Chocolate & Banana Cream Cupcakes

I made cupcakes last night. I listed off some choices for BF "Okay, so choice number one is matcha cupcakes with pomegranate frosting. Choice number 2 is vanilla cupcakes with banana cream filling and chocolate frosting,.."

He interrupted me "I don't need to hear anymore."

"But there are more choices"

"Nothing could be better than chocolate and banana."

Here they are:

I used the recipe for white cupcakes from Crazy About Cupcakes. This is the third time I've used it. I love the recipe, but these came out a little dry. I think I baked them about four minutes too long.

For the banana cream I used the recipe from this site, but I cut it in half (I still used two bananas though, effectively doubling the amount of banana in the recipe) and mashed the banana instead of cutting it so that it could be piped into the cupcakes (I use a Wilton's bismark tip #230 to do this). This is an excellent recipe, I highly recommend it.

The frosting is my regular buttercream with some cocoa and an additional tablespoon of milk added.

I decided to use yellow cupcake cups in keeping with the banana theme, and put slices of fresh banana on top (Do this immediately before serving because they turn brown and get soggy if you let them sit for more than a couple of hours).

These are some of the best cupcakes I've made yet!

July 29th Bento Lunch

100th post!!

Now that I'm not working, I can post earlier in the day, which is nice.

I found some great foods last week during a trip to the asian grocery store. My best find was frozen banana leaves! I'm too excited to have these back again because I haven't been able to find them since that one time my local grocery store carried them. They were dirt cheap too. I got 1 lb (about 20 sheets, 1 square foot each) for $1.65. Love it!

We made coconut banana rice (Chuoi Nuong) again last night - check out this blog post for how it's made. BF said "Remind me again why we don't eat this every day?" Well, now we can! I made two extra stuffed leaves for the bentos this morning. The meat in the bento lunches today is leftover from last night as well. It's a premade cut from the butcher, a pork loin stuffed with herbs, veggies and cheese with a strip of bacon wrapped around it that we barbecued.

I included a few lentil bites as well for extra carbs. For veggies, there are some strips of green pepper sauteed in a bit of oil and salted, a couple of pieces of yellow zucchini, some asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps (all steamed), and some awesome beet hearts.

Now I can hear my seven-year old self cringing as I call beets awesome, but oh man, these are gorgeous. The inside of the beet is alternating red and white rings and each beet is tiny, the perfect size for bento. I was able to get six heart slices from one beet which is exactly enough for two bento lunches in my opinion.

For fruit there are a couple of fresh lychees, some pluot bites (BF tells me that a pluot is a cross between a plum and an apricot), raspberries, blueberries and strawberry slices.

July 1st Bento

I felt like everything about today's bento was overshadowed by the fact that I overcooked the veggies. I missed the beep of the microwave timer and ended up steaming them about five minutes too long. They turned out soggy and a sickly green instead of a bright, delicious green.

Oh well, I won't make that mistake twice.

In the bottom tier there is some delicious yaki udon. I boiled one pack of noodles for three minutes and then fried with 1 Tbsp each of canola oil, soy sauce and sake. On top of that are some carrot flowers with snow pea leaves. On the other side there are some delicious seasoned lamb bites and some chinese broccoli (gai lon).

On top we have asparagus pieces, sugar snaps, a mini banana and a delicious mix of black beans, sweet onion, cilantro, red pepper, lime juice and olive oil that I picked up at the deli on the weekend. It was called a salsa, but it seems more like a salad to me, so that's how we ate it.

For fruit there are fresh lychees (yum!), cherries, the last few satsuma wedges, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

We're going to fireworks tonight - yay!