For the past six years, I’ve known Christmas is near just by opening my refrigerator. While I’m not looking, my husband will sneak a carton of eggnog into our grocery cart every week. And he’s the only one in our house who drinks it.

Yes, readers, I am a nog hater.

The running joke (which is actually 100% true) is that the very idea of eggnog is enough to engage my gag reflex. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in eggnog? There are uncooked eggs is that stuff! It probably doesn’t help that I don’t like milk either. There are just way too many things going on in eggnog that I do not like.

But baking with it? Count me in! It seems like the perfect baking ingredient. So I knew I’d have to find an eggnog cupcake recipe somewhere…and I found it at How to Eat a Cupcake!

The culprits:

The recipe was pretty straightforward, and included a nice douse of rum (because if you’re going to drink eggnog, it should probably be alcoholic…) and cinnamon. The batter tasted yummy:

And I even found somewhat holiday-ish cupcake papers!

The batter went into the cupcake tins:

And when they came out, I frosted them with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (the same frosting I used for my Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes at Halloween). I dusted the tops with a little cinnamon:

Very pretty. I had one of these cupcakes right after I baked them, and thought it was okay. Not spectacular. It seemed a little dry. But I put them in the refrigerator and hoped for the best. I don’t know what happened in that refrigerator, but the next day these cupcakes were ah-mazing. They looked amazing, they smelled amazing and they tasted amazing. A few of my co-workers said this cupcake edged out the Tarte Tatin with Carmelized Apple Cupcake as their favorite. One of the account executives took a cupcake and sniffed it experimentally, then looked at me in amazement and said, “It smells like a Yankee Candle!”

It’s that frosting, I tell ya’. That frosting could save a burnt-black cookie.

Two more weeks, two more weeks, eek! This week I’m baking a Grasshopper Pie for my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. And I still haven’t made a decision on the final project. I’ve got two ideas in mind, but both could prove to be beyond my budget. I’ll have to put some more thought into it. I feel like it needs to be something spectacular, seeing as how it’s The End!!!

Thanksgiving! The second best holiday of the year (Christmas is number one, of course, and Halloween is probably third). My Thanksgiving this year was different from all my past ones; instead of watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, I got to see it in person!

Also, my mom came out to visit from Ohio! This was also a pretty big deal, as my mom has never been to New York City before. We took her around to all the tourist traps and posed for pictures with the Naked Cowboy. Much fun was had.

My darling husband insisted that I make some kind of crazy cranberry sauce this year, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that combined cranberries with pears, sugar and honey and seemed easy enough to figure out. It actually turned out quite lovely. I’m not a cranberry sauce fan, but even I put a little on my turkey this year:

My main project though was a Pumpkin Pie. My husband’s family is all about traditions at holiday events, so when I told Rob I wanted to mix things up a little bit and make a Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, he was beyond nervous. He was so afraid that the pie would be some radical experiment. But it wasn’t! I followed the recipe from How To Eat a Cupcake, and it turned out great! The only problem I had was that my pre-baked pie crust slid down the pie pan on one side a little…not enough to ruin the pie, but enough to ruin the aesthetic.
What makes this pie a little different is that it incorporates gelatin and whipped egg whites in with the traditional pumpkin filling. It makes for an incredibly light pie. I like pumpkin pie well enough, but after one piece I’m usually done until the next Thanksgiving. I could have eaten two or three slices of this one.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the pie-making process, as I was really busy putting it and the cranberry sauce together the night before Thanksgiving (we had to be up at 5 a.m. Thanksgiving morning to get to the parade route in time). But here’s the finished product, which went over very well:

The recipe started with a really thick batter. It definitely did not have the consistency of a chocolate chip cookie dough, but it was thicker than a cake batter:

The batter went down on cookie sheets and, as I learned from the Iced Pumpkin Cookies, I put it down in exactly the way I wanted the cookies to turn out, as pumpkin cookies don’t spread much:

They baked up into beautiful golden cookies that were slightly springy and moist:

The filling for the middle was made of Crisco and sugar and a few other things and was delicious. I spread a thick layer on half the cookies, and then sandwiched another cookie on top:

The cookies were a big hit. Brian and Alison both loved them, and their kids worked on those cookies for the better part of ten minutes (they were pretty big cookies), licking up every crumb. I’m so happy that they enjoyed them, because I was living in fear that they’d take one bite and then spit it out.

Kid-tested, mother (somewhat) approved (the kids did run around like crazy people after all the sugar!).

Autumn is definitely here in New York. The trees in Prospect Park are changing colors, and hints of Christmas shopping are starting to show. The weather’s gotten chillier and that means it’s time to bust out pumpkin recipes.

I was getting a little tired of baking cupcakes, so I decided to find a nice pumpkin cookie to bake this time around. I scoured the Internet for recipes, and finally found one that looked delicious. And it included a glaze as well! Wonderful.

The recipe started with flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and salt being combined in a bowl and set aside:

Next, butter and sugar were creamed together and pumpkin puree, eggs and vanilla were added once the mixture was creamy. Finally, the dry ingredients were added:

The cookies were dropped by tablespoon full onto cookie sheets and baked:

The most important thing I learned about baking pumpkin cookies is that however the batter goes down on the sheet is pretty much the form the cookie will take. I tried to flatten my cookies down so they wouldn’t be mounds of pumpkin, but some of them still turned out kind of peaked. Eh, a little glaze will take care of that. The glaze was a combination of confectioner’s sugar, milk, vanilla and melted butter, and it was delightful. It added such a pretty touch to the cookie as well as just the right amount of sweetness:

These cookies were a bit hit with my coworkers. One of them asked me if there was really pumpkin in the cookie before he would take one, claiming that he didn’t really care for pumpkin. He then took one bite and said, “Oh my God…”, then shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth.

Stay tuned for last week’s project, Tarte Tatin Cupcakes with Caramelized Apples. As soon as I post it, I’ll be caught up! But that’s not going to happen tonight!

This is definitely a cheater post. I’ve made these Lemon Meringue Cupcakes three or four times in the course of this year, but I just love them so much. I”ve done double posts in the past, where I’ve made more than one thing in a week, so I think it all balances out. Someday I plan to make the lemon curd and just eat it over vanilla ice cream. Mmm mmm good.

The recipe begins with putting lemon juice, sugar, lemon zest and butter in the top of a double boiler and letting it simmer until the mixture is quite thick. Lemon zest is then mixed in and the mixture is covered with plastic wrap and left to chill in the fridge while the rest of the cupcakes come together.

The cupcakes are a fairly straightforward vanilla cupcake with a little lemon juice thrown in.

Once the cupcakes are cool, a small cone is cut out of each and a couple of teaspoons of lemon curd are used to fill in the cone.

Meanwhile, egg whites and cream of tartar are whipped together until foamy, and then granulated sugar is slowly added and whipped for about ten minutes, until the meringue becomes thick and fluffy.

The cupcakes were then topped with a dollop of meringue and put on a cookie sheet to bake in the oven for an additional five or six minutes to put a little color on the meringue.

Fantastic.

My co-workers really enjoyed these. And I know that I did. These are my absolute favorite thing to eat that I make. In a couple of weeks, I will be making my absolute favorite thing to make. Mmmmm…

My next post will be about the glazed Pumpkin Cookies I just made this past Thursday, and then I’ll be caught up with the blog!

This post marks just ten more baked goods to make for this year-long project. Next year I plan to start something a little different, but more on that when it develops.

Request are starting to roll into my job. Colleen wanted something with caramel, so I made Caramel Apple Cupcakes. Archives wanted something with pineapple, so I made Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes. This week, Brianne requested blueberry muffins like Crumbs bakery makes, with coffee cake topping and everything. Apparently she went to Crumbs four days in a row looking for this muffin, but they didn’t have it on any of those days, so she came to me.

I cheated a little bit this week, because I have made blueberry muffins before. I’ve even used this particular recipe before. But I haven’t made them this year, so I think it’s okay.

This recipe is a fairly straightforward muffin recipe, in which the most important thing to remember is that when combining wet and dry ingredients, to mix them just until they’re incorporated. It keeps the batter light n’ fluffy.

It’s also a good idea to coat your blueberries with just a little flour so that they don’t sink to the bottom of the batter.

The recipe instructed me to fill the muffin tins up about 3/4 of the way full, but I feel like that was too much. I know most people love that little muffin top that oozes out over the sides of the tins, but I’m not a fan. It makes the cupcakes top heavy. So all my muffins came out with a muffin top, which was covered with a flour/sugar/cinnamon/butter crumb topping.

In the end, they came out pretty nice, except for that nagging muffin top. But Brianne certainly enjoyed hers.

I’m pretty behind with updating this blog (but not behind on baking! I’m still caught up on that), so I hope to post a couple of weeks’ worth of stuff while I’m on a mini-vacation back in Ohio. The next post will be about my beloved Lemon Meringue Cupcakes.

This week, I took a much-needed break from cupcakes. I haven’t made cookies in a couple of months, so I thought I’d find an interesting recipe and go with it. I really wanted to make some kind of sandwich cookie, and when I found the recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Sandwich Cookies, I knew I’d found the right one!

The recipe started as a pretty standard chocolate chip cookie recipe, but with peanut butter added:

The dough was scooped out into small balls and placed on My Precious:

While the cookies baked and cooled, I mixed up peanut butter, chocolate chips and powdered sugar. Then I boiled some heavy cream and poured it over the peanut butter mixture, stirring until everything melted and became smooth. This mixture went into the fridge for about an hour until it reached a spreadable consistency:

Cooled cookies:

Once the chocolate was spreadable, I spread it over a flat half of a cookie and sandwiched another on top:

These cookies turned out quite good. The peanut butter wasn’t as pronounced as it would be in just a regular peanut butter cookie, and the peanut butter/chocolate sauce in the middle of the cookies was heavenly. I typically don’t care for the peanut butter/chocolate combo, but that sauce was just fantastic. My co-workers were equally impressed.

The only issue I had with the cookies is that while they were in the fridge overnight, three of my cookies sort of slid apart. That is to say, that the cookies wouldn’t sit flat because of the placement of the chips and the top of the cookies slid almost completely off the bottoms. There was no rescuing these cookies as the chocolate had hardened, so they were the ones I left for Rob. Oh well, the rest of them turned out fine.

One of my co-workers specifically requested blueberry muffins with crumb topping this week, as Crumbs Bakery apparently didn’t make them for four days in a row. A blog post about these muffins will be coming shortly.

By now, I’ve spoiled my new co-workers something awful. Every Friday around 2 p.m. when I come in, they’re all waiting for me at the door, a hungry look in their eye and a little drool on their lips. I’ve already had a few requests come in, so this week I decided to honor one.

One of the guys at my work whom everyone calls Archives, asked me to bake something with pineapple in it. It’s a running joke at work that Archives is a little bonkers for pineapple (and ketchup, but that’s another story). When he asked, I immediately thought of pineapple upside down. I’ve never made one, but I figured doing a cupcake version couldn’t be that difficult.

I started with a few cans of pineapple chunks, which were drained of their liquid and then left to drain a little more on paper towels:

Next, I mixed up some light brown sugar with melted butter to make a syrup for what would become the tops of the cupcakes:

This syrup was evenly distributed among the cupcake tins:

And then the pineapple chunks were decoratively placed on top of the syrup:

Finally, a pretty straightforward cupcake batter was mixed to be poured on top of the pineapple and syrup. The recipe didn’t even include vanilla, which I added to give it just a bit more flavor. The batter was poured on and the cupcakes were baked. Once they had baked, I cooled them in the tins for a few minutes and then wrestled with a cooling rack to flip the tins upside down and release the cakes. It worked for the most part. A few pineapple chunks stuck to the tins, so I had to pull them out and stick them back on the cakes:

These weren’t my favorite cupcake…they were a little sticky and the cake was just a touch too bland. I had the option of using either milk or reserved pineapple juice for the batter, and I went with the milk. Maybe I should have went with the juice. At any rate, my co-workers gobbled them down and Archives told me that I should divorce my husband and marry him just so I could bake these all the time for him.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to stick with the husband I’ve got, but thanks for the compliment, Archives.

This week I baked Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Sandwich Cookies, which I will be posting about soon. I’m trying to get back on track and post things the weekend after I bake, but we’re still unpacking and getting settled, so my schedule is still wonky.

More cupcakes up this week! I’ve been dying to make a pink lemonade cupcake for quite some time, so I decided it was finally time to do it. The recipe I found online seemed fairly simple and the pink color was extra cute. My co-workers seemed skeptical of a pink lemonade cupcake when I told them about it, so I knew I had to do it up right.

The recipe started with a batter that combined flour, sugar, vegetable oil, egg whites, buttermilk, red food coloring and thawed frozen pink lemonade concentrate (as well as a few other staples). The pink lemonade concentrate added a great lemony touch to the finished product, but lost a little of its tartness in the baking process:

The cupcakes baked up beautifully, although they weren’t as pink as I’d hoped. I added a few more drops of red food coloring to the remaining batter for the next round:

Second batch:

I felt like the frosting was the real star of this cupcake. The original recipe called for just a buttercream frosting, with powdered sugar, salt, vanilla and butter, but I felt like it was too bland. So I added a few tablespoons of the pink lemonade concentrate until it achieved a slightly tart flavor, and then a few drops of red food coloring to make it pink. Perfect:

The frosted cupcakes turned out quite cute:

My co-workers enjoyed them and became pink lemonade cupcake believers. These ones were gone within twenty minutes.

This week I also whipped up some Lemon Cupcakes for my husband’s cousin’s 40th birthday party. The cupcakes themselves turned out great, but my frosting was really weird. It never achieved the smoothness I was looking for, but stayed slightly curdled and spread on the cupcakes more like butter than frosting. It tasted great, but just looked a little weird:

Last week I baked Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes, which I will be posting soon.

After taking in last week’s S’mores Cupcakes to my coworkers, one of them, Colleen, requested something with caramel. So I came home and started doing some research to find a good caramel-y dessert. I didn’t want to just make the Salted Caramel cupcakes again, so I found a recipe for these Caramel Apple cupcakes and it looks awesome.

The recipe used applesauce rather than chopped apples. If I ever make these again, I might consider using applesauce and some chopped apples just to amp up the apple flavor:

The wet ingredients were added to a flour mixture that included a heavenly mix of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Mmm mmm!

The batter was scooped into cupcake tins:

Once the cupcakes had cooled, I melted down some caramel candy cubes in a saucepan. Once they were melting, I added in some heavy cream to get a smooth, buttery caramel sauce, which was spread over the tops of my cooled cupcakes:

As soon as the caramel went down, I dipped the tops of several of them in chopped Reese’s Pieces or M&Ms, to mimic the chopped peanuts or chocolate that you might find on a fair-style caramel apple:

They were so beautiful! I was so proud of myself:

And then the next day happened. The recipe instructs the baker to store the cupcakes at room temperature. Which I did. The next morning when I got up and checked on them, the caramel had melted and oozed down the cupcakes. The toppings went with them. They weren’t ruined; there was still caramel on the cupcakes, but it was melty and no longer that shiny veneer of caramel. I was so disappointed.

My coworkers, however, loved them. Colleen was thrilled that I’d brought in something caramel, as she much prefers it over chocolate.

This past Friday, I baked Pink Lemonade cupcakes, which I will be posting about sometime mid-next week. Tomorrow I will be baking some more cupcakes and on Monday we are finally (finally!) moving into our new apartment in Brooklyn. That will take up some of my time, but I promise to post before I bake my birthday cupcakes on Friday!