon (*) of baking powder had already been added to the 1 3/4 cups of cake flour per video! I am now on the blog ( I know a little late) and noticing that there are numerous posting about the discrepancies and how other handled it. There were equal number of people having success with 1 and 2 tablespoon of baking powder. Some used regular all purpose flour versus the cake flour and all purpose flour combination. All it seems with equal incidence of success and failure.

And so..... because I was already thinking a plain vanilla cupcake would be too boring, I had halved some strawberries to put in the middle of the cupcakes. Heck if I was taking a risk, I thought I might as well go whole hog. I decided to use all cake flour instead of the flour combination suggested....... Well, they turned out beautifully. No, the extra strawberry did not add enough liquid to make a difference... so there C!!!!

Ha, ha, now as I am sitting here and trying to write this post, I am trying to visualize exactly how I made these cupcakes. I am seeing in my mind's eye that maybe I measured 2 teaspoon of baking powder versus 2 TABLESPOONS of baking powder. So is this like a total do over of the Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes????? Okay, I think it was 2 Tablespoon of baking powder as I had to sieve the lumpy baking powder. We will go with 2 tablespoon. Hey, if you are game try MY Spaghetti and Meatball Special.

Happy 18th Birthday Daughter

Yesterday my beloved daughter turned 18 !!( January 6 ) It was a beautiful momentous moment. I have been truly blessed with a loving, caring and intelligent child who has made being a mother a fulfilling experience. I smile when I think of the number of friends who were motivated to start a family because of her as a baby - a happy, interactive and easy to care for and mother. I warned them that not all babies are like my baby but...... Even this week when I spoke to a teacher of hers who is presently pregnant, she commented that if her baby was like daughter L who is an angel she would be really blessed. Ha, ha, I tried to tell the teacher that she is not always angle like! Whatever flaws daughter has, they are eclipsed by her good heart, her strong sense of self and family, and the fact that she is a special part of me.

Happy Birthday Baby! I handed down to her the gold bangle my mother gave me when I was 18. Hopefully one day she will be blessed with a daughter she can hand it down to. Something new was a long strand a green colored freshwater pearls, which she can wear long or loop into multi strands or even wear as choker. Whatever style a fashionable teenager can think up. Green has been her favorite color the past couple of years (and mine too!). Maybe this will be a tradition of passing down family jewelry with an addition of something new.

As stars aligned, she was playing in a soccer match for her high school on her birthday. She was wearing her number 18 jersey. How apt! The school district is making a documentary on the International Baccalaureate Program and choose to film daughter L as she is the only IB candidate that is playing sport this season! So the cameraman was on the field filming her during the soccer game. All this on her birthday!!

At daughter L's request, I made a whole mess of spaghetti and meatballs for her team as a treat. Not! It was a tray of cupcakes disguised as spaghetti and meatballs.(Check out posting for that) She was happy that her team enjoyed them.



After daughter L cleaned up and dressed up as girly girl (versus scruffy soccer player) we headed out to dinner at the new Mr.Dumpling restaurant in Convey. We ordered a hot pot dinner and had noodles for her birthday.

I tucked my baby in bed last night, under her million layers of comforters. Once my baby , always my baby. Happy Birthday MY

Why the delay in postings

Was just looking at unposted "post", all there to be edited. What is the delay? Is it the perfectionist in me? Making sure it is just right? Ha, ha, not if you have read by blog- typo, spelling and grammatical horror! Maybe, I am editing it to portray myself the way I want the world to view me? I hope not!! Hmm, maybe there is a little editing there...... if I being honest. Hey, who wants to put herself out there as being _____ (whatever fills that blank!). Still I think it is essentially Me and my beloved family. It is hard because you always want to be portray everyone in good light. Plus it is hard to write about hard times. I guess that is why I never truly kept a journal. Heaven forbid, if it fells into the wrong hands. That is then to imply that there would be "juicy" stuff to be ashamed off!!! Ha, ha. I think I have lived a fairly normal life.......

Hah! Feels good to ramble on. Maybe that is why people keep journal. Was just reading Sister C's blog. Her attempts in keeping a journal in her younger days (yes, you are still young). It so reminds me of me at that age. I too tried and failed with journals. Repeatedly. I see that my Daughter L has the same problems. In my annual spring cleaning, I come across numerous journals she had started.....at best a dozen pages then cold silence. Ha,ha. I remember she had a coach that wanted them to keep a journal of their soccer / sports which they had to " show" him, weekly. There they could rant about the game, fellow players, how they felt, about the coach etc. Anything that affected their game. She invariable forgot to write in her journal. Okay, maybe that is not a fair comparison as you know someone is going to read it. Or maybe, she was just plain lazy. Yes, my sisters she can be lazy too. She is human.

I digress. Actually I take that back. Daughter L example is like Me. She is like Me. We both are writing or not writing because we know it is going to be read. Make sense????

This is what happens when you wake up at 6 am to bake Rock Buns for your daughter's breakfast so that she has something in her tummy before she takes the ACT examination! You ramble on nonsense.

My Young Man

Been sitting in Son A's Martial Art Studio classes more often these days. His class schedule changed recently, so that he now goes every night for about an hour. With the price of gas, it just does not make sense to drive back and forth within the hour. So, I sit. Read a book or magazine. Do a bit of work.

And I look up. Often. When I hear grunts, cheers or sound of punches raining on somebody! Is it my son? I am amazed at him. He is really quite good at Muay Thai and also at Jujitsu. He is more often than not the youngest in the class and he more than holds his own. It is totally mind blogging to see him lift and carry his training partner for the day, normally a person of approximately his weight across the studio. And do this repeatedly. Of course, I worry that he is going to hurt himself. I am in awe! The strength of my baby. He is able to lift and carry his own weight. The prowess of youth.

I watch with pride as he spars with kids older than him, college age and young adults. He has improved so much in the last 2 years since becoming a Black Belt holder. He is faster, stronger and more skillful. His Sensei was commenting tha other night about how fast and hard his punches and kicks are these days. Son A takes a private training session with the Sensei once a week. It has really help him hone his skills. The Sensei watches him during regular classes and gets excited when he see Son A sparring, using techniques he just taught him. He is beaming with pride when Son A wins or does well against an opponent. He was just saying he wishes his son would want to train as much as Son A. The other day, Sensei tells Son A he is prodigy #2. Prodigy#1 is an older college aged young man who is skillfull and currently the lead instructor aside from Sensei. Son A hopes to be a paid instructor once he reaches 16.

Me. I am proud. But... sometimes I wonder if I'll have to someday rush him to the emergency room because of an injury. So far, so good. He is careful and not boastful. That helps because if you think you are invincible, that when you get hurt. Oh, don't get me wrong, he knows he is good. He is confident and he goes out there to prove it over and over again. But, he knows his opponents. He knows who has a temper, who has something to prove......

I am also filled with pride when he leads classes. It is still so amazing to me to see him at the front of the class. Where is my little boy who used to be trying to wing it,among the crowd of the class? He is now particular about his form and doing his best. He is a young man,My Young Man.

I better post this already. Been thinking I wanted to take pictures of him in action. That is pictures that shows him in action without actually showing him! Yes, still have that hang up. Keep forgetting my camera so....... IT is posted.

Second thoughts about blogging.

Been in the dumps lately. All bottled in and not posted on the blog. I think I have a problem putting it out there. The blog is not quite working out as a journal for me. I am not free spirited enough to let it out there.

I enjoy the playing on the computer, taking pictures and writing about the good times, the funny times- the tougher time....... as you can see no posting for over a month. I guess I will limit it to my hobbies until and if ever I feel differently. Ha, ha, even that has not quite worked out. I am so happily engrossed in my cooking for example, I forget to take pictures or write down what I tweaked about the recipe. That I think will work itself out once I can set aside enough playtime and set up for it, knowing I will blog it. I will do that for my daughter L, though she will be in dorms for a bit so maybe no cooking yet.

Busy with my family. Proud to say, husband is busy getting fit. He has been biking up to 16 miles a day. GO Baby! He is aiming for 30 miles a day. Really proud of him. Me- my Wii Fit age went down to 29 the other day so that is pretty good, right???? Weight wise I have not budged much, though my clothes are feeling looser. That's what counts said my doctor when I complained to her the other day. At the amount I am exercising 2 years ago I would have lost 10-15 lbs in the first month alone. I have to jump start my metabolic rate. Have to work harder.

Son A has love and lost since the last blog. He has come out a little wiser about girls ( I hope!). He is busy with his Jujitsu, Muay Thai and Tae-Kwon- Do. Also, he is excited about Lacrosse and thinks it might be the sport for him.

Daughter L is started on the stressful college application process, meeting datelines ( or not!), being sweet (most of the time) tired out by all her sport activities but enjoying it all.

Well, at least I am trying to post something!