Cupcake Plush no. 383

383_Collage
Originally uploaded by rengawk

Hello hello!

I'm cupcake plush no. 383, and I sport a holiday-themed color scheme of Ruby Shimmer and Shamrock Shimmer, all over a base of crisp white.

Fall Recipe Roundup, Part I

Since I haven't caught up with my monthly Recipe Roundup like I intended, I am going to break up the current recipe stash of OMG SOMEDAY I WANT TO TRY ALL THESE into a few posts. In case you forgot what the Recipe Roundup was all about. Oh shit there are a lot! Lets try to break them up into chunks of ten...

Spiced Zucchini Bread with Chocolate  Poppytalk

Banana Breakfast Dumplings with Vanilla Bean Maple Butter  Joy the Baker

Bacon Wrapped New Potatoes   Ask Chef's Forum

Roasted Apple Spice Sheet Cake   Smitten Kitchen

Zucchini Bread with Pineapple   Simply Recipes

Baked Chili Cheese Fries  Joy the Baker

Mocha Banana Breakfast Smoothie  Madigan Made

Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars  The Girl Who Ate Everything

Fudgy Brownies with Cookie Butter Frosting  Lauren's Latest

Granola Bars  The Pioneer Woman

On the "tried" front, in August I tried this idea of spiral cutting hot dogs. It had shown up in a few places online that I saw, but this writeup from Not Martha made me smile, as do all her posts.

I didn't think to leave the skewers in, but that was because I was subbing a chopstick.  These are brats that I love but are super fatty, so it worked great to help grill off some of the grease. That's grilled chicken piled behind them. I even typed 'checken' accidentally. Old joke.

Back in August I mentioned a third successful Bundt experiment; the carrot Bundt cake!

The Best Humble Carrot Cake Ever  Pastry Pal

Now this was one I found through Google-fu, and as you can see I skipped the whole nicely lining a pan and sprayed the Bundt, omitting the walnuts and raisins. I made a simple vanilla and confectioner's sugar glaze. It went over well at work, and someone even did recommend raisins; I thought everyone hated raisins! Someday I will try it with soaking chopped golden raisins in some sort of alcohol.

What made this experiment special was the carrots; they were carrot pulp saved from juicing! I placed the pulp into a plastic container and popped it into the freezer until I was ready, which turned out to be within a day or two.

I tried juicing fruits and veggies using an extractor for a few weeks in late August and September. We got a juice extractor, it works great, the juice is great, I found two veggies I hate in juice (beets and celery, beets for the taste, celery for the burpies) and had fun jamming kale into every drink...but it was hard. Cleanup, while simple, was time consuming, so to make fresh juice in the morning to sub for a breakfast/lunch was taking too much time. No, you can't leave the machine for later to clean, you will be sorry while you scrub; thankfully I only tried it with one piece one time. Also we are apartment dwellers, and can't compost, so all the fibre and solids were going into the trash (which makes it stinky fast). We also aren't in the best place to get fresh, organic, locally grown produce, so it was hard to justify spending on produce that had traveled so far just to only keep the juice?  

Mobile phone photos of juice, and one from the camera of the kale. Notes below from my facebook posts.

UL: I was trying to keep the kale happy by keeping it in a glass of water in the fridge 

UR: August 28, Carrot apple kale celery lemon

LL:  September 3, Two oranges, one lime, three apples, good handful of kale, blob of ginger, three carrots 

LR: September 2; Very pretty, but one beet overpowers all the other flavors! Maybe I won't be incorporating beets into my regular juicing trials...I have been making enough for two servings each time, so this is half. Again saved the carrot pulp, and this time the beet to make cake, I wonder if it will be purple when mixed into the batter? The carrot cake was a big success at work.

There is a hint of my baking fail in the notes from September 2. See how I tried saving the beet pulp with the carrot pulp? We will save that story for the next post!  

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What recipes have you tried recently? 

Are there recipes out there that you would love to make?

Search this blog for other Recipe Roundup posts and view them here! 

378_Collage

378_Collage
Originally uploaded by rengawk

Hello hello, I'm Cupcake Plush no. 378!

My frosting is is made with a fun novelty yarn called Blue-Pink-Yellow Multi and light blue, while my base is made with a pale yellow yarn...all with a bright red cherry on top!

I was crafted especially for Miss J, and hope to be travelling across the sea to a new home soon!