April Showers bring…..more baked deliciousness

The month of April was a busy one for me, but I made sure to get my fill of sugary confections. I also managed to gain back some of that lovely weight I had lost in March, go figure. Here in San Antonio we have a little festival in April we call Fiesta, which means plenty of alcohol and any kind of food on a stick you can think of. It’s a city wide party and it’s full of food, drinks, and events. 

A little history… 

Fiesta San Antonio started in 1891 as a one-parade event and has evolved today into one of this nation’s premier festivals with more than 100 events and an economic impact of almost $284 million for the city. Fiesta is “The Party with a Purpose.” Each event is produced by a nonprofit organization selected by the Fiesta® San Antonio Commission. The funds they raise provide services to San Antonio citizens throughout the year. 

If you are in the area in April and want to attend Fiesta or just want to read up on it here is the Official Fiesta Website. 

In honor of Fiesta I decided to bake something appropriate so I chose Cupcake Project’s Margarita Cupcakes. With tequila in the cake and the frosting this was a perfect fit.

While attending an event, the King Williams Fair, I managed to find the gourmet food trucks. One of the ones I have wanted to try out for a while was Saweet Cupcakes, and I’m so glad I did!  I tried the Belgian chocolate cupcake with the vanilla bean buttercream and it was amazing! Deep rich chocolate complemented by the creamy, smooth buttercream. Yum!

Before I fell off the wagon though, I did do a little healthy baking. I made whole wheat cranberry orange muffins, which I seemed to have misplaced the recipe, but will update you if I find it. The sweetness of the citrus and tartness of the cranberry compliment each other perfectly. If you are not trying to be healthy there are tons of great recipes out there for you to try. The next one I want to try is Ina Garten’s Cranberry Orange Scones.

April was great. Hope there is another sweet month ahead of me. :)

Fruit & Honey Bars

So I was flipping through a weight watchers magazine that mysteriously showed up in my mailbox, (really, I didn’t order it, maybe someone is trying to tell me something), and I found an interesting recipe for fruit and honey bars. I changed things up a bit and added a couple things and this is what I came up with. These are very versatile, you could really use what ever kind of fruit and nuts you like; in the first batch I used dried apricots instead of pineapple and didn’t use the pecans or cashews. These little guys are low in calories, and sweetened only with natural honey. The nuts in the bar have so many benefits to your health, like heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids, and the dried fruit are full of fiber, vitamin C, and antioxidants. Keep in mind that when buying your ingredients to stick to unsweetened fruits and unsalted nuts to keep the calories and sodium down. Enjoy.

Health Kick

Well unfortunately I haven’t been doing a whole lot of baking lately. You see I’ve been eating really healthy lately and exercising six days a week, so I just can’t bring myself to indulge in those little sweet pieces of heaven like I used to. After about 4 weeks at the gym, I started a program called Insanity that I’ve been doing for about 2 weeks now, and the results give me the extra motivation to keep going. I have been baking a few healthy treats though to fill the need. I made many batches of muffins, a few good, and a few not so great. I made a really great whole wheat angel food cake, which got eaten so fast I didn’t even get a photo. But the other half says his favorite is the fruit and honey bars which I’ll post about later. In short, I’ve been a bad blogger, but I’ll be getting back to it soon. :)

There's a first time for everything

I actually had to throw out a batch of blueberry muffins last night! They were not tasty at all! This is because I have been on the search of a perfect healthy baked good. (I know, I know, it’s kind of an oxymoron) I’ve realized this is a very hard task. You guys know I love my sweets, but the other half has been dieting and going to the gym along with P90X and I can’t leave him out. Why deny him of my tasty treats, although so far not so tasty. The first batch of muffins I made were whole wheat pumpkin muffins, they weren’t so bad, just not real sweet and pretty dense because of the whole wheat flour. This last batch of whole wheat blueberry muffins were awful, pretty inedible. So what’s a girl to do? Well I’m going to continue my search and keep experimenting, but I thought just maybe someone reading this might just have a good recipe.

This is what I’m looking for…

Sugar free (Splenda or honey)
Multigrain or whole wheat (No white flour)
Low to no oil
Dried fruit or nuts are good
Under 200 calories per serving
Fewer than 4g fat per serving
Low salt
High fiber

If anyone has any ideas, please email me. And I’ll keep everyone updated on the search. Now if we can all just share a moment of silence for the poor blueberry muffins…

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Ok so I need to work on my timing a little bit (should have posted these before V-Day), but I made some super cute cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. This recipe I found on bakerella.com and it is the best red velvet cake I’ve ever tried. It is super moist and yummy. The flowers are marshmallow fondant, which I made from scratch as well. Think I’m going to start a little cake decorating again; playing with the fondant brought back fond memories. If you guys like red velvet cake you gotta try out this recipe.

This was a real comment I got from one of my guinea pigs.

“OMG! That is the best red velvet cake I have EVER tasted. I'm so serious.  It's so good that I can't even tell my wife about it, because she thinks her mom makes the best red velvet cake. In fact, it's a tradition in her family for her mom to make it. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. lol. It would hurt her feelings if I went on and on about it.”

Key Lime Cheesecake

So for another reason to bake I decided to start making birthday desserts for all my coworkers. The most recent birthday boy told me his favorite desserts were cheesecake and key lime pie. I knew right away that I would want to combine the two. I finally decided on this highly rated recipe on Epicurious. It's a graham cracker crust, of course, filled with three layers. The first being a tart lime custard, then a smooth cheesecake filling, and then topped off with a sweetened sour cream topping. Even though there are a few steps to this it was still relatively easy to make and the results were scrumptious! The minute it touches your tongue the tartness hits you, but is then smoothed out by the creamy cheesecake. Yummy.

White Chocolate Blueberry Brownies

In an attempt to fatten up my coworkers I try to bake for them once a week. I use them as my guinea pigs to test out new recipes. Not that I’m trying to sabotage their diets, but somebody has to try all this stuff. This is one of my coworkers now, after all of the goodies…

It’s nice to have a little inspiration at times, so when my coworker and I were bored at work I started quizzing her about her favorite sweets. She said she loved brownies and anything with blueberries so I instantly thought white chocolate and blueberries would be great together. Turned out they tasted even better than I thought. 

White Chocolate Blueberry Brownies
Adapted from this recipe.

1/3 cup unsalted butter, cut in pieces
8 ounces white chocolate, chopped
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup dried blueberries

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Butter and line a 9-inch baking pan with butter and parchment.

Place butter in a medium-sized, heat-proof bowl. Place bowl over a pot of barely simmering water, melt butter halfway. Add 4 ounces of the white chocolate and stir until chocolate has melted. Remove from heat and add in the remaining 4 ounces of chocolate. Stir until chocolate has melted and mixture is smooth.

Place sugar and eggs in a large bowl. Using whisk attachment on high speed beat sugar and eggs until pale and thick, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and add vanilla and chocolate mixture, beat just to combine.

In a separate bowl, using a fine-mesh sieve, sift flour, baking powder and salt. Add to egg mixture and beat until smooth.

Fold in dried blueberries, (do not over mix).

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into centre comes out clean. Place on wire rack to cool completely. Remove from pan and cut into squares.