Category: cake

Vampire Bite Peach Cupcakes

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
And Peach Cupcakes, Classic Buttercream, and Peach Italian Cookies

I don’t know why humans torture ourselves with thrillers – it’s the same weird phenomenon where we stand in lines for an hour for 1 minute on a crazy tall rollercoaster. But, I excitedly seek out both. When I was younger I ate up all of Stephen King’s books but Grady Hendrix’s approach to thrillers is slightly different. I had a moment in the first 50 pages or so where I questioned if this was even a thriller at all or if it was just about housewives reading true crime books. But then it turned a corner and my heart was beating and that familiar rush of reading a thriller was there. 

The main character, Patricia, a housewife in Charleston, is pretty infuriating throughout a big chunk of the novel. You just wanted to transfer a chunk of courage to her to trust herself but she was confined and limited by classic late 80s/90s misogyny. Her husband, Carter, was the worst and her kids were annoying. Patricia largely finds solace in her book club which chooses fun and exciting thrillers and true crime novels despite how their community might judge their book choices. But like everything that she chooses for her own enjoyment, others in the book try to limit and control this joy. The humiliation that these women were forced to endure at the hands of the men is palpable. Every single family eventually has the control of the men at the center of them revealed – and Hendrix does this only after you know and love the women in the book for their strong and unique personalities. The juxtaposition here is powerful and made your hearts break for them. For the modern-day feminist, it’s more than upsetting and could be viewed as another classic novel where men are controlling things – but you need to look beyond that and consider the book in the context of the 90s and then look at the subtle character moves in the novel which makes this a modern approach. Ultimately, the sense of sisterhood in this book remains supreme. 

This book was particularly interesting because it snuck in a lot of commentary about race, gender roles, classism, societal pressure, and more into the most unsuspecting places. Because of these themes, even non-thriller fans can find enjoyment here. For that very reason I picked the “peach tree” scene as the representative of this book – and after you get to the scene the cover of the book begins to make sense. I can’t give away too much…but if you read on more about this inspiration get ready for the sliiightest of spoilers/implications to major plot points. 

Final Recommendation:

Skip it! /  Put it on your list! / ((Go read it now!))

Patricia ends up taking on the responsibility of caring for her senile mother-in-law. Her character seems like just a side plot and I don’t pay much attention to her at the start. As the novel progresses, her outbursts which are written off as manic episodes by the characters begin to make sense – and inform an important backstory of the vampire in the book named James. One story, in particular, stuck with me. It was when her mother-in-law told the real story behind why her peach tree on her property was considered spoiled and poisoned – and why she wouldn’t let anyone eat from it even decades later. I really don’t want to reveal much but it was a nice parallel to the “present-day” of the novel and how society seems very willing to accept easy scapegoats versus admitting personal responsibility in hard situations. It seems that the easy way out ends up destroying the characters who opt for it in the long run. 

Here is the quote that inspired the cupcakes (sort of, this is where the first seed about the peach tree storyline was planted – not where the truth behind it was revealed):

“She refused to let anyone eat from the peach tree in her backyard no matter how good the fruit looked because she said it had been planted in sadness and the fruit tasted bitter.”

Grady Hendrix, page 59

The good thing about these cupcakes is they taste anything but sad and bitter. They are goooooood and visually stunning.  I promise.

Peach Cupcakes (Makes 12):

I highly recommend watching The Scran Line’s video where he gives a tutorial on how to make these cupcakes. I didn’t make the cupcakes with his recipe but I followed his “peach” Italian cookie recipe exactly. I am always skeptical trying new cupcake recipes for cupcakes that are flavored – and tend to just make simple adjustments to my go-to vanilla cupcakes. 

Cupcake Ingredients: (makes 12 cupcakes)

  • 1 stick of unsalted butter (softened)
  • ⅔ cup of sugar
  • 1 tablespoon (packed) of orange zest (about half of an orange)
  • 3 eggs (at room temperature)
  • 1 ½  teaspoon of vanilla extract 
  • 1 ½ cups of All-Purpose Flour
  • 1 ½ teaspoon of baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt
  • ¼ milk
  • 2 teaspoons of peach schnapps (or any peach liquor), optional
  • 1 cup chopped canned peaches
  • Food coloring: I used a pink gel with a touch of yellow gel.

Cupcakes How-to:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and fill your cupcake pan with liners
  2. Cream together your softened butter, sugar, and zest. When the orange zest and sugar combine it creates an awesome fruity flavor throughout the whole cupcake. Mix on medium until they are nice and fluffy. 
  3. Add your eggs, one at a time, using a rubber spatula to wipe down the sides each time. 
  4. In a separate bowl, mix together schnapps, vanilla, and milk. Set aside for a sec.
  5. In another bowl, mix together all dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) and whisk to combine. 
  6. Alternate between adding your wet and dry ingredients into your sugary lemony butter mix. Mix until combined – don’t over mix! I like to do the last couple of mixes with my wooden spoon or spatula. 
  7. Put in a few drops of pink food coloring and a touch of yellow to get the nice peachy pink.
  8. Fold in your peaches.
  9. Distribute the batter evenly throughout the 12 liners – it should end up at all being 3/4ish full. Put in the oven for 17-20 minutes. 18 minutes is usually my go-to time for most cupcakes but because there’s additional liquid in here with the peaches it may take a bit longer to fully bake. The trick to knowing a cupcake is done: touch the middle of the cupcake near the end of bake time and if it bounces back, it’s done! 
  10. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely!

Frosting Ingredients:

  • 2 sticks of unsalted butter (softened)
  • 4 cups of powdered sugar
  • 1 tablespoon of vanilla
  • Optional splash of peach schnapps if you feel so moved
  • 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream (whole milk would also be ok, heavy cream tastes best)
  • Pinch of salt

Frosting How-to:

  1. Put your softened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium and beat until it is consistently creamy. This takes around 2-3 minutes. 
  2. Add the powdered’ sugar 1 cup at a time (trust me – you’ll have a mega mess on your hands if you try and put it all in at once). Mix until combined. 
  3. Add in the lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. Beat for about 2 minutes on medium speed. 
  4. Add 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream until you get a consistency you’re happy with. Beat again for about 2 minutes. 
  5. Transfer to a piping bag and frost your cooled down cupcakes! This can also be made ahead and stored until about 1 week in the fridge. It is better to frost your cupcakes close before serving them! If you are making them ahead of time, bring them to room temperature and then beat them in your stand mixer for a minute or two until its creamy/a good consistency again! If necessary add another tablespoon of heavy cream. 

“Peach” Orange Zest Italian Cookies

Ingredients: I am giving this in US cups for measurement but head to The Scran Line for the original measurements in grams. (Full disclosure, I have a scale so used the original grams but just carefully watched the cup measurements for you all!)

  • 5 cups of flour
  • 1 tablespoon of baking powder
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup of granulated sugar minus about two tablespoons (it should be a little less than 1 cup).
  • 185 ml of whole milk (this is about 6 ounces or a fifth less than a cup)
  • 2 sticks of unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit
  • Freshly grated zest of 1 orange
  • 1/2 cup Peach Schnapps + 4 drops red food gel (adjust based on how light your alcohol is)
  • 1/3 cup of rum (I used dark rum) + 3 drops of yellow
  • About 1 cup of sugar for coating
  • Mint leaves (fresh) to garnish as the leaves

How-to:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Sift your flour and baking powder into a big bowl. Whisk together. 
  3. In another, small bowl whisk your eggs together then whisk together with your sugar. Next, add in your milk to this same bowl and continue to whisk. Lastly, add in your cooled off melted butter and mix to combine. 
  4. Zest your orange over this liquid ingredient bowl and mix to combine.
  5. Mix into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon and spatula to combine.
  6. Let the dough rest for about 5 minutes. 
  7. The batter should be thick enough to form little tablespoon-sized balls. Roll it in your hand and then place on a greased cookie sheet/or one fitted with parchment paper. These only expand a little and will keep their shape and light color after being baked. 
  8. Bake them for 15 minutes (bottoms should be slightly golden brown).
  9. While it’s baking – make your ganache (recipe below)!
  10. Hollow out a small hole in the bottom of each cookie, slather lightly with ganache, and attach bottom to bottom to form your peach. The ganache acts as your “glue”. I put these in the refrigerator for about five minutes for them to harden.
  11. Allow them to cool while you mix together your food coloring station: take out three bowls similar to how you would arrange a breading station for breaded chicken. In one bowl mix your rum and coloring, in another your schnapps and coloring, and lastly your sugar.
  12. Take the cookies, dip small sections in the red mixture, roll it completely in the yellow mixture and then coat it in sugar. 
  13. Then put a nice mint leaf on top and you’ve got a tasty peach! 

Ganache to join the cookies together:

**Note on chocolate ganache: basically your ratio of chocolate to cream is what dictates the thickness. For this, I used a 2:1 ratio which is similar to what you can use to make chocolate truffles. 

  • 1 cup of semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips
  • ½ cup of heavy whipping cream

How-To:

  1. Combine the two ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl. Gently stir. 
  2. Microwave in 20-second intervals, mixing after each time. Be patient! It eventually comes together. 
  3. Let cool a bit.

Vampire Blood:

  • Corn Syrup (both light and dark)
  • Red food coloring

To get the vampire blood I mixed corn syrup and red food coloring. I used a mixture of light and dark corn syrup to get a true blood color (I used much less of the dark) and sort of eye-balled the food coloring until I got a color I liked. I then punctured the cookie with a toothpick and used the toothpick to drip the “blood” mixture down into the bites. 

Heart “Cake” Tart to Say THANKS!

Wow. What a wild ride my first three weeks have been on this blog and on my instagram. On Friday I had around 300 followers and today I am at over 600. I am so thankful and excited to have so many following along on my reading and baking journey! The “bookstagram” community is one that I knew very little about before this year and now I feel so welcomed into a dope and supportive group of wonderful humans.

I started this page to combine two major passions of mine. I’m a full time high school English teacher and am currently attending graduate school for my (second) master’s degree in Educational Leadership. So, I never thought I’d have the time to truly dedicate to a blog and instagram page like this to truly be “proud” of it – or whatever other superficial pressure I decided to put on myself. With the quarantine in New York State and my busy city coming to a stand still I decided to say, “What the heck?!” and went for it. When things get hectic now, or when I feel down, I am finding the happiness here and in really honoring the things that make me happy. It’s been a pretty powerful experience so far.

SO, to express my gratitude I need to do it in the only way I know how – baking you all something!! (I know I know that I’m technically going to be the one eating it but it’s for YOU, I assure you). here is an easy cake to say thank you!!! The base is essentially a big sugar cookie that you can cut into any shape, letter, or number that you’d like to – the key is to just have it open in the middle so you can admire the layers. The frosting is a very subtly sweet mascarpone frosting that is surprisingly sturdy enough to hold it all up!

Heart Shaped Tart Cake

Cookie Base Recipe

  • 4 sticks (two cups) of Salted Butter, softened
  • 2 cups of granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs, room temperature
  • 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract
  • 4 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 6 cups of flour

Cookies How-To:

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. (Again, I forgot to do this. I don’t think I’ll ever remember!)
  2. Cream together your butter and sugar until completely integrated and fluffy, about 3 minutes at medium speed. ***Note – like I’ve mentioned before butter is a drama queen that demands to be respected. Softened butter should indent a bit when you touch it but shouldn’t be melted or liquidy. I just incorporate this step into my routine in the morning – put on the tea kettle, take out the butter from the fridge, do whatever else and then wait an hour or so until it’s ready for me.
  3. Scrape down your bowl and add your vanilla and your eggs, mix for about 30 seconds until combined.
  4. In a separate bowl measure out your six cups of flour, then add your baking soda and whisk to integrate.
  5. Mix in the flour into the butter mixture pulsating your mixer to juuust combine it to avoid over mixing. If you pour in all your flour at once you’ll have a mess on your hands, so do it in batches! 😉 Mix until you see the dough starts to come together. It should feel buttery and should stick together. If it’s a sandy texture continue to mix it a bit.
  6. Take your dough and separate it into double the amount of characters you want to create! For example, I did 3 hearts, so I separated my dough into SIX portions.
  7. Roll out each portion with your rolling pin on parchment paper, put whatever stencil your using over it and cut out your shape! I found my image on the internet doing a quick google search for printable stencils – a teacher’s secret trick for pretty bulletin boards :D.
  8. Use the parchment paper to help you transfer the cookie to a cookie sheet and back for 10-14 minutes (this will depend on how thick you rolled out your cookies). The edges should be golden brown.

Mascarpone Whipped Frosting

  • 16 ounces of Mascarpone Cheese
  • 2 cups of heavy cream
  • 1/2 cup to 1 cup of powdered sugar (I used 1/2 a cup but this depends on how sweet you like your frosting!)
  • 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Frosting How-To

  1. Through it all in the bowl of stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whisk until it firms up and holds its peaks! This took about 2 minutes for me on high.
  2. Put into a piping bag and that’s it!

Assemble:

  1. Wait for your cookies to completely cool – this will happen quick!
  2. Take your base layer and pipe small swirls of your frosting onto the cookie.
  3. Top this with your second cookie and pipe on top again.
  4. Top with any fruits or edible flowers you wish! I used blackberries, strawberries, grapes. I recommend mint leaves as well!

Untamed’s “Goddamn Cheetah” Swiss Roll Cake

Untamed by Glennon Doyle
And a Cheetah Swiss Roll Cake

Let me start off with a disclaimer on this one: I “get” this book but something about it didn’t affect me in the way I think it was intended to. I’m very pro the main message of this memoir: that society teaches and forces women to conform and to ignore their inner desires and call it martyrdom or call it “being a good/proper woman.” I also believe that women should “sink” into themselves more and listen to their intuition, or their “knowing” as Doyle calls it. Maybe it was the style of writing that I didn’t connect to or the repetition of the same message throughout the book but it didn’t register as anything revolutionary or new. Maybe, perhaps, it was my years in Barnard College as an undergrad or my hyper independent mother being my guide through life but I felt like I’ve already received these messages in a way that’s resonated for me in a more meaningful sense. It’s just a story. And it’s uniquely her story, and that’s ok. 

I think a lot of women, especially those struggling with any addictions, feeling unfulfilled in their lives, questioning their parenting methods, feeling the pressure of gender roles, or feeling confined in their marriages, would benefit from reading her story. This feeling of discontent and the moment that a young women’s light is dulled is all too real, and something many women will read and nod their heads in agreement to. Mhmmm, yes, we’ve been there. If this story calls to you, please read it!

Final Recommendation:

Skip it!  /  ((Put it on your list!))  / Go read it now!

Despite this book and I not exactly vibing, I love that Doyle found love and is finally living her truth. I especially liked the prologue of the book and think the metaphor of women being like cheetahs in captivity is a good way to set the scene for this book’s message. So, I decided that the best food to capture this book is a cheetah Swiss roll, which proudly wears its spots on the outside. It is a bold cake but is actually rather easy to make. It has a similar wow factor to the cover art of this book!

Quote that inspired the recipe:

“I understand myself differently now. I was just a caged girl made for wide-open skies. I wasn’t crazy. I was a goddamn cheetah,” (5).

Glennon Doyle

A Goddamn Cheetah Swiss Roll Cake
Adapted from Kimberlycstar.com

Swiss Roll Ingredients:

  • 1 box of white cake mix
  • 6 large eggs
  • 1/4 cup sour cream
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/4 cup canola oil
  • Colored gel food coloring (I used pink, red, purple, blue and yellow)
  • 1 black gel food coloring

Swiss Roll How-to:

  1. *I don’t preheat my oven for this one until I step 6 but if you’re faster than me, preheat it to 350.*
  2. Crack your six large eggs into the bowl of your mixer. Beat them on medium for about 6 minutes so they become very well combined and very yellow.
  3. While your eggs are being beaten (lol), measure out your parchment paper to cover the entire bottom of an edged cookie sheet. I used a little spray of canola oil in each corner to make the parchment paper stick to the sheet flat. 
  4. SIFT your cake mix into the egg mixture. This is a CRITICAL MOVE (sorry for screaming) when using boxed cake because the lumps in it will not come out and will lead you to overbeat your batter or having little pockets of unmixed powder (ew). 
  5. Add in the sour cream, water, and canola oil. Beat for about 1 minute. If necessary, give it a few more mixes with a spatula or wooden spoon. 
  6. Take out about six small bowls (depending on the number of colors you want to use. Focus on the black batter first. You will need ½ cup for your black batter (mix about 2-3 drops of black gel coloring in it). Once you get the color you like, scoop the batter into a piping bag. I used the Wilton 4 tip with this. You could also use a plastic squeeze bottle if you prefer.
  7. Preheat your oven 🙂
  8. Create your black cheetah lines first. I looked at an online picture of cheetah stripes for a while and then just freehanded the same 3-4 designs all over. Put this into the fridge while you mix your colored batter. (Putting it in the fridge helps the pretty design you just made not get smushed or spread).
  9. Take about two tablespoons of plain batter for each of the colors. Mixx them in separate bowls. Take out the refrigerated sheet and use a toothpick to grab the batter and color in the dots on your cheetah print. (You could also use individual piping bags for this but that felt like a waste.) When you’re done, put this in the fridge for at least five minutes.   
  10. Scoop the plain batter into a piping bag (I did not use a tip) and cover the entire cookie sheet. Patch up any holes carefully and lightly with a rubber spatula. 
  11. Bake for 9-12 minutes. Again the test for “doneness” is touching the top and it bouncing back up to you. Then move quickly to the next step! We need the cake HOT for it to keep its form and not crack.
     

How to roll a swiss roll cake:

  1. Let your cake cool for about 2 minutes and take a piece of parchment paper about the size of your cookie sheet and sprinkle powdered sugar lightly over it. Get a clean kitchen towel ready.
  2. Tightly place the kitchen towel over the cake and invert it, allowing the cake to fall (very gently) onto the towel. Your cake will be facing the wrong way. Gently (VERY GENTLY) flip it over with the help of your towel and a guiding hand onto the prepared parchment paper. It should now be cheetah print side DOWN on the parchment.
  3. Arrange the cake so it is short side of the rectangle to you. Score a line with a knife about five inches from the edge of the cake, being careful not to cut through to the bottom. 
  4. Take the edge of the parchment paper and drape it over to your scored line. Roll the cake up tightly but gently with your parchment paper. Allow the cake to completely cool (about 1 hour) in this position. I sandwiched it between two bowls so it wouldn’t flatten. 
  5. Once cooled, carefully unroll and frost the inside of the cake. 
  6. Re-roll without the parchment paper this time and let set in the refrigerator for 2 hours to overnight. This is BEST when it has the time to set overnight.

Frosting Ingredients:

  • 2 sticks of unsalted butter (softened)
  • 4 cups of powdered sugar
  • 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream (whole milk would also be ok, heavy cream tastes best)
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • 1 cup of heavy cream

Frosting How-to:

  1. Put your softened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium and beat until it is consistently creamy. This takes around 2-3 minutes. 
  2. Add the powdered’ sugar 1 cup at a time (trust me – you’ll have a mega mess on your hands if you try and put it all in at once). Once all combined, beat for about 2 minutes.
  3. Add the vanilla extract and then the 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream (until you get a consistency you’re happy with). Beat again for about 2 minutes. 
  4. In a totally separate bowl (!!) put your 1 cup of heavy cream (and optional 2 tablespoons of sugar but I left this out) use the whisk attachment to your mixer to whip up this cream into…well….whipped cream. Beat it medium-high until it has stiff peaks. 
  5. Take your whipped cream and fold it into your vanilla frosting – and voila! 

Circe’s Gold Lemon Cupcakes with Cookie Pigs

Circe by Madeline Miller
And Lemon Gold Cupcakes with Pig German Butter Cookies

I am a sucker for anything cosplay-able. When my friends announced that our next annual dress-up/theater event would be Greek Mythology themed I could not contain my excitement and decided to read all the Greek Mythology I could get my hands on. I am not playing the role of Circe, but I was drawn to this book because of the story Circe represents: classically misunderstood woman whose strength and beauty is doubted but who is crazy powerful and worthy. I spent a decent majority of the reading time with my inner monologue screaming, “Nooo Circe! Don’t let them play you like this! You’re a powerful witch, girl!!!” I think, by the end of the book, she heard me. 

Circe grows more powerful and self-determined as the story progresses. When she turns her first batch of fellas into pigs I nearly threw the book down to cheer – let me tell you, they deserved it! If you read the Odyssey in your 9th grade English class, like me, then you are only familiar with a very different version of Circe – where she is weak and grovels at Odysseus’s feet. It was nice to have her story and strength reclaimed by Miller in this novel. Additionally, in the spirit of Mother’s Day this weekend, Circe was a fierce single mother who did everything in her power to protect and love her son. It is equal parts: epic adventure, affirming powerful women, witchery and magic, and romance. Super like!

Final Recommendation:

Skip it! /  Put it on your list!  / ((Go read it now!))

Circe’s exile on the island Aiaia, although making her lonely at first, only gives her space and freedom to improve on her witchcraft. I wanted to make a cupcake and cookie that was an homage to her beauty (no matter how many called her “ugly” or her voice “thin” and annoying because she had the voice of a mortal and didn’t glow like her siblings). As the daughter of Helios and a naiad (a sort of water guardian – daughter of titan Oceanos), it was assumed that Circe would come out a golden goddess as her siblings had. She didn’t – but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t fierce and it took her getting away from her family and the cruel judgment they bore upon her for her to discover this. Thus, we have a fragrant lemon cupcake colored gold and some pig-shaped butter cookies as a testament to her power (and isn’t power better than fleeting and subjective standards of beauty anyways?!).

Quotes that inspired the recipe:

“The air felt limned in gold around me. ‘Come,’ I said. I strode down the hall and out to the sty. Its gate swung wide at my touch. The pig squealed, but when they saw him behind me their terror eased. I brushed each snout with oil and spoke a charm.”

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures–flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I ever believed it, I no longer did.”

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting (makes 12 cupcakes)
For this cupcake, I used my classic Vanilla Cupcake recipe and just added lemon zest/juice to it. Feel free to omit the lemon for vanilla only! This cupcake is a great base for a lot of different flavor experimentation.

Cupcake Ingredients:

  • 1 stick of unsalted butter (softened)
  • ⅔ cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoon (packed) of lemon zest (zest 2 lemons fresh!)
  • 3 eggs (at room temperature)
  • 1  teaspoon of vanilla extract (when I do just vanilla I use 1 and ½)
  • 1 ½ cups of All-Purpose Flour
  • 1 ½ teaspoon of baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt
  • ¼ milk
  • Fresh juice of the two lemons you zested!

How-To:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and fill your cupcake pan with liners
  2. Cream together your softened butter, sugar, and zest. When the lemon zest and sugar combine it creates an awesome lemony flavor throughout the whole cupcake. Mix on medium until they are nice and fluffy. 
  3. Add your eggs, one at a time, using a rubber spatula to wipe down the sides each time. 
  4. In a separate bowl, mix together lemon juice, vanilla, and milk. Set aside for a sec.
  5. In another bowl, mix together all dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) and whisk to combine. 
  6. Alternate between adding your wet and dry ingredients into your sugary lemony butter mix. Mix until combined – don’t over mix! I like to do the last couple of mixes with my wooden spoon or spatula. 
  7. Distribute the batter evenly throughout the 12 liners – it should end up at all being 3/4ish full. Put in the oven for 17-20 minutes. 18 minutes is usually my go-to time for most cupcakes. The trick to knowing a cupcake is done: touch the middle of the cupcake near the end of bake time and if it bounces back, it’s done! 
  8. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely!
  9. Optional filling for these cupcakes: they’d be so yum with a lemon curd filling.

Frosting Ingredients:

  • 2 sticks of unsalted butter (softened)
  • 4 cups of powdered sugar
  • 2 teaspoons of lemon zest (from about half a lemon)
  • 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
  • 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream (whole milk would also be ok, heavy cream tastes best)
  • Pinch of salt

How-To:

  1. Put your softened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium and beat until it is consistently creamy. This takes around 2-3 minutes. 
  2. Add the powdered’ sugar 1 cup at a time (trust me – you’ll have a mega mess on your hands if you try and put it all in at once). Mix until combined. 
  3. Add in the lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and lemon zest. Beat for about 2 minutes on medium speed. 
  4. Add 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream until you get a consistency you’re happy with. Beat again for about 2 minutes. 
  5. Transfer to a piping bag and frost your cooled down cupcakes! This can also be made ahead and stored until about 1 week in the fridge. It is better to frost your cupcakes close before serving them! If you are making them ahead of time, bring them to room temperature and then beat them in your stand mixer for a minute or two until its creamy/a good consistency again! If necessary add another tablespoon of heavy cream.
  6. Make them gold by mixing a tablespoon of clear vanilla extract and some edible gold dust. Then you sort of paint it on. So fun and so shiny! You can also buy gold spray for the same effect but it’s less tasty.

*Note on the pig cookies. I hated making them. I made a mistake, knew the mistake I made, but didn’t have the ingredients to start over. When I finished them I handed them to my husband and said, “Here! Take them! Take them out of my sight!” Don’t be like me – read the instructions carefully! 😀

Pig German Butter Cookies
Recipe from craftpassion.com/piggy-german-butter-cookie/

Special Equipment: A scale or use an online converter! However, my scale is one of my favorite baking tools!

Ingredients: (makes about 48 pigs depending on how large you make them)

  • 125 grams of Unsalted Butter (NOTE: This should be VERY softened – not just room temperature — like almost melted but still holding it’s shape)
  • 50 grams of Powdered Sugar
  • 95 grams of Potato Flour
  • 120 grams of All-Purpose Flour (sieved)
  • 10 grams of Full Cream Milk Powder
  • Pinch of salt
  • Pink Food coloring
  • Black Sesame Seeds (I used melted chocolate and a toothpick because I couldn’t find black sesame seeds)

How-To:

  1. Can you tell from my ingredient list where my mistake was? Yep. It was the butter. Make sure it is softened as your first step or else your batter will be very sandy and will crumble in your hands. I nearly had a meltdown, but butter is always a crucial ingredient in baking and can not often be fixed after other ingredients are mixed with it. Consider this your warning! 
  2. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. 
  3. Cream your SOFTENED (ok, I think you get the point now) butter and powdered sugar for about 1-2 minutes in your mixer until fluffy. 
  4. Fold in (with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula) your AP flour, potato flour, milk powder, and salt. Mix until it comes together into a soft dough. 
  5. Remove 2 tablespoons of dough and mix with pink food coloring. You can wear decorator’s gloves for this step or put the dough in some cling wrap and mix it through that – or you can just do it with your hands and live with the stains like I did. Up to you! 
  6. To make the face of the pic, roll a small ball of about 8 grams out of the plain colored dough. Then roll three small balls out of the pink dough and pinch 2 of them into a triangle shape for the ears and 1 into an oval shape for the nose. Arrange the ears on top of your plain dough ball, pressing lightly so they’ll stick. Use a toothpick to pierce the nose hols in the oval snout. 
  7. If you have black sesame seeds, press them lightly in now. If not, bake them without eyes and wait until they are cooled to dot them with melted chocolate eyes. 
  8. Bake them in the oven for about 20 minutes. 
  9. Cool for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. 

Ask Again, Yes & A Beer Bundt

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane and Guinness Chocolate Bundt Cake with O’Doul’s Frosting

My friend, Math, who is a book cover designer, brought a stack of books as his contribution to a Friendsgiving potluck. I loved it. It was the best potluck contribution ever. Who needs another tray of mashed potatoes when you could have BOOKS! (Actually… I’ll take both, please!) From his stack, I picked up Ask Again, Yes, a book that I had recently placed on my “to read” list. I was excited to read another novel by Keane after reading Fever, a fictionalized story about Typhoid Mary by her last year for a book club. Ask Again, Yes’s story follows two families who become neighbors in a typical suburban town outside of New York City. Both sets of families, the Stanhopes and the Gleesons, have their unique issues behind closed doors. It is when these issues begin to spill outside of the house that the drama of the book really picks up. 

This book gives an intimate look at how mental health issues can affect a family. Keane is subtle in the way she exposes these throughout the book in a similar way to how mental health struggles can be subtle to outsiders. It is seen in one glance from a character or one comment until it eventually builds to a climax. If you don’t notice the small build-up of these struggles it can seem that they came out of nowhere – only the one struggling knows just how difficult it was to keep the chaos at bay previous to an outburst. Overall, this story shows us the power of forgiveness and ultimately how important family and love are. It was both a love story and a story about parenthood. As a result of the novel covering how these relationships can progress with such accurate pacing, the whole book felt a little slow. It wasn’t until the last 50 or so pages that I felt like I couldn’t put the book down. 

Final Recommendation:

Skip it! /  ((Put it on your list!)) / Go read it now!

Food isn’t mentioned a lot in this novel, but when it is, it is cited as something to bring comfort – like Kate Gleeson imagining her mom’s warm bowl of oatmeal waiting for her at home or Peter Stanhope thinking of his mom giving him butterscotch candies to make him feel better. Food has a nostalgic power to send us right back to a place of safety. It is the alcoholic beverages that wreak havoc and result in pain for our characters. One of the major plot arcs in the book follows the subtle way alcoholism can consume someone and how something can start as a crutch or an escape and quickly dissolve into a dependency. Peter’s uncle, George warned him as he was heading off to college about the “gene” that he was afraid Peter could have based on his family. The “gene” made it difficult to quit after a drink or so and the “gene” ruined relationship after relationship because of this. There is also a real glimpse of how we as a society have trouble identifying when someone has trouble with alcohol because it is so normalized. It’s cool to have a scotch or two after work to wind down, to feel fancy at dinner with a glass of red wine, or to drink a few beers at a neighborhood barbecue. Often, we depend on arbitrary rules around it like what time of the day we deem acceptable to drink or how sloppy we allow someone to be. In the book, even when presented with a clear issue people made excuses like what if you cut out all clear liquors because those are the worst, and what if you just limit yourself to drinking at parties and not alone? Then, on top of all of this is the shame that accompanies it all for the individual experiencing it and for their family – and how to fight the instinct to keep it all hidden. 

Out of this came this recipe: a Guinness cake, referencing the Irish roots throughout this book (and the assumption that beer/darker beverages we somehow ok/better) all topped off with a non-alcoholic cream cheese O’Doul’s beer frosting. I also think of bundt cakes when I think of suburbia, and could imagine Lena, Kate’s mom, excitedly bringing over this cake to Anne, Peter’s mom, only to be shocked when it was coldly received. 

Two quotes inspired this cake:

“He looked at the row of tap handles and picked one, though he didn’t know one from another. The bartender didn’t ask for ID, so when he finished that beer he ordered another. Then one more after that. Three pints of some kind of dark beer, heavy for a summer day, but once he made a choice he thought he’d better stick with it. […] He felt warm, easy in his body, realized he might be a tiny bit drunk. He didn’t know it would feel so cozy.”

Keane, page 186

“Peter drank O’Doul’s when George was over, one after another, like the next one might quench his thirst. ‘Have a real one,’ George said once, last summer. They were out on the patio, the kids trying to catch fireflies. ‘Nah, this is fine,’ Peter said. ‘But you did already, right? Before we came? And you’ll have more once we leave?’”

Keane, page 280

Guinness Chocolate Bundt Cake
Adapted from thehungryhousewife.com

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of Guinness Stout
  • 1 cup of unsalted butter (2 sticks)
  • ¾ cup of unsweetened Cocoa Powder (I like Dutch-processed for the best flavor)
  • 2 cups of All-Purpose Flour, sifted
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons of Baking Soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¾ cup of Sour Cream
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
  • ½ cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • To grease pan: one tablespoon of unsalted butter and a little less than ¼ cup of flour

How-To:

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 (fun tidbit: I always forget to do this no matter how long I’ve been baking, so I always end up standing in my kitchen for ten minutes or more with my batter done waiting for my oven to preheat. Don’t be like me and preheat!)
  2. Grease and flour your bundt pan. This step is CRUCIAL for all cakes but is especially important with bundt pans that have lots of crevices. I take a tablespoon of unsalted butter. Warm it for 10-15 seconds in the microwave if it is just out of the fridge. I then rub it all over the pan. When I am sure I’ve covered it in butter, I sprinkle my flour with a spoon all over the pan and then tap and rotate it over the sink (to avoid a mess). You should see the flour stick to the butter and cover everything. If there is a shiny spot you either missed it with butter or with the flour so patch it up! After you’re sure you got everywhere, turn the pan upside down over the sink and tap it so excess flour falls and doesn’t turn your chocolate cake white!
  3. Take your two sticks of butter and your 1 cup of Guinness and bring it to a boil over medium heat. After it boils, turn off the heat and immediately whip in the cocoa powder. It should look like a thin chocolate sauce.
  4. Add the remaining dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, salt) to a bowl and whisk together. 
  5. In a separate bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer) beat the eggs, vanilla, and sour cream together. 
  6. Slowly add the Guinness mixture to the egg mixture and beat until combined, about 30 seconds to 1 minute on medium speed (but make sure your Guinness mixture has cooled a bit. It is ok if it is warm!)
  7. Add the flour mixture a little at a time, using the stand mixer on low for about 10 seconds after each addition. It is important not to over mix once you incorporate the flour, so mix it until just combined and then use a rubber spatula to mix it around and ensure that all the ingredients combine. 
  8. Fold in the chocolate chips. 
  9. Pour into your bundt pan and cook for 50-55 minutes. To check if it is done I touch the top and see if it bounces back (which means it’s ready! If it stays, give it some more time) You can also use a long toothpick or a cake tester to see if it comes out dry. 
  10. Cool your bundt on top of a wire cooling rack for 10 minutes. If you try and flip the pan too early, your bundt might crack or stick to the pan.

O’Doul’s Beer Cream Cheese Icing
I took my tried-and-true cream cheese frosting and added some beer to it.

  • 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter, softened
  • 4 ounces of cream cheese, softened
  • 1 ½ – 2 cups of powdered sugar (depending on how sweet you like it)
  • Splash of vanilla extract
  • 3-4 tablespoons of O’Doul’s (or any beer)
  1. Take out your butter when you start making your cake or about an hour before you start this recipe. If not, you’ll want to carefully soften your butter in the microwave at 10-15 intervals. 
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter and the cream cheese.
  3. Add the sugar a half cup at a time, allowing it to incorporate for 15 seconds after each addition. 
  4. Add the splash of vanilla, for some flavor. 
  5. Add the O’Doul’s, one tablespoon at a time. Taste test as you go until you get the flavor/consistency you want. I used 4 tablespoons and it had a loose consistency and a very slight beer taste.