The CAKE in cupcake....

Growing up I loved baking with my mom and still do. Looking back though, we never made anything from scratch, everything was out of a box. So over the weekend I decided to bake vanilla cupcakes from scratch. However, this was not the case with the chocolate frosting. I shared this with friends/family just to get the same reaction: "What!? frosting is the easiest part! here let me give you a recipe..." Who knew people were so passionate about their cupcakes. Needless to say I was worried my cake batter would not turn out to my liking, so I admit I bought the store bought frosting just in case I had to mask the taste of the cake.

Neil found this super easy recipe on-line at cupcakerecipe.com. (click on link) Makes 24 cupcakes. Enjoy!

Ingredients:


A good excuse to finally use the Cuisinart hand blender!


A missing cupcake! I had to try one before putting the frosting on all :)


Voila! finish product


a beautiful cupcake if I do say so myself - and the hubby approved!

If you would like to share your frosting recipe post a comment below. I'm ready for my next batch!

Antipasto + pasta = not so antipasto salad!

Neil loves salads and I love pasta. So it only made sense that we compromise on a quick and easy Monday night dish!

Our ingredients:


bag of pasta from Cost Plus World Market


mixing the pasta with the salad


top it off with some fresh mozarella and viola!

Mama Mia - Neil's a makin the pizza

When Neil and I were dating he went through experimental stages with food. I remember one month he decided to experiment with pizza dough and making that from scratch - I think we had six pizzas in a two week span!

Flash forward to married life - we are both quite busy and nobody ever said that everything we cook together has to be completely from scratch. Thanks to grocery chains like Fresh & Easy, and Cost Plus World Market we were able to get most of our ingredients and pre made pizza dough. No recipe really needed, just add all the toppings you want to your little heart's desire :) Well on this particular night our hearts desired two kinds of pizza. I can only take credit for the grocery run - since Neil did all the prep. But that's what team work is all about.

Neil's homemade sauce (2 finely diced med. yellow onions & 2 cloves garlic crushed, sauteed in olive oil until translucent, add 1 large can peeled roma tomatoes with basil, a little bit of sugar, sea salt, and red wine vinegar, simmer about 30 min).


Pizza #1 - toppings: wild Italian mushrooms, artichoke hearts, bistro blend olives, and fresh mozarella.



Pizza # 2 - toppings: fresh mozarella, thin sliced onions, and roma tomatatos, and spinach.

You buy... and I'll fry!

It's a new year and we haven't given up on cooking together! So Neil and decided to try our luck.... or I guess my luck at frying fish. Mission accomplished. Pictures below:

Fish batter (flour, salt, a good amount of cayenne)


Deep Fry! (well, not really deep fried, but a good quarter inch of vegetable oil is good).


Catch of the day - tilapia