Cranberry Sauce for Fakers

It's Thanksgiving Eve! And I'm so thankful for my darling friends who read this oft-neglected blog. I thought I would post a little something I just made -- cranberry sauce. I should have typed "made" because I cheated and used a can (gasp!) of cranberry sauce. I do love figuring out how to doctor up decent food into good tasting stuff. No, not gourmet, but if you are honestly making everything for a full thanksgiving dinner from scratch without any help, then you're reading this blog because you're amazing and you just want to make me feel good about myself. Bless you.

I am no cranberry connoisseur -- my family always had this cranberry jello salad that secretly no one actually likes. Which means that this little recipe tastes pretty darn good to me. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Saladita!

Imagine this: a vegetarian who didn't really like to eat veggies. See also: Me, approximately a year ago. I was what I like to call a "vegaquarian" (a vegetarian who eats fish, er pescatarian). That lasted four years until I drove past an In and Out Burger. But that's another story. The real story here, folks, is that I found a veggie dish that I actually crave. Here it is:

Shake it up.

Hi friends -- I've been taking a break here because, let's face it, my behind needs to take a break from all the cupcakes and cookies and ice cream. Time to start posting some healthier options that I've found that are still pretty yummy.

Exhibit A: The breakfast fruit shake of glory. This fruit shake is delicious and (I'm told that) because it has protein powder, it doesn't shake up your blood sugar level as much as other sweet smoothies do.

Ahoy!

In honor of Halloween, of no longer being sick (after ten days in bed), and of Lito going back to work (despite the fact that he still has a very mean esophagus that hurts him), I give you: Pirate Cupcakes.

Pre-Halloweening Mini Cheesecakes

Is it just me, or did all things Halloween seem to begin on October 1st? Target and Old Navy are full of fun stuff, and I have to admit that for the first time in a while, I'm actually pretty excited about All Hallows Eve. So naturally I started by trying a new recipe. Cookies and cream cheesecakes made Halloween style with special edition black and orange Oreos.

I used a whole Oreo as the base for the mini cheesecakes. The Oreos have cats, ghosts and jack-o-lanterns on them. Check out the awesome orange layer under the cake. (I wanted to type "bootiful" just now. I'm really glad I didn't.)

Oh Martha.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes. Sounds good, right?

So yesterday my husband, Lito, was like, Heeyyy.... you haven't made cupcakes for a while...and the guys at work have heard a lot about how awesome they are.... The gauntlet was thrown. Cupcakes had to be made. So I sent a list of possible cupcake flavors I'd like to try, including PBChocolate, and that, my friends is what I made.

I returned to my perfect-bound Martha Stewart cookbook and flipped through to the loveliest picture of warm, perfect cupcakes. And I made the recipe. Here they are with frosting:

Bah.

So, here I am, expecting to be able to post on the magnificent maiden voyage of the kitchenaid mixer, and it was lovely, truly, so I should post on that, but instead, I'm going to tell you about some really lovely pretty cupcakes that didn't taste that great. That's right. They were okay. And maybe it should be preceded by the following caveat: I have no baking/culinary training whatsoever, other than what I've picked up along my quest to eat delicious desserts.

See? Aren't they pretty? The frosting tasted (tastes) fantastic BTW, but I knew it would -- butter cream frosting always tastes good.

So I tried Martha Stewart's buttermilk cupcake recipe. Yep, I'm calling out the queen of all things domestic and lovely. But here's the deal: other people have tried this recipe and liked it, so, ya know, maybe don't write her off entirely. Maybe just think before you make these particular cupcakes.
It looks like a Ferris Wheel of delicious cake.

So here's the scoop: the recipe, first of all, said that it yielded 36 cupcakes. When I made it, I came out with over 48, for a family of two, that is way too effing many cupcakes. Even for me.

Second of all, the cake wasn't dry. But it wasn't moist either. Someone explain to me how a cake that calls for EIGHT eggs (five whole and three additional yolks) can not taste like a dreamy dream loaf? Perhaps the eggs were the problem. The cake was dense but kind of stuck to the roof of my mouth. Irritating.

But absolutely lovely. No?