A Day Late, But Not a Cupcake Short

Yes, I normally post on Sundays, but this Sunday someone threw a monkey wrench in my plan. I worked until 8pm last night and was going to get to blogging when I got home from work, but while still at work I got a text message from Bobby and the conversation went like this...

Bobby: "How much do u love me?"

Me: "I'm marrying you, so I guess that means I love you a whole lot."

Bobby: "Ok well I locked my keys in my car at Fishers."

Me: "So I'm marrying an idiot."

Bobby: "Yes lol... buuut if you drive over my spare set you will get a home-cooked meal by chef Pedrozov."

So clearly you can see what happened. I left work, stopped at home, fed Rollins, got Bobby's keys and drove over to our friend John's house. I did get dinner, but they had all already eaten without me, and I had to reheat my food. It was good, don't get me wrong, and it was nice to not have to cook for myself, but at the very least my beloved fiance could have waited for me. I ate, the Sunday Night Football game was on, so we watched that and I indulged in some leftover Halloween candy the boys still had. Mini Twix are delicious and my downfall. But, today is a new day, and as far as I know Bobby hasn't locked his keys in his car.

Now, to the important part... the cupcakes. Ladies and gentlemen, it's official. The first phase of project cupcake has concluded. The baking of the peanut butter and jelly cupcakes has resulted in the completion of the swirled and sprinkled portion of Martha's cupcake cookbook. 18 cupcakes are in the books (no pun intended), I can't quite believe it either. In honor of this momentous occasion I thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane to relive some of the highlights, the low lights, and everything in between.

To get it out of the way... let's start with the "bad" news, and my least favorite (and also ugliest, two for one!), tres leches cupcakes.

The horrible picture speaks for itself. Next time around these bad boys will get less tres leches (and much better lighting) and maybe I'll like them more.

Of course, there always has to be a beauty queen on the bunch, these blueberries-and-cream cupcakes were the best looking in my opinion. But then again, it may just be that I'm partial to purple. My bridesmaids will be wearing that color after all.

Most surprising cupcakes goes to...

... rhubarb cupcakes! I had no idea what to expect with these cupcakes, and I thought for sure I wouldn't like them. I had never worked with or even eaten rhubarb so my expectations were low. Turned out I really liked the taste and thought they were quite pretty as well. Too bad I couldn't convince anyone else that they were delicious. As soon as anyone heard rhubarb they ran. They didn't know what they were missing.

Most likely to never make again goes to...

... date-nut mini cupcakes! It's not that these cupcake weren't good, because they weren't horrible, it's just that if I had to pick one of these to never have again, I wouldn't be sad to miss out on these. We already know I'm not a big fan of nuts in my cupcakes and after making these we also learned that I'm terrified of dates because they look like giant slugs. That's an image I'm not going to be able to get out of my head, and to be honest, when I think of these cupcakes I just see a giant slug in my mind. Not the mental image you want when you're eating something.

Last, but not least, the favorite. This shouldn't be a shocker. The winner is...

... carrot cake cupcakes! Carrot cake is my favorite cake, hands down. I love it. It's my dessert of choice if and when I get dessert at a restaurant. While this recipe is different from the recipe that I use when I make carrot cake it's still just as tasty. And, out of the 18 cupcakes I've made so far, I would pick carrot cake first every time I had to choose.

Hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane. It made me want a carrot cake cupcake. What's coming up next? You'll just have to wait and see.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes

Peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, jelly... Family Guy anyone? Or at least I think that's from Family Guy. It's ok, I don't watch it either, but I've heard that somewhere before. First, let me start with the photos. A lovely friend of mine recently purchased for me a portable photo studio as an early birthday gift and these cupcakes were my first guinea pig in trying it out. I think they came out pretty well, especially since it came with no instructions. Practice will surely make perfect, right?

I should also apologize for being a day late with my post. You may or may not be aware of the massive snow storm that came through Connecticut this weekend. We were one of the fortunate ones to not lose power and to not have any significant damage to our home. However, some of our friends lost power and still don't have it back, so we've been taking people in so they have a warm place to sleep and hot water to shower. Needless to say things have been a little busy around the house and my office has been monopolized by house guests. Right now the house is currently empty, except for Rollins who's sleeping on the couch (gotta love a full day of doggy daycare) so I'm trying to make the most of my free time tonight before everyone comes back.

So, moving on to what's featured in my pictures... peanut butter and jelly cupcakes. These cupcakes are the last in the first section of the cookbook so I was excited to make them for many reasons. One, because I feel like I've reached a milestone in my project in the fact that I've completed the first section. Two, Bobby's favorite thing in the whole world is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yes, he may be 30 years old, but he could eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or pizza) everyday and be completely happy with that. So, I was excited to see how my peanut butter and jelly sandwich expert would like peanut butter and jelly cupcakes.

Before I started baking I remembered to leave out everything that had to be at room temperature before I started working. I also read through the entire recipe. My first order of business was chopping the peanuts, which is rather difficult considering that peanuts are pretty small (I also ended up using honey roasted because I can't read. But I will swear that when I put them in my shopping cart, the package said dry roasted). But, I did manage to successfully chop the peanuts without successfully chopping off any of my fingers. Hooray. After chopping the peanuts all the hard work was pretty much done.

Similar to these applesauce-spice cupcakes, the batter for these cupcakes was also quite thick so I wasn't able to use my pour-by-Pyrex method for the second week in a row. Very depressing. Again I used a tablespoon and spooned about 1 1/2 tablespoons into each cupcake liner. All the cupcakes came out pretty perfectly and I only yielded 2 less cupcakes than the recipe said I would. Both batches of cupcakes were baked for 22 minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. They came out perfectly with this amount of baking time. Golden brown, and just the right size.

Time for the frosting, and a new one to make at that! Double win! These cupcakes called for creamy peanut butter frosting, doesn't that sound delicious and fattening? This frosting wasn't too difficult to make (and I got to use my stand mixer) but I did have a moment of panic when I was afraid the heavy cream wasn't going to turn into medium-firm peaks. It took a little longer than normal and I nervously stared at it every few minutes wondering if it was ever going to firm up, and what my back-up plan would be if it didn't. Luckily, my whisk and mixer started doing their thing and I had peaks! I folded the whipped cream into the peanut butter-cream cheese mixture to finish everything off. The frosting wasn't as thick as I thought it would be and it was actually quite spreadable. For the finishing touch each cupcake got a little dollop of strawberry preserves. I went with preserves instead of jelly because I like that preserves have little chunks of strawberry in them.

To be honest, from the start I didn't think I would like these cupcakes. Not because I'm not a fan of peanut butter and jelly, because I am, but because I had a feeling these would be pretty dense and pretty peanut buttery cupcakes... I was right. I think I would have liked them more if the frosting was a little sweeter. I kept tasting it as I was adding each ingredient while making it, waiting for the sweetness to emerge and I got nothing. I didn't try a completed cupcake until I took the pictures and I still had the same issue. I needed more sweetness. I had one bite and didn't eat any more. I hate to say I didn't like a cupcake, because it feels wrong. But, I didn't like these. Luckily for me and my taste buds, there are roughly 50 more cupcakes to make... yes, I counted.