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!

Web Tools: Tasty Kitchen

Tasty Kitchen

I am amazed at how one woman, The Pioneer Woman, can create a movement. My examples are two-fold. When she has a giveaway, her comments number up around the 20,000 mark, and her newest cooking website, from what I can figure out, has at least 10,000 members of Tasty Kitchen. Including me!
All of the categories are pretty self-explanatory I like that it has a gluten-free category although I have not delved into the gluten-free movement. That’s kind of neat though and I know a lot of people eat that way. There are also dairy and sugar free categories.
The joy of this site is that you can exchange recipe’s with other members and keep track of other members and what kind of recipe’s they upload. I like the idea of making food friends online. When you submit a recipe and it’s accepted into the database, you become a member of the “Fraternal Member of the Mitt.” I think that is hilarious!
Recipes can be rated and you can see them by this ranking, or most recent, or most popular. I have yet to submit a recipe but I’ve already found many that I cannot wait to try! So give it a look and see how soon you can be a cooking addict.
My user name is MegBat so please, add me as a cooking friend. I think you will enjoy this website.