Christmas martini!
also, Christmas apron.
Which my cousin made herself for me. Amaaaazed. So beautiful. I think it might be the most beautiful fabric I've ever seen. Maybe. Can I wear this out and about?
Can I please have my own house and family now and wear this around all day?
All I want to do is eat and eat and eat. Everyone else is in the same boat, yeah? I'm not even hungry! It's just that there is way too much delicious food around. Ridiculous amounts of delicious foods!
Yesterday I made my birthday supper (tacos!) and I made my birthday cupcakes. I don't mind cooking too much. And actually it kind of soothed my terrible achingly-bad mood yesterday afternoon to putter around in the kitchen. But especially because it all worked out. If it hadn't then I might have had a real melt down.
Today has been fantastic so far. And we're done now with all the heavy stuff (not quite for my mum since she's preparing dinner). Breakfast is our big crowning jewel of the festivities. And it was all it should be. Along with the regular (but still amazing) eggs and potatoes, we had the (gluten-free!) crepes with gingerbread cheesecake stuff and poached pears my cousin made! Jeeeezus!
So lucky!
Along with the apron I got mostly a tonne of plates and dishes and each one is so wonderful. Good life, this one.
Okay you wanna know about these flourless chocolate cupcakes with maple creamcheese insides that I made for my birthday last night? (I know my cousin does so I thought I'd just post it here for everyone.)
I took a few different recipes and sort of combined them. I'm not the best baker for that exact reason -- that I have difficulty following recipes and sticking to things, luckily these turned out soooo good.
You know how eating gluten-free is all about trying to find things that are almost as good as their glutenful counterparts? Well these cupcakes were some of the best cupcakes I've ever had!
FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES (WITH MAPLE CREAM CHEESE):
8 (1 oz) squares of semi-sweet chocolate
(you could do half of the squares of chocolate with 1/2 cup cocoa)
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
okay so I didn't have a double-boiler so I heated the chocolate squares and the butter in a pyrex over top (not touching the water but resting on the saucepan) of boiling water until they melted.
While that was going on I beat the eggs a lot with an electric beater. Then I beat the sugar and vanilla in. I may have used more vanilla than that.
In another bowl I combined
1 package cream cheese (warmed slightly to mix easier
1 egg
1/2 cup maple syrup (I would use more next time or possibly maple flavouring, you could also do some pumpkin or gingerbread type mix that'd be so good)
1/3 cup sugar
Then when the butter and chocolate were all melted and mixed I poured them into the rest of the cake ingredients and mixed it lightly.
Then poured it into the cupcake wrappers in the tins (it's very runny so don't be worried). Then I dropped spoonfuls of (the also very runny) creamcheese mixture into the centre of the cupcakes.
I baked the cupcakes at 300 degrees for half an hour. Except I forgot about the second batch and they were in there for probably 40 min at least and it didn't do them any harm at all.
If you were to make a cake with this recipe it's suggested to grease the tin and then flour it with cocoa powder. Apparently this amount is good for one 8-inch round cake (without the creamcheese bit -- that's the part I completely made up) but I would suggest making it in a bigger pan and spreading it out very thin. I would also suggest making mini cupcakes. The crunchy bits around the top edges of the cupcakes were everyone's favourites, that's why. These cupcakes are very soft and squishy and a bit more like pudding than cupcakes but I like fudgey brownie-type cakes way better anyway, so it's perfect for me!
Ugh so good. Now I wish I weren't so full so I could eat another.
Anyway, Christmas has been delightful thus far and I'm exceedingly pleased about today, etc. And I'm also pretty exhausted. Maybe I will have a little lie-down before dinner. Mum's making veggie pot pies and a big salad!
eeeeeee! christmas!
I hope you're having a lovely lovely lovely little time wherever you are and also that your family leaves you alone for awhile like mine does because man, so many people get overwhelming after awhile!
Posts
