Bi-Weekly Round Up

I've fallen harder in love with this vest than I ever anticipated and it's made its way into the majority of my outfits throughout this entire month. When it first arrived in the mail, I wasn't sure how to style it and rarely it wore it out for a whole 2 months. But now it's proved itself to deserve a permanent place in my closet.

I've been meaning to invest in a new bike for the past couple of years but have yet been able to bring myself to the commitment of riding it around. My biggest worry is that I wouldn't be able to bike with skirts or dresses on - blogger problems.


Since I started to successfully grow some cherry tomatoes in my planters back in Ottawa, I've been meaning to give myself another try at an air plant. The last time I had one back in middle school, it quite literally died because I did nothing to it. Hopefully with my DIY Terrarium it'll survive this time around.

And if it doesn't, I'll drown away my sorrows in this delicious melon sangria that my cousins have introduced me to. It's quick, easy, light and hits the spot. Did I mention that weekends are reserved for food experimentation? All we ever do is cook, bake and eat!

Cookies and Cream Fudge

It's taken me awhile to finally show the fantastic cookies and cream fudge recipe I found over at Cupcakes and Cashmere, but I'm more than excited to share my fabulous treat that had everyone swooning over the holidays. I'm a sucker for Hershey's Cookies and Cream chocolate bars and by no means did I plan on the outcome of the fudge to taste similar. So when I got reactions asking me if I used any of the chocolate bar in the recipe due to how identical it tasted, I was pleasurably surprised. I modified the original recipe slightly, out my own idiocy when  grocery shopping and didn't purchase enough supplies, so the overall taste is less sweeter than the original.

I used this recipe, but I replaced sugar for icing sugar once I realized that I didn't actually have any at home. This actually sped up the cooking process as the finer sugar melted a lot faster than I had expected. I started the process by doubling the recipe, and by the time it came to incorporating the marshmellow cream, I realized that I had only bought enough for one portion. So only 3.5 oz were used.

I also omitted the pinch of salt because of the decreased cooking time due to the icing sugar made the entire mixture extremely difficult to mix.

Key Lime Cupcakes

I had a pot luck to attend this afternoon and had no idea what to bring. Surprise, surprise I decided to flounce in with a batch of two dozen cupcakes. I'm not going to lie, I did go with one of those pre-made cake batter boxes that anyone can pick up at their grocery store (I was in a crunch for time and couldn't run around picking up all of the proper ingredients), but I did not get the frosting to go with it. Instead I opted to make my own butter cream frosting and flavour everything lime.

*I purchased 4 limes for all the lime zest and lime juice *

 

BATTER

Duncan Hynes Classic White Cake Mix
3 Large Eggwhites
1 and 1/3 Cups of Water
1/4 Cup of Vegetable Oil

1 and 1/2 Tablespoons of Lime Zest
1 Tablespoon of Lime Juice

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and fit two dozen cupcake liners into muffin trays.
2. Finely grate the lime to get enough lime zest and then squeeze the limes into a bowl for the juice.
3. Blend the cake mix with the eggwhites, water, and vegetable oil together until smooth, then add in the lime zest and then add the lime zest and juice.
4. Blend once again until everything is mixed in evenly.
5. Pour the mix into the cupcake liners so that each one is filled to about 2/3 of the way.
6. Bake in the oven for approximately 20 minutes.
7. Poke a toothpick randomly through some cupcakes to determine if they are completely baked.
8. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before icing or else the icing will melt.

FROSTING

1 Cup of Salted Butter
4 Cups of Icing Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon of Brown Vanilla Extract

3 Tablespoons of 18% Table Cream

1 Tablespoon of Lime Zest
2 Tablespoons of Lime Juice

1. Beat the butter until it has a whipped consistency and is smooth.
2. Slowly mix in the icing sugar one cup at a time until everything is mixed evenly.
3. Add in the Vanilla extract and mix again.
4. Add in the table cream (the more cream you use, the smoother the icing, the less you use, the stiffer the icing) and beat until smooth.
5. Add in the lime zest and juice and beat until smooth.
6. Once the cupcakes are smooth, pipe the icing to cover the tops of each cake.
7. Sprinkle a little bit of lime zest atop each cupcake for a final touch.

Voila! How easy was that? Now if you want to get "more" creative, you can always use any original batter that you may have and just add in the lime zest and juice to flavour. I had originally wanted to add a slice of lime and twist it to the top of each cupcake but decided in the long run that it would be overkill. So now I have a little plate full of sliced limes sitting in my fridge that I think I'll just add to my water tomorrow morning.

This simple and delicious recipe yielded approximately 39 cupcakes, although you can change it to more or less depending on the sizes of the cupcake liners that you choose. I hope you enjoyed the recipe and let me know if you end up trying it out!