One of my favorite comfort food desserts is pineapple upside-down cake, well it’s actually a toss up between that and my famous carrot cake. For their graduation luncheon, the teens in last week’s class requested  “cake, cupcakes, pineapple upside-down cake, macarons, and ‘something’ chocolate”.  After compiling all of their suggestions, I settled on pineapple upside-down cupcakes and macarons filled with chocolate ganache.  The easy cupcakes are here today and the much more complicated and patience needed macarons will be posted on Tuesday.

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What makes something suddenly become a fad, the new “in” thing, all the rage?  Especially when it’s something that’s been around forever?  And when I say “forever” – I’m talking more than 200 years.  And what I’m talking about are cupcakes!

According the source of all modern knowledge… Wikipedia… “The first mention of the cupcake can be traced as far back as 1796, when a recipe notation of “a cake to be baked in small cups” was written in American Cookery by Amelia Simms. The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in “Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats” in 1828 in Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook.”

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Yesterday in class we made the Samoa cookies, today we are using those cookies to make some seriously out of the world cupcakes. I would say, “Hey, don’t let the 7 1/2 sticks of butter (nearly 2 pounds!) between the recipe for the cookies and this recipe for the cupcakes, scare you off”… but I would be lying, it totally scares me!  According to my math (and my math is iffy at best-since I married a CPA and I rarely use that part of my brain) that is about 2 tablespoons of butter per cupcake! So let’s just agree that one cupcake would serve as your dessert for several days and not buy into the guilt.

Speaking of guilt, I’m going to add a little “Linda’s Psych 101″ into today’s post.  This is what I feel about “guilt”… it is a wasted emotion. I’ve heard it said that “The Jewish people invented guilt, and that the Roman Catholics perfected it.” I would have to agree, and here is one Roman Catholic who wants to abolish it!

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I’ll be on Channel 12 Valley Dish today at 3:30 making a memorable Memorial Day Turkey Slider Bar with fabulous toppings. Tune in if you can, if not, the recipe will be posted here tomorrow…

Instead of a traditional birthday cake, I made Connor cupcakes this year. Since we were going out to dinner instead of eating at home, it seemed easier to pack up a few cupcake to have at the restaurant rather than an entire cake. Connor’s favorite ice cream is Cookies ‘n Cream, so that was the inspiration for the cupcakes. It is unanimous – these are winners!  It takes about 1 1/3 package of Oreo cookies to make 2 dozen cupcakes.  If your family is like mine, no one will complain about the 2/3 package of extra Oreos hanging around.

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In case you still have your Arizona Republic newspaper from today (May 23rd), check out page 4 of the D section.  If you don’t get or don’t still have the paper, you can see the same thing at this link from AZCentral.com

We attended a wonderful college graduation party on Saturday for my dear friend Laura’s daughter Megan.  Laura and I have been friends since high school, we were in each others’ weddings, and are godmothers to each others’ children. Laura’s two sisters, Mary and Shawna, are like my sisters, they are my second family, so there was plenty of reminiscing going on all afternoon. One of the many things that came up was food (of course!) and one of those foods was these wonderful little garlic bread balls served at a restaurant at the Venice Pier in Marina Del Rey, California, C & O Trattoria.  They are called “Killer Garlic Balls” for good reason – they are free, brought to the table throughout the meal, and are amazingly addictive.  If you think the endless chips and salsa at Mexican restaurants are bad…

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This Easter I’ve decided to skip my usual big holiday dessert and jump aboard the cupcake bandwagon. Both of these Easter themed cupcakes are easy and totally kid friendly, so be sure and have them help! And remember to watch Channel 12 Valley Dish today and watch as Marissa, Tram and I show you, step-by-step, how to make Silk Tie Easter Eggs.

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My friend and neighbor, Ronnie, is a CAbi (Carol Anderson by invitation) Consultant. CAbi is a line of beautiful woman’s clothing that is sold at private parties in people’s homes. Recently one of Ronnie’s hostesses served these decadent toffee cookie bars that are seriously candy rich! The recipe is from a recent Pillsbury Bake-Off.  I believe the original Bake-Off recipe used white chocolate chips, but the hostess substituted peanut butter chips, which I think is a great idea.  Also the original recipe makes 24 bars, these are far too rich for that, so I cut them into 45 bars… much more manageable for the tummy!  Thanks, Ronnie for passing on this recipe to me. I hope you enjoy that I’m passing it on to you! [Read more →]

When my kids were younger, I loved to trick them with food on April Fool’s Day. The year Marissa was in forth grade and Connor was in first grade was a stellar year! 

I began the day with a non-food trick on my husband, Dave.  The day before, I took a new bar of soap and coated it on all sides with clear nail polish.  After it was dry, I replaced the soap in our shower with this new bar. I stood outside the bathroom and listened to him cursing as he continually dropped the bar of soap, trying to get a lather going.  He was so frustrated, I actually began to feel sorry for him, and went in to replace the bar for him.

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It was cold (well, it was 69 degrees, which is cold for us in March) windy and rainy yesterday, the perfect day for baking!

These savory little muffins came to be after Matt McLinn, Executive Chef at The Grind, taught at Les Gourmettes and left behind a batch of his candied jalapeños. This particular batch had gone past the point where Matt usually cooks them at the restaurant and had dried out to the real “candied” stage. Usually they are still juicy and dripping with syrup.  The recipe below makes them that way, if you want them to be more dried out, like they are pictured here, just cook them longer after the vinegar is added, to dry them out. I prefer them still juicy though and they will work perfectly in this recipe either way. Matt uses them on his “to-die-for” burgers. You’ll want to use them on and in just about everything you can imagine… trust me, they are an addiction!

Along with that new vice, you should know that the muffin recipe make a whole heck of a lot of mini muffins … how many?  Nearly 100!

Don’t try to count the muffins in the picture above. Before it was taken, I’d already delivered 2  1/2 dozen of the little gems to my sweet neighbor, Lori, who lent me 2 of the eggs I needed to make them.

I have four mini-muffin pans, so I had to make them in two batches. You can easily cut the recipe in half, but they freeze great and make the most wonderful party-size appetizer sandwiches.  Just cut in half, spread with a little jalapeño butter or jalapeño jelly and fill with shaved deli ham or turkey.  So Amazingly Good!

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As promised, here is the fantastic recipe for a traditional Irish Soda Bread, given to me from Sharon Cereska. The recipe writer in me couldn’t help but rewrite it a little bit, but I only changed one actual ingredient from the original recipe, and that was using unsalted butter instead of margarine. I don’t use or buy margarine, sorry, can’t help being a foodie snob about that one! My reworded recipe is first and Sharon’s original family recipe is below. But first, here is what Sharon wrote to me when she sent the recipe, accompanied by a lovely treasured family photo of hers.  Thank you Sharon for sharing with me and everyone out there in the blog-a-sphere.

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