Graduation Cupcakes

Yay! I have my laptop back. Hence, my ability to share pictures from the weekend. It's only fitting that I share pictures from my cousin Andrew's graduation party today, as I have the afternoon off to go attend another cousin's high school graduation ceremony. Graduation season is definitely in full swing!

First off, the food. I feel like I haven't done much creative baking in a while. Part of it's been the heat and part of it's just the lack of overall time and energy due to the million other things I'm trying to get done these days. However, when I saw a picture of graduation themed cupcakes, I felt inspired by their simplicty and overall cuteness to make them for the party.

I went with my go-to chocolate cake recipe for the cupcakes. I could gush about this recipe for days, not only does it exclude eggs as a leavener (making them easy to make even if you are out of eggs or worried about not having enough), but it results in the most perfect cupcakes. Nice, rounded domes + moist cake = perfection.

Perfect chocolate cupcake recipe (from Hershey's Kitchen):

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups water
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups water

Directions
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups.

2. Stir together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add water, oil, vinegar and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full with batter.
3. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until wooken pick inserted in cake portion comes out clean. Remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely. Makes two dozen cupcakes.

Now comes the fun part, the stages of frosting the cupcakes. I used another recipe from the Hershey's website since I love the consistency and the color contrast of the frosting against the cupcakes.

One-bowl Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
2-2/3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat butter in medium bowl. Add powdered sugar and cocoa alternately with milk, beating to spreading consistency (additional milk may be needed). Stir in vanilla. About 2 cups frosting.

I frosted these using my cloth pastry bag and an icing tip, using a simple spiral design that allowed me to move quickly from cupcake to cupcake. I had to pause after frosting the first cupcake to admire how nice it looked!
 

As you can see, to make graduation caps, I end up decorating each one with a mini Reese's peanut butter cup (large end down), topped with a Ghiradelli chocolate square (I went with the caramel squares) and adhered using a small dot of frosting. Another dot of frosting on top was used to hold a M&M in place and tassels and Andrew's initials were drawn on with a Betty Crocker gel frosting tube.

I think these look a little messier than I was looking for and it would've been better to have created a red frosting to use, instead of using the store-bought gel frosting. However, I've learned that I can't do everything and sometimes, it's worth a shortcut to save some time and frustration! Plus, I like the contrast of the vivid red with the chocolate, although as my Andrew pointed out, tassels are supposed to hang off the sides rather than lay on top. I saw some creative decorating ideas that used thin strings of red licorice to achieve that effect, but I definitely didn't have the time or patience to add that effect this past weekend. :)

What warmed my heart at the end of the day? Seeing the graduate of honor chowing down on a cupcake. I knew the cupcakes were right for him simply because they were loaded with tons of candy. Ever since he was little, Andrew has had the habit (aggravating for me at times) of picking candy off the top of my baked goods without eating the rest of the item (such as Hershey's kisses off of peanut butter cookies). So this time around, I figured he could pick the candy graduation caps and eat them, and this one time, I wouldn't scold him for it!

Time To Relax...

Today was another hectic day at work, and I ended up staying late to make sure I could finish up some work in preparation for being out of the office tomorrow for a training class and out Thursday for my cousin Jim's graduation. I was supposed to bring my computer home tonight (as I normally do) to finish up some work and realized I forgot it once I got home. No way was I going to do over an hour round trip to pick up the damn thing just to come home and work.
So I took it for a sign and relaxed tonight, and let Andrew serve me our first meal cooked on the new grill - burgers!

Unfortunately, all my pictures from the weekend are on the other laptop so the graduation party recap will have to wait until I'm reuninted with my laptop on Wednesday.

Congratulations Andrew!

Andrew, my cousin, that is.  My youngest cousin has officially graduated high school as of this weekend. And my first selfish thought is "Geez, I'm old if Andrew's gradutating high school." But I'm incredibly proud and excited at what the future holds for him as he heads to college this fall. More to come on his graduation party and what I baked (natch) for it.

A Little Bit of Louisiana In Boston

I think this is the last catch-up post before I actually make it into this weekend's events, but does it help that it feels like just yesterday that we were able to hang out with a friend who was visiting from the weekend, all the way from Lousiana?

Mike is one half of a fabulous duo (Jeanne being his other half). Andrew had gotten to known Jeanne through a former job, and happily, that gave us all the chance to become friends while they were still living in Boston. They ended up moving back home to Louisiana soon after the birth of their daughter Marie Elizabeth (here, here and here) and it feels like ages since we've all had a chance to hang out.

As Mike is in the process of writing a thesis at Harvard, he makes periodic visits to Boston and we had the opportunity to meet up with Mike last Saturday to show of our new house (which we still love) and grab some dinner in the city.

Fittingly enough, although I didn't realize it at the time, we ended up taking him to Parish Cafe (Louisiana being one of the states that actually has parishes). Even more interesting (a coincidence, I swear!) was the fact that Parish Cafe had purple and yellow flowers up front, so we made Mike, the LSU grad, pose in front of them:

Many hours and drinks later, we were still going strong - we had switched venues to join up with another group of friends for a 30th birthday celebration, and Andrew and Mike seemed pleased at the fact that they could still order Sam Adams even though the bar seemed like a fancy-schmancy place (my own words):

Cheers to the simple enjoyment of cold beers on a muggy day, good conversation and hanging out with a friend. The only thing that could've made the night better would have been Jeanne's presence but I'm happy to say that they will both be making it up to Boston in October for our wedding. 

Venturing Into The South End

It had been way too long since Jen and I had enjoyed one of our monthly dinners together. And we had something to celebrate - a new job in Charlestown!

On Jen's recommendation, and taking advantage of the fact that the South End is now pretty close to home for me, we decided to head to Coda Bar and Kitchen on Columbus Ave last Friday.

The first thing we did was toast her new job with the most delicious cocktail (again, recommended by Jen). It's called the Grapefruit Summer Press (with Absolut Ruby Red Vodka, St. Germain Wild Elderflower, Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice, Fresh Lime) and it ranks in the top five drinks I've had in the past year. 

Cheers to Jen!

We were too busy talking for me to place close attention to the bread, but if I recall correctly, it was slices of a raising bread that came with a delicious hummus spread:

I was in the mood for something light and summery, so I went with the Spring Vegatable Risotto

 (with peas, fiddlehead ferns, grilled Vidalia onions, and Parmesano Reggiano). It was nicely flavored and hit the spot without making me feel I had eaten too much afterwards:

Jen chose the Steak Frites (chargrilled balsamic marinated hanger steak served with handcut shoestring fries). Can I tell you about the fries? They were perfection. Skinny, crispy, salty, delicious! I literally abandoned all pretense of being polite and consistently stole fries from Jen's plate throughout dinner. She was kind enough to allow it without commenting on it. :)

Desserts were a little underwhleming for me. I loved all the fresh chunks of strawberry and rhubarb, but I felt that the "crisp" part of the dish was a little to deconstructed and sparse for my liking. Pluses included the generous portion size and heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream - yummy!

Trying not to let my bias against most chocolate desserts influence my opinion, I thought Jen's dessert was a little better than my strawberry rhubarb crisp, but it wasn't anything special. I forgot what it was called but it was some sort of chocolate almond cake. It had a nice clean chocolate flavor that wasn't too rich but again, I didn't think was something you would remember weeks later and crave.

All in all, I found the food to be delicious and reasonably priced, and I liked the atmosphere at Coda. Heck, I'd come back just for a meal of french fries accompanied by an unlimited number of Grapefruit Summer Presses. And the brunch menu looks pretty good!

Signs That Summer Is Almost Here...

When I have one determined fiance spending hours on the deck putting together our new grill. This is about an hour into the assembly on Memorial Day:

That's his "I'm fed up with how long this is taking look". The problem was that we were offered a fully assembled grill in Sears but didn't have enough room in my car since it was already loaded with purchases from Lowes. So we relied upon Andrew's excellent assembly skills and he did not fail to deliver. And don't feel too bad for him, the weather was warm and gorgeous that day:

After a break for dinner and the light quickly fading, success! I can almost smell the burgers and the hotdogs now...except we still need to get our propane tank filled:

To reward my hardworking guy, I decided to use the fresh blueberries I had on hand (look at how big and juicy they are):

To make a blueberry cobbler for dessert!

I'm not going to bother posting the recipe since it ended up being a little too watery for my liking - however, it still tasted heavenly served with vanilla ice cream:

Aside from wedding-related tasks and errands this weekend, I'm determined to find a pick-your-own farmstand somewhere to load up on tons of fresh berries. Frozen, they'll last for baking projects in the winter when summer will just be a fond memory!

Four Months To Go!

This is what was delivered to my inbox today.

Or as the countdown ticker proclaims on our wedding website, 122 days.  Yikes. I think I'm officially allowed to freak out about getting everything done in time for the wedding at Day 100.

Green Acres Is The Place To Be

Andrew and I are becoming quite the domestic homemakers. Needless to say, we've been spending the past couple of weeks at Lowes (on top of the countless trips that Andrew had already been making). But this was the first time we headed into the Garden section. Here's a shot of one our shopping carts below. That's right ONE of our shopping carts. We ended up needing two to haul all the plants that we had picked out.

Arriving home, while Andrew was puttering in the yard, I had all our new plants lined up on the ledge ready to go:

The little section we had selected for the plants was occupied by a large bushy thing with purple flowers. It had a certain charm (despite all the bees crawling all over it) but we decided it had to go:

We believe that big plant was sage based on the shape and smell of the leaves (plus a marker we found buried in the dirt), so I picked a few leaves and froze them before we uprooted the bush.

In its place, lots of young seedlings waiting to grow us tons of yummy things to eat (that's how I like to picture it).  I got a little carried away in the aisles of Lowe's and ended up picking strawberry and blackberry plants, and what I believed to be a fig bush. When we got home and actually read up on figs, we realized it was actually a tree that can grow up to ten feet tall and wide. Whoops!

Andrew did a great job of uprooting the unruly sage plant and tilling the dirt with our handy dandy garden claw:

With a lot of digging and potting soil, I transferred all the plants to their new home. There isn't much open space in our backyard that isn't devoted to Andrew's grass growing project or paved, but I like the fact that I can see how far my plants have progressed during the day when I come home from work each day.  Joining the plants I mentioned above, I also added a few varieties of tomatoes, one red pepper plant, one yellow pepper plant and one cucumber plant. I also sprinkled some wildflower and carrot seeds that we had received free with Andrew's grapevine purchase in some open patches:

That's our new garden upfront, with Andrew's grapevines around the corner to the right, and our deck overlooking it all:

A week later, it's amazing to see the plants' progress already. They look healthier, taller and have multiple new leaves. As I keep telling everyone, I will be thrilled even if only one of these plants bears something edible this summer.

Five Guys Burgers And Fries

In the past year, I feel like I've noticed Five Guys Burgers and Fries popping up all over MA. After a long day of running errands last weekend and realizing that our favorite Thai restaurant was closed, Andrew and I decided to check out their Dedham location.

First thing I liked about the place that it had a straightforward menu that focused simply on types of burgers, hotdogs and fries, along with a wide variety of toppings.

Second thing that Andrew and I both liked were the free peanuts to snack on while you waited for your order to be cooked:

Andrew went with a regular sized bacon cheeseburger - while he's happy to have received the burger in the picture, his final verdict was that it was a bit too greasy:

As for me, I went with the little bacon cheeseburger. The patty was roughly the same size as a McDonald's patty, which I actually like since I don't like a huge amount of meat (yes, I know I'm weird like that). The patty seemed hand-shaped, and while I appreciate the effort that went into it, I didn't feel like the burger was anything special:

The fries were the biggest disappointment. They come in two flavors, so Andrew went with the regular and I went with the Cajun flavor.

For seasoned fries, I could barely taste the seasoning. Plus, they were a bit too thick and non-crunchy for my tastes. On the plus side, the regular size of fries came with enough to share with another person. Literally, Andrew and I didn't finish our orders of fries, which has never happened before. Also, I liked the fact that they had malt vinegar in bottles available to use at your table for a dipping sauce for the fries.

Overall, while I can appreciate what they were trying to do with the place (fast food joint that tries to be a cut above with fresh ground beef for their burgers and a board that lists the farm in the US that provides the potatoes for their fries), I just wasn't a big fan of what I ended up eating.

A Good Sign...

Rainbows have become our lucky omens of sorts. We saw one on the night we celebrated our engagement and we saw one tonight (one of the largest I've seen outside Hawaii) after we picked out the tuxes for all the men (groomsmen, ushers, dads and uncle/officiant) at Men's Wearhouse:

As we're about to hit the four-month mark, I'm hoping this means nice weather for our wedding day!  A girl can hope.

Did Someone Say Dessert?

Was the dessert table at the Memorial Day BBQ worth its own post? If you know me, definitely yes!!

There was a lot of yummy things to choose from, including a homemade strawberry pie covered with whipped cream on the left, magic bars on the lower right and two types of cupcakes:

One of the neighbors brought over "corn on the cob cupcakes", inspired by one of my favorite cupcake decorating books, Hello Cupcake! (Flashback: the boxer cupcakes were inspired by the book, and I copied the shark and the turkey cupcakes exactly):

My lovely cousins Andrew and Andrea (usher and bridesmaid respectively) showed no fear at diving into the treats:

My dessert contribution, based on a request from Tom who had seen this post, was Vanilla Oreo Cupcakes. Using a doctored cake mix, I was very pleased at the texture and the rounded domes of this batch:

With Andrew serving as my hand model, here's an inside look at the cupcakes so you can fully appreciate the oreo bottom, chunks of cookie scattered throughout the batter, and thick cream cheese frosting. Best enjoyed in a swimsuit next to the pool:

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

Ignore the fact that I'm writing this way after Memorial Day Weekend, and focus instead on the fact that I wish we were still enjoying the holiday!

Sunday morning was a busy morning for me. In addition to using my handy dandy pineapple slicer for sangria and making a dessert (more to come on that later),I made a Greek pasta salad that was loaded with yummy, colorful things:

Then it was time to head over to Andrew's parents' place in Plymouth. One of the first things I noticed was Charlotte's homemade sign warning visitors to keep A.J. in the house:

Then it was time to join the crowd poolside to bask in the lovely warm weather:

The water was a balmy 75 degrees (Tom claimed, the warmest ever for Memorial Day weekend) so Andrew, Phu and Amy ventured into the water to play with Andrew's cousins Madison and Meghan (not pictured):

There were even some fierce games of bocce played on the sidelines (which ended quickly once a set of balls rolled into a patch of plants that looked suspiciously like poison ivy):

Then it was chow time - Tom was busy grilling hotdogs, linguica, and chicken, and also made his famous beans as well as a new recipe for "sloppy linguica":

Paul, Jen and Pete arrived just in time to join us in eating the delicious food:

The rest of the time was spent lounging poolside, as demonstrated by Amy and her shadow, Meghan:

What BBQ would be complete without the neighbor's cat stuck waaaaay up high in a tree next to the pool?

Come to think of it, I hope that poor cat made it down. It was still stuck in the tree when we left around 8 p.m.

Easy Does It

It figures that it would take five months and Memorial Day weekend to finally test out a Christmas gift from Andrew - the Pineapple Easy Slicer by VacuVin, apparently a company in the Netherlands. Andrew purchased it in a much more convenient location - Williams-Sonoma. Here it is facing its opponent, a ripe pineapple.

I have to admit that I had my skepticism on whether it would work as well as promised. It came in one piece, was fairly lightweight and didn't seem like a worthy opponent for the tough and prickly pineapple.

All you have to do is slice the top off the pineapple and center the slicer over the core of the pineapple:

My puny little arms had no problem twisting the slicer through the pineapple in a clockwise motion. It literally took less than a minute to twist to the bottome of the pineapple:

One quick tug and the edible part of the pineapple slid right out:

Leaving the core and an intact pineapple shell that could be used as decorative container (if so inspired, mine went straight into the trash):

The twisting process did generate some juice, which went straight into a pitcher of sangria I was making, along with some chunks of pineapple.

The verdict? The Dutch are awesome and clever, and I will be eating fresh pineapple more often.