Cupcake Boxes from Bake-A-Box - Review, Giveaway, and Coupon Code!

A Tale of No Cupcake Boxes: Do Not Try This At Home
(like a certain author of this blog)

It was a sunny day and Blogger X loaded her cupcakes into plain bakery boxes (not cupcake boxes with cupcake inserts).  She carefully held the bakery boxes on her lap while someone else drove (it may have been a photographer to whom she was married). One cupcake with a mind of its own toppled over to its demise. Of course, it didn't die alone.  The cupcake managed to take down several of its neighbors in a grisly, messy murder.  Blogger X tried to blame the driver.  Perhaps he took a turn too fast.  But, Blogger X only had herself to blame; she needed cupcake boxes!

Where To Buy Cupcake Boxes

Round Challah for Rosh Hashana

Round challah (airy, eggy, braided bread) is served on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, to symbolize the cycle of life.  I baked round challah for the first time last year, but neglected to do any research on the proper way to braid the challah.  I had assumed that to braid round challah, I would take three strands, braid them (like I would my hair), and then coil them around each other.  It worked, but the challah wasn't all that pretty.  This year, I learned the proper technique for braiding round challah.  I also had an inspired thought: "Rosh Hashana challah is round and cupcakes are round - hey, why not make challah cupcakes?"

The Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake - Test Baked by 50 Bakers and Counting

"This is it, Stef!! This really, really is the ULTIMATE Vanilla Cupcake!!! I can't believe we finally found it, but I know in my cupcake-loving heart that we did. I will honestly be dumbstruck if this cupcake isn't the ultimate because I can't imagine a more perfect vanilla cupcake." 

Apple Bacon Cheddar Cupcakes with Mesquite Buttercream - The Boyfriend Jeans of the Cupcake World

Apple bacon cheddar cupcakes with mesquite buttercream are the boyfriend jeans of the cupcake world. They are a perfect fit for your man: they feature the magic word - bacon - and the mesquite gives them a nutty, earthy, manly finish. Yet, when you try them on (your tongue) and experience the cheddar, apple cider, and brown sugar, you'll find that they fit you just as well.  Just like boyfriend jeans, your guy will claim they are his, but you'll be stealing them out from under him any chance you get.

The 19 Cent Cupcake - No Box Mix or Canned Frosting Required

This cupcake recipe is the first recipe that I have ever created solely based on price.  As part of the Hunger Challenge, I had $87 to spend on food for the week for my family of three - and as a cupcake blogger, I wanted to include cupcakes.  For this recipe (and everything else we ate during the Challenge), I assumed that I had nothing in my pantry except salt and pepper.  If I wanted to use vanilla extract, the cost of buying that vanilla extract would count against the total.

I ended up baking eight banana cupcakes with dulce de leche frosting.  Each cupcake cost nineteen cents (thirty-three cents if you serve it with a scoop of homemade banana ice cream).  The cupcakes themselves are simple and not overly sweet, but when you top them with the dulce de leche and eat them with the ice cream, they rival any of my pricier creations. 

I Don't Have a Clue

Last night, I received the following comment on my Facebook page (it's no longer up, so don't look for it) and I wanted to publicly respond:

If a family receives food stamps then I doubt that they have the means to access a Whole Foods store. Buying organic is usually not at the top of the priority list. I work with this population daily. You don't have a clue, despite your good intentions. No need for comment, I am opting out of your FB page.

She's right.  I don't have a clue - which is exactly why I am participating in the Hunger Challenge (read my intro post on the Hunger Challenge for all of the details).

Everyone who is participating in the challenge is free to interpret the rules how they'd like.  Several people have asked me whether I'll be using items already in my pantry during the week.  The answer is no.  The only items in my pantry that I am using this week are salt and pepper.  Yes, I could have taken the challenge one step further and relied on public transit or only visited grocery stores within a certain radius of my home.  Admittedly, that would have been more of a challenge.  But, I wanted to use the week to explore - to really think about what food costs and how those costs differ from place to place.

What would it be like to eat on food stamp dollars at Whole Foods, the normal store where I shop?  What if I shopped at a less expensive grocery store like Shop 'n Save?  How much cheaper would it be?  What would the experience be like shopping in a bargain basement store like Aldi?  Would I save money by shopping at bread outlets?  How much would I rely on coupons?  If I just went to one store, I feel like I would have missed out on an education.

That being said, let's talk about my first few shopping trips.  And yes, the first one was at Whole Foods.  You'll see that I was able to get some good values, but it wasn't easy.

Food Outreach Hunger Challenge

I'm spoiled when it comes to food and I know it.  Here's a breakdown of my typical week's eating:

• Breakfast for me consists of cold cereal and soy milk.  I have a pantry stocked with five different kinds of cereal that I mix and match.  I'll typically have some raisins for my breakfast dessert (every meal needs to end with something sweet!).
• I eat lunch out with my husband and toddler every single day.  We don't go to chains and rarely go to places that would be considered "family" restaurants.  Since he's been going out to eat his whole life, my son is fairly well-behaved.  If he starts to get too loud, my husband or I will take him for a walk (but, that doesn't happen too often).  One of my son's favorite foods is sushi.
• In the afternoon, I'll have a snack, some fresh fruit, a piece of a $7 bar of chocolate, or whatever the cupcake of the week happens to be (remember, too, that the cupcakes often contain free ingredients provided by companies so that I'll share their products with my readers).  
• Because my husband takes food photos for several local magazines, a few nights each week our dinner is the food that he has photographed (the chefs typically give it to him because after he's taken the photo, they can't serve it to a customer).  Other nights, my husband might cook.  He does all of the cooking and he is incredibly talented.  When we cook at home, it often costs almost as much as when we go out to eat since we shop at Whole Foods and buy expensive fish and meat and impulse buy any new and exotic ingredients we see.  But in reality, Jonathan almost never cooks because he doesn't have to.  If we don't have any free food or leftovers to eat for dinner, I may just have cereal because I'm so full from my giant lunch.

I am lucky.

This week, our family is taking the Hunger Challenge on behalf of a unique non-profit organization called Food Outreach. Located in St. Louis, Food Outreach provides nutritional meals to individuals facing HIV/AIDS or cancer who also struggle financially. It is very strenuous for these individuals to eat nutritiously because they often rely on Food Stamps, which provide just $29 a week for groceries. Today through Saturday, our family is eating on $29/person ($87 total) to spread awareness of the necessity for Food Outreach’s services (and services provided by other similar organizations throughout the country).

I know that for some of you, this may not seem like challenge - this is your life.  I'm someone who can't think of the last time I went three days without eating in a restaurant and I have gone a lifetime not paying attention to what goes in my grocery cart as long as I am happy with the ingredients.  This is going to be a major challenge for me and my family.

Because this is a cupcake blog, I have given myself one additional challenge.  If I can do so without sacrificing the nutrition of my family, I am going to try to make a small batch of simple cheap cupcakes at the end of the week. 

I will share Hunger Challenge updates throughout the week both here and on Facebook and let you know what we're eating and what I've learned. 

Join me in this challenge by visiting hungerchallengestl.org to pledge $29 or to find out how you can help.

Homemade Apple Chips in Fun Fall Shapes

Apple chips serve as lunchbox-ready snacks that are crispy (baked - not fried) and have just a touch of cinnamon and sugar.  Even store-bought apple chips are wonderful treats, but when you make homemade apple chips, you can not only control how much sugar you add (you don't need to add much), but you can also make your homemade apple chips in fun shapes!

I used tiny harvest cookie cutters to cut my apple pieces into leaf and apple shapes. Using the apple cookie cutter was the literal version of the game Apples to Apples.

How To Make Homemade Apple Chips

Mesquite Flour Tortillas

Mesquite flour (or mesquite powder or mesquite meal, as it is sometimes called) is likely a new ingredient to you.  I hadn't heard of mesquite flour before I received a free sample of mesquite flour from Navitas.  Because my only association with mesquite was the wood that we use to smoke fish and meat, I kept thinking that mesquite flour was going to taste smokey - it does not.  Mesquite flour is made from the dried and ground pods of the mesquite plant (not the bark) and tastes a bit like walnuts and caramelized sugar.  Mesquite is a unique, vibrant flavor worth adding to your arsenal for bread making, pancake making, tortilla making (like I'll show in this post) and cupcake making.

Mixing Bowl Cover Giveaway

Often, I'm in the middle of frosting cupcakes when something comes up - forcing me to stop (e.g. my son woke up from his nap and needs to walk down the block to see the train NOW or the world will end).  I decide to cover the bowl to protect the frosting from uninvited house guests (I'm not talking about hungry neighbors with spoons, but rather evil flies that let themselves in during the one second that our door is open). At this moment, I always wonder how to best cover the mixing bowl.  Here were my options as I saw them pre-amazing-mixing-bowl-cover:

Chocolate Banana Baklava Cupcakes

Take baklava (the middle Eastern dessert featuring buttery phyllo dough, nuts, and sticky sweet honey), add a layer of brownie, mix in some banana chunks, bake in jumbo silicone cupcake liners, and you get chocolate banana baklava cupcakes.  As a baklava fan through and through, I never thought baklava could get any better than the traditional Greek baklava that I order every chance I get.  I was wrong.  Silly me, everything is better with chocolate!  Plus, the banana adds one more surprising and delightful flavor to the mix.

Chocolate banana baklava cupcakes are more labor-intensive than most cupcake recipes that I make.  However, none of the steps are difficult.  If you've got time, you CAN make these and they will be worth every second!

Take a look at a couple more photos and then I'll tell you how to make them.