A chocolate and peanut butter kind of week

I have watched “10 Things I Hate About You” three times in the last three days. Seriously. I think I might have a problem. I’ve loved the movie since it came out (probably because my mom thought it was inappropriate…what adolescent doesn’t love to rebel in some way?). A friend mentioned the other day their favorite band had a song on the movie, so naturally I had to watch. I had the soundtrack too, so I knew where it was. It’s just so great. “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?” “I think you can in Europe.” Or… “My insurance does not cover PMS!” Oh and Heath Ledger’s smile? SO wonderful. Sigh.


Anyway, point is, I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends lately. I’ve reconnected with a lot of old ones and am making new ones, and it’s totally wonderful. Like I talked about last time, I had a major life event happen recently — I became single for the first time in more than two years. If you know me well, you know I’m a serial long-term dater. My goal this time is to avoid that and just do things I want to and remind myself who I am. Some of those things happen to be watching movies, hanging out with people and baking, obviously. This week I combined a couple, when my friend Anne came over and helped me make cupcakes (and took a picture of me with them so I could prove I actually do make them!). It’s been a learning experience thus far, but it’s a good thing too. A little alone time isn’t bad. And keeping up with friends isn’t either.


One of my friends from school, Lauren, just got hired on as a copy editor at my newspaper. I’m so happy I get to see her regularly! She likes chocolate (or so she tells me) so I wanted to make her a chocolate-y dessert to welcome her. Kelly gave me some polka-dotted cupcake wrappers for graduation, and I bought some yellow sprinkle things to match, so a basic devil’s food cupcake and basic buttercream and voila! a chocolate dessert. I’m not sure I’d buy those sprinkles again, because they were definitely capable of cracking molars...but they tasted good, so it's a trade-off. They looked pretty though!


Fun fact about me — I LOVE peanut butter desserts. Cookies seemed like the right way to go, because I hadn’t made them in a while. I made this peanut butter cookie recipe from Smitten Kitchen once before, and my roommate Eric LOVED them. I forgot why until I made them again, but they’re soooo fluffy and awesome. A lot of times peanut butter cookies get crunchy or hard, and then they’re just not as wonderful. These stay light, I think because you beat the hell out of the butter and peanut butter at the beginning. A few Reese's Pieces on top and you’ve got one of the best peanut butter cookies ever.


Like I said earlier, Anne came over to help me with a dessert this week too. Our sports editor at work missed a few desserts I made, so I told him to request something (I love requests! You should request something! It’s a challenge and I like those). He said peanut butter and chocolate. I’ve been kind of averse to this combo this summer because it’s been SO hot and muggy and it seems like such a heavy combination, but this cupcake had been sitting on my list of bookmarks for a while. Anne and I made them, but it really meant more talking than baking. They were tasty, although a bit rich for my tastes. The filling is pretty thick and the frosting so sweet, but if you like that combo, these are probably right for you.


For the holiday weekend, I drove out to the lake to see my dad, stepmom and stepbrother. My stepbrother, Justin, is in town from Canada, and he just returned there from London. It’s so nice out on the lake. We took the boat out after dark, anchored it and just stayed in the middle of the lake. The stars were so clear, and the Milky Way just looked like smoke. I made my first recipe out of “Booze Cakes,” a rum cake with a spiked chocolate icing. Very tasty and very pretty, although the rum in the cake didn’t come out as much as I thought it would. The bourbon in the chocolate sauce, though, you could taste.

So now I’m on to another work week. A couple things, I’ve switched so this blog has its own domain, ingredientsofa20something.com. Long and obnoxious, I know, but I didn’t really want to shorten it. The old address will still go there, but I thought it would be worth getting its own address. Plus, today I had centerpiece stories on the fronts of two sections of the newspaper! The first was about a local woman who is shaving her head to raise awareness for childhood cancer after her daughter was diagnosed. The other was about a woman who just returned from two years in the Peace Corps based in Togo. It's always incredibly satisfying to see these kinds of things in print (and online, with comments). Woo hoo!

Cinnamon Toast Crunch cupcakes: A new leg in the cereal cupcake marathon, plus some yummy cookies

I know it's been a while since I've written. But it's summer, right? I'm allowed to take time off. At least that's what I tell myself. Anyway, with the trip to Chicago and work, my schedule got all off last week. So I blog now! Just because I haven't written doesn't mean I haven't been baking though, of course. You knew that though.

My plan was to have a bunch of cupcakes in Chicago and talk about those places, but the trip got cut short unexpectedly, so instead I made my own desserts. I did have one cupcake at Sweet Mandy B's bakery in Lincoln Park. It was a creamsicle cupcake, and definitely tasty. It was pretty fun to eat it in the bakery, t00, which was painted all in pastel colors and very dollhouse-ish. It's not a bakery that focuses on cupcakes, so not that many were available. Not bad for an orange cupcake though.

When I got home, I decided to make a cookie recipe I've been itching to try for a while now. I'm a huge fan of sesame seeds (sesame seed bagels are the only way to go! unless there's asiago too). I found a recipe for sesame cookies from Atlantic Kitchen while browsing and thought they looked really tasty. They called for white and black sesame seeds, though, and I hadn't found black sesame seeds until a recent trip to Dean and Deluca. On a side note, if I were a millionaire, I'd probably buy everything in that store. A-MAZ-ing. Anyway, armed with two colors of sesame seeds, I made these cookies. It called for three kinds of sugar: white, brown and vanilla. I didn't have a vanilla bean handy to make the vanilla sugar and didn't feel like waiting, so vanilla extract it was. The only way I can describe the flavor is that it tastes like fall. People at work were a little reluctant to try them, but ended up liking them. They're nice and chewy inside but the sesame seeds gave some crunch. Definitely on my list of things to make again.

That day I also got a request for plain old chocolate chip cookies. I don't make plain things very often, so when I make them I always get the yummy surprise of how tasty chocolate chip cookie dough is. Mmmmm. I think my baking instincts have gotten better, because I took them out and they were perfect. Also a huge hit at work.

I made a couple other things too, but nothing super yummy that I haven't made before. But then I decided to make devil's food cupcakes for Kelly's birthday. She's a big Toy Story fan, so I made ones with her favorite dino on top. The cake has sour cream, which seems kind of weird, but it cuts the sweet just a touch and makes for a really tasty cupcake.

Then I created my own cupcakes. Kelly came over to help. My friend Taylor suggested I try more cereal cupcakes after making Fruity Pebbles ones, so these were Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I decided to make my favorite yellow cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen, as usual. I've had a hard time figuring out how much batter to put in cupcakes without them overflowing, because the cake rises a lot. This time I put two cookie scoops, and they turned out perfectly! Add some crushed cereal, a cinnamon icing and some cereal on top, and we have Cinnamon Toast Crunch cupcakes. Wait until right before eating them to put the garnish of the cereal, though, because they get soggy sitting there. These were a hit too :)

Cinnamon Toast Crunch cupcakes

For the cake (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

This is half of her recipe, because otherwise you end up with a gazillion cupcakes. Mine made about 20.

2 cups plus 1 tablespoon cake flour (not self-rising)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk, well-shaken
1 handful Cinnamon Toast Crunch, crushed into chunks

Preheat oven to 350°F. Put cupcake liners into tin.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping down the bowl after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture will look curdled). Add flour mixture in three batches, mixing until each addition is just incorporated. Fold in crushed cereal. Put into prepared tins (like I said, I did two cookie scoops, which is like half full).

Bake until golden brown, which is generally a little longer than 15 minutes. Just watch it.

For the frosting (Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcake Book):
3 sticks butter, softened
4 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Ground cinnamon, to taste

Beat butter until light and creamy. Add powdered sugar about 1 cup at a time. After adding each batch, increase speed and beat heavily for about 10 seconds (this makes the frosting lighter). After all sugar is added, add vanilla and cinnamon to taste.

Frost cupcakes, top with cereal. Yum!

Also, last night my team won at trivia. It was fun! I've been going on Sunday nights when I don't work, but we haven't won yet. This time we did, and that means money. Woo hoo! My claim to fame: knowing that "Saludos Amigos" is the 1942 Disney film that's only 42 minutes long but still considered a featured animated film. If you know me well, it probably doesn't surprise you that I possess that knowledge :). And, on a final note, here's what Kansas looked like after a storm last week. Oh, Kansas summer.