Paris, Je T'aime!

Bonjour Mademoiselles et Miseurs!

Are you familiar with the phrase "like kids in a candy shop" ? Well they're thinking about changing it to "like Aim and J in Paris". Neither of us are what you would call a "dieter", however, we try to limit the amount of sweets we consume in one sitting to a normal amount. But this city's culinary excellence forced us to leave all the rules at the train stop. Every single meal consisted of us sharing a small sandwich and then a few pastries. A very balanced diet. Our friend Lindsey said it best when she described our diet by saying she felt like a stuffed animal.

We could attempt to describe our experiences, but there aren't enough words to express what our taste buds tasted. We'll let the pictures do the talking:

Chocolate Meringue

Croque Monsieur (not a sweet, but we had to share this Parisienne delicacy)

We can't remember the name of this pastry but we like to call it a double decker eclair.

The double decker eclair pre-surgery

Kristie and her chocolate eclair
A strawberry tart

Ice cream cones from ice cream Le Ils de Glaces (Ice Cream Island).

Macaroons

This is where we got the macaroons, meringue, croque monsieur and double decker eclair. We like to think it's the Parisienne version of Carlo's Bakery.

Unfortunately we did not photograph every treat we ate. Just add a few pain du chocolats, eclairs, croissants and let your imagination do the rest.

Paris was good to us, stay tuned for more European treats!

xoxo

Aim and J

LONDON BABY!!

Cheers ladies and gents!

We apologize for the delay, but better late than never. Our first stop on our European journey was London.

London is known for their comfort foods such as bangers and mash, fish and chips and shepherds pie. Unfortunately these dishes aren't too sweet. But we did find some goodies at our favorite shopping plaza: Harrods. At Harrods, everything is extravagant. We like to refer to it as the Disneyland of department stores. What's even better, Harrods has a basement with chocolates, teas, coffees, and even a few restaurants. While we wandered through, we were in search of something sweet. J was in line for chocolate when Aim stopped dead in her tracks: CUPCAKES. Cupcakes in Harrods. J instantly asked the Harrods employee to put her chocolate back (obnoxious American) and ran to her first love.

Bliss

J's Lemon Cupcake

Aim's Oreo Cupcake

Salt, Birthdays, and Bon Voyage.

Ahh we meet again.

We've been busy, real busy, but baking doesn't take a rest. Finals took their toll but we still found time to make these chocolate, salted-caramel filled cupcakes. These weren't our best creations, but you live and learn.

We learned to be conservative when adding salt to something sweet like chocolate. This recipe had potential, but due to salt overdose, they never reached their prime. Oh, one good thing about these cups: their ganache frosting called for THREE sticks of butter. It was rich and tasty.

We would like to introduce you to someone very dear to our hearts:

Allison Rae Choco

We lost Allie to Spain the past semester but we're happy to say she's back again!

To celebrate her return and her birthday we decided to bake her a little something special. We decided to keep it simple with a yellow cake with a fudge frosting. It got a little runny, which made for difficulty with decorating, as you can see, but it tasted spectacular!

It was our friend Jake's birthday, too.

Now we are left in an awkward position. We have been presented with the opportunity to travel to Europe for 5 weeks which means we will not be baking during this time. However, we have a proposition to make. How do you feel about keeping up with all of the tasty pastries and various European sweets we try while overseas?

We're feelin pretty good!

See you in Europe! Our first stop: London.

xoxo

Baking with Mrs. Hershman.

What do Aim and J think is more fun than baking together? Baking with a wonderful friend who loves baked goods as much as we do. Our friend Rachael invited us to her home to bake cupcakes for her roommate's bridal shower.

We made Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes while Rachael made her infamous red velvet recipe.

Note Rachael's super adorable aprons she lent to us...

Rachael's dog Zoey was a huge component to our baking success.

Rachael's Red Velvets (died purple to fit her roomies wedding colors). Notice how perfect they look. Before scooping the batter into the liners, she puts the batter in a ziploc and cuts a hole in the corner, making for easy batter distribution. A fantastic tip!!!

Our final product: Strawberry Shortcake cups.

Pretty pretty pretty.

Thanks again Rachael for inviting us to bake with you! So so fun.

Until next time...

Love and Cupcakes.

We've got ourselves a Situation.

This past week we celebrated the blessed birth of our dear friend Peter Raphael Fredericks. To show our appreciation and love, we decided to make cupcakes of his choice that reflected his character (Italian, flashy, red velvet- essentially guido cupcakes)

Peter loves red velvet, but we decided to embrace the Italian colors. So we split our batter and colored half of it green and half of it red.

The end result: red and green velvet cake. Cream cheese frosting. Leopard print liners. Italian flags. And edible gold glitter. (purchased from A&J's of course)

Guidofied

The best part about distributing cupcakes at a birthday party: Seeing the love of cuppies in our friends eyes. Check it out for yourself!

Stay tuned next week for more cupcake fun as we collaborate with our creative and talented friend Rachael Lunghi.

Cupcakes, Love and Guido's,

Aim and J

Mocha Cheesecake Cupcakes

These bad boys are not for the faint of heart (or weak stomached). We decided to use a brownie crust, partially because we couldn't find the right type of chocolate wafer cookies to use for a cookie crust. We considered this a blessing in disguise because the gooey brownie bottom really complemented the mocha flavored cheesecake.

In order to achieve the mocha flavor, we used a cheesecake base and added melted bittersweet chocolate chips and a little bit of strong brewed coffee. We used Pikes Place, our favorite Starbucks flavor.

(photo via tumblr)

Also this week we discovered the wonders of silicon baking cups. After being a bit apprehensive, we have learned these are the way to go. They don't require cooking spray and the cupcakes are easily removed without falling apart.

You can tell a cheesecake is done when the tops rises and cracks, but they still jiggle a bit. It sounds tricky, but you definitely can tell when they are finished.

]

Gooeylicious.

We soon faced the problem of what to top these with. After contemplating our always reliable cream cheese frosting, we determined that would have been a cream cheese overload. These cupcakes are heavy enough, they needed to be paired with something light.

Bet you didn't know they sold Cool Whip in a can now! Yeah, we cheated. We didn't make our own homemade topping this time, but Cool Whip is unbeatable. Don't judge.

Caution: These must be refrigerated. One of our friends who shall not be named learned this lesson the hard way when they nearly melted away. Plus, they set better when refrigerated.

Alisha demonstrates how a classy girl sports a cupcake.

We brought some to our friends Victoria and Jessica hard at work on duty.