Cuppycakes :]

No more fake food jewelry, I've been making lots of real food for once!

Yogurt cupcakes with more yogurt icing.
The cupcakes:
1 3/4 cups flour1 stick butter1 1/2 cup sugar1 cup yogurt (any flavor) 1 tsp vanilla extract1/2 tsp baking soda1/2 tsp baking powder2 eggs
Cream butter and sugar. Then add in the eggs one by one, and then all the rest of the ingredients slowly, making sure they're all incorporated.This should make a thick batter. If you'd like more flavor in it, now's the time to check, because you can go ahead and put them in the oven now if you're ready. Bake at 350 F for 30-30 minutes.
The icing:1/2 cup yogurt1/2 stick butter1 cup confectioners sugar1 tsp lemon juice
Soften the butter, and then beat the yogurt in. Then, while beating, add the sugar and lemon juice. P.S. The cupcake does not actually taste like yogurt, just a bit of whatever flavor the yogurt you put in was. However, if you really don't like yogurt, you can replace it with cream cheese :)

Bubble Tea!

Bubble tea: delicious, but at four to five dollars a cup, it can get expensive. But lucky for you, it's fairly easy to make :)

If you haven't had this before, bubble tea is an Asian drink that consists of a milky of fruity tea drink with large sweet tapioca pearls at the bottom. Usually you'll be given a large straw that the pearls will fit through to drink it with, but I didn't have any, so I settled for a long spoon.

So to start out, you'll need your bubbles. You can get them at most Asian supermarkets. I experimented with different kinds, and found that the cheaper ones are much harder to make (the centers stayed hard even after an hour of boiling!), so in the end I went with a slightly more expensive brand with a five minute recipe. 

Most bubbles will ask you to add 5-10 parts water per one part bubbles in a large pot, bring the water to a boil, stir in the bubbles until they float, and then cover the lid and let them cook.

Meanwhile, you can make the syrup. You will need:

2 cups water

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

drizzle of honey

Heat all of that up in a sauce pan over medium high heat. When it starts frothing, pour your syrup into a container and place it in the refrigerator to chill. It should be about the consistency of maple syrup. 

When your bubbles are done (make sure they are squishy all the way through with no hard centers!), scoop them out and place them in the container with the syrup. The longer you leave them there, the sweeter they will be.

The water from the bubbles should be a bit thicker and cloudy in color. I like to use that to make the tea component. Just grab your favorite tea leaves and pour boiling water over them in a large bowl. Then cover and let it sit for a while as your bubbles cool in the fridge. Keep in mind that the tea flavor will be diluted by the milk and sweetened by the syrup.

When your tea is done and the bubbles are sweetened to your liking, get a tall glass and start pouring! The ratio I used was...

Fill the bottom of the glass with about two rows of bubbles.

Cover the bubbles with syrup, and then add another tablespoon or two.

Fill the glass a bit less than halfway with tea.

Fill the rest of the way with vanilla soymilk.

You can of course use regular milk too, with vanilla extract, but the soymilk gives it a thicker texture which I like :)

And enjoy your delicious bubble tea! This can make up to 15 servings, with less than the cost of one store-bought drink!

Try serving it warm and cold, or even frozen in popsicle molds. Use blended fruit instead of milk or coffee instead of tea. Have fun with it :)

Father's Day Baking

Father's day is allllmost here! I got together with my friend today, and, inspired by Bakerella's fast food fun, we made our own with a few modifications. Behold:

Burger with a patty, ketchup, mustard, and lettuce; french fries; and heart shaped chocolate peanut butter cake.
Let's start with the hamburger:True to Bakerella's instructions, we made the bun from yellow cupcakes cut in half. However, we made our cupcakes without sugar, since the rest of the burger would be so sweet. It turned out pretty well in sweetness! We just filled the cupcake papers about halfway so the top would be flat, and sprinkled them with sugar to give it a more bun-like appearance. 
We baked a whole sheet of moist chocolate cake that we used for the patties. We crumbed up the entire cake and then added some chocolate syrup....

...and squished patty shapes with the mixture, just like you would with ground beef. 

Finally, the condiments are made with cream cheese colored with food coloring. Just stick globs of each color on the patty with your finger and squish the entire burger a bit when you put the top of the bun on so the colors peek out from the sides. 

From a distance, they actually look like the real thing ;D
Now the fries:We had some yellow cake mix that we turned into cookie dough with the following:1 box cake mix1/3 cup vegetable oil2 eggs2 tbs milkJust mix it all together and voila! Cookie dough!Of course, you also just could use any cookie dough recipe you have. 
For the fries, we covered the bottom of a flat pan with sugar and then laid a rectangular sheet of cookie dough on it. Bake at 350F until they turn golden around the edges and then flip the whole thing over and bake for another 5 minutes. Then we cut them into french-fry-like strips. 

The hearts were a bit of an afterthought: we had lots of chocolate cake left over and some peanut butter, so we mixed the PB into the crumbled cake and pressed it into heart-shaped baking tins. 

Hors d'œuvres

Last night was prom night, and my friend and I made hors d'oeuvres before going: mini bacon bowls with buffet style fillings.

Scrambled eggs, leftover mac and cheese, and corn with pine nuts.

The bacon bowls were made in a mini muffin tray; half a strip of bacon placed in each hole to make a bowl shape, and then put in the oven at about 400F for half an hour or so. Just make sure they're stiff to the touch and cooked all the way through. A few of them curled in on themselves, but most were perfect. We then took the bowls out and saved the grease to cook other vegetables with. 
We had some mozzarella cheese too, so we filled a few of the bacon bowls with cheese before baking. They got eaten before we could get any pictures though!
We fried the remaining strips of bacon in a pan, and used the leftover fat to make the corn and eggs.But I'm sure you could fill these bowls with anything really! 
We had some whole wheat toast too, since the bacon was pretty greasy. Everything tastes good on toast, right? =]
This was super super easy-- it only took about 45 minutes total to prep and cook, and everyone agreed it was delicious!

X-mas is Coming!

With Christmas just around the bend, I thought I'd share some more gifts I made my friends:

Sorry for the bad pic, but what you see is: a candy cane hot chocolate stirrer, chocolate dipped marshmallows, and a tea sweetener, along with simple instructions on how to use all of them =]
And whenever candy canes are involved, you always somehow end up with a few broken ones....

Show your love this season!