Birthday cupcakes

For M's birthday a couple of weeks ago, we decided that we wanted to celebrate a deux, and I promised to make cupcakes, instead of buying a birthday cake. I looked around the internet for different recipes, and finally settled on white chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling from Good Things Catered, one of my favorite cooking blogs. However, I did not want to use shortening in the filling (shortening still kind of creeps me out), and Sharone was kind enough to forward me a low-fat, non-shortening recipe, so I used that instead. Then, I searched around for easy and waist-line friendly frosting recipes and found a chocolate cream cheese frosting (forget where). I was so excited to get a-baking, until I realized that I had pretty much none of the necessary tools. For one, I did not own a mixer. So off I went to Sur la Table, and back I came with my tail between my legs. Obviously, they were under the impression that money is falling out of my ears, because the cheapest hand mixer they had was around $70. So off I went to Target, and came home with a handy-dandy hand mixer which I already fantasize about trading in for a stand mixer. Sadly, this will probably only come to my counter when money is falling out of my ears...

I also did not have: cupcake paper cups, cornstarch, chocolate (white or milk), sprinkles, cream cheese, filling bags/tips ... basically anything involved in making my cupcakes! The only ingredients I had were flour and sugar... enough to make a sugary paste, but not enough for super duper birthday cupcakes!

After much fun was had exploring the baking isle at Safeway, I was revved and ready to bake!

Everything but the kitchen sink

Fresh out of the oven. Smelled delicious!

Now comes the filling! A bit messy but sooo yummy!

Ooey, gooey

Finished product

Recipe, as adapted by moi:

White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Filling

Cake Ingredients:
8 oz. Ghirardelli white chocolate chips
1 3/4 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 c. oil
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 c. canned unsweetened coconut milk
3 large egg whites

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 325 degrees and prepare muffin tins with paper liners.
-Place white chocolate in metal bowl set over pan of barely simmering water.
-Stir until melted and smooth (this was really fun!).
-In medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt.
-In bowl of stand mixer, beat sugar, butter, and vanilla until blended and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
-Slowly add in oil while running and mix until combined.
-Add hot white chocolate to sugar mixture; stir to combine.
-Add flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with coconut milk in 2 additions, beating batter just to combine between additions. (I think I could have gotten better quality coconut milk, or maybe I'm just not used to its texture, but it was kind of clumpy).
-Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites in medium bowl until soft peaks form. (umm white peaks didn't really form... this is where I need more practice)
-Gently fold egg white mixture into batter.
-Divide batter among muffin cups (about 1/4 cup each).
-Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.
-Cool completely. (try really really hard not to eat the cupcakes)
-Using melon baller, ball out small portion of the top of each cupcake and discard. (or, as I did, EAT).
-Fill disposable bag with raspberry filling and pipe into scooped out portion of each cupcake until just reaching height of top of the cupcake. (this was a big mess!! definitely need practice with the filling bag!)
-Ice as desired. (I made a chocolate cream cheese icing that turned out a bit runny but I did not use as much sugar as the recipe had called for. I think that would have made it stiffer). I also sprinkled colored sugar on each cupcake for a more festive, birthday-ish feel :)

Raspberry filling:

1 1/2 cups raspberries
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
a small handful of Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips

In a small sauce pan, combined all of the ingredients and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Let cool. Take little scoops out of each cupcake with the fruit scooper thing, and using the frosting bag, inject a bit of the filling into each cupcake. Mine turned out a bit messy but no biggie. The filling turned out tangy and very raspberry-ish, which was perfect!

Gourmand ambitions

Something very exciting has been happening lately -- amidst a subtle and ongoing midlife crisis, I have discovered that I really enjoy cooking and baking; this is probably a felicitous discovery considering how much I like eating!

Since domesticity has never been among my strong suits, at first I was surprised by my own epicuriosity. I blame three people for this new interest: my mother, M, and Sharone. While my parents visited, my mother cooked almost daily, reminding me of how much I love her food. At first, I didn't understand why she wanted to spend so much time slaving away cooking, especially with some of the more time-consuming dishes she made. But then, I started realizing that cooking wasn't just meant to be a means of feeding us, but rather an expression of her creativity, ability, usefulness... in short, identity. When you cook something, you put yourself into that food, and it becomes a signal to those eating the meal that you took the time and effort and pleasure to create this food for them. You are nourishing them in a very particular way - your way, and at the same time telling them that they are important enough for you to cook for them, and that you are important enough to be trusted with this responsibility. I guess I am realizing that when not done out of sheer necessity, cooking can become an outlet for one's personality much like creative writing, painting, playing an instrument can. But unlike all these other outlets, it yields tasty, delicious food!

The second person I blame for my newly discovered passion is M. If he wasn't so supportive of all my whacky ideas, and didn't encourage me to do whatever it is that makes me happy, and didn't like to eat as much as I do, I may have been prevented from obsessively creating Amazon wish lists of all my new "must-have" cooking and baking needs! Our apartment would not suddenly feel too small because it cannot house all the hundreds of spice jars, dozens of baking molds, etc etc etc that I suddenly want to spend half my paychecks on.

Thirdly, reading Sharone's blog encourages me to take chances on things I never previously wanted to make. Her amazing ability to squeeze in time to create Margarita Cupcakes and gorgeous fluffy clouds of deliciousness while juggling wedding showers, work, grad school, and life has convinced me that there is always time for a tasty treat!

I think this cooking thing is part of a bigger picture. Lately, I've been overwhelmed by new hobbies that I want to pursue, from camping and backpacking, to spin classes and running, to cooking and becoming the next finance guru (okay, that's a bit far-fetched. But I do have this fantasy of creating a super-duper portfolio that is chock full of diverse investments, and participating in conversations in which I confidently command the usage of words like "maturity," "municipal bonds," and "hedge fund.")

Wherefore these interests? Wherefore now? I blame the clock. The clock that in a voice akin to Chinese water torture tells me each day, "You are getting older." And, without magical ear plugs to shut out this evil clock, I somehow along the way decided that "older" will not mean "boring," will not mean "settled," will not mean "slow" or "fat" or "dowdy." I have decided that if fate must be left to her devices and pull me into adulthood and all the things that come with it, I will do it on my own terms.

So, for now, I spin, I run, I ache. I eat, I cook, I bake. (I couldn't help myself!)

Things to come

1. Photo proof* of my culinary adventures, including my soon-to-become famous white chocolate, raspberry-filled, and chocolate cream cheese-frosted cupcakes.

2. Impressions of 4th of July camping trip.

3. Additions to my foot woes/whoahs series, including adventures in barefoot running and my high hopes for five-toed running shoes.

4. Discussions on upcoming events, including Kenny Chesney concert, Wharf-to-Wharf run, and possibly Harry Potter film.

5. Most likely a review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

* Cupcake shown in banner was not made by yours truly.

I am not nice enough to work at Trader Joe's

It might be because I am getting older; or because I am getting bored of eating the same thing all the time; maybe it's because dining out is just too damn expensive, and again, becomes boring after a while. Whatever the case, I've recently decided that I want to be an amateur foodie, that fustian (GRE word!) label adopted by high-falutin' yuppies who occasionally cook and tell everyone they do so.

For this purpose, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are definitely my friends - a couple of weeks ago, I managed to make a surprisingly successful Indian-inspired lamb dish, complete with naan and curry rice (don't get too excited, it was just rice-maker rice with curry powder in it; but it was good!). Whole Foods has really good, cheap, Indian sauces, and you just cook up the lamb with the sauce for a super easy but delicious dish. I'd bought some fresh pesto from Whole Foods, and spread that on olive oil-sprinkled naan, topped with a bit of grated cheese, and stuck in the oven for ten minutes - easy, quick, and so so good!

Then, there was the ham tacos adventure, again surprisingly successful! Basically, just sautee the ham a bit with some fresh salsa, chopped onions, and spices, and fill tacos with said ham, top with fresh guacamole (I cheated and bought Whole Foods guac, instead of making my own, and it was delicious), and you have a quick, easy, and nutritious meal.

It helps that I have a good partner in eating. A few weeks ago, M made the best chicken-tortilla soup I've ever had! It sounds like it took a while to make, but the results were definitely delicious.

Last week, I took on the baking challenge. I don't think I've ever actually baked anything from scratch before, so when we decided to make cookies for Valentine's Day, I was a bit skeptical. But, our chocolate chip, dark chocolate M&Ms, and sprinkles cookies came out mmmm mmmm good! Perfect for the rainy long weekend.

Today, I'm attempting to make a polenta pizza dish I found in the New York Times. Seriously, it doesn't get yuppier than getting recipes from the NYT, but I have a feeling it will be delicious. I made the polenta this morning, and it's chilling in the fridge while I avoid doing homework at the library (more on that later). When I get home, I'll cook up some spinach with pancetta, cover the polenta with feta cheese (substituted for Gorgonzola, which the recipe called for), tomato sauce, and some fresh basil, and bake it all up.

Okay, now to the point of this whole post - with my renewed interest in cooking has come a renewed relationship with Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. I was at TJ's last night, buying up the spinach, pancetta, feta, etc. for tonight's dinner, and realized how friendly the Trader Joe's staff is. And not fake friendly, but genuinely nice, enthusiastic, and really chatty. I remember thinking this when I first moved to Palo Alto and started going to the local TJs a lot during the summer. But it's been a few months, and I was completely zoned out last night, so when the cashier started up a conversation while bagging my groceries, I was slightly surprised. "Why is this person talking to me?" I asked myself. That's when I realized, I am really not nice enough to work at Trader Joe's. I don't care what people have planned for their weekend. I couldn't care less about what people are planning to make with the things they buy from the grocery store. I truly don't want to make small talk with people I will probably never see again. I want to stay in my bubble, and have that bubble bump up against other people's bubbles without those bubbles actually merging into a conversation arena. For the majority of the time, I want to be left alone until I choose to make small talk with a very select number of people (apparently, aside from being anti-social, I'm also rather arrogant. Note to self - Food for thought?)

Here is evidence to back up my discovery about my lack of niceness. I got to the Mountain View Public Library, set up my computer, was syncing my iPhone with I-Tunes, and realized that there were - gasp - children running rampant among the shelves. (This seems to be a recurring problem). I could not see them - there were two! - but I could hear them. I could hear them giggle and whimper and make strange, alien, sounds that only small children can make. Did I think, how cute? No, I thought "Shut up, you little rug-rats!" Now, if I were as nice as the young man in Trader Joe's last night, I would have probably thought nicer thoughts, and even if I was annoyed to the point of doing something about it, I'd have done it in a nice, pleasant manner. Not I. Two more minutes and I would have walked over, looked at the mother with squinted eyes, and said something like, "Ma'am, this is a library. Please keep your snotty children quiet! I can't concentrate with all this noise!!" (Okay I wouldn't have said "snotty" but I like to dream).

The snot-nosed ones have since gone downstairs, I think. Little matter, because now I have my headphones on and Joni Mitchell is singing to me, so I couldn't hear them anyway. But the point is - I am not a nice person. I daydream about yelling at strangers' children, and wish cashiers would just leave me alone. I could never cut it in the country song mythical small town where everyone knows each other. That's a nightmare scenario for me, living somewhere where one can't ever be anonymous.

Now that I have that out of the way, I should really get down to studying. I had signed up for this writing class through Stanford's Continuing Studies program, and I haven't done my homework in five weeks! This is why, on a Saturday, I am holed up in the library. So, back to work!