Looking for a recipe to make this weekend for a Christmas party?? Or maybe you want to stay in, put on your comfy clothes and bake something really special for your family? Here’s a decadent, perfectly chocolate cupcake from our very own Malary with a simply elegant snowflake on top.  

Malary (my niece and Melody’s daughter) is just 18, but she is already one of the best cooks and bakers that we know. The cupcake testers around here are moaning and groaning with chocolate-y pleasure….these are some of the moist-est fudgy-est cupcakes you’ll ever make.  Enjoy her amazing recipe!

xoxo
(Aunt) Kathy

Triple Chocolate Snowflake Cupcakes with Chocolate Glaze

Cupcakes:
1 box devil’s food cake mix
1 (4 oz) box instant chocolate pudding mix
1 C sour cream
1 C vegetable oil
4 eggs – lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla
1 or 2 C mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350*. Line 2 muffin tins with paper or foil cupcake liners. (This recipe will make about 24 cupcakes.)

Beat the cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, oil, eggs, and vanilla on medium speed for about 2 minutes, or until well combined. Then fold in the mini chocolate chips.

Fill the muffin wells with batter about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until the top of the cupcakes spring back when softly touched. Allow them to cool for about 10 minutes before you take them out of the muffin tins. Then place them on a cooling rack and let them cool completely before dipping them in the glaze.

Glaze:
1 1/2 C powdered sugar
3 T cocoa powder
3 T milk
1/2 t vanilla
pinch of salt

Whisk all the ingredients together until the mixture is smooth. If it seems too thick, add more milk just 1 teaspoon at a time.

Dip the tops of the cooled cupcakes in the chocolate glaze and let the excess drip off. The glaze will harden in about 5 or 10 minutes.

For the snowflakes, melt a bag of white candy melts in a microwave safe bowl and then poor into a ziploc bag. Cut a tiny hole in the corner and go to town drawing snowflakes on top of the cupcakes… or any other design you want! These ones have little pearl sprinkles placed on the ends of each snowflake “spoke”.

Enjoy!

On my best friend’s 23rd birthday, I made big plans to make a big cake…..a tiered cake.

I baked the cakes in the morning, and planned to put them together a few hours before the party that my husband and I were hosting.  Except when I went to take the cakes out of their pans, they were stuck.  I had lots and lots of yummy cake that was stuck in cake pans.  I couldn’t see any pretty way to get them out.  So I did what any girl in her early twenties would do.

I called my mom.

Like always she had the perfect solution – cut it all up and put it into icecream cups….as if I’d planned to make birthday parfaits all along.  Genius.

Sorry for the horrible picture…we were obviously singing happy birthday.  Also, that’s the birthday hat….she hit a lot of people in the head with that during the party.  On accident, of course.  What you really want to see is the delicious birthday cake parfait.

So….here’s the thing…..if I can mess up a simple cake, I can certainly mess up an apple pie.

And we all love pie.  What we don’t all love is making pie.  Especially fruit pie.

It’s scary.

And intimidating.

And you can’t be sure about how it’s going to turn out.

UNLESS you make everything separately and turn it into a fun little pie parfait!  We call it “Deconstructed Pie” … you’ll call it “stress relief” or “deliciousness in a cup” or “wondefulness”.  Doesn’t really matter what you call it.

Start with the the filling….melt 1/4 cup butter with one can of frozen apple juice concentrate…..

put it on low and let it melt together and reduce a little while you work on the crust…..

First gather your ingredients:

3 Cups Flour
1 tsp Salt
1 1/4 cups regular (not butter flavored….trust us) shortening
1 tsp Vinegar
1 beaten egg
6 1/2 Tbsp Cold Water

Mix the flour and salt together, then cut the shortening in with a pastry cutter until it’s crumbly (don’t worry too much about it….the actual name of this crust recipe is “never fail pie crust”.  It’s reliable.

So back to the pastry cutter, cut it until it’s crumbly.   They say it should be “pea sized”, but really it should look like this:

Okay I guess that’s sort of pea sized.  Just a note: there is really no substitute for a pastry cutter.  Fork, banana masher, fingers….they’ll make you feel like you’re not doing it right.  Get a pastry cutter and make yourself feel better.

Then mix the egg, vinegar and ice-cold water together (measure the water from a bowl of ice water, so it’s super cold!), and add it to the flour mixture.  Then mix it til it’s all moistened…don’t overmix it.

When it looks like this:

Put it onto your floured surface and form a ball….

And like any pie crust, roll it out….

Looks like any regular old pie so far, right?

Here’s where we change that:

Cut the crust into strips or pieces or whatever and put them on a cookie sheet, then sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar.  No perfection required.

Then bake it at 425 degrees for 12 minutes or until it’s well browned.

Mmmmm….you’re gonna want to taste this…it’s goooooood!

You can set the crust aside (if you trust yourself enough to look at it while you finish the filling…if you’re like me, you’ll have to put it away.).  You’ll be breaking this up into slightly smaller pieces right before you serve it, so don’t worry if it breaks.

Now we can finish the filling….

Remember the butter and juice concentrate we put together on the stove a while ago?  By now it hopefully looks more like this:

You want it to be syrupy.  Then you’ll add the apples.

We used 2 golden delicious apples and 6 granny smith apples.  You’ll find that the golden delicious apples sort of melt away and turn into yummy applesauce, while the golden delicious keep their form.  They all add to the end product.

You’ll want to add about 1 Tbsp of cinnamon and if you feel like it isn’t sweet enough, you can add Agave or sugar or honey to taste.  (Ours was sweet enough without anything else.)

Cook them down until they’re tender and look like this:

Mmmmmm….the juice makes them sooooo appley!!!  Yum!

Then easy peasy….put some crust in the bottom of a parfait cup, then put come filling in, then crust, then more filling, and icecream (or any cream for that matter), and for good measure, add a little crust to the top to make it pretty.  We also added a little drizzle of caramel sauce….because why wouldn’t we.  You can find that recipe here…just follow the link and look for the modification to make caramel sauce.

Just as delicious as pie (or maybe better), with flaky, crunchy crust and perfect filling!

Hope you try it – let us know if you do!!!

xoxo

Perfect Deconstructed Apple Pie

CRUST:
3 Cups Flour
1 tsp Salt
1 1/4 cups regular (not butter flavored….trust us) shortening
1 tsp Vinegar
1 beaten egg
6 1/2 Tbsp Cold Water

Mix the flour and salt together, cut in shortening.  Mix the vinegar, egg and cold water together then mix them into the flour mixture until it starts to form a ball.  Then turn it onto a floured surface and roll it out.  Once it’s rolled out (about 1/8 inch thick), cut it into strips (don’t worry about perfection), and put the strips on a cookie sheet.  Bake them at 425 degrees (f) until it’s golden brown.  About 12 minutes.  Set aside.

FILLING:
1/4 cup butter
1 can apple juice concentrate
2 golden delicious apples (peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces)
6 granny smith apples (peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces)
1 T cinnamon
Sugar or Agave to taste (optional)
Juice from 1/2 lemon

In a large sauce/saute pan, melt 1/4 cup butter and 1 can apple juice concentrate together.  Simmer on medium-low until the mixture thickens and becomes syrupy.  Add in apples, cinnamon and sugar or agave (if wanted), and lemon juice.  Cook until the apples are tender.

ASSEMBLY:
Crumble (not TOO small!) some of your crust pieces into the bottom of parfait cups, then add some filling, then more crust, then more filling.  Garnish with a little more crust and caramel sauce for good measure.  (Caramel recipe here – look for the modification to make caramel sauce instead of caramel corn.)

You know  you want one of these right now…..

You may feel intimidated by the idea of making cream puffs or eclairs.  I know I was.  Until I watched Chelsea (my sister….Kathy’s daughter) make them.

They’re not so scary….and even if they were they’d be TOTALLY worth any hyperventilation.

First, gather your ingredients…..

2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

Start by mixing together the best (and easiest) part, to get your self confidence up and also because it needs time to thicken.  That’s right….we’re making the filling.

I suppose there’s probably a real custard recipe out there somewhere, but this one is soooo yummy and soooooooooo easy you might not want to bother being fancy with custard.

We make filling by mixing 2 packages of instant jello with 2 cups of cream and 1 cup of milk.  Don’t over mix it.  One time we mixed it in a blender….only for a few seconds, but it was enough to make it so stiff that we couldn’t even use it….(I mean, don’t get me wrong, it certainly didn’t go to waste….we took care of it.)….just….for this, mix it with a wisk and let it thicken on its own while you work on the next step…

This is all going to look a little weird….just let it be weird and trust me….it will get unweird (and delicious)….

Start by putting 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup of water to a boil.  Once it’s boiling take it off the heat and add the flour and salt (which if you’re a responsible little girl, you’ve mixed together before hand) and mix it until it forms a ball.

I told you was going to be awkward, but keep stirring and it will come together and start to look like this…..

Now it’s going to start looking REALLY bad….and it’s going to feel uncomfortable and like you’re doing everything wrong.  If that’s how you feel, then you’re right on track.

What you’re going to do is let your little ball of dough cool off for a minute (we’re never too technical about how long we wait….maybe we even wait just for formality’s sake.  I think the point is not to scramble the eggs.  Seriously though like 4 minutes is long enough)…

Then add the eggs one at a time…and mix it in.  Or cheat and do 2 at a time.  No one is grading you.

The point is mix in the eggs.

You are going to think you’re doing it wrong….because it will look wrong…..and it will look separated….and like it’s never going to come together.  One minute you’ll want to give up and the next….

wha-lah…..it’s all better.  (I wouldn’t lie to you.)  Just keep stirring.

Then put all your dough into a piping bag (or a ziplock bag would do just fine)…..and cute a fairly large hole in the top….then pipe your little cream puffs onto a cookie sheet.  Some tips:

1. If your cookie sheet is not nonstick (double negative! so would you say simply “stick”?) it should be greased.  It’s going to be hard to pipe onto something so slippery, but they’ll stick if you don’t.

2. These are going to puff up (obviously), so make them small and spread them out….like so:

3. You may have to get fancy to get the cream puffs to form….Use your fingers, dipped it a little water, to pinch the dough off and to smooth them out on top if you need to.

Then bake them…..425 degrees (f) for 20-25 minutes or until they’re golden….like this:

Now it’s time for that delicious filling you made….don’t worry….if you’ve had a couple little tastes, there will still be plenty. : )

For this you’ll need a piping bag and a sharp tip for filling…..(I can’t think of a substitute tool…..can you think of something else you could use??)

Fill up the piping bag, then jam your tip into each cream puff and squeeze the bag to fill up each cream puff.

Don’t be stingy.  Nobody ever complained that their cream puff was too creamy.

I suppose you could stop there, but why would you when these beauties are just begging to be topped with chocolate???

So…whip some ganache together by warming 1/4 cup of cream……warm it til it bubbles around the edges.  It won’t take long….

Then pour it over 3/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips….the hot cream will melt the chocolate chips….

Again, you might think it will ever come together….keeps stirring….it will…and if it doesn’t, put it in the microwave for 5 seconds….

Again with the piping bag (or ziplock) ….drizzle these babies with chocolate……

If you showed up with these at a party, we’d be best friends.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.  Give them a whirl……

INGREDIENTS:
2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

DIRECTIONS:
1. Mix together vanilla instant pudding mix, cream and milk. Cover and refrigerate to set.
2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F
3. In a large pot, bring water and butter to a rolling boil. Stir in flour and salt until the mixture forms a ball. Transfer the dough to a large mixing bowl. Using a wooden spoon or stand mixer, beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased nonstick baking sheet (otherwise grease it).
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown. Centers should be dry.
5. When the shells are cool, either split and fill them with the pudding mixture, or use a pastry bag to pipe the pudding into the shells.
6. Top with chocolate ganache