dessert

Apple & Brown Sugar Soy Chicken

Fall dinner. Apple and brown sugar soy chicken from the crockpot. Apple crisp for dessert. All courtesy of the millions of apples we picked in Charlottesville the other week! The house smells decadent 🙂

The meal itself was super easy to make. Chicken breasts. 1 cup of apple juice. A few tablespoons of lemon juice. 1/2 cup soy sauce. 1/2 cup brown sugar (or to taste.) Toss in a few apple slices, if you have them. Cook on low in the crockpot for 6-8 hours. Serve over rice!

The apple crisp was good but not worth sharing yet – I have a better recipe Ill try later!

(Taken with Instagram)

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Culinary Delight #10: Pancake Cupcake with Maple Buttercream & Bacon

This is the first cupcake I’ve made from scratch that wasn’t overly heavy or dense, but boy was it sweet. I was skeptical of the whole concept but it’s actually pretty good – and Chuck downed a whole plate of them and made me keep the excess frosting. It’s straight up brown sugar and maple syrup though, so they’re a bit sticky. Easier to eat with a spoon almost!

Pancake Cupcake Ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 stick or 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup light-brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups maple syrup

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, finely chopped (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat your oven 350 degrees. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and ginger together. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar on medium speed in a large bowl until they are fluffy. (Your butter must be soft!) Add in eggs, syrup and vanilla. Mix until blended. Then mix in the flour mixture alternating with the buttermilk. Do about one-third of the flour and then one-third of the buttermilk, and so on. Add the nuts if using.

Fill muffin or cupcake tins, either lined or buttered, according to your preference. Cook for approximately 20 minutes or until your tester comes out clean. Cool totally and then ice with Maple-Butter Frosting.

Maple-Butter Frosting Ingredients

1 cup of softened, unsalted butter

3 ounces of cream cheese, also softened

2/3 cup of dark-brown sugar (I use golden)

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup of maple syrup

3/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup of confectioners’ (icing) sugar

Instructions: 

Beat the softened butter, cream cheese, brown sugar and salt in a medium-sized bowl until fluffy. Once again, it is critical that your ingredients be softened. While you keep beating, add both the maple syrup and the vanilla. Slowly add the confectioners’ sugar and gradually increase the speed to high. Continue beating until the icing is fluffy.

Chill the maple-butter frosting for one hour before using.

Breakfast for dessert!!

I was craving straight up chocolate decadence last night, so I whipped up a devils food chocolate layer cake (just out of a box) with semi sweet morsels and a cream cheese frosting center… And a rather lopsided powdered sugar heart on top? 🙂 I added a few tablespoons of heavy whipping cream for extra richness!!

I’m not gonna lie, it tastes GLORIOUS.

(Taken with Instagram)

Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake.

– Jeanne Ray

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Culinary Delight #5: Chocolate-Strawberry Cupcakes

I actually made these for Valentine’s Day and thoroughly screwed them up, but somehow, they still tasted fantabulous – even if they were a huge mess.

I’m a bit sheepish that I failed*, because they are so easy to make they don’t even need a drawn-out recipe. Simply make brownie batter in one bowl (brownie mix + 2 eggs + 1/2 cup canola oil + 1/4 cup water) and strawberry cake batter in another (cake mix + 2 tablespoons canola oil + 1 1/3 cup water + 3 egg whites.) Spoon a small amount of the brownie batter into the muffin tins, and then spoon a slightly larger amount of strawberry batter on top, and bake for 20 minutes at 350. Frost with cream cheese icing once they cool, and voila! 🙂

*I failed because I didn’t have brownie mix, and figured cake mix would suffice. It didn’t! The two cakes just ran all together and made for a very weakly structured cupcake that fell apart easily. That’s what I get for substituting…