Veggie Cake

I was at work less than an hour when a shoe flew at me.  A shoe.  "WHO THROWS A SHOE?"

I have already reached my days limits on tantrums.  And it's barely after 1.  Less than 4 hours to go today, thank Heavens.

I don't want to leave lunch and go back to work today.  It's a Monday.

But on to my happy place.  Here is a veggie cupcake recipe I probably got from epicurious.com or allrecipes.com a while back.  Zucchini Chocolate with Chocolate chips.  I'd frost with a light vanilla buttercream.  Or, for fun, maybe a zesty orange.


Ingredients
 1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons instant hot chocolate mix
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup and 3 tablespoons white sugar
1 EXTRA LARGE egg
1/3 cup sour milk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2/3 cups grated zucchini
 2/3 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees 


cream together the butter, olive oil and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the sour milk and vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture, just until incorporated. Stir in the grated zucchini and chocolate chips. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the top of the cupcakes springs back when lightly pressed. Cool in pans over a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before removing from baking cups.

"This Borders on Fabulous."

So, the cupcakes came out.  I baked them for around 25 minutes per batch.  They have a crispy top, like a brownie does.  And a super moist cake.

I couldn't figure out what kind of frosting would properly adorn the cake without overpowering the egg nog flavor.  So, I decided to make an egg nog topping. 

By the way, the recipe is 1 box cake mix and two cups egg nog.  I used Devil's Food.

For the topping, I took a cup of eggnog, a splash of milk, a dollop of whip cream and about a cup of powder sugar.  Enough powder sugar to make a proper frosting would have been far too sweet, as it was, this was still a smidge sweeter than I'd have really liked. 

I put the ingredients into the Magic Bullet and whipped the shit out of them for about 4 minutes.

I ended up with a liquid the consistency of the froth on the top of steamed milk. 

I took a bit of the top off with a grapefruit spoon and I poured the glaze in. 

I served it to the family.

The brother, an egg nog afficianado, said it was "good."  Then he went with "Not Bad."  But too sweet for him.

The sister, a chocolate addict, said it was "okay."

But my mom, who loves desserts, said it "bordered on fabulous" and i had to share the recipe.

And, the greatest compliment of all, my grandmother, who generally sneaks the majority of her food to the cats, ate the entire thing without letting them near it.

So, please enjoy if you'd like.


Cake:
1 Box Devil's Food Cake Mix
2 cups eggnog
Mix, scoop into liners, bake for about 25 minutes. There is minimal rising.


Glaze:
1 cup eggnog
1 cup powder sugar
splash of milk
dollop of whipped cream
Put in high speed blender and blend for about 4 minutes till the consistency of froth on steamed milk.

Put cupcake in a bowl, spoon glaze on top to taste.  Enjoy while cupcake is still mildly warm and glaze is cold.

Egg Nog Cupcakes

After the experience I had with cake mix cookies, I began to wonder what other things can you do with cake mixes?  I googled it.  apparently, you can make cupcakes with a can of soda and a box of cake mix.  No eggs or oil needed.  I began to think about this.  Something in the soda, an acid thing, helps be the binding agent.

So it occured to me, what if I used eggnog?  It has eggs.  And milk.  And stuff you make cakes with?   Thus, In the oven right now, a devil's food eggnog batch of cupcakes.  It might be a disaster, it might be delicious, but considering the vast amount of cake mixes I ended up with (I bought some, then my grandmother thought I'd like some, so there's a good 18 mixes here) it's not going to hurt to try.  Now to come up with a good frosting/glaze...

Corporal Punishment.

It's Sunday. Not Saturday, but I made cupcakes today instead of yesterday because of Vacation Bible School. I'm trying to stage it. So I spent yesterday painting backdrops for the water park theme.

So Today! CUPCAKES!

Here's a Before Picture:

Penzey's figures heavily in almost everything I do

I gathered all the tools of my trade.  This time around, I planned on making full sized cupcakes.  I didn't want to spend forever monitoring the mini-cupcakes.  Or frosting them, to be quite honest.  So I was taking the easy way out.

I used Almond instead of vanilla this time out, because I'm anti-vanilla.  And extremely anti-imitation vanilla, and that's all we had.

The almond extract is wicked sweet.  Use less than the vanilla amount recommended.


I have a confession to make.  I sometimes use unnecessary force when combining my ingredients.  Maybe I just don't know my own strength.  No matter what it is, I tend to over-beat the eggs.  I try to not do this, and then all of the sudden, the batter is about 4 times too fluffy.

It's not my fault.  the damn eggs never listen to me.  They whine.  They yell inside.  They fight with each other.  If I have to hear one more tiny eggy demand, I'm just gonna... And then they're all meringue.

This can be a problem during cooking:

I had to watch the oven carefully, to make sure I didn't have another repeat of the family-famous red velvet incident.

When they came out, they were stuck together.  I used my cake spatula to seperate them while they were still warm.

They may not have looked pretty but the choco-holic of the family came in a few times while they were cooling to eat one.  I finally slapped some chocolate frosting on top and handed him one so he'd stay out of my kitchen while I was working.

"Eat this and get the hell out of my kitchen, Grandpa."

I had the parchment bag all set up with the tip and the frosting in the plastic wrap bundles, but in the end, I gave up decorating them and just slapped the frosting on.  I did, by the way, make a second smaller batch, but they ended up a little mangled looking, too.  The papers were slightly folded in.  I did swirl them with a star tip, but they're going up to work, and preschool teachers on a Monday aren't the least bit picky about what the chocolate looks like.

They look stupid.

The truth is, I've reached that "7th inning stretch" part of my job.  It's the whole month of July.  It's around July when all year-round, all-day preschool teachers start to question their sanity and chosen profession.  I'm not going to lie, as I get closer to 35, I feel less and less like spending my day on the hard floor, playing with kids who don't appreciate me.  I'm sure as the new school year rolls around, the excitement of new possibilities will kick in and I'll feel refreshed.  Renewed.  Revitalized.  My cupcakes will probably be much better then. 

Until then, I'll keep baking, because there is peace in the process.  And sometimes that will be enough.