Food: Inspiration cupcakes

Look at this!

Ming Makes Cupcakes has over 20 easy and beautiful cupcake recipes. Including a florless recip for the gluten free, some of them just sound so wonderful "Sourcream Raspberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting" or how about some "Coffee Chocolate Cupcakes with Baileys Irish Cream Frosting?" I can't believe this is real. It's so beautiful!

I feel so inspired. I'll have to try these out soon. The cookies and savouries (savory, rather than sweet, cupcaks) also sound delicious.

Amazing!

Food: The most diverse cookie. Ever.

I decided to try out an old family recipe. I like to call these cookies "Uncle Richard's cookies." But after some googling, I realized these powdered sugar cookies are also called Ukrainian, Mexican and German wedding cookies. Since these cookies are butter rolled in powdered sugar so I'll just call them delicious.

Powdered Sugar Cookies

1 C. soft butter

3/4 C. powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. lemon liqueur

2 C. flour

1/2 C. chopped pecans

1 lemon, zested

1-2 C. powdered sugar for rolling

Cream the butter and gradually add powdered sugar. I used a whisk because I don't have a mixer, but I think a rubber spatula would work better.

Next add the vanilla and lemon liqueur, cream well.

Now, gradually add in the flour, nuts and zest from one lemon. At this point, I switched to mixing with my hands. I used closer to 1 and 3/4 cups of flour than the 2 cups called for, so add the flour slowly and stop when the dough is smooth and crumbly.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Shape the dough into 1" to 1 and 1/2" balls. I made mine a little bigger--maybe 2" in diameter.

Place the cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake the cookies at 300 degrees for 35 minutes. The bottoms will be light brown, but the tops will still be white. My cookies took closer to 30 minutes and because I sprayed some water into the stove to create steam the cookies came out a little darker brown in color.

Take the cookies out of the oven. Put one to two cups powdered sugar in a large shallow dish. (I used a pie pan.)

Now roll the cookies in the powdered sugar and place on a serving platter. Let cool.

Enjoy your sugar and butter love! I know I did.

Drunken Oreos II

Remember, Drunken Oreos? The cookie and ice cream dessert of amazing deliciousness. Well, here's what it looks like.


I like to make one big plate for Erin, Ava and I to enjoy family style. Props to Erin for the beautiful photos.


We also enjoyed a great bottle of chianti with dessert.


Drunken Oreos were long enough ago, I don't remember specifically what I liked about this chianti, but I remember liking it.

Of course, the best are the originals at Meditrina.

Experiment

Hey there,

Tonight I think I'll experiment with some lemon, ginger, coconut and pecans. I'll let you know how it goes. If anyone has any suggestions (I'm currently thinking dessert), please let me know!

Talk to you soon,
Krista