White Chocolate Rose Cupcakes

I bring you some white chocolate rose cupcakes today my friends. Are you familiar with rose water? It's OK if you are not, I wasn't aware of its existence until a couple of months ago when I stumbled onto these cupcakes and couldn't wait to experiment. I bought the extract a while ago and have been shying away from using it after I took a strong whiff that put me off.

As with most things, except chocolate, less is more with this flavor. Thanks to an inspiring Mother's Day week by Joy the Baker, I was excited to try my rose water. I started with a simple vanilla yellow cake, infused with rose water, and topped with a white chocolate swiss meringue buttercream with a dash of rose water as well!

The rose water gives these cupcakes more of a scent, than a flavor. A wonderful floral smell that just makes you very happy as you bite into the cake (well, it made me happy at least!). Oh did I mention there are white chocolate chunks in the cupcake? Yummm!

I used these floral cupcakes on Sunday to celebrate some of the wonderful mothers in my life. A small treat to show them how much I appreciate and love them!

Homemade Fried Donuts

Last weekend, we went over to my in-laws for a lesson on how-to make Grandma Storms' famous homemade donuts. I've heard of these donuts from my husband and he always said they were the best donuts he's ever had. So I was very excited to learn how to make them from my father-in-law (Thanks Wayne!). 

My father-in-law dug out the recipe from a pile of hand me down recipes he keeps. We went through the box and it felt like a treasure trove. So many baking recipes and I was able to copy some of them and will be sharing up on the blog soon. 

Grandma's donuts were very easy to make. We started by combining melted butter, sugar and eggs in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, we mixed together flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and salt. I heard nutmeg is the secret ingredient.

Next was adding in the sour milk to the wet ingredients, followed by the dry ingredients.  The hubby proceeded to mix until the dough was formed (I was busy writing down directions and taking pics :)).

Then it was time to roll out the dough.  We floured our surface and the rolling pin and again the hubby was so generous to do the dirty work (and the clean up lol!). 

We used a donut cutter to cut out the donuts and stacked them on wax paper.

Then it was time to fry! We broke out a 100-year old pot (Grandma's of course!), heated some vegetable oil and went to town deep frying the donuts until they were golden brown. 

And here they are all done. 

They turned out so good and there was no stopping myself from eating a few too many. I know, I know they are not good for you, but I just had to indulge.  Oh did I mention they tasted even better the next morning with a cup of tea? 

Since I haven't tested this recipe in my kitchen, I won't be sharing the recipe just yet. For now, this family secret recipe is going to remain a SECRET!
 
Have a good rest of the week and don't forget Mother's Day is this Sunday May 12th. Be thankful for the wonderful mothers in your life and appreciate their many sacrifices. Maybe make them a cupcake? Or a cake?

Vanilla Bean Cake with Raspberry Filling and Whipped Vanilla Bean Frosting {Octopus Birthday Cake}

Just a short post today guys, I have a sick husband on the couch to tend to. I wanted to share two wonderful recipes that go along with this cake. I made the cake for a birthday party I attended this weekend. As you can see, it was inspired by my friend's love for octopi (??).

I didn't want it to be extremely 'under the sea'-themed because she is really just into octopi, so I kept the decorations simple. A fondant cut out of the octopus and 'star' fishes and a few buttercream additions.

But the real star here is not the decorations but the cake itself. I made a vanilla bean cake with a fluffy whipped vanilla bean frosting, both recipes from Sweetapolita. I added a layer of raspberry compote inside the cake for a little extra flavor and it complemented the light and airy vanilla cake very nicely.

This is a recipe that will go down in my books for a great vanilla birthday cake and bakery-style frosting!

Here is the recipe:

Chewy Toffee Bars

Nostalgia hit last week and I found myself thinking about my childhood and missing home. It's been so long since I've been home and had food from my mom's kitchen. This led me to thinking about (and missing) my dad, who would always bring home toffee after work and it was just the best treat ever!

To be honest, I have never been a 'sweet' kind of girl. I don't know why because my little sister is a chocolate magnet and yet we grew up in the same house. But for some reason, toffee is different. It was my go-to candy growing up.

 
Toffee, most commonly called English toffee in the US, has just the perfect amount of sweetness without being overly sweet. I've not had one in a very very long time and I was prepared to fix that.

So when I saw these chewy toffee bars in this month's Food Network Magazine, I knew I had to make them. Finding the toffee was the most difficult part of the recipe; I spent hours looking down candy aisles at different grocery stores. In the end, I found chopped pieces at a local frozen yogurt dessert bar (totally not kidding).

The recipe is pretty straightforward and it took only 20 minutes to assemble the ingredients, mix and get them into the oven. The resulting brownie-like bar was chewy, crunchy, perfectly sweet, and brought back to so many happy memories!