A Perfect Summer Dessert!!

When it comes to summer desserts, light and fruity is much more refreshing then something heavy. One of my favorite fruit-cake combinations has always been angel food cake. You can pair almost any fruit with the sweet, light, and fluffy cake. The easiest thing to do is go out and buy an angel food cake and cut up some fruit for the topping, but there is nothing homemade about that! I decided to take on the challenge of making angel food cake from scratch, a more tedious task than I had imagined. The thing about angel food cake is that everything must be mixed very precisely. I like things already portioned out, so instead of making a cake, I went with angel food cupcakes.

I looked up a few recipes, but ended up taking parts of a couple to come up with my own. My fruit of choice: blueberries! With a hint of lemon.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup of cake flour, sifted
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 egg whites, room temperature
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• zest of 1 lemon
• blueberries

This recipe makes approximately 16 cupcakes. Heat oven to 325.

If you don't have cake flour (which I do not) you can use flour and cornstarch as a substitute. For every 1 cup of cake flour the recipe calls for, use 1 cup of flour - 2 Tbsp. Add in 2 Tbsp. of cornstarch.

 

Whisk together the first 3 ingredients.

Mix the egg whites, water, vanilla, and cream of tartar.

 Mix the egg mixture on low until foamy. The turn the speed to medium and slowly add in the sugar 1 Tbsp at a time. Turn the speed to high and beat for 3-5 minutes, until medium peaks form.

*This is the tricky part and where you have to be patient. Make sure the mixture isn't too glossy and stiff. The peaks should fall over when you put your finger or handle of a spoon in the mix.

Add in the lemon zest to the egg mixture.

Turn the mixer off. Add the remaining dry ingredients (powdered sugar, flour, and salt) by folding in 2 parts. Fold as many blueberries as you would like.

Divide among lined cupcake pan. Bake for 15-18 minutes.

You can top of angel food cake with a meringue icing, but I decided to go a healthier route. I mixed a little bit of vanilla extract (lemon would also be very good) into fat free cool whip and topped each cupcake with a little cool whip. Garnish with fresh blueberries.

The perfect end to a fresh summer dinner of salmon and salad.

I was finally able to bring one of my treats home to Pittsburgh for my family to enjoy! My mom made a delicious dinner of salmon and salad. We finished it off with blueberry angel food cupcakes! Perfect on a hot summer night when you want a little something sweet.

There are things to make besides cupcakes...who knew?!

I have been promising myself that I would venture out of the cupcake world and make some real food. Well today I finally did. Over the summer, I am going to try and master not just baking, but cooking healthy meals. It is always better to be well rounded! After a weekend of delicious food and lots of beer drinking, I felt like I needed to focus on healthy eating this week. A trip to Trader Joe's was in order. And a successful trip it was. I decided to make a weeks worth of meals to include, kale, zucchini, sweet potatoes, and fish.

For my mixer project tonight, I decided on mashed sweet potatoes. But not just any mashed sweet potatoes. Light, flavorful, summer mashed sweet potatoes.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Pineapple and Banana

Easy and delicious! Now for the rest of my meal. I wanted something spicy to compliment the sweeter taste of my sweet potatoes. So I created my own chimichurri sauce to cook my fish, kale, zucchini, and onions in.

Ingredients: 1 lb sweet potatoes, 1 banana, 1/2 cup pineapples, 1/4 cup orange juice, 2 tablespoons honey, salt and pepper to taste

Peel, cut and boil the potatoes until tender.

Add all ingredients to the standing mixer.

Mash with flat beater, but don't over beat so they are a little bit chunky.

Chimichurri Sauce

Ingredients: garlic, parsley, ground pepper, red pepper flakes, olive oil, rice vinegar, water

Throw all ingredients into the food processor to blend. I didn't measure anything, but estimated how much I would need to get the flavor I wanted. The recipe I was looking at used white wine vinegar, but I used rice vinegar and it tasted great.

Pour over top of kale, onions, zucchini and fish.

Cook on low until fish is done, veggies tender.

The perfect combination of sweet and spicy.

A healthy, light, refreshing meal that I will enjoy all week!

More healthy mixer cooking to come next week!



Is it a pie or a cupcake?

Happy Memorial Day! When it comes to Memorial Day cookouts, the food possibilities are endless. My mixer and I could have whipped up many delicious dishes, but I had some people to impress with my culinary skills. I decided to stick with something that is tried and true. You guessed it...cupcakes! But these weren't going to be just any cupcakes. They are cupcakes that look like berry pies! Perfect for a start of summer cookout.

First, I found a delicious vanilla cupcake recipe from Martha Stewart. The recipe makes 24-30 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cups cake flour
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla


Mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt until combined. Add the butter until coated. The only adjustment I made was for the cake flour because I didn't have any. I used a little over 1 cup of regular flour, and 3 Tbsp. cornstarch.

Whisk wet ingredients together, then add to the dry mix in 3 parts.

Bake at 325 for 17-20 minutes.

Next - the surprise on the inside! This really makes it taste like a pie. I put some frozen berries on the stove, added sugar and cornstarch to make the berry filling.
Now it is cupcake filling time!

 

Time to decorate!

Making the icing look like pie crust.




Mini berry pies in the making! Cover the cupcake with a thin layer of icing.
Cover the top of the cupcake with M & M's. Lattice icing over the top to look like the top of the pie.
The outside crust is made with a star tip.

2 Dozen Cupcakes!



I ran out of M & M's, so I made some picnic ants on the grass. Simply put a few drops of green food coloring in a bag with coconut to make the grass. Then use brown M & Ms or other large brown candy to make the ants.

 Needless to say, my filled cupcakes again were a hit (and hopefully impressed some people)! Everyone thought they were adorable and love the fruit surprise in the center! But now it's bathing suit season. I think I need to lay off the cupcakes and make something healthier next time!