Sprinkles Galore: Birthday Cupcakes and Cookies

We’ve been shirking our posting duties for the past couple months, but now we’re back!  What better way to celebrate the return of Piggie Diaries than with SPRINKLES???

Sprinkles everywhere!

When I think of any celebrations, I automatically think of cookies, cakes, and ice cream – all with lots of sprinkles on top!   A few weeks ago, two of my friends were celebrating their birthdays, a perfect time for me to test out some funfetti (best word invented by Pillsbury) recipes I found.  I made two different funfetti recipes:

1) Homemade Funfetti Cupcakes with Mascarpone / Cream Cheese Frosting:  Yes – homemade!! I didn’t use the mix for these delicious morsels of goodness.  These were SO yummy I had to

Satisfying My Six Month Tiramisu Craving

For roughly six months now, I have been craving tiramisu.  Three months ago I got a slice from a nearby Italian restaurant only to be sourly disappointed, and so the craving continued on, unsatisfied.  I had to take matters into my own hands…the result is this giant tiramisu made by yours truly.  I think it’s safe to say I will have fully satisfied my craving after this is all gone.

 The solution to a six month tiramisu craving

Mini Oreo Cheesecakes

As most of you already know, or may have figured out, I have an absurdly large sweet tooth.  I have successfully managed to polish off batches of cookies and cakes by myself (probably not something to brag about).  In order to curb my excessive dessert intake, I now try to decrease my baking.

A few weeks ago, my coworker had a housewarming party - the perfect opportunity for me to bake something and not single-handedly consume all of the goods.  For two years, yes, TWO WHOLE YEARS, I have had this Mini Oreo Cheesecake recipe bookmarked but never actually made it.  On this fine Saturday in May, I finally

Fuji Bakery: Best Chinese Pineapple Custard Buns

Ever since my parents brought home Chinese pineapple buns when I was little, or “bolo bao", I’ve been hooked.  Years later, I discovered the pineapple buns filled with custard filling – those have become my absolute favorite.  I tried to make them a few weeks ago (check out my version here), but from now on, I’m going straight to the professionals.

 

And by professionals, I mean Fuji Bakery.  Before, I used to go to one of my favorite Chinatown bakeries to get my pineapple custard bun fix, but then one day, my husband came home with this large, football shaped pineapple bun abundant with custard filling – see for yourself:

 I want one.  Now.

Francois Payard & Macaron Day 2011

I just can’t get enough macarons.  My husband and I are slowly eating our way around Manhattan’s best macaron shops.  One bakery we’ve been wanting to try for a long time is Francois Chocolate Bar, named after the chef / owner, Francois Payard.  Payard is the real deal, a French pastry chef from Nice who sharpened his skills in Paris.  Well lucky me, it just so happens that my husband came home and surprised me with a whole box!  

 Pretty packaging

Vday Part 3: PB Banana Cake with Nutella Frosting

Ah, the trials and tribulations of Valentine’s Day dinner: what to make for dessert, arguably the most important part of the meal (at least in my eyes…or perhaps my tummy).  I thought long and hard and came up with the perfect way to end the meal, with all of our favorite things.  Peanut Butter.  Bananas.  Nutella.  Honestly, if I had just chopped up a banana and threw in a generous scoop of PB and Nutella, my husband would have been more than content.  But obviously, I couldn’t leave it at that.  I decided I would make, brace yourselves, a PB Banana Cake with Nutella Frosting.

I browsed online and found recipes for banana cake and Nutella frosting.  I love cream cheese frosting, so I was sold when I found this recipe.  I’m not a big fan of the buttercream frosting varieties.  There’s something about seeing that giant stick of butter when you make the frosting that is a bit of a turnoff.  A giant block of cream cheese, on the other hand, I’m all for that.  I’ll have you know that I at least used 1/3 fat cream cheese.  Also, the banana cake recipe calls for buttermilk, instead I used lowfat vanilla yogurt.  It’s the perfect substitute for buttermilk and keeps the cake nice and moist.

Pumpkin Pie Brownie 'Cupcakes'

Four words.  Pumpkin Pie Brownie Cupcakes. 

Ok, allow me to elaborate.  Imagine a thick layer of fudgy pumpkin spiced brownie topped with a layer of pumpkin pie filling.  Now I dare you to maintain that image in your mind and try not to drool.

I stumbled upon this recipe in a blog geared towards vegans.  Yes, I repeat, vegans.  First thing that struck my mind when I saw this was “wow, vegans actually eat delicious food?!”  Obviously, a bad assumption on my part, as I know nothing about being a vegan and consider myself the polar opposite…someone that eats absolutely everything and anything in sight.

Back to the recipe – although I did want to see what living like a vegan was like even if only for a second, I un-veganized the recipe.  For one, I didn’t have coconut oil and wasn’t going to specially purchase it since I’m clearly not vegan, so I used good ‘ol butter.  The original recipe says it only makes 8 large brownies and 2 small, so I doubled it because I was planning to share.  Somehow the math must have gotten mixed up, because when I doubled the recipe, I ended up with 24 large brownies, and 24 mini brownies.  More brownies?  Psh, no complaints here.

After I took the first batch out of the oven, I couldn’t wait and had to have a sample.  These brownies made me speechless.  Essentially a rich, decadent brownie with gooey pumpkin pie on top, I was definitely in a happy place.  I was very confident in these pumpkin pie brownie cupcakes, but here came the ultimate test: what will the hubby think?  

And then, he proceeded to eat five in a row.  I think they passed the quality control test =).   

Amazing brownie batter

Macarons Part Deux

As promised, I attempted to make French macarons once again to take home to my family for Thanksgiving.  Typically, when I’m home, I’ll make some sort of cake or cookie and the only people out of my family of six that will eat it will be mom and myself.  My brothers and dad aren’t big on sweets and my sister is allergic to gluten, so pretty much whatever I make she can’t eat.  

So this year, I thought it would be perfect to make macarons to take home since they are made with almond flour so are gluten-free.  I figured at least my sister would be able to contribute to the consumption of the goodies this time around. 

I used the same base macaron recipe as last time but changed up the flavor to vanilla.  I used a basic vanilla buttercream for the filling.  I was really crossing my fingers that my macarons would come out big and fluffy like my favorite Bouchon Bakery macarons in NYC.  But alas, they did not.  The first problem was that I was making these at 2am (those of you who know me realize I don’t really operate at this time).  As I was cracking my eggs to drop the egg whites into the bowl for the meringue, I may have inadvertently dropped some yolk in…and then my egg whites + a little yolk didn’t quite form those stiff peaks as directed.   

I ran out of space on my cookie sheets, so I decided to experiment and made a few "Macaron Mini Muffins" in my mini muffin tin.  Um...why didn't anyone ever think of this before?  These came out delicious and I didn't have to worry about piping out a perfect circle!  Next time, I'm sticking to my Macaron Mini Muffins!

Anyways, as you can see, I can’t quite compete with the pros yet, but I have to say the macarons were still delicious.  Luckily, my family has never eaten macarons, so they don't know the difference =).  

Recipe I previously used is below (with a couple tweaks) as well as the vanilla buttercream recipe I found on the Food Network website.

Macarons for the fam

Apple Bread

Yet another recipe passed on from one of my coworkers – apple bread.  I always have Fuji apples at home and all of the other ingredients in this recipe are already in the pantry.  In my opinion, these are the best kinds of recipes because you don’t have to do any extra shopping.  I also got to try out our brand new food processor to chop up all of the apples, yay!

Another amazing thing about this recipe is it makes a TON of bread.  It makes two full loaves, but I opted to make mini apple muffins with the other half of the batter.  I topped them off with some chopped pecans for an added crunch.  As always, I sampled both the loaf and the mini muffins, and both came out so moist and delicious! 

Slices of deliciousness

Raspberry Chocolate Macarons

While my husband and I were in Paris for our honeymoon, we of course sampled many of the culinary delights this beautiful city had to offer and even managed to satisfy my seemingly insatiable sweet tooth.   Chocolate croissants, nutella and banana crepes, chocolate tarts, cream filled beignets, coconut flan, panacotta, crème brulee, chocolate truffles - you name it, there’s a very good chance we consumed it.  One of our favorite dessert items was the dainty little macarons from Laduree.  You take that first bite and it’s like you’re floating off to a happy place – there’s that hard exterior shell, immediately followed by the soft and chewy interior …and finally, you hit the gold mine.  The creamy deliciousness that is the filling inside the macaron.     

We came back to NYC thinking we had eaten enough sweets to last us at least a week; but alas, our craving for the macaron was too strong.  And so, I decided to attempt to recreate those morsels of bliss. 

As you can see from the pictures, they are not quite up to Laduree standards.  I had some issues with controlling the size of my macarons (fortunately, my husband and I don’t have a problem with bigger cookies).  Also, the pan I had on the lower rack of the oven overbaked and came out flattened and slightly on the crispy side (also didn’t stop us from devouring them all).  Needless to say, I would say it was successful for the first try, and I’ll definitely be trying this recipe again before Thanksgiving!

Trying to beat those egg whites