Peanut Butter Surprise Cupcakes

I'm a bit behind in posting this one, but for Easter I made a modified version of the Peanut Butter Surprise Cupcakes from the cookbook, Cupcakes: From the Cake Mix Doctor. I love cake mix recipes and this cookbook provides some of my favorites. And to tie this into a book I reviewed, let's go for Emily and Einstein by Linda Francis Lee. In that book, Emily bakes tons of cupcakes and brings them into work (which is exactly what I did with these) as part of her grieving process regarding the loss of her husband. Emily's boss doesn't appreciate the baked goods, but fortunately for me, my coworkers love the cupcakes.

Here's how I modified the recipe for Easter: I used Dove Dark Chocolate eggs instead of Hershey's Kisses and Easter-colored M&M's instead of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I also used a dark chocolate buttercream for the frosting. The end result was delicious. Check out another modification (with plenty of pictures) at Sweet & Saucy.

Shortbread

The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry includes a number of recipes that Ginny makes throughout the novel. I decided to try her grandmother’s shortbread recipe. It’s very simple with just 2 cups of flour, 2 sticks of butter, and ½ cup of sugar mixed together and then baked at 350 degrees. My first batch was tragically burnt (I checked halfway and they looked ok, but the final minutes did them in), so I reduced the baking time to 16 minutes for the second batch and was quite pleased. Shortbread is a little plain, but still delicious.

Raspberry Angel Food Cake

When she isn't romancing a former flame, Tara from The Sweetest Thing is baking up a storm (she's going to be taking care of food for the inn she owns with her sisters). The ARC of the second book in the Lucky Harbor by Jill Shalvis includes a casserole recipe, but I don't like casseroles so I'm not about to make one. Instead, I'll share this incredibly simple and oh so yummy Raspberry Angel Food Cake.

The original recipe came from one of my mom's magazines, but I made one small change: raspberry extract. All you need to make this is a box of angel food mix (and anything the mix calls for), a small box of raspberry Jello, and vanilla and raspberry extracts. Just mix up the angel food according to the box, then add a teaspoon a piece of the extracts. Pour about half the batter into the angel food pan; add Jello powder to the remaining batter, then swirl it into the pan. Bake according to the box. Even if you've never baked before, you can make this.

Mocha Madeira Cake

Murder Takes the Cake includes a few recipes in the back. The one I decided to try was the Mocha Madeira Cake. What appealed to me is that this cake is topped with sugar rather than frosting. For whatever reason, I’m not that much of a frosting fan.

This isn’t a light, fluffy cake, but rather more dense. It’s also definitely for chocolate fans (the flavor is excellent if
you love chocolate like I do). Madeira cakes are traditionally served with Madeira wine (hence the name), but I was satisfied with a large glass of milk.

This is a completely from scratch cake, but with only five ingredients, it's quite simple. The recipe calls for self-rising flour, which I bought before realizing that it's just regular flour with baking powder and salt already added. Definitely make your own self-rising flour if you have a recipe that calls for it. I'm going to be baking a lot of biscuits to use it up!

Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Pie

I thought it might be fun to bake in conjunction with some of the books I review. Not every book mentions food, but quite a few do. Baking pies comes up in Welcome to Last Chance when Ray (who has a head injury) decides to help Clay find a mate by ranking the single women in town. Ray thinks the ability to make a good pie is important. One pie-related issue brought up is whether it’s alright to use store-bought crust. Because I love shortcuts, I use a store-bought crust almost every time. I used the Keebler Ready Crust and one of Keebler’s recipes to make this yummy Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Pie.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Not long after I made the Cherry Crumb Muffins featured in my review of the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook, I made another variation of their basic muffin: Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins. Once again they were delicious and easy to make. These muffins use the same base, so they actually just get easier and easier to make. Since these muffins weren’t a part of the cookbook review, I decided that I could do what I always like do and change something. I added far more chocolate than the ¾ cup called for because I love chocolate. If you do too, I would recommend adding chocolate because even with the extra I felt there could be more. My other suggestion would be to mash the bananas a little (I’ll try this next time I make them) because I would’ve liked for the bananas to be more distributed throughout the muffin rather than coming in large chunks here and there.

baking!

When I first started reviewing books, it didn’t occur to me that cookbooks might be a part of that. The first one I reviewed, 5 Ingredient Fix, focused more on cooking meals than baking. I’ve always preferred baking to cooking, but was pleased with the easy recipes featured. I’ve actually succeeded in cooking a few meals for myself! Quite the feat for someone who prefers the convenience of restaurants and microwaves. Baking, on the other hand, has always been something I was willing to put the time in for; though I love to “cheat” with mixes.

After reviewing the cookbook from the Clinton St. Baking Company, I started thinking that I might enjoy blogging about baking in addition to my book reviews. So here it is, my baking blog.