Cupcake Royale

I recently had a chance to visit one of the fancy shmancy cupcake shops that are in the process of taking over the world. Cupcake Royale has a number of locations; we visited the one in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. "We" being me, Laurie and her very sweet husband, Wayne. This would be Laurie from the Hawthorn Tea Room who is now a good friend. I guess she felt sorry for me after all my whiny blog posts about having no friends. So, see? You can make friends over the age of 40. Or I can. I don't know about you per se. You might have a gypsy curse which has forced you to become a recluse who never leaves your home to eat cupcakes. Or something.

The shop is super cute, lots of pink, brown and white with other very bright colors thrown in here and there. It's also very Seattley. Very trendy, lots of laid back cool people lounging about. And of course, there's coffee. Cupcake Royale also has some good marketing happening. Lots of cupcake related merchandise for sale and they also sell their products through Metropolitan Market, the upscale grocery store. My favorite item was the "Legalize Gay Cupcakes" shirt. It cracked me up.

We went to check out the selection and I had to spend some time wiping saliva from my chin. They don't like it when you drool on the display case. Sorry!

I've actually had their cupcakes before because, as I mentioned, they sell them at Met Market which has a location near my house. So I knew I'd be getting one with a white base. I absolutely LOVE the texture of their white cake. I'm usually a flavor person, but I'm all about the texture here. It's extremely dense and rich. It's almost like pound cake, but not that heavy. I wish I could describe it better. For me, it's the perfect cake consistency. I've tried other flavors, and they're all yummy, but the vanilla buttercake is my idea of cupcake heaven.

I chose the Lemon Drop, which has a lemon head candy on it. Even though these are super cute, this is too much frosting for me. This is how they frost all of their cakes, so I've learned to deal with it. But if they handed me the spatula for a minute, about half the frosting would come off. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, I just think the thickness of it is a little overwhelming. This plate, on the other hand, rocked my world. I adore it and am actually kind of glad they weren't selling this pattern, because I don't have any room for it in my house and I wanted to buy twelve of them.

They bake the cupcakes on site, which means they frost and decorate them here, too. They have an open area in the center of the store so you can watch. I was enamored with the sprinkle jars. Feel lucky you only have to look at two of the fifteen pictures I took of them. Not even joking.

After I ate my Lemon Drop, and Laurie and Wayne shared their vanilla and chocolate babycakes, one of the bakers came out and started frosting a tray of chocolate cakes. I freaked her out when my flash went off for this shot. Oops!

But she was so sweet and came over to the other side so I could take pictures. And she didn't call me "weirdo" or anything. In fact, you can see in the second picture she was talking with me about what she was doing and how long it took her to learn the signature swirl. This is the cream cheese frosting (which is phenomenal, by the way) and because it was a warm day it wasn't cooperating with her. But I still think they looked beautiful.

I know you may not live close to Cupcake Royale, but I'm sure there is an independently owned cupcake shop somewhere near you. Since they are taking over the world and all. So go support them and eat a few cupcakes. Unless you have that gypsy curse thing going on. In which case, never mind.

Cooking Light Mondays: Skillet Fillets with Cilantro Butter

So, Shrink My Butt Cooking Light Mondays haven't been going too well. Namely because I haven't bothered to cook any food for a million years or so. However, I did manage to throw something together way back in June and actually take pictures of it. Miraculous, I know. This recipe was super easy and very tasty. Definitely a do-again. Here's what transpired as far as I can remember.

Any recipe that has a big hunk of butter in it has to be a winner, right? To the softened butter I added some fresh cilantro, lemon rind, paprika and salt. I think it goes without saying that you have to be a cilantro fan to enjoy this. But I guess I just said it anyway.

Smoosh everything all up together. I suppose I should have wiped down the sides of the cup for this picture. Honestly, I'm just happy I found my camera.

You can use any "mild white fish" for this dish. I believe this is cod. Let's just say it is, okay? It gets sprinkled with a mixture of salt, cumin and ground red pepper. Don't worry, it wasn't too spicy. I am the poster child for the Spicy Food Destroys Tastebuds foundation and I thought it was fine. So it is SFDT approved. I may have put in less of the red pepper than called for, but I can't remember. You'll have to cut me some slack--this was two and a half months ago.

Anyway, the fillets and the nonstick pan both get a good dose of cooking spray and then fry for about 3 minutes on each side. (Fry the fish, not the pan.) I seem to recall leaving the thicker piece in longer because it didn't seem done. I'm always a little iffy about using cooking spray because I feel like I'm eating chemicals. But I've managed to down my fair share of Pop Tarts in my life, and those are probably worse, so I just get over it.

That was pretty much it. I stuck some Cilantro Butter on top and served it with a baked sweet potato and sauteed spinach. (Baked meaning microwaved for 5 minutes.) This was the money shot. Ooo. Ahhh. Ohhhhh.

Then I realized the fish really had very little flavor on its own. So I squeezed the lemon over it and spread out the butter so it would melt into the fish. MUCH better. Not as pretty, but pretty tasty!

So if you need a quick meal and want to get more fish into your diet, we have a winner! Hop on over to Cooking Light if you'd like to make this recipe. And let me know how it turns out. I'll pass the findings on to the SFDT. The tastebud you save may be your own!

Mmm...Hot Butter!

When I think about the holiday season, I realize that yes, I love the family time, the weather and the spirit of giving. But the thing that I think of most during the holiday season is THE FOOD! There are treats we get to enjoy at this time of year that are the true essence of the holidays for me. I associate many smells and tastes with the magic of the season. And some of them just aren't available at any other time of year, so I take advantage of them while I can. One example is this:

This special product comes to area stores and I get so excited when I see the little yellow tub. This so reminds me of the stuff my mom made when we were kids that I would drink by the gallon if allowed. The only problem is, I don't like rum. So I just drink the batter on its own, hence I drink Hot Butter instead of Hot Buttered Rum. I wanted to find out how many calories were in this stuff (bad idea since it's mostly sugar and butter) so I went to their website. No nutritional info, but a very interesting story about Harvey, the man who invented this stuff back in the 50's and now runs a small factory in Bremerton (a town about 30 minutes away) making only this batter. The man is in his 90's and still going strong. Which goes to show, that drinking this stuff will help you live a very long time. Plus it is SO GOOD! Of course, the container says to use a teaspoon of mix per cup. Bwahahahahaha! That's a good one! I'll just stick with my 3 heaping tablespoons, thanks. So, if you are in the Northwest and you see this nectar of the gods in your local dairy case, do yourself a favor and pick some up. You'll thank me.

But, wait, what if you don't live in the Northwest? What if you are doomed to live in some other boring, Not Northwest, Butter-Rum-Batter free zone? Well, guess what I have for you? My mom used to make an equally deadly version of this every year and because I'm so kind I will share the recipe with you. Mom's is technically better than Harvey's but with the premade stuff I don't have to work so hard. Always a plus. Anyway, go whip up some of this batter to keep in your freezer. And I won't count how many tablespoons you put in your cup if you don't count mine!


Hot Buttered Rum Batter

1 lb. powdered sugar
1 lb. brown sugar
1 lb. butter
1 quart vanilla ice cream, softened
1 Tbl. vanilla extract

Beat together all ingredients. Place in an airtight container and store in freezer.

To make, combine 1 1/2 Tbl. batter, 1 cup hot water, 1/2 jigger rum. Sprinkle with nutmeg.

I told you it was bad for you. What's not to love? Enjoy!

By the way, anybody know what a jigger is?

Cooking Light Mondays: Pomegranate-Avocado Salsa

This is one of the appetizers I brought for Thanksgiving. We always have snacks before hand, but I'm not sure why since we eat freakishly early, so I'm rarely actually hungry for dinner. But somehow I managed to eat plenty anyway.

The first time I ever had this, my friend Jill made it for a cookie swap she was hosting. I don't remember much about the cookies we had, but I remember this salsa, so that says a lot. It actually has "spicy chips" that you can make to go with it, but I wasn't feeling it. Also, remember: broken oven. We had baked Tostitos scoops and they worked great and tasted yummy. Couldn't really tell they were the baked kind, so that's good.

This is fairly easy. The hardest part is seeding the pomegranate. I used the underwater method to keep from spraying juice all over the place. It was kind of tedious, but it got the job done. The rest of this is just chopping stuff up; oranges, avocados, cilantro, green onion and jalapeno. You throw it all together with some honey, lime juice and salt. That's it. Easy as pie. Actually, pie's much harder to make, so I'm going to say Easy as salsa. So there.

Here's the recipe if you would like to make your own. It's a really popular dish, there was nothing left of it. So I highly recommend it for any holiday parties you might be attending. I think I'm going to make it again for our upcoming staff party in December. If you make the chips let me know how they turn out. Once I have a working oven I might give them a try. Enjoy!

p.s. Isn't the dish pretty? I just love Polish Pottery!!

Thanksgiving and Tea

Wow, I can't believe it is almost the end of November. Only two more days of NaBloMoPo. I really do intend to keep posting. But it will definitely be less frequent as December is a very busy month for me. And you too, I'm sure.

Anyway, thought I'd catch you up on my holiday weekend.

My niece, Madison, made these cutie-patootie decorations in school out of toilet paper rolls. I'm not sure why they are looking to the side and sticking their tongues out. Maybe they are full from too much turkey. I do know that my nephew Max enjoyed pulling their hats off repeatedly.

My poor sister, Monica, came down with the stomach flu on Thanksgiving, so no turkey for her. It was a pretty rotten holiday for her overall. She's trying to look cheery in this picture, unlike her daughter. Madison is a very sympathetic girl, so she's hanging out with mom on the couch.

Mmm, turkey! You can tell it's done because its little timer popped up. It's sitting on this neat rack my mom found that lets you easily lift the entire bird up out of the pan.

Here's the center of the table loaded up with food. Why, yes, we did have a ham as well as turkey. No, I don't know why. Because we did, that's all I've got for you.

After we recovered from pigging out at dinner, we further did ourselves in with pie. Besides pumpkin, we had pecan made by my brother-in-law, Steve, (it was very good!)

and apple pie without any cinnamon. My step-father is allergic, so we had to sprinkle our own cinnamon on there if we wanted some. It didn't really taste the same, but what can you do?

The next day was tea at the Queen Mary Tea Room in Seattle. You may recall that we did this last year, too, but with a different cast of characters. Unfortunately, my sister still wasn't well enough to come. So besides me, we had

my Aunt Kay (left) and my mom (right). They are wearing crowns because the waitress offered tiaras to the little girls but they wouldn't wear them. So we put them on instead. Plus, we made them look GOOD!

Madison drinking her Almond Cream tea, looking pensive. Actually, I think she's mid-sentence, but I wanted to get bonus points for using the word "pensive."

Kenzie is trying her hardest not to smile in the top picture. Obviously, that didn't work too well for her!

Our tea trays, loaded up with lots of yummy stuff! You would never have guessed that we pigged out at Thanksgiving the night before, because by the end of tea, our trays looked like this:

Overall, I ate WAY too much. But I was able to spend time with my family so that makes it all okay. That and the healthy eating I plan to begin again tomorrow. Right before Christmas. When there is food literally everywhere. Yeah. Oh well, holidays come just once a year, right? Thank goodness!

p.s. Welcome to my 6th official follower, Pam from Sidewalk Shoes. I feel so honored to have all these people reading my lame little blog. Thanks, guys!

Cooking Light Mondays: Cod Poached in Spicy Tomato Broth

That's right, Shrink My Butt Cooking Light Mondays are back! Mostly because I made this one literally months ago and just never got around to posting it. But never mind. Here it is in all its easy-as-pie glory!

Put together all the stuff you need. Here we have garlic, kalamata olives, crushed red pepper, Italian Recipe diced tomatoes (yay, S&W!), olive oil, capers and some white wine hiding in the back. You can't get away from ME, wine! And thanks to The Pioneer Woman for giving me the idea of putting all the ingredients in one photo so I don't have to go on about them individually. Unless I want to.

So let's go! Heat up the oil and throw in some garlic you smooshed up. The recipe calls for bottled minced garlic, but I usually have fresh stuff on hand, and I love using my Pampered Chef garlic smoosher.

After a minute or so, throw in water, some of the wine, some of the crushed red pepper (not all of it. hot is bad) and capers. Drink some of the leftover wine.

Realize you were supposed to put the tomatoes in there, too. Oops. Darn wine. Anyway, put the tomatoes in and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Doesn't it look pretty? See all the steam? Ooooo. Tomato stuff.

Throw in your fish fillets cut up into chunks. It just dawned on me that the recipe doesn't say to cut up the fish. I guess that came out of my little brain. Oh well.

Put the lid on the great Calphalon pan your mom gave you. Let fish simmer for 5 minutes. Notice how dirty and beat up the ancient stove in your apartment is. Wish you had a new one. Realize you forgot to chop up the olives.

While fish is cooking, chop up the olives. Try to get a picture that doesn't make them look like raisins on crack. Drink some more wine.

Serve fish with some of the broth and a crusty french roll you heated up in the toaster oven. Sprinkle olives on top. Take pictures. Realize the roll soaked up a LOT of the broth and is now soggy. Swear a little. Eat it anyway. Say "Mmmm, this is good."

And there you have it. The VERY easy poached cod recipe from Cooking Light. Really, if it was any easier, I could have drunk the whole bottle of wine with it. Instead of just half.

Okay, three-quarters.

Cooking Light Mondays: Diner Meatloaf Muffins

Hey everyone! It's time again for Shrink My Butt Cooking Light Monday! Maybe I should just officially change its name to that. Anyway, this week's recipe is Diner Meatloaf Muffins. In the March, 2006 issue, they did a "cooking class" segment on lots of ways to make meatloaf. I've been feeling the need for some comfort food lately with our freezing temperatures out here, and plus I've been craving hamburger. I know there are lots of better types of beef out there, but I am a hamburger girl. Love it!

This was a very simple recipe and luckily it came out VERY good. This is definitely a keeper. Not only did I love the flavor and texture, but I also managed to make it in under an hour. Even with chopping time involved. Let's make meatloaf!

Chop up a cup of onions and half a cup of carrots. This is a fine dice. Heat up a little olive oil and saute them with 2 garlic cloves mushed (I am too lazy to mince) and a teaspoon of oregano for two minutes. This smelled heavenly. I wanted to take a bath in this stuff. However, that would get me lots of alone time. Or institutional time. Whatever.

Set that aside to cool down a little bit. Then pull out your fat free Saltine Crackers which you forgot to buy and had to run to the store for had sitting in your cabinet. I know I could have bought store brand for this, but now I have 3 other sleeves of crackers that I will have to deal with. So I spent the big bucks and got the Nabisco ones. Expect more Saltine Cracker recipes in the near future.

Now for the fun part. Take 20 crackers (says the recipe...I needed 25) and smash them up until you have a cup of finely smooshed crackers. That's an official cooking term. Finely smooshed.

Okay, I'm lying. But you knew that.

My favorite method of smooshing is to put the smooshable object in a big Ziplock bag and have at it with a rolling pin. Anything heavy will do, but I try to use my rolling pin more than once a year for SOMETHING. Plus it's really fun to roll it all over the bag.

That's pretty much all the hard work for this dealie. Next, stick all of the ingredients in a big bowl. Here we have the one and a half pounds hamburger (93% lean), the vegie mix, crackers, ketchup, mustard, a couple of eggs, some Worcestershire sauce (wooster? wistersheer? how do you say this?) and a little bit of freshly ground pepper. Only a little because pepper is hot. It is too. I always seem to bite into a big piece of pepper. Ick. So add more if you like that kind of thing. Notice there's no added salt? It was totally fine without it. But I guess you could put some in at this point if you wanted to.

Make sure you use this kind of ketchup. It is the best. All others suck.

Heinz, need a spokesperson? Call me!

Now for the dirty part. Stick your hands in there and mush it around. Do this as little as possible, just until it's all blended. I speak from experience. Hamburger that has been overly mixed comes out dense and tough. And gross.

I know this looks yucky. But trust me, it's yummy!

No, I didn't taste it. I just know. I'm smart like that.

Now take a muffin tin and spray some cooking spray on there. Fill each tin with some of the meatloaf mix. I had to pat it in pretty good to get it all to fit. Then spread a few teaspoons of ketchup onto each one. You could skip this step if you don't like it, but it helps keep the top from drying out. Some of the reviewers on the Cooking Light website suggested using BBQ sauce instead. That would be good, too. Stick in the oven for 25 minutes at 350*.

Here are the cooked ones. I let them stand for 5 minutes while I took the pictures. I was worried that maybe they would overflow or grease would come out or something, so I cooked this on top of a rimmed cookie sheet and some foil. You know, like I was supposed to do for the Sticky Buns? But I didn't need to. I had no problems or drippage at all. I think the key here is to use the lowest possible amount of fat in your hamburger. These might be pretty nasty and greasy otherwise.

One serving of these is 2 "muffins." I served it with steamed zucchini and some orzo that I cooked in chicken broth. You know, Swanson's flavorless, healthy chicken broth. It worked fine for this and added a subtle flavor to the pasta.

Some of the website reviewers thought these were too moist. They are definitely very wet, but if you've ever had overmixed, dried out meatloaf you will appreciate these all the more. And the flavor actually tasted like sausage, I think because of the garlic and oregano. I wolfed these down and am looking forward to lunch tomorrow. This makes 6 servings, so I plan to freeze the leftovers individually and then put them in a Ziplock so I can pull them out when needed.

Oh, and why do these have the word "diner" in the title? Probably because they were doing a feature on meatloaf and needed different names for each one and that was the best they could do. Regardless of the name, make this recipe and enjoy!