cupcake – Fervent Foodie

Detox.

January 17, 2012 9 Comments

A spongy glazed doughnut. A homemade scone, still warm from the oven. A yellow-cake cupcake slathered with thick chocolate icing. A piece of jam-filled chocolate straight from Germany. Sugared pecans. A lemon ricotta cookie. A miniature cupcake filled with champagne strawberries and topped with a dollop of vanilla icing. A slice of carrot cake. A caramel drizzled pecan bar with sugar cookie crust.

All of it.

Each and every sugary treat… down to the last crumb and gooey morsel.

I ate it all.

Today.

This is what we call an extreme lack of self control, and I am ashamed. When presented with not one but TWO potlucks in the very same day, I cracked. I ate with reckless abandon. As I type this I can feel the jitters in my fingers and the creepy crawlies in my shoulders from all that sugar seething through me.

I am addicted and something has to give.

Sugar, I need a break. Just some time to clear my head, get my thoughts straight, and get back on track.

It’s not you, Sugar. It’s me.

Just one week apart, Sugar. And then? Well, we can still be friends?

Recipes

Mini Pumpkin Muffcakes

November 14, 2010 3 Comments

Oh so simple, and oh so delicious.

In the past week or so, I realized that my year-to-date pumpkin intake is severely below goal this year. It dawned on me that I have only enjoyed ONE Starbucks pumpkin latte this year and I’ve only made pumpkin cookies ONCE. Sad! The very next day, I received an email newsletter from Hungry Girl that was ALL ABOUT PUMPKIN. Fate? I’m thinking yes.

Do any of you get the Hungry Girl email newsletter? I am a big big fan. She always has simple healthy recipe ideas and offers up tips on healthier options to make at chain restaurants. She’s also coming out with a show in January, which I’m pretty pumped about.

One of the pumpkin recipes in the newsletter that caught my eye was this recipe for Caramel Pudding Pumpkin Cupcakes. I truly am a baker at heart. Yes, I love to cook, but if I had to choose I’d pick baking any day. One of the reasons I rarely bake is that I possess little to no will power against baked goods. I’m the girl who has to try a “little bite” of each baked good at family get togethers… only to end up eating the sugar equivalent of 7 king size snickers bars… For those of you who were Sex and the City watchers, I could totally relate to the episode where Miranda ate chocolate cake from the trash can. Like I said. Little to no willpower. So rather than suscept myself to sugar induced comas, I avoid baking.

Unless of course I have plenty of people to pawn my wares off on… And when all else fails, I scale it down. I mean way down. I’ve been known to make a solitary no-bake cookie. Talk about proactive measures!

When I got to baking these pumpkin cupcakes, I decided to cut the recipe down to 3 cupcakes. Come on. You have to give yourself a little wiggle room Winking smile

I assembled the ingredients for 3 cupcakes in a large bowl (making a few minor tweaks from HG’s recipe):

1/2 cup Better Crocker moist yellow cake mix
1/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 egg white
1.5 tsp Smuckers sugar free breakfast syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Truvia
dash of salt

I whisked everything together with a fork for a good two minutes:

Then divided evenly into 3 muffin tins, which I popped into a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes…. and VOILA!

Little bits of joy:

I’m so proud Smile

While the cupcakes cooled, I got to work on the caramel icing. For three cupcakes, I only needed 1 caramel candy (the little cube caramels you can find individually wrapped in the bulk candy section of the grocery store) and 1 tsp Almond Breeze Vanilla Unsweetened Almond Milk. I put both of the icing ingredients into a bowl and popped into the microwave on 50% heat for 1 minute, then stirred, and repeated for another minute.

Then I just drizzled the caramel goodness over top of the three cupcakes:

I had one of these little guys with my evening cup of Earl Grey tea. It reminded me of the pumpkin muffies you can get at Panera (you know, the ones that are dusted with powdered sugar?). These cupcakes really are a cross between a muffie and a cupcake…. A muffcake, if you will Winking smile

Not only were they super easy and scrumptious, but they made my kitchen smell absolutely heavenly.

Stats on 1 Mini Pumpkin Muffcake (as prepared by Fervent Foodie): 106 calories, 23g carbs, 1g fat, 2g protein, 1g fiber

Mini Pumpkin Muffcakes Ingredients List (makes 3)

1/2 cup Better Crocker moist yellow cake mix
1/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 egg white
1.5 tsp Smuckers sugar free breakfast syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Truvia
dash of salt
1 caramel candy
1 tsp Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk

Restaurants, Travel

Friday B,L,D in Charleston

July 17, 2010 7 Comments

For breakfast Friday we decided to head to Hominy Grill, which is a nice short walk from the studio we are renting.

We sat outside on a nice little covered patio that had several mounted fans to cool us down:

We decided to order two dishes to split, and ended up with the sausage omelet with home fries and toast:

And the buttermilk pancakes:

Both of these were DELICIOUS. We also brought some of the housemade banana bread and ginger pumpkin bread home with us:

Box of joy:

We both enjoyed both of these breads, though I preferred the pumpkin and Jarrod preferred the banana.. so that worked out quite well 🙂

After breakfast, we headed to Folly Beach for a little sun, and the sand, and drinks in our hands napping on the beach:

All the sun and salt water made us crazy hungry, so we stopped at the Triangle Char bar for lunch:

For an appetizer, we ordered the cheesy sausage Tailgate Dip. Cheesy Heaven:

I ordered the Turkey Burger, which was called the “I’m on a diet but still want a burger, burger”

I ended up only eating half of the burger, because we had such a big breakfast and all the cheesy dip. The avocado spread is what really made the burger tasty.

Jarrod got the spicy chicken tacos, which he REALLY liked:

After our late lunch, we headed back to the studio for some napping/showering then headed on our merry way to dinner. We decided to go to Sermet’s Corner on King Street. The restaurant had great ambiance, and kind of funky decor:

For the appetizer, we ordered the Baked Artichoke Torta:

Looks beautiful, tasted like butt. Haha.. unfortunately the menu didn’t mention that the torta was FILLED with black olives. Jarrod dislikes black olives. I, on the other hand, DESPISE black olives. I feel like they taint everything they touch… there’s just no eating around them because once they are in a dish the whole dish is RUINED (in my opinion anyway 😉 )

Lucky for us, the main course was AMAZING. We ordered the chicken sautéed with chorizo sausage, roasted red peppers, and sweat peas, in a red wine thyme gorgonzola reduction over penne pasta:

A-may-zing. For the record, that is pasta for night #3 in a row.. Hahaha 😀

On the way home, we decided to take one of the bike taxis back to the studio. Here’s a pic of me trying to discretely take a pick of the driver’s t-shirt without the driver noticing… Too bad he noticed, so I felt bad and didn’t try to take another clearer pic.. hahahah

For my raincheck b-day cake, we stopped at Cupcake and I got a Chocolate Tuxedo Cupcake:

This was so decadent…the icing was so thick and creamy it literally took several attempts to swallow… I saved half for later today 🙂

Today we’re heading to the harbor to do some actual sighteeing and some (more) eating 😉