Rainbow Cupcakes

I teach in the Rainbow Room at school, so when I saw these rainbow cupcakes in the latest issue of Family Fun (yes, I am a subscriber) I knew I had to make them. They came out beautifully but took a lot of effort. First, make cupcake batter and seperate into six bowls.

Color each bowl with food coloring:

Purple: 9 drops red, 6 blue

Blue: 12 drops blue

Green: 12 drops green

Yellow: 12 drops yellow

Orange: 12 drops yellow, 4 red

Red: 18 drops red

Starting with purple, spread a small amount of batter in each cupcake liner. Spread each color so that it covers the color underneath it.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove cupcake liners.

Beauuutiful!

Top with a buttercream "cloud"

 Enjoy!

The Friendly Toast

Today, I went to the Friendly Toast in Cambridge with Fina and Ellen. A few of my kids told me about it awhile ago and I've been wanting to check it out ever since! I looked up the menu online and knew I had to go ASAP.

 We headed over around noon and had to wait for about 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad because there was lots of stuff to look at:

Life-sized Barbie!

Cool retro lights

Funny signs:

"Everyone loves bunny-enriched bread"

Oh?

The place had a very 50s-60s feel. It reminded me of my Buscia's house - I definitely want to take my parents there! At first I had planned to stick to pancakes or french toast but then we discovered the milkshake menu:

Whaaat??

I didn't think about it - I just tried it.

Fina got "The Pinky": black and white milkshake with raspberries.

I LOVED mine: a little strange but verrrry interesting and delish.

Finally, we got our food.

Almond Joy Pancakes

The Guy Scramble: Eggs with avacado, cheese, black beans and salsa, with cayenne cheese bread

 

Special of the day: sweet potato fries, chorizo, goat cheese, scallions, banana peppers

Yum, yum, YUM!

Cooking recipes for kids!

We usually cook with our class once a week, and its always a treat to attempt to find a recipe that is easy, fun, and yummy. I have two cute recipes I've recently tried out with my kiddies...Stained Glass Window Cookies and Olympic Torch Cupcakes.

Today, we made the Stained Glass Cookies - so easy!

Start with some premade sugar cookie dough

Flatten slightly

Cut out center

 Fill with crushed Life Savers and bake for 6-8 minutes at 375 degrees

Cool for 10 minutes

Enjoy!

And, to show our Olympic spirit, last week we made Torch Cupcakes. Cupcake mix poured into ice cream cones...

Topped with orange "fire" icing!

U-S-A! U-S-A!

SPINNING

I write a LOT of posts about food and eating. Okay - almost all. So, I figured I should probably write at least one post about being healthy. Tonight I went to my very first spinning class and I loved it.

 (photo credit)

It was such a good workout - not too short, not too long, great music, instructors who are excited and keep you going. I had always been really intimidated by spinning classes because they look so hard but you can pretty much go at your own pace/resistance. Highly recommended! And, my favorite workout song of all time: How Far We've Come by Matchbox 20. It always pumps me up for 4 more minutes when I think I just can't do any more!

Flowers!!

We've recently had a whole bunch of flowers around the house, so of course I've been busy taking pictures and playing with them using different photo editors. Here are some of the ones I took...

 

Pink and white roses

 Pink roses, if you look closely they should look like a painting

Tulips!

More roses

And finally, amaryllis

EVERYone should get one of these. You literally plant the bulb in a little pot, put it in a sunny place, keep the soil moist, and watch it grow 1/2 inch everyday. Beautiful!!

99 cent pizza dough, 2 yummy recipes

I recently received the latest issue of Everyday Food in the mail and was excited to see the section titled "Pizza Dough Desserts"...yum! I stopped by good old Trader Joe's to pick up 99¢ pre-made pizza dough - what a steal! This weekend I tried out two recipes: Rosemary Focaccia and Brown Sugar and Pecan Sticky Buns.

The focaccia was sooo easy - just knead in some fresh, chopped rosemary (I used about a tablespoon for a pound of dough), let rise for a couple hours, spread on a cookie sheet, brush with butter&olive oil, bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

The rosemary added the perfect amount of flavor, and the butter made it perfectly golden and crisp!

You really can't beat three ingredients!

And then, I made: the. yummiest. ooey-gooeyest. sticky buns. ever. Extreeeeeme close up:

I really don't have any words. My house smells like Cinnabon. Here's the recipe (adapted from Everyday Food, Issue 70):

Ingredients

flour, for work surface

2 pounds pizza dough

1 cup plus 6 tablespoons unsalted butter @ room temp

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

maple syrup, for drizzling

Directions

1. On a floured work surface, roll dough to a 10x18 inch rectangle. Dot upper two-thirds of dough with one cup butter, then fold remaining third up. Fold top down, like you fold a letter. Roll again into a 10x18 inch rectangle. Refrigerate for an hour.

2. Mix brown sugar, pecans, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl. Dot dough with remaining butter, then sprinkle the brown sugar mixture on top. Roll the dough up, long ways, then cut in to twelve buns.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a muffin pan with cooking spray and place each piece of dough in the pan. Drizzle with a small amount of maple syrup. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from pan and serve warm.

 

 A nice warm treat for a cold, yucky week ahead of us!

Let's go RED!

Friday night I went to the Cornell/Harvard hockey game with a whole bunch of Cornellians. I also popped in to the Cornell/Harvard basketball game to see the cheerleaders! It was so fun to catch up with so many people I haven't seen in months (some since graduation!) and was even better because we won BOTH games!!

Afterward we went to John Harvard's in Harvard Square and celebrated the wins by taking over the bar with a sea of red and white. There were definitely bar-wide chants of "Let's go red!" Such a fun Cornell night!

 

 

The epic journey that is: Making Macarons

First things first...macarons are different from macarOOns. They both use egg whites as a main ingredient, but macaroons have coconut while macarons do not. And, according to NPR, macarons are the new cupcake. For us bakers (yes, I've now classified myself as a "baker") thats like learning that pink is the new black. Very exciting.

 I was a little intimidated when I checked out the recipe; there were directions about "aging" your egg whites and folding in almond powder to form "a soft magma"....what?? I've learned that this is a recipe that will definitely take many tries to perfect, but the macarons are so cute that I will keep trying till I get it right!!

Raspberry Chocolate Macarons (adapted from Epicurious)

Ingredients

3/4 cup finely ground almonds

1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

3 large egg whites

3/4 tsp salt

3 T sugar

red food coloring

Directions

Beat egg whites and salt on medium speed for about a minute. Add sugar to egg whites a tablespoon at a time and beat until stiff peaks are formed. Add food coloring and mix on low until color is distributed. Mix the almonds and confectioners sugar in a separate bowl, then fold in to egg white mixture with a spatula. Fold until the mixture is slightly runny; test a bit on a plate: if it spreads into a small pool - its perfect! If it stays in a mound, fold a few more times. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray and pipe batter into 1-inch rounds. Bake for 10 minutes at 300 degrees. Let cool completely, and remove from baking sheet. 

 I sandwiched the macarons with raspberry chocolate ganache:

1/4 cup heavy cream

4 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 T raspberry preserves

Also, if you look closely, the two batches of macarons are two different colors. This is because the recipe told me to bake them for 20 minutes, but they really only needed TEN! Lesson learned.

 Happy baking!

Gaslight Brasserie

 A few months ago, Ellen and Dan introduced me and Mike to our new fave brunch spot, Gaslight in the South End. It's a french restaurant that makes me feel like I'm in Paris and reminds me a little of our fave Ithaca eatery, Carriage House. 

 I was sold the second I saw the bread basket (raspberry croissant, pain au chocolate, blueberry muffin, butter croissant), but as it turns out the rest of the brunch foods are amazing as well! The first time we went I tried out the vanilla french toast, which was obviously amazing and lasted me two meals. This time I got the croque monsieur...

you can get a fried egg on top and it's called "croque madame"...so cute!

...and Mike got the onion soup

This meal kept me full ALL DAY.

I plan to try the carmelized banana crepes next. You must go, go, GO!