Chocolate Cream Filled Cupcakes

Back in the winter, I posted my Famous Chocolate Cake. And dang, it sure is good. I have been wanting to make the recipe into cupcakes for awhile. Last week I finally made them for work.

This week, since I had left over ganache, I made them again for some workers who are here tearing out our garage floor and part of the driveway and replacing it. (Quite a job!)
Always good to bribe the workers! They seemed really happy and surprised to get cuppies. Of course I was glad to make them!

You can find the recipe for the cake here. Below is the recipe for the filling.

Cream Filling
2 T shortening
2 T Butter
1 C 10x sugar
3 T Hersheys Dulce LeLeche Dessert topping
Milk- to thin
In a large bowl, beat butter and shortening together until smooth. Blend in confectioners' sugar. Gradually beat in topping. Beat until light and fluffy. Add milk as needed to desired consistency. Fill a pastry sleeve and pipe into cupcake.

Blueberry Banana Pancakes

Some Sundays after church, Mark likes to make pancakes. Now, he is a standard no frills kind of guy, while I like to mix things up a bit. So he has his plain pancakes, and I usually add something to mine.
This morning he actually went wild and added fresh blueberries to his. Of course, I tossed a lil extra in mine- some cornmeal, a little bit of flax seed, a small amount of oats and a mashed banana.
Top with butter and maybe some syrup and dig in!!

Wretched Cakes

Do you need a laugh??! Well - who doesn't? Check out this website Cake Wrecks. Each post just gets funnier. I especially like the girl/boy cake and the babies on carrots. Funny stuff.

DB Danish Redux

I made my second danish braid today and it DID come out better than the first. I wasn't so anxious this time I guess. I took the dough from the freezer last night , and when thawed I formed my braid and filled it with this cream cheese filling -
12 oz cream cheese
1/3 cups sugar
1 egg
plus a little raspberry jelly down the middle. I let it rise in the fridge overnight and baked this morning. Much better the second time around!

Danish Braid a la Daring Bakers

I'm going to start out by saying right off that baking with yeast is not my favorite thing to do. Oh I have made bread in a bread machine with no problem. But this recipe for the June challenge, chosen by our hosts, Kelly of Sass and Veracity and Ben of What's Cooking started out scary because you do not proof the yeast. And it appears to be a recipe that requires patience, of which I have none. This recipe calls for making a dough, laminated with a butter block. No, I have not had the pleasure before.
I made my danish on a Saturday and baked it for a Sunday breakfast. I made the dough recipe as written. It gave me a chance to try my mortar and pestle that my friend Kim picked up for me during an Ikea trip. I opened the cardamon pods and tried to crush the seeds but couldn't get them fine enough so I used my coffee grinder first and then used the mortar and pestle. I didn't have an orange left in my fridge like I thought, so I used water and orange extract instead of orange juice and zest. I had a little fun incorporating the butter into the dough, because it actually seemed to come together like it was supposed to! I did sneek little unbaked bits and it seemed tasty enough.
For my filling I used 8 oz of cream cheese, 1 egg and 1/2 cup sugar. Next time if I fill with cream cheese I will double the filling as it seemed not enough for our tastes.
I think I may have voodooed the dough into not rising to my satisfaction or maybe I was hasty and baked too soon. I also think my dough could have used more flavoring, but maybe more filling would help. I have the second slab of danish dough in my freezer to try again later. I'l try to be more patient!
Daring Bakers are such a fun group. Always something to learn and stretch our cooking skills. Anyway, you can find the long recipe at the hosts' blogs.

Berry Trifle

I needed a quick dessert for a get together and had no time to bake. ACK! Well, I turned to a solution that many have done before me- a berry trifle.
I forgot I even had a trifle bowl, until I came across it recently while I was searching my cupboards for something else! It used to belong to my mother and I have never used it.
This dessert is light and fairly low in calories compared to others. Fresh berries are layered with angel food cake and sweetened whipped cream. (In my haste, I overbeat the whipped cream.) Calories can be cut further by using a low calorie whipped topping.

Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

My father in law is a big PUSD cake fan. So for Father's Day, I baked these cute little cupcakes for our cookout. They are great for a small taste!
My silicone cupcake pan worked great for this recipe. I used this recipe from Crazy Cupcake for the topping, but since I was also making 4 other kinds of cupcakes for the cookout, I used a boxed yellow cake for the cake part.
Sometimes I really think you can't tell it's from a box, depending on what recipe you are doing. Especially with this recipe, since the topping sinks into the cake somewhat.