Jar It

I recently made cupcakes for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday party - Cinnamon Mocha and Cherry Crisp. I had left over frosting and leftover chocolate cake in the freezer; and you know how I love to use up all my leftovers in scrumptious ways.

I took a few jars down form my windowsill (I am also an avid jar collector - a jar can't hardly get passed me) and made cupcake parfaits using my leftover ingredients.

On the left is chocolate cake with cinnamon coffee buttercream and cinnamon brown sugar oat crumble. On the right is chocolate cake with cherry buttercream and cherry preserves. Yummy, yummy (my favorite word).

They were so nice to eat with a spoon - way less mess. About two cupcakes fit in these particular jars so I didn't have to go back into the kitchen to get another cupcake. Maybe I'll do the jar thing more often. What a beautiful and scrumptious mess.

Sourdough Cupcakes! What?

I know I said that I would try to limit my non-cupcake escapades. This week's blog entry is part cupcake and part something else truly wonderful.

Last month I started my own sourdough starter. This is when you mix together a certain amount of flour and water and feed it twice a day (discarding some of the starter, and adding in more flour and water) for at least a month. This cultivates the natural yeast in the air for making bread (and other goodies) without having to buy yeast.

I've been making bread for several months now and was excited about the prospect of not having to buy yeast anymore. Little did I know that I was walking into a wonderful world where my sourdough starter could serve as the base for breads, pancakes, waffles, pizza dough, muffins, and yes, you guessed it, cupcakes. Yippee!

I found a recipe at King Arthur Flour for chocolate sourdough cake and modified it to make beautiful, rich, chocolatey cupcakes. The cupcakes do not taste sour or bready in any way. Also, they rose beautifully. Thank you my little natural yeast friends.

I used these cakes for a baby shower where I filled them with eggless cookie dough, frosted them with peanut butter frosting, and drizzled salted caramel on top. They were scrumptious - too scrumptious.

I've also used the starter to make English muffins - which also turned out yummy.

For Easter I'm planning on using my starter to make carrot cake cupcakes based on another online recipe that is supposed to be super moist and super yummy. How many times can a person use the word "yummy" in one blog post? I' haven't come anywhere near my limit yet. Hee, hee.

I still use my starter mainly for bread. I bake two loaves of sourdough every other week. My starter is still in it's baby stage, so I am keeping it on the kitchen counter and continuing to feed it twice a day. I am looking forward to transitioning the starter into my refrigerator where I'll only need to feed it once a week or so. Until then, I've got three little ones in the house to take care of. ;)

If you are interested in starting your own sourdough starter, here is the website I used as a jumping off point: http://www.culturesforhealth.com/how-to-obtain-sourdough-starter.