Posts from — March 2010

They’re back…

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Several years ago, Jim came across this recipe for Beer Cupcakes from Big City, Little Kitchen, but I only got around to making them this year in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

I was inspired as well by the recent appearance of a delicious stout in our house. The recipe calls for one cup of Guinness. I pulled two cups of home-brewed stout: one for the batter and one for the baker! That was the only variation I attempted on the cupcake batter.

For the frosting, I made only a small batch. I used 4 ounces of cream cheese with about 1/2 cup of sugar and a little vanilla. I wasn’t sure if hand-beating would dissolve the sugar well enough (we were out of powdered sugar) but I was pleasantly surprised that the frosting came out lovely and creamy. I put a dollop of frosting on about half of the cupcakes. The plain ones disappeared almost as quickly.

These beer cupcakes are moist and delicious. I didn’t find any true beer flavor, just a deep, satisfying chocolate. The recipe is really quite easy and the results were excellent. Perhaps we will establish a new St. Patrick’s Day tradition.

We don’t bring a lot of snacks and chips into the house because we generally find them irresistible. Still, we do indulge from time to time in potato chips, corn chips and SunChips. Recently at the big grocery store, I found SunChips offered in a 100% compostable bag. This product innovation was news to me since we don’t usually watch broadcast television or read the sorts of magazines in which their advertisements might appear. Because we like SunChips and because I like compost experiments, I bought a bag. Soon enough, we had an empty bag and I had yet another compost experiment.

SunChips Compostable Bag-- Day 1

(20-Minute Jim) I hadn’t planned on brewing today mostly because the forecast I had seen called for temps in the 40′s and precipitation in various formats. I was pleasantly surprised by a nearly sunny morning, but by the time I really started to believe the weather and not the weatherman, it was already 1:00 PM. Not too late too brew.

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I don’t consider myself a “houseplant person,” although for as long as I can remember, we’ve always had some plants living inside with us. Inspired by the post at Mr. MrGregor’s Daughter and the envelope which arrived in the mail this week, I decided to take a Houseplant Census as well.

African Violet in Bloom