Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

It's been a while since I've baked. I'm sad to say that. But today, I had all of the ingredients so I decided to go ahead and try these out. This is a super fast recipe. You can make it in no time and the ingredients are things that you usually have on hand so that makes this even better. The chocolate stout cupcakes are definitely my most favorite recipe, but they're a bit time consuming so for the sake of time, these were a good alternative. The cupcake batter is super runny, and it uses not only oil, but sour cream as well. Those two components create a super moist cake. The peanut butter frosting was not peanut buttery enough for me so I added an additional 1/3 cup of it. I liked the idea of putting cream cheese into the frosting-it just created a wonderful creamy texture and surprisingly not a lot of tang. I decided to top half of them with chopped salted peanuts.

Sour Cream-Chocolate Cupcakes
Recipe courtesy of Sky High Cakes

1 cup flour
1 1/4 cup sugar
3/8 cup dutch process cocoa*
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1 egg
Peanut Butter Frosting, recipe follows

Preheat oven to 350. Spray the tops and line two muffin pans with 13 cupcake liners.

Add dry ingredients to the bowl of your stand mixer. Turn on low and add sour cream and oil. When completely mixed, add water in 1/4-cup increments until the batter is uniform. Add vanilla, vinegar, and the egg, mixing on medium until combined. The batter will be very runny. Using a cookie scooper, scoop the batter into the cupcake liners, filling 3/4 full.

Bake for ~23 minutes, until a skewer inserted in a center cupcake comes out with moist crumbs attached. Let cool in pan for 20 minutes and then cool on wire rack completely before frosting.

Yields 13-14 cupcakes

Peanut Butter Frosting
5 oz cream cheese, at room temp
4 Tbsp butter, at room temp
pinch of salt
3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup peanut butter

Beat cream cheese and butter on high, until light and creamy (2-3 minutes). Mix in salt and powdered sugar on low speed until just combined and then beat on high for 2-3 minutes, until the frosting is fluffy. Add peanut butter and mix on high until completely combined.

Swiss Chard

Look at the color of these things! They're beautiful! In one crop there were stalks of magenta, orange and purple-all picked fresh from my Aunt's garden. Some of these were about 2 feet long! I decided to cook them and serve it as a side. I sauteed some onions and garlic, added the swiss chard and finished it off with a splash of red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. A simple, delicious dish that goes well with anything!

Mike and Anne's

Sundays are meant to be like this. Nothing planned-nowhere specific to go. We took our little man out for a walk this morning and he ended up falling asleep so we decided to have breakfast out. We walked to Mike and Anne's in South Pasadena. This restaurant is our go to place when we're in the mood for a local breakfast that's within a reasonable walking distance...it's really not that close, but it's fine. My husband always has doubts that I can make it there without pulling a muscle, or complaining about a sore side.

So Mike and Anne's is a good place for breakfast-we like to sit outside in the patio. The food is good-it's not the most amazing thing in the world, but it's good food. I'm never blown away by it, but it's never a disappointment. We ordered the lemon ricotta pancakes and now that I think about it, I can't remember tasting the lemon. It was really good today. It's been somewhat forgettable in the past, but today it was really good. It's not fluffy like a pancake. It's kind of course yet super moist and has this great unexplainable flavor-the ricotta adds such great flavor to the dish. My husband ordered their corned beef hash as always and it was good.

It was just a great way to start our Sunday.

Bo Kho-Vietnamese beef lemongrass stew

My husband always raves about his mother's dishes, as most men do. He talks about her stews and broths and noodle dishes with the highest regards. I usually lean more towards Italian food or American food just because that's what I know, but I've decided to take advantage of all the Asian markets around me and to see if my husband can maybe one day say the same about some of the Asian dishes I make. I recently bought the book "In the Vietnamese Kitchen" written by Andrea Nguyen. It had great reviews online so I figured it was a good starting point for a novice like me. Her book is beautiful by the way-filled with amazing photos and very descriptive details about the dishes. Just reading about each of the dishes is so interesting. There are a ton of dishes I'd like to try.

Last night I made Bo Kho. It's a stew filled with beef, carrots and has the essence of lemongrass, star anise and bay leaves. You dip large pieces of baguette in it and dip your beef in a salt, pepper and lemon mixture. It's hearty and homey and great on cold days-unlike today. I think we were all breaking out into a sweat eating it on such a hot day. Not so smart.

It takes a few hours to prepare it from beginning to end (mostly because it needs to cook for about 2 hours.) I started it last night around 7 and it didn't finish until 9 or so, so I just decided to save it for the next night.

My husband said that I should make the dish and he'll ask his mom to come over tomorrow for dinner to critique it. greeeeeat. He said that it would be the best way to learn. His mom could just tell me everything that was wrong with my dish and I would be a better cook for it. So, I agreed-I'm determined to learn and who better to learn from than my very own amazing cook of a mother in law?

So, my in-laws came over tonight for dinner and she said she could smell my stew from the street. She said it smelled like bo kho. Phew, that's a good thing. When she got here she took the ladle, spooned a small sip into it and said..................
"eh, it's okay." And then she went on to tell me what was wrong with it. My M-I-L is the sweetest thing, but when it comes to cooking, she knows her stuff so I grabbed my pen and paper and took my notes.

1. "You put tomatoes in it? You don't put tomatoes in it."
2. "You didn't put potatoes into it? I do."
3. "No chili powder? Next time put it in."
4. "Curry powder. Just a little bit."
5. "Black bean stuff- makes it salty and richer in flavor."
6. .....

The list goes on. My father in law was kind-he's a very soft spoken man. He said it was good and that it smelled like the real stuff too, but that "something" was missing.

I think my husband felt a little bad for me. He didn't want to translate everything his parents were saying about it at the dinner table. He made sure to tell me a few times how much he liked it. I guess ultimately that's what's truly important to me because he is the one I'd be making it for in the future...

Next time, I will do all the things my MIL told me to do, but for my first time, she said it wasn't bad, and that's one step in the right direction. I'll take it.

Oyako Donburi

Oya means parent. Ko means child. Put it together and you have a parent and child dish-the chicken and the egg. It's kind of a sad name. Nonetheless it's a wonderfully delicious, Japanese, poor man's dish. The chicken simmers in a sweet sauce and the egg on top just seals the deal. Served over rice and you have a very filling meal. I would've taken a photo of it, but to be honest, it's not the most beautiful dish. I couldn't get a good shot of it, so you'll have to use your imagination. The greatest thing about this dish is how easy it is to make-and you have most of the ingredients in your refrigerator. It can be made in about 15 minutes. This recipe is from about.com. It's a great site for really reliable Japanese dishes. Enjoy!

Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:

4 cup steamed rice
3/4 lb chicken thighs or chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 2/3 cups dashi soup stock
7 Tbsp soy sauce
4 Tbsp mirin
3 Tbsp sugar
4 eggs

Preparation:

Cook steamed rice.
Put dashi soup stock in a large skillet and put on medium heat.
Add soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in the soup.
Put chicken and simmer on low heat for a few minutes.
Add onion slices and simmer for a few more minutes.
Lightly beat eggs in a bowl.
Bring the soup to a boil, and pour the eggs over chicken and onion.
Turn the heat down to low and cover with a lid.
After one minute, turn off the heat.
Put steamed rice into deep serving bowls, then serve simmered chicken and egg on top.

Easter

Easter has come and gone. That was so fast. From Easter egg dyeing and Easter egg hunts to Easter pageants and Sunday meals- it was so much fun this year. Having little ones around allows me to buy in to all of the things that go along with this holiday.

We spent Saturday dyeing our eggs with my nephew. The dye kits are amazing nowadays. They have great colors, shrinking wraps, stickers and a wax crayon all inside that little box! I have to say that the shrinking wrap was the neatest thing. You slip the plastic around the egg and then submerge it in boiling water and the plastic wrap magically adheres to the egg. I didn't believe it would work, but it did! Sunday included breakfast, church, egg hunts, an amazing dinner and my contribution: red velvet whoopie pies.

We had whoopie pies from Corner Bakery recently and they were amazing. I normally shudder at the idea of cake like that with who knows what is inside. Ding Dongs and Twinkies are not my idea of a tasty treat. Although my husband could eat a dozen and then some. These whoopie pies were really really good-try them-you'll see what I mean. My friends will order a platter of them for birthdays or for gatherings-they're a great dessert to put out.

I do plan on making some from scratch, but I admit I cheated this time. I only had one hour to make dessert and I wanted to keep it simple. I received a canister of Sprinkles Red Velvet Cupcake mix from my brother in law and I decided to use it, but not to make cupcakes. I made whoopie pies instead. It's the same idea except instead of putting them in cupcake liners, you use a small cookie dough scooper and place a mound of it on silpats or parchment paper. I only put 6 per sheet because they spread. Once they are completely baked, you must remove the silpat or the parchment from the baking sheets immediately so they don't continue to cook. I used a simple cream cheese buttercream frosting for the inside filling. My family liked them. I will be searching for the best whoopie pie recipe. The happy face is my uncle's contribution. He loves cream cheese frosting. He didn't want to see it go to waste.

See the tiny jello eggs? Aren't they so adorable? That's my Auntie for you. She's so creative.

I hope you all had a Happy Easter!

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I love having bananas. I buy them often because my husband and my son love them, but the best part is when they go bad. Very baaaaaad. Well, not that bad because then I can't use them, but you know, when they're so mushy and soft that they're practically inedible? There are so many banana recipes out there, but I decided to use this recipe. I love using sour cream in my cakes. It makes the end product so moist. I decided to make 12 muffins and 2 loaves instead of 4 loaves. This recipes makes a whole lotta banana bread. Oh, and I added the chocolate chips because I love them. This recipe is from allrecipes.com and it got over 2000 glowing reviews. It's gotta be good, right? My house smells amazing right now.

Ingredients

1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup butter
3 cups white sugar
3 eggs
6 very ripe bananas, mashed
1 (16 ounce) container sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking soda
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease four 7x3 inch loaf pans. In a small bowl, stir together 1/4 cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Dust pans lightly with cinnamon and sugar mixture.
In a large bowl, cream butter and 3 cups sugar. Mix in eggs, mashed bananas, sour cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Mix in salt, baking soda and flour. Stir in nuts. Divide into prepared pans.
Bake for 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.