#6~Cinco de Mayo Yumminess!!

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas with salad!!
http://lillyella.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-kitchen-creamy-chicken-enchiladas.html

These are yummy and so easy! I used 4 chicken breasts and kept everything else the same. Last night I made 8 enchiladas. They aren't real spicy, (I don't do spicy..) but the heat can be easily increased.

For dessert, Key Lime Cupcakes with Coconut Buttercream!
http://icecreambeforedinner.blogspot.com/2007/12/key-lime-cupcakes.html
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Coconut-Buttercream-104915

This has to be the best batter I've ever made!! I still had my cast on when I was zesting the limes~tough job, so it ended up a bit skimpy~there was simply no way I could hold those little limes with an immobilized thumb! The recipe made 16 cupcakes and they taste even better this morning than they did last night. (if eating cupcakes for breakfast is wrong, then I don't want to be right..) I made a full recipe of the icing as I'm planning to make cupcakes (pina colada) on Saturday night when we have people over for 'Cinco de Mayo meets Hockey Night in Canada' Should be fun!

#5~Orange-Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Ganache and Hazelnut Buttercream Frosting

Don't they look delish? I made half the cupcake and icing recipes which made 17 cupcakes and kind of ball-parked the filling. I topped them with candied orange peel left over from a previous cupcake experiment. They are very sweet, but def yummy! Here's one opened up to show the nutella filling!

The recipe is from:

http://sourandsweet.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/orange-chocolate-hazelnut/

#4~

I ventured back into the realm of the kitchen today, thinking it couldn't be too difficult to operate the kitchenaid one-handed~I had surgery a week ago and am sporting a huge honkin' cast on my left hand and forearm~and managed pretty well except for taking the pan out of the oven. I used a 12-cup pan thinking it would be easiest, but it was not easy to get the hot pan out of the oven, with one hand, trying not to damage the cupcake goodness!

My cupcake choice today: White chocolate sour cream cupcakes, a recipe I found on 'cakeonthebrain' blog . Scraping nearly every bit of batter out of the bowl (no easy feat with one hand!) I was able to get 12 cupcakes. They are a bit flat on top, and they stuck to the rim of the pan, so they all ended up with somewhat lifted tops as I had to loosen the edges with a knife. Then I made a white chocolate cream cheese icing, subbing baileys in for the milk. I didn't go too heavy with the icing sugar, since my preference is a softer and less sweet icing. The cupcake itself is light textured with a subtle white chocolate taste and nicely moist. The Baileys icing is very good, with barely a hint of cream cheese flavor coming thru. All in all, very yummyful, and now I'm off to do the one-handed kitchen clean-up!

#3~'Grandma's Lemon Cupcakes'

Well, not my Grandmas cupcakes, but a recipe in an Esther Brody book I picked up a few years ago and have never used until today. There's sour cream in the batter, which was very thick and a bit hard to get into the cupcake liners, but they baked up just fine and are quite yummy!

I wasn't sure what to do about the frosting, but turned to page and found a lemon cream cheese icing! This made me happy as I didn't want to make lemon curd and don't like the taste of lemon extract. I used low fat cream cheese tho, so it's runny and has a bit of an aftertaste~lesson learned!! I added a ton more icing sugar but it didn't thicken up as much as I would have liked. From now on it's the full fat stuff for me! So a thumbs up for the cupcake and a thumbs down for the icing...

#2

Well, I did bake cupcakes the other night, my 'default' chocolate cupcake recipe~a wacky cake made with coffee instead of water, and topped with the Strawberry Buttercream mentioned in the previous post~they were awesome, and disappeared pretty quickly! Even found the cat licking the buttercream off one! Although I made only half the icing recipe for 21 cupcakes, there's left overs~will make more soon..

#1

I picked up the latest issue of Martha Stewart magazine yesterday~who could resist all those cupcakes! The recipes make lots, so I'll be off to buy more baking pans today. The strawberry buttercream icing sounds to-die-for!

(image:marthastewart.com)