.:: Fire The Housewife ::.

So, I’m trying to think up some really fabulous cupcakes for Amelia’s birthday but I definitely want to have time for some trial batches.  I’ve tossed around the idea of an Oreo cupcake, VERY Chocolate Cupcakes (Chocolate cake with chocolate chips with chocolate frosting with chocolate jimmies), Hot Fudge Sundae (vanilla cake, chocolate frosting, maybe some sort of marshmallow frosting in there too…), Plain ole chocolate with plain ole buttercream frosting,

She requested chocolate, but I’ve also thought about Lemon, Raspberry, Cheesecake, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Espresso, Mint Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter, on and on and on.

But what I really want is your suggestions, your votes, HELP ME.  Also, please consult my niece if you HAPPEN to be her mother, maybe she REALLY has a preference.

We’ve been here for a week. Over a week.  We have spent a looong time looking at the Barney wall.  We finally got around to getting some paint on that thing and suddenly when going from dark, Barney purple to Marshmallow on one wall and Meadow Twilight on the other wall we gained what appears to be 400 extra square feet and also our fireplace mantle looks less weird and out of place.  Funny how that works…

We have discovered something quite interesting about our new place, everyone is REALLY friendly.  Neighbor Gigi planted a beautiful Japanese maple in front of our townhouse which just happens to be a favorite tree around these parts.  The real issue is here we have some new friends that are really kind of getting too close.  They’re always in our backyard, asking for food, honestly, we have panhandlers.  Nature’s panhandlers…

He is pretty, I love him, even if he is always taking our croutons and peanuts.  The boyfriend is mostly thrilled, so thrilled he bought a brand new bag of peanuts at Cost Cutter today (that is REALLY the name of that store, I’m not making it up.) He’s pretty brave and unafraid too…

Today The Boyfriend watched this squirrle take the crouton we gave him, put it in his mouth, dig a hole, deposit, bury, and then place a leaf on top of it as camouflage.  He’s saving up for winter because Seattle is officially showing signs of fall which meant it was time for us to start eating soup non-stop.  Today I tried to get The Boyfriend to branch out a little with Root Vegetable Soup and Cornbread.

I’m getting nervous that soon my favorite of vegetable stands will be closing, so today we really stocked up for a great soup, I loved it, I thought if anything it really could have either 1. used less liquid and pureed it, or 2. added roast beef.  Either would have been absolutely delicious, not that it wasn’t absolutely delicious on it’s own and wonderfully easy to make as well.  I used:

1 rutabaga

1 turnip

2 russet potatoes

2 sweet potatoes

1 daikon

3 yukon gold potatoes

vegetable stock

onions

leeks

garlic

olive oil

rosemary, thyme, 3 bay leaves, salt, pepper

Dice onions, garlic and leeks and put in soup pan with olive oil until tender, add about 16 ounces of vegetable stock, dice all other root veggies, toss them in pot, add water until all our covered, bring to boil, then let simmer until all vegetables are soft.  This can take a while especially on the rutabaga.  I left mine on the stove simmering for around 2 hours.  Definitely would make a good crock-pot meal, but when you don’t have a crockpot, you use a soup pan and watch it.  You can also watch your boyfriend paint while you watch it too if you want, but be forewarned, later when you’re trying to get a candy corn out of the dish he’s going to take them and then feed you like he does the squirrels.  It happens.

Get ready to die. Die a painful, delicious death.  That is if you like cheesecake or raspberries. Mmmmmm!

So, I haven’t had a lot of baking experiences in the new kitchen yet, mostly it took me a long time to figure out where I wanted my sprinkles and sugars and other pretty things.  All the decisions were made and I had the afternoon off and I thought these sounded delicious.  Mostly because I love cheesecake and THIS POST at Tartelette made me want Raspberries.  Have I ever told you how much I love that blog? No? Well.  It’s a lot.  Trust me.

Anyway, onto what you really care about, the painfully delicious recipe.

The Cake:

3 sticks of butter
3 tsp. vanilla
1 (8 oz.) brick cream cheese
3 c. cake flour (as I’ve said before, I don’t keep it on hand, refer to THIS POST for details)
6 eggs (yes, 6, don’t tell anyone.)
3 c. sugar

Mix butter and cream cheese together until completely mixed.  Butter should be at room temperature I used pretty cold cream cheese, but you do whatever you want.  Alternate adding the eggs and sugar mixing well between additions.  Add SIFTED flour by cups and finish it up with the vanilla, I almost forgot the vanilla, don’t be like me.  Remember your vanilla.  It remembers you.  This batter is pretty thick and really doesn’t raise that much in the oven so you should fill up those muffin cups.  Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean, they turn VERY brown, so, get ready for them to start looking over done before they are actually done.

Let them cool, and while they do mix up the buttercream.  I am loving this buttercream recipe more than all others right now.  I adapted it from the Wilton buttercream recipe, so you can pretty much just sub the raspberry for vanilla or whatever you want.

1/2 cup shortening

1 stick of butter

2 tsp. raspberry extract

4 cups sifted powdered sugar

Cream together the shortening and butter, add powdered sugar and raspberry extract, beat until well mixed.  At this point just dip your hand into the bowl and eat all of the frosting right away, you’ll thank me later. With whatever you can pry out of your hands go ahead and frost those cupcakes.

I wanted to 1. use up some of the fondant I have left from the football cookies, 2. make the tops look a little more cheese-cakey, so I mixed a couple jabs of red gel food coloring into the fondant I had left over and rolled it out so it had a little bit of marble look to it.  I also, as usual, took the easy way out and piped the frosting on the others because we all know I hate spreading frosting on cupcakes and face it, it just looks prettier and you end up looking like a real badass piping stuff.

MMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMM

Get Jealous, Folks, then go ahead and go back a couple posts and buy me housewarming gifts and then click on my advertisements so I can quit my job and bake all day.  OKAY!? OKAY!

I don’t even want to talk about the filth I have had to clean up in the past few days.  Though, par normale, I have recieved most of my deposit back on the old apartment (The Boyfriend caved and let them illegally charge us for carpet cleaning.) We’ve spent the rest of our time trying to clean up in the new place and unpack.  The good news is, my kitchen is near clean and will be used for cooking very soon.

Get Ready!