Sean's birthday was last week and i'm just now posting about our night. we went to Buca di Beppo (i'm not going to try to spell check it) with Mike's sister, Michelle and her fiance, Mike, sean, mike, me and andy, and his new friend who came late (ps: new friend definitely gets our approval. what a polite and nice guy!).
The white-iced cupcakes are "cinnamon bun" flavor, which i made by making vanilla bean-flecked cupcakes with a very rich batter and basting them once cooked with the cinnamon syrup left over from the apple cups and streudel from a few days prior.
the other cupcake was a round version of the jeweled poppyseed loaves with raspberry butter that i posted pictures of 2 months ago or so. i'd include a link here but it would likely make me a bit depressed to consider how few posts i have made so far and therefore how easy it is to search through the small amount of entries on the blog.
the pink icing of those cupcakes was a heated blend of some frozen icing my mom left in my freezer from our wedding (!!!) and strawberries, icing sugar, 3 drops (literally) of orange blossom water, and lemon juice. it took two takes to get this right, mainly because orange blossom water is the most intense flavoring to use... if you add even 1/4 teaspoon too much of this liquid (basically concentrated bottled flowers), you get a taste full of weird lilac and apple blossoms in your mouth. howEVER, if you use it sparingly (1-2 drops per fruit situation) it definitely helps build a fruit flavor. it's the weirdest thing; it really tastes like flowers when you taste and smell it independently, however, when you add a very small amount to anything fruit-heavy you really notice a big fruit assault... it's almost a way to boost or enhance the flavor of the fruit that you buy in addition to building on a new flavor level.
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and here might be a good point to talk about your freezer. personally, i can deal with baking a cake if the calendar dictates or the mood allows. howeverwhen it comes to thinking about icing it, my motivation stops and my fabulous idea of baking something for someone or some event burns up. for some reason, cakes are okay by me, but an extra step that the icing involves is almost too much. well, i'm here to advocate making a cake (or a batch of cupcakes) when needed/wanted and making a double or triple batch of icing. a vanilla is practical, but a chocolate is always appreciated (however, you can always make a chocolate icing with a vanilla base by adding cocoa or melted chocolate-- fyi). anyway, just throwing out an idea.
1 comment:
You're crazy nerdy.
Love you.
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