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Triple Chocolate Muffins

A year or two ago, I tasted the triple chocolate muffins at Tim Horton's for the first time and they were soooo good. I haven't had them in a while -- they don't seem to have them in all the Tim Horton's stores. So I decided to try and make my own... turned out pretty good :) How can you go wrong with a chocolate muffin with 2 kinds of chocolate chips? Yummy :D

Makes 15 small muffins.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

• In a medium bowl, mix the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
• In a separate bowl, mix milk, egg, oil, and vanilla.
• Slowly add the dry ingredients (flour mixture) into the wet ingredients, mixing them well each time you add.
• Add the chocolate chips to the batter.
• Fill muffin cups 3/4 full.
• Bake at 175˚C for 15 mins or until the toothpick comes out clean (when you poke the muffin).

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I'm back!! After 3 months of traveling around and spending time with family, I'm finally back at home (I have multiple homes. Yes I'm a nomad.) Which means I can bake again! I did bake a few times when I was in the Philippines but it was all old stuff -- Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Cupcakes, Apple Crisp -- stuff that are already up on this blog.

I had a day to kill before school started so I thought I'd bake some cupcakes. I've tasted some reaaally good red velvet cakes and cupcakes in the past so I wanted to make my own. As with everything else, my favorite part is always the frosting -- cream cheese frosting.. mmm yummy.

These cupcakes turned out a little dry so I'm gonna have to tweak it next time. But anywho, here's the recipe.

Makes 12 medium-sized cupcakes.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tblspoon red food coloring
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp vinegar
1 cup flour
2 tblspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt

• Preheat oven to 175˚C.
• Cream together butter and sugar.
  
• Add egg, buttermilk, red food coloring, and vanilla to the mix.
  ** I had no buttermilk so I put 1 tablespoon of vinegar in a mixing cup and filled the rest with milk until the 1-cup mark. Use half of this for the recipe. **

• Mix in baking soda and vinegar to the batter.
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder and salt.
  
• Slowly add the dry ingredients to the other bowl. Mix well.
• Pour batter into cupcake cups until they are half full.
• Place in the oven for 10 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 of an 8oz. cream cheese block, softened
2 tblspoons butter, softened
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

• Cream together cream cheese and butter.
• Add vanilla and mix well.
• Slowly add icing sugar.

** Remember to cool cupcakes completely before adding the icing because it will melt.

Yummy Rating:
♥
(It was a little dry.. and not as red as I wanted it to be.)

Banana Crumb Cupcake

Banana cupcakes with a sweet, crunchy topping!

Flour Mixture
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Banana Mixture
3 bananas (overripe), mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup oil

Crumb Topping
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tblspoons flour
1/8 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tbslpoon butter, softened

• Combine the flour mixture and the banana mixture in a big bowl. Stir.
• Spoon the batter into muffin/cupcake cups and fill them up halfway.
• Sprinkle crumb topping on top of the batter.
• Bake in preheated oven at 175 degrees C for 15-18 minutes. Use a toothpick to check if they are done (should come out clean).
  

Ta da!

Yummy Rating:
♥♥

My New Toy: Lumix DMC-LX3

Pic Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dan_harrod/3153469955/
This is the new toy I bought yesterday. One of things on my to-do list for this summer is to buy a DSLR and take photography lessons. Ended up being too expensive so I decided to go with a semi-pro point and shoot camera (Lumix DMC-LX3) since all the settings can also be set manually. Next goal is to buy a book and teach myself all these photography jargon. Been tinkering with it all day today :D I'm learning how to set everything manually so it'll take a while. Shutter speed, aperture, exposure..

One of my test shots outside the house..

I'll also be using this camera to take pictures of all the stuff I bake. As you can see, I still have lots to learn..! :)

Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Swirl

Recipe from Black Bottom Cupcakes I.

These cupcakes turned out really moist! The chocolate cupcakes I made before were super dry compared to this. Instead of cream cheese frosting, there's a cream cheese filling in the middle of the cupcake. I think I put too little because you can't really taste the cream cheese part.

I didn't have a cupcake pan or cupcake liners so these are brand new. I bought 100 pieces of cupcake cups for only 6 pesos (C$0.13!!) and the pan for about 150 pesos (C$3.50). Really cheap! Have to remind myself to buy tons of baking stuff before I go back to Vancouver.

Yummy Rating:
♥♥♥
(I didn't really like it but other taste-testers did!)

Yummy Cheesecake

Recipe adapted from Brownie Caramel Cheesecake. Just followed the recipe.. minus the brownie part. I tried baking the whole thing a couple of years ago and it turned out yummy. Just a little time-consuming since you have to bake the brownie first then bake it again with the cheesecake. I made this cheesecake a couple of months ago. The top came out kinda ugly so I decided to cover it up with melted white and milk chocolate. Chocolate fixes everything!

Cheesecake has got to be one of my favorite desserts (I have many favorites). I've had mango cheesecake, coffee cheesecake, oreo cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake... yum

Yummy Rating:
♥♥

a tiny break from baking

I'm finally back in the Philippines and boy is it hot. Such a change from the 12-degree rainy/cloudy weather in Vancouver (which apparently changed to perfect 20-degree sunny days once we left). Its 32 degrees with the sun shining brightly outside-- perfect beach weather. Not for going out on a walk or going shopping. Wayyyy too hot. I start sweating 5 minutes after taking a shower. Yeah it's that hot.

Anyway I probably won't be able to bake much while I'm here. All my baking stuff are back in Vancouver and it's kinda annoying when you don't have the proper things. Hard to find most of the ingredients too but we'll see.. I might bake some stuff here and there. I kinda wanna take cake decorating classes too so I'll post pics if I ever do it.

Oh! and I might also get a dslr! Trying to expand my hobbies this summer. Once I get the hang of it, I'll be able to use it to take pics of the stuff I post onto here cus as you can see.. my camera skills are not that great haha.

I'm also thinking of moving my blog to wordpress. I signed up for an account and started fiddling with it the other day but it seems so cluttered. Not very user friendly. Has a lot of extra stuff but the user interface is messy. There aren't very many themes to choose from either. And since I have no knowledge of CSS, it's kinda hard to make my own (hmm maybe another thing to learn this summer). What to do what to do..

Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

To make up for the failed chocolate cookies, I made cupcakes!


This recipe makes 10 medium + 12 small cupcakes. I tend to scale down most of the recipes I find on the web because only my sister and I eat them. (If you want to make more, the un-scaled recipe is here: Chocolate Cupcakes, Cream Cheese Frosting II)

Chocolate Cupcakes
2/3 cup flour
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup & 2 tblspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 tblsp & 1 1/2 tsp butter, softened (room temp)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk + 1/4 cup chocolate milk (combine in 1 cup)

• Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt in a bowl.
• In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar using a mixer.
  
• Add the egg to the butter & sugar mixture. Then stir in the vanilla.
• Add the chocolate flour and milk alternately. (Flour, mix, milk, mix, flour, ...)
• Bake in 175C for 10 minutes.
• Take the cupcakes out and insert a toothpick. If it comes out clean, it's done.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1/3 8-oz. cream cheese package
1 tblsp & 1 tsp butter, softened
1/3 cup icing sugar
1/8 tsp vanilla

• Combine the butter and cream cheese and mix them well.
  
• Stir in the vanilla.
• Slowly add the icing sugar until well blended.
• Taste it and adjust accordingly (if you want it sweeter, add more sugar. Add more cream cheese if you want more 'cheesecake' taste.)

** Cool cupcakes completely before adding the frosting. **

Straight out of the oven

Frosted ones for me, plain ones for my sister

*bite*

Yummy rating:
♥♥♥

Failed Chocolate Chip Cookies ☹

I was really craving for some chocolate chip cookies the other day so I decided to bake some. I actually wanted to eat it with ice cream.. warm chocolate chip cookie with cookies and cream ice cream.. mmm! Sadly I made a mistake in measuring the amount of butter I needed so it was a disaster :(

Recipe used:
Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

The recipe called for 3/4 cup melted butter.. so I sliced 1/2 cup worth of butter and melted it in the microwave. It came out as 3/4 cups of melted butter so I thought it would be okay. I ended up having a batter that was way too dry. I tried baking it anyway.. they looked completely fine on the outside. But the insides were not baked at all. And if I had kept them in the oven any longer, they would've burned. So I had to throw them away :( I didn't really wanna eat 'raw' cookie dough. What a waste of baking ingredients...

Yummy Rating:
no hearts :(

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

It's strawberry season! Yummm. Strawberry dipped in milk chocolate. dipped in white chocolate. Strawberry with condensed milk. Mmmmm!

Yummy rating:
♥♥

Sugar Cookie Lollipops

I was planning to give the cake pops to my boss and co-worker as a goodbye present. But since that did not turn out too well, I had to come up with something else. So I thought of making sugar cookies.. you can't really go wrong with sugar cookies. Got the recipe from The Best Rolled Sugar Cookie. For the frosting, I used Sugar Cookie Frosting.

After I chilled the dough, I had to cut the cookie shapes out. The first few I made were just circles (easy enough). Then I tried to be more creative and cut some 'flower' shapes out with a knife.. the one on the far right turned out okay. The bottom one, not so much (Is there a flower with only 4 petals?). Also made a square. After I did those two, I went back to making circles.. too lazy to make other shapes. Once the shapes were cut out, I stuck the cookie sticks into them. The back of the cookie opened up a little bit so I just got small pieces of dough and covered the sticks at the back. Then I baked them. I was a little worried that the sticks were gonna catch fire but luckily, they didn't. Cooled the cookies for a couple of hours and then decorated them with frosting. I got lazy after a little while so I just made random scribbles on some of them. As you can see from my cookie frosting designs, I'm not a very creative person :p

The final product. My thank you/goodbye present for my boss.

Yummy rating:
♥♥

Cake Pops Fail.

Soo all week I’ve been waiting for the weekend so that I can make Bakerella’s cake lollipops.. which I saw last week and looked oh-so-good. Even went to Michaels and bought candy melts.. lollipop sticks. I was even going to give some of them to my boss & co-worker as a good-bye present.

I started by baking the plain yellow cake. I did it from scratch cus I didn’t wanna spend any money on cake mix.. plus I had all the ingredients at home anyway. The cake tasted yummy on its own but I had to turn it into cake crumbs so I did (after eating some). Added some canned cream cheese frosting to the crumbs. Rolled them into balls and then put them in the freezer (no patience to put them in the fridge). Shaped them into balls, tulips, butterflies, and flowers. Stuck the lollipop sticks inside and chilled them some more. I started melting the candy coating.. white, pink, and brown/chocolate. Took the cake pops out and started dipping them into the melted candy.. the first few were okay.. then the cake pieces started falling off of the stick! I didn't put the lollipop stick far enough inside the cake so they started falling into the icing :( but anyway.. I figured it out and finished dipping everything. Waited for the coating to dry.. then it was time for a taste test!

… ew. I don’t know if I put too much icing or what but the inside tasted so weird. It was like.. gooey. or mushy. or something. The texture just wasn’t very appetizing. The chocolate candy coating was yummy though.. but the inside ruined it. Grrr. And I was expecting to taste so good! Sooo disappointed. Just goes to show you that looks can be very deceiving :(

I really wanted them to taste good so I kept eating them.. I ate 2 lollipops before I finally gave up and accepted the fact that they tasted like crap. Sad to say that all these ended up in the trash soon after :(

Yummy rating:

♥

(I liked the chocolate candy coating...)

Vanilla Brown Butter Cupcakes

Recipe from BakingBites.

When I was working at Maxxam (for my first 2 co-op terms), they held a competition to fundraise for the Vancouver Food Bank. All the employees were split into 7 or 8 different teams. At the end, my group came in 3rd place. We raised about $700 (if I remember correctly) by having a pizza lunch, clubbing night, 50/50 draw, and a bunch of bake sales! This was my contribution to one of our bake sales.. I think I sold them for 50cents per cupcake.. cus they were mini ones.

Yummy rating:
♥♥

Snickerdoodles!

Snickerdoodles are basically cinnamon sugar cookies. Not sure where it got its name from but I like it :) Reminds me of goldendoodles (which are not food)..

Got the recipe from allrecipes.com again -- Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodles. Almost all of my recipes are from this website. Whenever I think of something I wanna bake, I just search the site and (this is the imporant part) look for the ones with the highest ratings. Then read all the comments. If people are saying it tastes good, chances are high that it'll taste good when you bake it -- assuming you stick to the recipe!


Recipe for 24 cookies:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening (If you don't have shortening, you can use butter too.. so in that case, you would use 1/2 cup butter for the whole recipe)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda + 1 tsp cream of tartar (If you don't have cream of tartar, use 1 1/4 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp baking soda)
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cinammon

• Mix the butter+shortening, sugar, vanilla, and egg together.
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and cream of tartar, salt.
• Slowly pour in the flour mixture to the butter and sugar mixture. Mix well.
• In a smaller bowl, combine sugar with cinnnamon powder for the coating.
  
• Use a spoon to make rounded balls of dough and roll them around the sugar coating.
• Bake at 200c for around 8 minutes.
  

Yummy Rating:
♥♥♥