German Chocolate Cupcakes

This is Augie.

Please disregard the case of Miller Lite in the background. It was left over from a family visit and we've just now taken back the empties. I didn't want to lose the opportunity for this picture by removing it beforehand. It's very hard to get a puppy to hold a pose. So, like I said, this is Augie. He's the newest member of our family. He's a 9-week-old black lab (he was just about 8 weeks old when this picture was taken) and he's been with us just about 2 weeks. Needless to say we've been pretty busy trying to teach this little guy the ropes and make sure Rollins (our almost 3-year-old yellow lab) still knows we love him. Thankfully the boys actually get along really well, which was my biggest worry. Now if I could only get Augie housebroken... all in good time.

So anyway, that handsome little face is the reason it took me so long to make these German Chocolate Cupcakes.

It's difficult to bake while a puppy is running around under your feet. It's even harder to keep track of him to make sure he's not running around in another room doing something he shouldn't be. For those reasons I waited to bake until my hubby and I would both be home so he could keep an eye on the boys while I worked.

This recipe didn't involve much prep beforehand. I left both the butter and the eggs out overnight to get to room temperature. I had also chopped all the chocolate the day before and just put it in a tupperware until I needed it. I was making chocolate frozen yogurt that also required chopped semisweet chocolate so I figured doing all the chopping at once would save me some time in the long run. I love being efficient. On to the cupcakes... I started with melting the chocolate and after the chocolate was melted I let it cool while I buttered and floured the cupcake pans. One of my least favorite things as I've mentioned many times before.

Making the batter wasn't difficult and it didn't take very long to do. The only hiccup I came across when making the cupcakes was what they looked like when they were done, and getting them out of the cupcake pans. I filled the cupcake pans three-quarters full (or what I think is three-quarters full) and baked them for 20 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. When the cupcakes were done they were very flat and wide. They didn't bake up, they baked across, and in my opinion were quite ugly. But then again, I'm a sucker for a nice round cupcake. I can only conclude that I filled the cupcake pans too full, and since I only got 21 cupcakes instead of the 24 I was supposed to get that's probably the case. So, if I were to make them again I wouldn't fill them quite as full.

The other problem I came across was getting the cupcakes out of the pan. For whatever reason, buttering and flouring the cupcake pans didn't work like it normally does. Out of 21 cupcakes, I think only 2 or 3 of them came out cleanly. For the majority of the cupcakes there was at the very least a small portion that stuck to the bottom of the pan making the cupcakes look very ugly and making me very frustrated. The only thing I can think of is that cake flour doesn't work as well as all-purpose flour, or maybe I didn't butter them enough. I used a paper towel to apply the butter instead of just buttering the pans with the stick of butter itself. The butter was too soft and would have made a mess. I always apply Crisco with a paper towel so I figured using the same technique with butter would work just as well. So it was either the butter or the cake flour, something didn't work right.

After the cupcakes had cooled I set them aside in a tupperware until I could get to making the  Coconut-Pecan Frosting. Time and energy have been lacking for me lately so it took me a day or two to get to it. This frosting was a little more involved than a typical frosting but it wasn't that difficult. First order of business was chopping the pecans so they could be roasted. While the pecans roasted and cooled I worked on putting together the rest of the frosting. The recipe said to heat the frosting over medium heat until it thickened to the consistency of sour cream, roughly 10 minutes. I stirred constantly just like it said and at roughly 10 minutes the mixture wasn't that thick, nor was it the consistency of sour cream. So, I let it go another 10 minutes hoping the consistency would change and that I wouldn't ruin the frosting in the process.

The additional 10 minutes didn't make much of a difference. I suppose it was a little thicker, but it still wasn't sour cream consistency. But, at this point the mixture was boiling and I was worried about burning it, so I stopped when I got to 20 minutes of constant stirring and no success. I was hoping that taking it off the heat would also help it to thicken up a little bit... it did. Once I was done cooking the frosting I strained it through a fine sieve into a medium-sized bowl. I have a small sieve so this took a little while since I had to strain it in batches. Eventually I will invest in a larger sieve. When I was done straining the frosting I stirred in the remaining ingredients and let everything cool before I frosted the cupcakes.

While the frosting was cooling I sliced all the cupcakes in half and entertained the pups for a little while. When the frosting had cooled completely I put one tablespoon on the bottom half of the cupcake, placed the top half of the cupcake on that, and then spread some frosting on the top of each cupcake. This was a bit of a messy process as the frosting was quite sticky, but I thought the cupcakes actually turned out looking quite nice. Especially considering what they had looked like when I took them out of the pan. Don't get me wrong, some still looked a little rough, but they were much improved.

As for the taste of the cupcakes once they were frosted, I didn't love them, but I didn't hate them. I'm not a big fan of coconut or pecans, I know I've mentioned that before, so I didn't expect to like the frosting very much. The frosting itself wasn't terrible, and eating it with the cupcakes definitely helped. The cupcakes themselves, without the frosting were very good and I did actually eat more than one with no frosting at all... less calories! But, when completely finished and frosted I didn't get through half a cupcake. They weren't bad, they just didn't suit my fancy.

Skunked (Pupper le Pew)

This is Rollins. Our 2-year-old Yellow Lab. He is very handsome, and he knows it.

This is a skunk. Not mine and certainly not handsome.

A couple weeks ago on a mild September evening after the sun had set, these 2 met. And because of that chance meeting we have the story of the night Rollins was sprayed by a skunk.

It was roughly 9pm, give or take a few minutes. I was in the kitchen and my husband (Bobby) was in the bedroom. Rollins was also in the bedroom and started growling and barking out the window. He does this on occasion and whenever we look out the window we never see anything, and never quite know what he's barking at.

(Please note the image below is not even remotely to scale or at all accurate in terms of what our house actually looks like, but it gives you an idea of where things are.)

We decided to let him out, so Bobby put his collar on him and Rollins sprinted out the back door clearly keen on getting whatever creature was lurking in the darkness. I had tried to ask Bobby to check around the side of the house (where the skunk is on the drawing above) to make sure there wasn't anything there before Rollins went out. It's hard to see around the side of the house, especially at night and I was worried about him chasing whatever creature was there into the street. But Rollins was not to be stopped, he was on a mission.

Since Rollins literally took off off the deck I ran outside as well to make sure he wasn't going to run into the street. When he's chasing something, he has no concept of where he is. He is a retriever after all. Because it was dark I couldn't see what was on the side of the house. But by all the barking and growling Rollins was doing it was clear that he had found something. Bobby was in the yard going after Rollins to get him to come back onto the deck. Rollins is actually a pretty well behaved dog and listens most of the time, so back to the deck he came and stood with me while Bobby assessed the situation.

I asked him if he could see anything and he said, "I think it was a skunk." And instantly I'm thinking, "Oh, (expletive), I hope he didn't get sprayed." He was standing right next to me and I didn't smell a thing, I thought we were in the clear. Then I bent down and took a whiff. Yep, it was a skunk, and Rollins got sprayed. Skunk 1, Rollins 0. It was late, it was dark, everything was closed, what do we do? Google of course. Google always has the answer.

I stood on the deck with Rollins to keep the smell out of the house while Bobby Googled on his phone and ran down the options. I remember tomato juice being a remedy when I was a kid. I knew we didn't have any tomato juice so I was hoping there were other options. There were. We decided based on what we had on hand that giving him a bath with his own shampoo was the best option.

Before bathing him we checked his eyes and ears and they appeared to be fine. Apparently skunk spray is actually an oil, and it can burn the eyes and cause blindness. Rollins was good. Google also said to wipe down the sprayed animal, Rollins in this case, with paper towels to try to get some of the oil off before it soaked into his skin. We did that and then into the tub he went.

Rollins loves the water. He's a big fan of the pool and loves the hose, but he hates being in the bathtub. I wish I had taken a picture of how pitiful he looked while standing in the tub soaking wet. He was not a happy camper. We (Bobby) ended up giving him 2 consecutive baths with his regular dog shampoo and it did the trick. However, there was no remedy for the skunk smell that permeated the house. The smell was everywhere. Because the bedroom windows were open, and the incident occurred outside the bedroom windows, the smell had worked its way into the house. It was awful. We turned on all the fans, lit all the candles we had and opened all the windows. In the morning it was much better.

As for Rollins, he didn't smell the next day, but if he gets wet, even now that it's a couple weeks later, you can still smell a little bit of the skunk on him. But only if you're close to him. We read on Google that the smell can stay on animals that have been sprayed up to 2 years, so the sooner the situation is address the better. Since he was wearing his collar when he was sprayed that also stunk of skunk. We left it outside on the deck for a few days and airing it out completely got rid of the skunk smell. The towels we used to dry him off, and the clothes we were wearing while we bathed him were all also rid of the skunk smell after they had been washed.

We haven't seen the skunk since, but then again, I never saw it to begin with. I will say, I now do a quick check of the yard before I let him out at night, just to make sure I can't see, or smell anything. And now, when Rollins barks out into the darkness at what I think is nothing, I do a quick scan to see if there's anything there. Just in case.

If You Can't Stand the Heat... Stay Out of the Kitchen

As I'm sure everyone is aware, most of the U, S of A is melting and we're all experiencing one heck of a heat wave. I live in Connecticut. You know, New England, the northeast, where this winter we got the most snow in a calendar month since some date I can't remember. But, it was a long time ago, definitely before I lived in Connecticut, probably before I was born. Here's some evidence to prove it.

That's Rollins, our dog, and you can see that the snow is almost as high as the chain-link fence.

This is our "weather station" (a gift to Bobby from his brother) that we keep in the kitchen because we like to know what the temperature is outside. Although today I'd rather now know because it's so disgusting. That' right, it says 108.1 degrees outside. I didn't realize I had moved to Phoenix overnight. You'll also notice that it's a much cooler 93.5 degrees in the kitchen. The worst part is, it's actually refreshing to come in the house from outside.

We don't have air conditioning in the house because we have radiators for heat so there's no ventilation system in which to pump cool air through the house to keep it under a balmy 93 degrees during these beloved heat waves. However, last year through a stroke of brilliance and getting tired of sweating while sleeping with the fan on full blast and no sheets, purchased ourselves a window air conditioner for our bedroom. That air conditioner is my new best friend. Normally we only use it at night for sleeping and sometimes during the day when it's really hot for Rollins. Yes, he's very spoiled. As of late however, we've been leaving the AC on all day, (on economy to save some energy) and holing up in the bedroom because it's just too uncomfortable to be anywhere else in the house... including the kitchen.

I really wanted to keep up the stamina of a cupcake a week, and have been debating about when to bake this week's cupcake because of the temperature. I almost did it today thinking, how much hotter can the oven really make the house at this point? So what if the can of solid fat that was sitting on the counter from taco night returned to its previously occupied liquid state during the course of the day. Maybe it'll do me some good and I'll sweat off a few pounds. My beach vacation is right around the corner! Plus, I can always retreat to the bedroom and the AC when I can't stand it anymore.

But, the more I thought about it I decided today wasn't the day for baking. I'm already working up a sweat just sitting still, mixing and stirring might equate to a full-fledged workout, and that runs the risk of me sweating into the cupcake batter. Gross. I would never think of ruining a cupcake that way. So, instead of baking and working up more of a sweat, I did my best to stay cool... and so did Rollins.