j'aime des macarons

Bonjour! Comment allez-vous ? Comme vous pouvez voir, nous avons été TRÈS bons.C'est ce qu'il y a de neuf dans notre cuisine:

Remember these?

les ingrédients

cacao et sucre de poudre

blancs d'oeuf

Belle fin

A quote from a friend:

"The kick is in the texture, the crispiness then the decadence in the middle. Very rich."

-David Linder

Our hearts have been aching for Europe lately, especially European treats. French pastry chefs make for tough competition, but we'd like to think that ours turned out pretty tasty. As you can see from the photos, it was quite the process, but it was 100% worth it.

Bisou Bisou,

Aim and J

Cupnuts. (get yo mind outta the gutter)

Cupcakes + Donuts = Cupnuts.

In order to create the donut-like texture, rather than a cake-like texture, we chopped up cold tablespoons of butter and mixed it in with pastry flour.

Sometimes we bake in our personalized sweaters.

In case you can't read it:

Aim -"...and a Jay-Z song was on"

J- "true playa for real"

Anyways, when the donut/cake/hybrids came out of the oven, they were golden, lumpy and kind of resembled corn bread. Interesting.

So we made them pretty. We dipped them in chocolate glaze.

Then sprinkled them.

We liked these. We love donuts. We're also in the market for a puppy and a fireplace.

Think of how much better this family photo would look if there was a puppy on our lap and a fireplace in the background.

Never stop dreaming,

Aim & J

We're really excited about the change of seasons! Although the leaves aren't changing down here in Southern California...we still love autumn and wanted to bake seasonal cupcakes. We sorted through dozens of fall recipes and decided on a caramelized apple spice cake. We knew it was good when we saw the words "sour cream" and "apple cider" under the ingredients. The end result was lovely. Another plus-they were fairly dense which made for a great breakfast in the morning!

Chopping apples.

The apple brew. It might look unappetizing, but it was deceptively tasty.

EGG ME!

horseplay in the kitch...tisk tisk...

cupcakes and love,

xoxo the chapman sisters

Choco 'n Cream

We're back. And better than before. Why you may ask? Well, for starters, we have a new clean kitchen in our grown-up apartment. Most importantly, we have found ourselves a photographer. Our dearest roommate, Allie Choco, has volunteered her time and photography skills to improve the quality of our blog. We're excited to be back!

First up on the menu? Cookies n Cream cupcakes.

We had the idea to put half an oreo on the bottom of the cups. We loved the idea, but once baked, the cookies slightly burnt to the paper liner. They tasted great, but made it difficult to remove from the paper. If we baked these again, we might try to spray the liners with cooking spray.

Hard at work. (This may be the first ever documented photo of us baking together. Allie Choco, where have you been all of our blogging lives?)

As Rosie the Riveter reminds us every time we step foot in our kitchen, "We CAN do it!" And we're seriously excited for this year.

Love Love Love,

Aim & J

P.S. If any of you out there ever want one of our recipes, please feel free to ask! We love sharing, we just don't like cluttering up our blog.

World Cupcakes.

In order to celebrate our homecoming to the United States and the big World Cup game on Saturday, we decided to try something new.

First, it was such a treat to bake in a kitchen bigger than our tiny apartments! Just one of the many perks to being home in the summer.

To create the soccer ball, we arranged the cupcakes into a ball shape then frosted the tops together. The idea of this pull apart cake is to overfill the cups with batter so that they bake together when they rise. However, ours didn't exactly behave like they were supposed to. We made it work anyways...

Even though the U.S. lost, we're still glad to be back in the States baking!

We sincerely missed being in the kitchen while we were in Europe.

We will be back soon with more from our European adventures.

love love love

Aim and J

Czech us out!

While our experience in Prague may not have been ideal (marijuana hotel placed in between tattoo parlor and night club, dark hairs found in the sheets, no shower head), the food was definitely up to par.

Breakfast for dessert? Yes please! These were Lindsey and Nicole's pancakes with blueberry compote.
We opted for the maple banana crepes.

We were heading back to our hotel after dinner, but were literally stopped dead in our tracks by this gelato shop.

There was a slight language and monetary barrier... but the end result was fantastic.

Many more to come!

Sausagefest.

One word sums up our German experience: Sausage.

Sausage, sausage, sausage.

Belgium.

Belgium was a close second to Paris as far as best food contest goes. Since we were only there for one night, we had no time to waste. So we decided to treat ourselves to a three course meal.

Course #1: Belgian Chocolate.

Insider Tip: If you ever find yourself in Brussels, its best to go into every chocolate shop you see. Most give free samples. End result: a dozen free chocolates.

Course #2: Belgian fries with andalouse sauce.

Course #3: Belgian waffles.

We wish we would have gone for the ice cream on top of the waffle option, but the homemade whip cream was not too shabby.