Baking in a HomeAway Condo in Washington, D.C.

Just before Thanksgiving, my family and I headed to Washington, D.C. to visit friends and family.  We rented a HomeAway condo (the link there is to the British site, but there is also a U.S. site that you can use) with four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a fantastic kitchen with Viking appliances. Jonathan laments daily that we don't have a gas stove, so he was in guy-gadget love with the place from the moment we walked in and saw the Viking range.

Small Business Saturday - Vanilla Bean Giveaway and Coupon Code

Photo courtesy of IndriVanilla

When the Cupcake Project Explorers and I came up with the recipe for the Ultimate Vanilla Cupcakes, we learned that nothing gave the cupcakes as much of a true vanilla flavor as a real vanilla bean.  Although I am a tremendous fan of vanilla bean paste (it makes the best vanilla buttercream frosting - read the comments on the post if you are a doubter), in the cupcake itself, nothing works like a bean.

Beans, however, can be pricey.  I've seen vanilla beans sold for as high as $7 for one bean.  For a quality bean at a cheaper price, I've recently turned to IndriVanilla.  IndriVanilla is a small business owned by Whitney, a PhD student who wanted a cheaper, better-quality bean. She found a way to procure the beans and decided to create a business out of it. "Middlemen, referred to by the farmers as 'traders,' pay vanilla farmers very little for their prized beans. IndriVanilla was born to provide more people besides myself with high-quality, low-cost vanilla. I buy direct from the farmers at their asking price."

IndriVanilla charges just $0.50 for individual beans and as little as $0.30 each if you buy in bulk.  Plus, IndriVanilla is offering a 10% discount to Cupcake Project readers; just enter the code "thecupcakeproject" at checkout.  (Full disclosure: supporting her small business also supports mine.  I get a small commission every time that code is used.)

How to Win Some Vanilla Beans

Cupcakes Benedict - Maple Cupcakes Topped with Black Forest Bacon, Poached Eggs, and Maple Hollandaise Sauce

While cupcakes get some frosting lovin' on a regular basis, sometimes they get jealous of English muffins (or as I call them, stud muffins). Stud muffins are a key player in Eggs Benedict, where they are topped with bacon, eggs, and drippy, buttery hollandaise.  Cupcakes are used to playing it safe with perfectly coiffed frosting, but after years of dreaming, they were ready to get a little dirty.  They came to me for help and I arranged a cupcake and Eggs Benedict liaison - Cupcakes Benedict.

Maple Hollandaise Sauce

I'm a carbs girl - as if you couldn't have guessed that.  Come brunch time, you'll find me ordering the French toast, waffles, pancakes, or crepes (I barely take the time to the read the eggy options).  Because of my one-track brunch thinking, I rarely encounter hollandaise sauce.  Until I made it myself, I never even bothered to find out that the thick yellow sauce was made of egg yolks, butter, and lemon.  There I was, thinking that I was the unhealthy one eating a cake made in a pan and then dousing it with maple syrup (funny how we justify eating huge pancakes by not thinking of them as real cakes), when all along the person sitting across from me was making just as dubious a choice with their eggs slathered in butter-based Hollandaise sauce.  It's a good thing brunch isn't an everyday thing.

For me, brunch isn't brunch without maple syrup.  Despite my proclivity toward carbs, if eggs were more regularly paired with maple, I would show them more love.  This leads me to my creation: maple Hollandaise sauce - a thing of beauty.  Maple Hollandaise sauce tastes just like traditional Hollandaise, but with a distinct maple flavor and a bit milder lemon flavor. Maple Hollandaise makes eggs happy.

But, not just eggs...

As I was preparing my maple Hollandaise for the third time (I had to get it right so Jonathan could get the perfect photo), I happened to be making my dinner - a sweet potato prepared in the microwave.  Yes, this food blogger often has a simple, unadulterated microwaved sweet potato for dinner, sometimes with a bowl of Cheerios on the side.  On a whim, I dipped my sweet potato in the maple Hollandaise sauce.  Screw eggs.  This maple Hollandaise was made for sweet potatoes.  You may already put maple and butter on your sweet potatoes; maple Hollandaise is the same thing but with the thick and satisfying addition of egg yolks.  Have sweet potato and maple Hollandaise for dinner if you like, or fancy up a Fall brunch by serving a sweet potato hash topped with this maple Hollandaise.

Maple Hollandaise Sauce Recipe

Giveaway - Ice Cream Happy Hour Book and Sucre and Spice Ice Cream Spoons

If there were a Greek system for desserts, ice cream and cupcakes would definitely be sorority sisters.  Ice cream made it into my list of top ten frostings, and each May I hold an Ice Cream Cupcake contest on this blog (start thinking about your entry now!).

As you know, I like taking cupcake flavors to unexpected (often alcoholic) places, and the book Ice Cream Happy Hour does the same thing for ice cream.  In fact, many of the boozy cupcakes I have created mirror the ice cream flavors that are found in this book.  Here's a list of some of my cupcakes that have related ice cream recipes in Ice Cream Happy Hour:

• Eggnog cupcakes
• Pina Colada cupcakes
• Margarita cupcakes
• Mojito cupcakes
• Mimosa cupcakes
• Mudslide cupcakes
• Hot buttered rum cupcakes

I know how much I loved these flavors as cupcakes and I'm looking forward to trying them all as ice creams! I already tried the butter pecan ice cream with brandy and highly recommend it!

Lucky for you, you've got a chance to win Ice Cream Happy Hour and give the recipes a try yourself.  As a bonus (read this in your best infomercial voice), the winner will receive a set of 20 totally adorable ice cream spoons from Sucre and Spice - in any style that you like!

How to Enter

Maple Pecan Cupcakes with Butter Pecan Buttercream Frosting for Paula Deen

Diving into these maple pecan cupcakes from the top, you’ll be met with butter pecan buttercream frosting that tastes exactly like butter pecan ice cream – so much so that you may be tempted to put it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon.  That wouldn’t be a bad choice, but then you would miss out on discovering how well the butter pecan pairs with the pecan-packed maple cupcakes made with a half cup of pure maple syrup.  Together, frosting and cupcake are pecan perfection!

I developed the maple pecan cupcake recipe for Paula Deen. So, you'll have to head over to Paula's website to learn how to make them.  Happy travels!

Butter Pecan Brandy Ice Cream From Ice Cream Happy Hour

When I first heard about the book Ice Cream Happy Hour, which contains 50 recipes for spiked ice cream, I had two questions:  How do you keep kids from eating it, and how does the ice cream set since alcohol doesn't typically freeze well?  Authors Valerie Lum and Jenise Addison don't answer question one (my answer is to hide the ice cream behind the frozen broccoli), but they do answer question two right in the preface. Mixing the alcohol with gelatin prior to stirring it into the ice cream allows the alcohol to freeze and yields a properly creamy end result (don't worry, the ice cream doesn't have the consistency of jello shots - you won't even notice the gelatin). 

Since butter pecan ice cream has always been a favorite of mine, I immediately knew that I wanted to try the butter pecan brandy ice cream.  The butter pecan brandy ice cream came out just as I had hoped: a cross between a traditional butter pecan ice cream and a strong egg nog.

I'm sharing the butter pecan brandy ice cream recipe below, but there are so many other flavors in Ice Cream Happy Hour that you might want to try - like Irish coffee ice cream, chocolate martini ice cream, and strawberry daiquiri ice cream.  I'll be giving a couple of copies of Ice Cream Happy Hour away later this week, so be sure to check back for the details.

Cranberry and Cheese Danish Cupcakes

When presented with a breakfast tray of pastries, I typically avoid the Danishes.  They are always huge and seem like they will cause a guaranteed food coma within the hour.  Secondly, while cupcakes, muffins, and cookies are still delicious at room temperature, cooled puff pastry always has that guy with too much hair gel feel to me.

Most of us have experienced the joy of hot-out-of-the-fryer donuts (if you haven't - get on it!). Hot-out-of-the-oven Danishes are a less common but equally magical experience. 

I made these single-serving Danish cupcakes with a cranberry cheese filling.  I got a bit carried away with the filling quantity.  I knew that it might cause exploding filling syndrome on some of the Danish cupcakes.  But, like a kid with a bowl full of Halloween candy and a tummy already aching, I couldn't help myself.  I kept overstuffing because I wanted to eat all of that filling!

If anyone refused to eat these hot bundles of buttery, cheesy, sweet, and tart joy because of a little extra filling creeping out the side, well then, more for me!

Homemade Tart Cranberry Jam in Ten Minutes

Homemade Jam Making Myths - Debunked

1. You need fresh fruit to make jam.  Just about everyone I know who makes jam has a garden.  They make jam to squirrel away the summer's bounty in jars for yearlong enjoyment.  I made this cranberry jam because I like jam.  I used frozen cranberries and intend to consume it all this week.
2. Jam making is an all-day event.  I made this cranberry jam in ten minutes.  That's just ten minutes, people! 
3. You need special equipment and sterilized jars to make jam.  Sure, if you plan to eat your jam next year, you'd better be careful about how you package it.  I don't want to hear about anyone dying from botulism because they stuck this jam in their basement in an unsterilized glass jar for two years.  But, if you plan to eat your jam within a week, you don't even need a jar (make only what you need for the week and store the jam in a bowl in your refrigerator).

This SIMPLE cranberry jam was as good as, if not better than, any store-bought jam I've had.  Knowing what I now know about how easy it is to make, I don't know why I'd ever buy it again.  This same technique would work with all different kinds of berries.