Birthday Cupcake Frosting

Do you remember last week when I made those crazy Chocolate Caramel Peanut Popcorn cupcakes for The Boy?

Well, this week it was The Girl's turn.  In honor of her 15th birthday (oy!) I pulled out the best ever frosting recipe.  Seriously.  The best.  Ever.

Doesn't it look divine?

I made regular white cupcakes from a box.  I didn't want anything to interfere with the flavor of this frosting.  Then I made this:

Nutella Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 cup salted butter, softened, but cool
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
• 1/2 cup Nutella
• 1 tablespoon milk

Directions:

To make the frosting, in a bowl of stand mixer, combine the powdered sugar and butter and beat on low speed for about 1 minute.  Add vanilla, and beat on low speed until well combined.

Add the melted and slightly cooled chocolate and beat on medium speed until smooth (about 2 minutes).

Add the Nutella and beat on med-high speed for another minute.  If too thick, you can add small increments of more milk and blend until smooth.

You'll end up with wonderful chocolate deliciousness that looks like this:

You'll really want to like the beater.  And you can go ahead - I won't tell.

Now, to frost the cupcakes, I used a pastry bag with a large star tip.  I piped around the outside rim of the cupcake, and spiraled inward, pulling up at the end to get the point.

This frosting is really easy to work with.  It is nice and soft, but it holds up in the heat.  It was in the upper 90s when I was making these, and I even put them under lights to get some pictures, and there was no melting.

This recipe frosts just a little more than a dozen cupcakes pretty generously.



I'd make and extra one and set it aside for a midnight snack.

You'll thank me later.

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Good Camouflage, Bad Location Choice

I'm pretty sure that this guy?

If he were standing on a leaf or a branch?  Would be virtually undetectable.

Instead?

He chooses a fence post.  Someone needs to tell him he doesn't quite blend.

I've felt like this guy looks on occasion.  I remember attending a Brownie meeting with The Girl years ago.  The other mothers were all complaining about one teacher who was using a red pen to grade papers.  They were actually interested in getting rid of that teacher because the use of red pen might hurt their child's self-esteem.  I like to think my kid is smart enough to realize that even if a correction is done in purple pen, it is still wrong and she needs to learn from that mistake.

I felt a bit like that tonight at The Girl's swimming awards banquet,  We sat at a table with some parents we do not know well.  When the coach was giving out some "joke" awards (a fly swatter to a girl who stopped a meet because there was a bee in her lane, a can of Cheese Whiz to a boy who whined the most, etc.) one of the parents thought that she was being mean.  The kids didn't think she was being mean.  In fact, when the coach was given a gift by her team,  one of the boys mentioned that he got an award for goofing off one year and that the next year he was the most improved swimmer.  So maybe there was method in her meanness?

I think that, as a society, we coddle our kids a lot and do them a pretty big disservice.  I don't like to see our kids hurting or frustrated or sad any more than the next person.  But we need to help them figure out how to deal with those emotions and the things that bring on those emotions.  And better to have them figure it out in a safe environment, one in which we can guide them, than out in the "real world" alone.  I believe we need those coaches who give them a not-so-gentle public nudge.

And I think that thinking that way, at least here in my area of So Cal, makes me a bit of a leaf bug on a wrought iron fence post.  At least it feels that way sometimes.

The Children are worth it though.

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Saturday

For a busy day, it sure didn't seem like we got much accomplished.

I did bake some cookies.

Peanut butter.  Yum.

And The Girl had a fantastic piano recital!

 And we chatted with relatives in from out of town.

 In a dark room.  On a really gorgeous day.  Sigh.

 But it was a fun day chatting.

 And a got to wear a new outfit.

 With fun shoes.  Who doesn't like red shoes?  ;-)

Did you have a good Saturday?

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Sunday Snapshot - 13

We just finished our last weekend as parents without a teenager until 2020.  The Girl turns 13 on Tuesday!

She had her birthday party on Saturday - laser tag with her friends.  They all had a great time - a success in my book!

Though it was a dark room, and we only had cell phones...  you get the idea.

Would you be 13 again given the chance?









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On Being a Step Mom - Events

The Girl had her 13th birthday party today.

She and 8 of her friends played laser tag at a local laser tag establishment.  There was pizza and cake and presents.  Standard birthday party stuff.

Because we spend a lot of time with The Children, we always find it a bit odd when we encounter parents and kids who find our particular family situation odd.

Some parents won't really talk to us.  I've found that other moms in particular will give me the cold shoulder.  

I'm not entirely sure how to deal with it.  Mostly we just ignore it and move on.  

I feel like I should do something.  Be more involved?  Push the conversation?  Seems like there should be something.

The Girl had a great birthday party (quote from her facebook page "Most awesomest birthday party EVER!!!!!! ") so that is great.

I just hope that one day I will not feel like an outsider.  

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Sunday Snapshot - Sunday Dinner

Sunday is our day for family dinner.  My in-laws come to dinner every Sunday, and we all sit down at the table and have dinner.

Dinner and conversation.  Which can be problematic some of the time.. a  subject for a different blog though.

I like to make dinner entertaining, and to that end have been having "theme dinners" for several years now.

Theme Dinners have a theme (go figure) usually relating to something that happened in history on that day or something that is happening in current events.

One of our first theme dinners was on a Veteran's Day.  We wanted to teach The Children about what veterans were, so our menu was war themed.  We had "Redcoats in a Blanket" for the Revolutionary War, "M*A*S*H'ed Potatoes" for the Korean War, "Kaiser Rolls" for WWI... you get the idea.  Then we got the opportunity to talk about each war at dinner.

For the 2004 summer Olympics, we had a Greek dinner, with authentic Greek food.  We bought special plates (at the dollar store) and at the end of the meal we all threw our plates into the fireplace!  The Boy, who was 3 at the time, had eyes as big as the plates when he yelled "Oplah!"  Cute.  Later The Mr and I took the shards of the plates and made this mosaic to remember the Olympics and our dinner (can you see the Olympic rings in it?).

We made Mount Zentmore for President's Day one year when my sister was visiting.  This was a great project where we got to stick our faces in goo that sets up into a form that you can pour plaster into.  Worth the effort I think... you might ask my sister if she thinks so too as one of those is her face.

Sometimes we do crafts - this is one our "Christmas Cards for Santa" dinners where we all wrote (painted actually) a card to Santa on a ceramic tile.

We turned our house into the M.S. Zentdam when we had a cruise ship themed dinner (and yes, we had a lifeboat drill - mandatory attendance).

Tonight our theme was International Pasta.  We found some great pastas at the Farmer's Market the other day.  We bought some curry angel hair pasta and some habanero radiatore.  We had a lot of great produce to use, so I tried to put it all together.

We had Italian sauce, with whole wheat penne, Caribbean jerk chicken with mango sauce over the habanero rotini and Indian cilantro cream sauce over the curry angel hair.

And of course, fresh baked French bread....

All of them were tasty.  The habanero pasta was crazy spicy.  We made The Children each have some of all of the pastas.  They actually did a great job, given the spiciness of the habanero... and actually the spiciness of the Italian pasta too (my favorite sauce is pretty hot).

The Boy drank a lot of water...

The Girl does not like her picture being taken...

So for dessert, after a crazy meal, what do we serve?  This:

Fruit and ice cream.  Avocado and mint ice cream (the brownish green rectangle thing at the bottom of the pile of fruit).  I know.  Very weird.  We didn't tell anyone what the "secret ingredient" was, and no one could guess.  Imagine that.

The odd thing was, everyone liked it!  And, it calmed down the heat in our mouths.

All in all, a great success of a meal.  No one (insert "The Children" here) yelled at each other, and we all enjoyed the food.  Makes the work worth every minute.
















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