Don't Peek On us.

This week called for Sticky Pecan Upside Down Cupcakes. You make them right side up. This is why the pecans are at the bottom of the pan in this stage.

After baking the cupcakes, the directions say to "invert the pan". This sometimes caused commotion.

But the end result was lovely- we like to think :)
At the bottom of the cupcake pan was a a mixture of brown sugar, honey and butter. This helped to adhere the pecans and seeped into the cake to create a slightly crunchy, sweet topping. Which might be confusing because it used to be on the bottom. Upside down remember?

MMM

The only downfall to these delectables is that they are lacking in the frosting department. To fill this void we added ice cream to the freshly baked cuppies. It added the correct amount of moisture needed.

This batch was dedicated to two of our bevloved male companions,

David Alan Linder and Peter Rapheal Fredericks.

Happy Birthday Chase!

Free Love.

We apologize for the delay of this Valentines-related post.

We decided that for this holiday, we would try to challenge ourselves and step it up with our presentation and decoration skills. In order to achieve this, we decided it would be helpful to pay a visit to a cake supply store. We found what we thought could have been our heaven:

You read correctly: A &J CAKE AND CANDY SUPPLIES. Chills. While the store wasn't THAT amazing, it did provide us with these fun little Valentine decorations:

Which we then learned that Aimee's special gift is most certainly not intricate decorations. Let's just say...some of her attempts looked like something she could have made at the age of 8. But Jessica is a fabulous decorator. Teamwork.

To celebrate the love of Valentines Day and to aid in the prevention of certain weight gain from weekly cupcake batches, we split up and distributed our cupcakes to our most deserving friends.

Love through cupcakes. Hope your Valentines Day was grand!

Some More Cupcakes, Please.

While we were debating what recipe we wanted to make this week, we stumbled upon these little beauties on Bakerella. Sometimes we feel adventurous, so we decided we would stray away from our recipe book for this week.

We seriously love S'mores. And we crave them often. But they're hard to come by when you don't have a campfire handy. These cupcakes were a fantastic replacement for the classic s'more.

The bottom layer is a graham cracker/cake blend, with graham cracker pie crust crumbles. While you can't tell in the photos, there is a marshmallow in the middle. The top chocolate layer is so fudgy, chocolatey goodness, brownie-like substance. On top we have more graham cracker crumbles and a thick chocolate ganache. BOOM. There you have it. S'more Cupcakes.

Highlight of this week: Jessica's stitches were removed, but in order to keep her wound clean, she was forced to bake with a glove on. We're considering making this her signature accessory, a la Michael Jackson...

Personal Preference: slightly under-cooking the cuppies and while still warm, enjoying them with a bit of ice cream. A little much? possibly. But YUM.

Hummingbirds.

On our first return to the kitchen from the Scotcharoo/Stitches incident, we decided to make Hummingbird Swirl Cupcakes. What is that, you may wonder? Well,

Hummingbird cake is a banana, pecan and pineapple cake that has a cream cheese frosting. This cupcake version adds the fruit and nuts to a yellow cupcake batter and covers the top of the cupcake with thick swirls of cream cheese frosting.

We were slightly skeptical about the combination of pineapple, cinnamon, banana, and pecan. But we were pleasantly surprised with the turnout. The pineapple and banana made for a moist cake and the cinnamon and pecan balanced it out quite nicely.

Our favorite part? The cream cheese frosting. No questions.

The cupcakes are shaped a little funny, thanks to our cheap Ikea cupcake pan. Apparently in Europe they like their cupcakes tall and skinny. Next time we promise our cupcakes will be a little more regularly shaped. We'll work on our presentation. Until next time...

Love Love Love,

Aim and J.

P.S. No wounds this time :)

Stitches.

Hello world, our names are Aim and J. We have been best friends for many many moons and embarked upon many adventures starting with facing the treacherous days of Jr. High school together, and most recently traveling to lands such as London and New York City.

Our love for baking tasty treats started when were just young lasses and we baked numerous goodies for our high school football team. Now that we are older and have kitchens of our own, we have continued to bake tasty treats together.

Some of these treats have not come without peril. Aim whipped up some Scotcharoos (a rather tasty mix of Peanut Butter, Butterscotch, Dark Chocolate and Rice Krispies). After removing them from the freezer, J began to cut them with a large knife when she stabbed herself. She had to pull the knife out of her hand and we spent our Friday night last night in the Emergency Room where Jessica received 5 stitches.

We have high hopes for this blog, and see it as a stitch in our adventures together. We have committed to baking all of the recipes from Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans. This blog will document our struggles and victories (and hopefully, no more stitches...) as we bake many many cupcakes.

Love Love Love,

Aim and J.