strawberry cupcakes

so this weekend, in the midst of packing for my trip and watching my awesome husband play baseball, we helped host a baby shower! and what a cute one it was! while i plan on blogging on all the little details tomorrow, i thought i should start with the cupcakes ash and i made. they were pretty much awesome, i’m not going to lie!! while we are all about cake pops, based on the logisitics of the weekend we recognized that we wouldn’t have time to assemble something to our level of perfection. plus, with all the showers we do for our lifegroup, we like to mix it up- the first shower we did a three-tiered cake, then the cake pops, so we opted for cupcakes. inspired by none other than pinterest, we went for some fun cupcakes with a sugar cookie on top. we divided to conquer and ash made the cookies and i made the cupcakes, then we helped each other assemble.

so saturday night, after a long day at the baseball field, i got to work. and i lost the site i got the recipe from, but if you want it, i have it saved.  i liked this recipe because it had 1 1/3 cup of fresh strawberries- yum! and an interesting addition- strawberry milk! of course, most nesquick and what not versions of strawberry milk have HCFS in it, so i found the cute little horizon milks that are all organic!

the strawberry milk

yum fresh strawberries going in the food processor to make puree!

so sometimes my baking is all about improvising. while i went to the store the day before to get everything i needed, somehow i forgot that i needed more sugar?! so, i combined what i had- i'm sure this is a baking nono, but i mixed some organic cane sugar, some demerera sugar, and some brown sugar. it works, right?

the color was almost perfect, but i added a few drops of red food coloring because i wanted to ensure that the cupcakes turned out bright pink.

i tried out a new buttercream recipe, and we loved it!

this turned out awesome- and super fluffy!

my perfectly pink strawberry cupcakes.

i colored my frosting gray by using black coloring, but just a bit. then, using a star tip, i piped on the swirl.

then, sunday morning, once i got to ash's, i melted down some white candy melts and put them in a zip loc bag with a small tip and piped "ella" the sweet baby girl's name. now even though i only made 30 cupcakes, i made about 60 ellas, because, since they were made of chocolate, they were super fragile. i wanted to make sure i had enough in case some broke, and i thought we could definitely use some elsewhere.

the finished product!

look forward to tomorrow's post on the shower!

in the morning, i'm making waffles...

this past saturday morning, nathan and i had no where to be early, so after sleeping in, i had a hankerin' for some waffles. we love lazy saturday mornings with homemade waffles, and it had been too long since we had last made them. so, i whipped out my handy dandy cookbook and got to work.

now don't get me wrong, i love a good eggo with peanut butter, but if i'm getting out the waffle iron, the only way i roll is homemade!

the recipe i use is a loose interpretation of the better homes & garden's new cookbook one.

yes, i write in my cookbooks and leave future me notes. its a good thing too, because everytime i see them i'm like, 'o, yeah!'

of course, its pink

you know me, all about some le creuset. this piece was a christmas present from my aunt...everyone needs a good batter bowl!!

so here we go. first, i mix about 7/8 cup of whole wheat flour with 1 tablespoon demerara sugar (or brown sugar), 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt. to that, this time, i added 1 tbsp flax seed

and about 1/4 bag of walnuts

in a separate bowl, i mixed 1 egg with 7/8 cup milk, 1/4 cup of oil and a big splash of vanilla. 

then, i make a little well in the center of the dry mix and pour the wet stuff in all at once.

and stir, preferably with a big pink spatula :)

finally, into the waffle iron it goes.

and thats it! these were super hearty and kept us full for quite a while! also, this recipe only made 4, but i think you could think it out to get 6. the original recipe is for 12, and i half it, but i think its too thick. perfect for us though!

while i was making waffles, nathan ran out to starbucks to get us some drinks to go with. we chose to have some quad shots, 1 pump sugar free vanilla, whole milk lattes.yum!

this was my waffle...i like them with just a sprinkle of powdered sugar and some whipped cream

after such a yummy breakfast, we headed out to piedmont park to hit up the local green market and enjoy some sunshine. 

check out this shot of the city- isn't it beautiful? i love this view

nathan's sister sarah gave us a call and happened to be in the area, so she came over and met us and her and nathan joined a pick up game of ultimate frisbee. i lounged under a tree (it was HOT) and snapped some pics.

its days like this one that make me love the city and love living here.