In the Kitchen: Weekly Recipe: Rum Cupcakes

It's Monday and that means... absolutely nothing. Really, where was I going with this? Oh yes!
CUPCAKES!


A friend of mine is getting married in Vegas this weekend. We had a fun little shower for her a couple weeks ago and I made playing card-themed cupcakes for everyone.
The baking of the cupcakes was incredibly easy. I just got a chocolate cake mix and made it the normal way except when it came to the water. Instead of all water, I made 1/2 of that with rum!
It is very important that you do not taste very much of the cake batter before it is cooked. I didn't even think about it and was not prepared for a little alcohol buzz at 10 in the morning while I was baking.



I choose Sailor Jerry's rum to use because of it's nice vanilla finish. I was sad that all that alcohol would be burned off in the cooking process, but it was the taste I was after, not booze.



Decorating was fun! I piped on the vanilla butter cream frosting then used Betty Crocker's easy squeeze icing which was actually not very easy squeeze. I won't use them again, it was incredibly difficult to push the icing out. I sprained my hand! For the black I used the easy squeeze icing for brownies. I had the same problems. Originally i was going to use the icing to fill in the playing card images but after all the trouble to make them, I went ahead and used red and black sprinkles.
The cupcakes were a big hit though. Very moist with the fun rum taste.
I look forward to cooking with more alcohol in the future! He-he!

In The Kitchen: Weekly Recipe: Chai Tea

Fall has arrived! This is my favorite season so allow me to wax poetic for a moment.
The temperature from the hot scorching summer begins to drop. Instead of being sweaty in shorts and tank tops, a shirt and jeans become the uniform of choice.
The colors! Oh the colors that begin to emerge. Nature brings us orange and red with a tint of brown and dark green. The world bursts out with a radiant display of visual tricks before the sleepy winter months take over. The world even smells better! Cinnamon and hay mixed with apple's and dirt.
I lucked out on the genetic lottery and my alergies have no problems keeping away in the fall. I could stuff my head into a hay bale and breath in that smell. I love Fall!!!
To celebrate, I think we need a drink, wouldn't you say?


What is that I spy? Ho-ho! A warm and seasonal Chai Tea. Perfect!

I used to work at Starbucks and I became addicted to their Chai Tea. Of course, if you ever had the powdered Chai Tea mix from Borders Cafe before they had Seattle's best take over their coffee shops, you know that THAT was the best Chai Tea mix on the planet. Chai should be yummy and sweet. Sure, this is not a true Chai Tea, but it's the Americanized version of it.
But I know the calorie content of a Starbucks Chai. I also know that those sugar free Chai's just aren't as good. What to do? (The various flavored Chai's will lead me down another path, but really, I will figure out a low calorie option to pumpkin spice syrup so that pumpkin spice chai's can take over the world!)
Well I swung over to Hungry Girl and found a Chai Tea recipe that I modified a bit.
Here is what we will need:

2 Chai Tea bags
1 Cinnamon Stick
Hot water
Sugar Free Vanilla creamer
Cinnamon Powder

Throw the tea bags and cinnamon stick in with some boiling hot water. The tea bags are going to steep for 10 to 15 minutes, thus why it needs to be so hot. Just walk away and let it sit.



Take out the tea bags and cinnamon stick and set them aside. Add in the creamer until it looks milky then add a dash of the cinnamon powder on top and throw the cinnamon stick back in. I was able to get two batches of tea from the tea bags and cinnamon stick, so when you run out of one cup, make another!
Hungry Girl's recipe is actually for cold chai tea, so you pour everything over ice, but I believe that Chai is a fall/winter kind of drink. Also, if you'd rather use plain milk or even soy instead of the creamer, to get the vanilla taste, either use Vanilla Chai tea bags or add vanilla flavoring to the mix.
Enjoy!

In the Kitchen: Your Weekly Recipe

Roasted Ricotta Roma Tomatoes

I am fan of The Pioneer Woman. One of her fellow bloggers, Pastor Ryan, http://www.thisisreverb.com/, that she had stay at the Lodge, gifted her site with a recipe for stuffed tomatoes. They looked good so I thought I’d give it a try.

We will need:

1 handful fresh Italian parsley
1 handful fresh basil
2-3 cloves garlic
8 Roma tomatoes halved
1 ½ cups ricotta cheese
15-20 crushed Ritz crackers
Kosher salt
Olive Oil

Mmmm pretty tomato's!



Here is what we’ve got to do. Scoop out the tomatoes. No need to keep the stuff inside. Perhaps use it in salsa or something. Then salt the tomatoes and turn them upside down to drain out the water.





Chop up the parsley and basil and mix it up with the ricotta cheese. Ad a little salt and pepper to your taste.






Fill each of the tomato halves with the ricotta mixture. Use it all up.



To crush those Ritz crackers, you can put them in a food processor or you can put them in a bag and hammer the hell out of them. Both ways are fun!



Press each tomato with the mixture into the crushed crackers to cover. Place them face up on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil.



Cook them at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.



I was expecting these to be a little bit more flavorful than they were. These are incredibly light and don’t cloud up the taste buds too much. Something light before a heavy Italian meal perhaps. I expected a bit more of a hardy flavor. I think adding in chopped spinage might completely change this up. But if you are looking for light and nice, this is great.

Sweet Salmon

I ended up creating a salmon recipe last night. Unintentionally, but there it is.

My cooking night started when earlier that day I decided to cook a salmon grilling recipe out of my Betty Crocker cook book. I love this cookbook. I enjoy the tips and use them most of all so I have been trying to find recipes that will work with my healthier life style plan. This salmon recipe was one of them. Of course later that night I ran across two problems.
1. I didn't buy all the ingredients needed.
2. The salmon has to marinate 48 hours!!!
Oops!
Not to worry. I grabbed my iPhone and used one of my apps called BigOven that has multiple recipes. Still I ran into the problems.
1. Missing ingredients.
2. Long marinating time.
What to do, what to do...
Create my own non-marinating recipe.
First I decided on my ingredients, then I decided how much of each one I was going to use, then I mixed it together and viola! It cooked well and tasted wonderful. So here is the recipe for what I have names Sweet Salmon.

2 pounds thawed salmon fillets, cut into 8 pieces.
1 1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce (I used a low sodium soy sauce and think it tastes just as good as it would have with regular soy sauce.)
2 tablespoons honey

Lay salmon out on sheets of tinfoil. Mix all other ingredients together in small bowl. When mixed, spoon mixture over salmon fillets. Flip Salmon and apply to other side. Place another sheet of tinfoil over salmon.
Meanwhile, heat up your BBQ to 350-400 degrees. Place tinfoil packet of salmon on grill with cover on for 15 minutes. Remove from grill, salmon should be flaky when done.


I served the salmon with a regular salad with a nice Asian flavored dressing. Complemented things well.
I love creating food, this was a really fun little meal to make and I am glad/relieved it turned out well.
BTW, you can munch on the orange used for the orange zest while you mix everything up. Yummy, yummy!