Food Lush

Cookie Monster Cupcakes

Oh Pinterest, you've done it again! I would have never in my wildest dreams come up with this cookie monster cupcake idea on my own. 

After seeing the pin, I couldn't find a good cookie monster cupcake tutorial online - just a lot of random pictures, so I wrote one myself. You can see it, in all it's glory, here. 

Or follow the 6 easy steps below!

1. Bake the cupcakes of your choosing, making sure to fill the cups to the top. We went with the quintessential funfetti flavor, one box filled 12 cupcakes.

2. While they are baking you can prepare the googley eyes.

All the examples I saw used white chocolate discs. But the boys love them some “mellows” so I wanted to find a way to make this work. They are just large marshmallows with dollops of blue gel icing. I let these sit for about an hour before I put them on the cookie monster cupcake so the gel didn’t run.

3. Next the fur.

I put half a bag of coconut into the food processor with a whole tube of blue gel icing. Just be careful when you are doing this because I noticed steam coming from the top, after spinning it for a while. Sorta worried I was burning up the machine, I checked and thankfully the steam wasn’t hot it was cold? I was actually beginning to liquify the coconut and it was creating a mist. So don’t do that.

Once I got the coconut to the blue hue I wanted, I transferred it to a bowl and mixed in a shaker of sprinkles to make cookie monster a little bit sparkly and fabulous. Ha, my poor boys.

Now that they’ve baked and have nice big muffin tops (finally, a situation when that’s actually desired!), let them cool and then you can begin icing and assembling.

4. First you’ll want to ice the top. I chose Pillsbury Easy Frost (which is 99% of the reason this was so darn easy). Then over the bowl of fur, holding the cupcake upright (or the muffin top will begin to separate), place handfulls of fur onto the icing. Rotate the cupcake from the base as you go and lightly press the fur down.

5. Mouth: Then after your satisfied with the fur coverage, take a serrated knife and give the little monster a mouth. Just cut about 1/4 of the way in at an angle so you don’t cut the whole top off or encourage it to separate. Then lift the knife to open the mouth and shove the Chips Ahoy cookie in!

6. Eyes: After the gel icing has set (note: it won’t be completely dry, just a little less gooey) take your serrated knife and cut a little of the rounded part off the marshmallows so the eyes will sit flat on the cupcake.

If not then they will either roll off or you will have to secure them with tooth picks. Which is neither cute nor safe, both of which we want our cookie monster cupcakes to be, right? 

After you cut a few of the mellows you’ll want to rinse the build up off the knife with hot water so you can keep getting nice clean cuts.

A little icing on the bottom of the eyes also helps them to stick.

And that's it. Seriously. 

Made any creative cupcakes lately? Do share....

 

Super easy recipe for shrimp!

Garlic prawns and bok choy with herbed rice

preparation time 20 minutes, cooking time 15 minutes, serves 6

• 36 medium uncooked prawns (1kg)
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh coriander
• 3 red Thai chillies, seeded, chopped finely
• 1/3 cup (80ml) lime juice
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil
• 1kg baby bok choy, quartered lengthways
• 6 green onions, sliced thinly
• 1 tablespoon sweet chilli sauce

Herbed Rice

• 2 cups (400g) jasmine rice
• 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh coriander
• 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh mint
• 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lime rind

Shell and devein prawns, leaving tails intact. (As you can see in the picture I overlooked this step!)

Combine prawns in large bowl with garlic, coriander, chilli, juice and sugar.

Heat half of the oil in wok or large non-stick frying pan; stir-fry prawns, in batches, until just changed in colour. 

Heat remaining oil with pan liquids in wok; stir-fry bok choy, onion and sauce, in batches, until just tender. Combine bok choy mixture and prawns in wok; stir-fry until hot. Serve prawns on herbed rice.

Herbed Rice

Cook rice, uncovered, in large saucepan of boiling water until tender; drain. Return rice to pan; combine with remaining ingredients.

(Source: simplylite Low-Fat feasts cookbook by Woman's Weekly)

The Verdict?

This recipe was very tasty and easy to make. Maybe it was easy but I left out one of the most time intensiive steps - deveining the shirmp!?!?

I would recommend amping up the rice a little bit, as it was a little bland. 

Definitly over bought on the shrimp for this recipe - I'd love to hear some other ideas for shrimp recipes if you feel like sharing! 

 

Steel Magnolias Cinnamon Ripple Sweet Potato Cake

By Cherie

One of my clients, who also happens to be a family friend, sent me this cookbook as a thank-you gift. My mom, who was visiting this past weekend, had heard a lot about it and was excited to try some of her friend's recipes. 

Our first adventure was Kristie Moore's Cinnamon Ripple Sweet Potato Cake

 

The cake was delicous, it's actually in the Breakfast and Brunch section but really could be served any time of the day -- I for sure ate at least one piece morning, noon and night!

I had to include an actual picture of the recipe to give you an idea of how gorgous the cookbook is. 

And there is this bit in the begining that I just love:

"The Lousiana Steel Magnolias described in these pages represent all women who are strong and determined, long suffering, and faithful ... not to mention gracious, charming and often quite witty"

I'm sure you all have a few steel magnolias in your lives -- I just so happened to get to spend a little bit of time with mine cooking a few of these recipes. 

In the mood for more Cajun recipes? Those Steel Magnolias who put together the cook book also have a blog! 

Pulled Pork Sandwiches and the Best Potato Salad

By Cherie

My friend Kristi and I co-cooked a meal this past Saturday that was ah-mazing. We had Bobby Flay's Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Ina Gartner's New Potato Salad.

Now normally Food Network recipes intimidate the crap out of me but since Krisit did most of the heavy lifting there were no problems. 

We did skip Bobby's s Black Pepper Vinegar Sauce and Green Onion Slaw in favor of my family's long held not-so-secret-anymore BBQ sauce recipe! 

We cooked the pork in the crock pot and I think I am going to try this more often. And maybe even mix it up like Elly Says Opa's Pork Tacos.

And finally let me tell you about the potato salad! The buttermilk made it rich and creamy while the celery and the red onions added bright little bursts of flavor. Yum, yum, yum! 

The BEST BBQ SAUCE known to man.

So I could totally be disowned for posting this recipe as it's been in my family for generations. There's a story, that all the written versions have an extra cup of water added and only those in the "know" know to leave it out. 

The first time I made it for my soon to be in-laws I was not in the "know" and our sauce turned out more like soup than sauce. 

So here is the recipe (without the water of course):

1 cup sugar

1 cup ketchup

1 cup vinegar

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

1 tbs pepper

1/2 tbs garlic salt

1 tbs season salt

2 tbs dehydrated onions

Heat for about 10 minutes over med-high heat or until onions are rehydrated. 

Serious credit goes to my great-aunt Gladys, who turned 86 on Tuesday. She is one of the finest ladies that I've ever known and in her prime could have given ol' Martha Stewart a run for her money. The barbecue sauce recipe was passed down from her uncle's meat market in Franklin, TX. 

Happy Birthday Aunt Gladys or, as she is affectionately known in our family, Aunt Happy Bottom!

What to do with extra cilantro?

By Cherie

{photo credit: www.thedailygreen.com}

I love cilantro. I always ask for extra when ordering, especially tex-mex and it's usually on the weekly grocery list. But as much as I love it I can never seem to use it all before it starts going bad.

What's a girl to do? Well last week I put on my thinking cap and decided that surely someone had tried to make a cilatro pesto before.

So I googled.

Then I chopped, bended, mixed, ect. until I thought I had created this.

I'm not sure where I went wrong but it was disgusting. It looked terrible, smelled terrible and tasted terrible! 

But it's supposed to be FABULOUS.

So I shall try again but in the meantime how do you use all your cilantro? I would really love some ideas! 

Champagne and cupcakes party!

My friend Kristi recently started selling Willow House products -- and while "in-home-parties" tend to scare the bejeezus out of me -- I offered to host one because she's quite literally one of the sweetest people that I know. 

Inspired by Jennie's champagne and cake party, I decided to host a champagne and cupcake party myself. Because we all know that there's nothing better to socialize over than a glass(es!) of champagne and a cupcake(s!) And when paired together, they rank pretty high up there in the favorite dessert category.

Here are a few pictures of all the yumminess.  

I can't take credit for all the cute housewares, those are all Willow House, but I'll totally take the credit for the menu plan! 

The cupcakes! They were the strawberry champagne cupcakes that we had also made on New Year's eve - except this time we didn't make them as parfaits. There was also chocolate covered strawberries and a spicy red wine cheese ball! 

The beverages.

The ladies that attended were so lovely that they brought champagne, which was totally unexpected. And of course since I'm such a stickler to the rules of etiquette, we HAD to open them! 

From left to right: Roederer Estate's Brute, Yellowglen's Pink and Torre Oria's Cava Brut - they were all so good and probably much better than the three bottles of the Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut that I bought for the occasion!

All and all, it was a great get together and it gave me a reason to decorate for Valentine's Day! 

And, can we please talk about how cute my gardeners are?!?

Pigs in blankets

Mmmmmm, comfort food! I had this box of hot roll mix in my pantry for the longest time and because of the picture on the box only thought of making cinnamon rolls with it.

But, last week as the pantry was getting bare, I had a light bulb moment why not wrap some little piggies (or TJ's spicy jalapeno chicken sausage) with it?!?

 

 

Here are the little (big) piggies baking!

And the finished product, so so so good! And after writing this I'm wishing I had another box of that dang hot roll mix so I could make some for dinner tonight! 

How do you like your pigs in a blanket? Do you call them this... or is this another Southernism? 

My favorite chicken curry recipe

By Cherie

I must admit that I do not have that much experience with chicken curry recipes -- other than trying two or three recently. But, I was so pleased with this one from my Bob's Red Mill Cookbook that I've decided to call it my fav.

 

Not sure how common cinnamon is to curry recipes -- this is the first one that I had seen call for it -- but, it was delish, really complemented the other flavors.

How do you like your curry?

Recipe for a Crowd: Frito Pie bar

By Cherie

I never realized that Frito Pies were so specific to Texas until we served them this Saturday at a get-together we hosted at our home in Portland. We had three other families over -- one from Washington, one from North Carolina and another from Texas. The only ones who had ever heard of Frito pies were the Texas natives. 

My main motivation for serving these: EASY to make and EASY to eat while socializing. But what I didn't bargain for was how they would be the topic of conversation for the majority of the evening! Turns out that while non-Texans may be curious about Frito Pies, Texans are pretty opinionated about how they should be made.

Our Frito Pie bar started out with Fritos of course. Did I mention I have the best little helpers? That is of course if helping means eating all the chips before everyone arrives OR spooning the salsa onto the chips to make sure they are nice and soggy by the time everyone arrives!?

Then there was the chili, I found a recipe (see first comment) online that called for the ingredients that I had on hand. (Oh and hello there L'Epice Jars from the lovely Home Sweet Sarah!)

 

Then my favorite part, the toppings! From the left: onions, jalapenos, cilantro, cheese, sour cream (whoop!) and avocados (not pictured).

To assemble I begin with a layer of whole Fritos then top with chili, cheese and other preferred condiments. My husband, who I found out is quite passionate about this, begins by crumbling the chips then adding a layer of cheese followed by chili then cheese again and then condiments. Who knew there was such technique involved?!?

Have you heard of Frito Pies? How do you assemble yours?