Move over Martha, there's a new cupcake master in town! 

No, I'm talking about me, I'm talking about Sweetapolita! Her official name is "Rosie" and she knows a thing or two about baking.

I made Cherry Cheesecake Cupcakes, using Rosie's Pinkalicious Cherry Cupcakes and layering in my dad's Cheesecake recipe. Actually, I used 3/4's of my dad's cheesecake recipe... I forgot to add the sugar!

But never fear. With Rosie's most excellent cupcake batter and the cherry buttercream I whipped up, the sugar in the cheesecake wasn't missed.

Not even for a second!

Remaining: $0.28

I started out optimistic that this week would be no problem. That'd I'd be able to breeze through it with eaze. But I was wrong.

Typically I don't spend a lot on groceries. I keep my baking supplies well stocked of course, but I don't cook much. I am starving by the time I get home from work and make whatever seems to be the easiest and quickest when I look in my fridge/cupboards.

This week forced me to cook. Sure, I bought some ready-made soups for those days I knew I wouldn't want to cook anything. I also bought a variety of frozen vegetables, chick peas, hummus, curry sauce, rice, quinoa. So basically I lived on stir fries.

I learned that I really need to up my cooking game. Well, I already knew that, but this just sort of reinforced it.

Even though I don't always spend a lot on groceries, I have the option to if I want. I can only imagine how hard it is for people who have to do live off $35 or less week after week after. This challenge really did give me a sense how lucky I am.

This summer I made some Lemon White Chocolate Raspberry cupcakes, and they were pretty near perfect.

I had a request to make them again, so instead of doing the exact same cupcakes, I took a second to think of how I could take them beyond "near perfect" to "they can't possibly get any better than this!"

How did I do it?

Well, the cupcake itself was already perfect so I used the same recipe.

Instead of baking a white chocolate ball inside, I switched it up for some white chocolate buttercream! The buttercream is so light and it's the fluffiest I've ever made, and so simple (whip 1-1/4 cups, add 10 oz melted and cooled white chocolate, 1-1/2 cups icing sugar and 1 tsp vanilla and whip for a few minutes).

I made a raspberry coulis (blend a container of frozen raspberries (the kind in light syrup) with 2 tbsp lemon juice, pass it through a fine sieve, then mix it with cornstarch/water until it boils and becomes thick) and injected that into the center of the cupcakes. (I reserved some coulis to drizzle over the buttercream, but didn't take a picture of it.)

And that did it!

Also, thank you all for supporting me this year, not only with baking, but in life! Have a very happy holiday!

Note: This is a guest post from Heather J Lennon of "A Little Bit of Everything"

Last night over a couple of drinks and dinner with a few members of my softball team we came up with a challenge, the 35 dollar challenge. Our challenge to each other and anyone else who would like to participate is to live off of $35 of groceries for a week.  You made be asking yourselves where did this idea come from and why $35?

The conversation started from the topic of HOHOTO, an annual fundraiser for the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank. HOHOTO was started by friends in 2008 and has grown into the fundraiser of the year for “geeks, phreaks, webheads, twitterfiends, techies, media, marketers, PR folk, socialites, troglodytes, theodolites and…um… what were we saying? And everyone else!” as posted on HOHOTO’s event description.  The price of a ticket is $35 which has been rounded up from the $32.50 a week food budget which is the median of GTA food bank users prior to social assistance.

And this is where the idea for the 35 Dollar Challenge began.

We talked back and forth about if someone could really live off of $35 a week and what those meals would look like. Asking questions such as is it possible to eat relatively balanced meals and how diverse each meal could or would end up being? With the rising cost of food these days eating balanced meals on a $35 a week budget is getting more and more difficult.

In the end we all agreed it could be done and we were going to try it. We set out to come up with a few guidelines for our challenge and set the dateJanuary 9 – 15^th, 2012.

Guidelines (Which have been tweeted by @bakingispassion and @heatherjlennon using the hashtag #Challenge35)

1. Single people get a weekly food budget of $35, couples get $60.
2. Every dinner must be different.
3. Condiments already on hand are excluded from the $35 budget.
4. Alcohol is considered food for the purposes of this challenge though if previously on hand it doesn’t affect the weekly budget (Being all softball players/ Canadians deciding were alcohol fit into this challenge was very important to us).
5. Tweet what you have for dinner every night using #challenge35, better yet why not tweet everything you eat!
6. Most Importantly, donate the difference of what you would normally spend on food a week to the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank or any Food Bank in your community (ie: $100-35 = donate $65).

This challenge is about both understanding how too many of our fellow Canadian’s live and continuing the giving notion of the holiday season even if it is a small amount.

I’ll be participating in the 35 Dollar Challenge this January 9 – 15^th, will you?

So the original theme of this blog was supposed to be about cooking, with a little bit of baking thrown in. Somehow it became all about baking (which is great, don't get me wrong), and not at all about cooking.

Simply put, cooking isn't the all that fun when you're doing it for one. The last thing I want to do is when I get home from work is stand in my kitchen making dinner. I'm usually starving and want to eat right away, so I go for whatever is quick and whatever is easy.

Thing is, that's not really healthy, so I have decided that I am going to start cooking for myself, and gosh darn it, I'm going to enjoy it!

Stay tuned for recipes for one and things of the sort...

This week my Grandma Martin, my inspiration for baking, for life, turned 85. EIGHTY-FIVE!

One of my most favourite childhood memories is decorating sugar cookies with her and my sister at G & G's house on their kitchen table ("G & G" is how Grandma and Grandpa used to sign Christmas and birthday cards).

Grandma's cookie cutter collection had absolutely every possible cookie cutter you could imagine, for every different occasion, and there would always be a wide array of cookies to ice. She would have these little bowls set out with every colour of icing, and the three of us, Grandma, Annette and I, would set to work creating a veritable fantasy land of purple horses, green pigs, tie-died hearts, etc. etc.

So in honour of Grandma's birthday I decided to bake and decorate sugar cookies!

I opted to keep the shape simple (though my cookie cutter collection is becoming quite impressive, and should I ever become a grandmother myself, my grandchildren will be just as in awe of my collection as I was/am of my grandma's) and have fun with the decoration.

I put a call out on Twitter/Facebook asking what people would like to see on a cookie, and this is what they came up with:

Sugar Cookies

3 cups All-Purpose Flour
3/4 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1 cup Butter, Unsalted, Softened
1 cup Sugar
1 Egg, Beaten
1 tbsp Milk
Icing Sugar

Sift the first three ingredients together. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and milk and beat until combined.

Put mixer on low and add flour mixture until combined.

Divide dough in half and wrap in waxed paper and refridgerate for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375*

Sprinkle surface with icing sugar (you will need a lot more icing sugar than you would use flour, as it gets absorbed into the dough more). Remove one wrapped pack of dough at a time, sprinkle rolling pin with icing sugar and roll the dough to 1/4 inch thick. Move the dough around to make sure it doesn't stick to the surface.

Cut out shapes and place on non-stick baking sheet (or baking sheet lined with parchment paper).

Bake for 7-9 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to turn brown around the edges, rotating the cookie sheet half way through. Cool on a rack.

Royal Icing

4 cups Icing Sugar
3 tbsp Meringue Powder
1 tsp Lemon Juice
1/2 - 3/4 cups Warm Water

Mix icing sugar and meringue powder. Add lemon juice and 1/2 cup of water and beat for 5 minutes. Add more water if necessary to get the consistency you need. Add food colouring as desired.

Grandma's Icing

Icing Sugar
Milk
Vanilla Extract 

Quantities depend on how much icing you want to end up with. Start with icing sugar and add a teaspoon of milk at a time until perfect. Add food colouring as desired. 

I'm going to go ahead and say right here and now that I have the very best family anyone could ask for. I have three loving parents, four amazing brothers and sisters, four awesome in-laws, three of the sweetest neices, one adorable nephew, a grandma that inspires me daily, two grandpas that were the apitomy of patience, another grandma that always made me laugh, five handsome uncles, six beautiful aunts and twenty wonderful cousins (including their spouses and kids), one of whom celebrated a birthday yesterday!

Deb has two sheep, Lola and Harriette. Though I'm not sure who's who, they were both inspirations for her birthday cupcakes!

When my offer to make her birthday cupcakes was accepted before I was able to press 'send' on my email, it came with the flavour request of carmel or dulce de leche. Since Deb's kind of fancy (in a completely down-to-earth, 'not afraid to get her nails dirty in the garden' kind of way), I decided to go with dulce de leche.

The recipe I settled on was incredibly simple. A buttermilk batter, dulce de leche in a jar (I did not want to test my carmel skills at this time, as carmel and I aren't always the best of friends, and I didn't want to screw up the cupcakes!) and the BEST buttercream of life. Seriously, this recipe for Swiss Buttercream is now posted on my fridge, tucked in my apron and about to be tattooed on my forearm. Ok not seriously, but now that you mention it...

I made cute little heads out of marzipan, drew on some smiles, shaped some ears and popped on some eyes, piped some buttercream and there you have it - Sheep!

Happy Birthday Deb!

It's been a while since I played with cupcakes and new flavour creations! So when my aunt gave me a bag of white chocolate Lindor chocolates for my birthday I knew I needed to turn them into cupcakes.

At first I was planning on making my classic chocolate cupcakes and sticking one of these delicious balls of white chocolate goodness in the middle, thinking that it would look pretty fantastic when they were bitten into.

But then on Friday when I was looking through all the food porn in my rss feed, I saw a gorgeous post filled with the most delicious-looking lemon treats, and knew then and there what I needed to do.

After a little confirmation from Godiva that lemon and white chocolate do, in fact, go together, I grabbed some lemons on my way home from work and was all set.

I used My Baking Addiction's Lemon Cupcake recipe, and it was perfect! I was really pleased with the way the cupcake batter came together - slightly sweet, fluffy, and packed with citrus but not overwhelmingly so.

After I filled the cupcake cups I unwrapped the Lindor chocolates and plopped one in each cup, covered it with a little more batter and into the oven they went.

For the buttercream, I added the zest from two lemons and the juice from one, butter, and enough icing sugar until it was the right consistency. It turned out deliciously bright and not too sweet. I also made some raspberry coulis by blending a pint of raspberries, two tablespoons of sugar and the juice from one lemon, straining it, then adding some corn starch and simmering it until it was thickened.

When the cupcakes were cooled I swirrled on some buttercream and drizzled the raspberry coulis, and to be honest, waited about two seconds before sinking my teeth into one!

The lemon was bright yet subtle, the chocolate was like a sweet little surprise, and the raspberry was the perfect compliment to it all!

... to be your wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and to be delicious, until you are both eaten?

Do you Vanilla, take Chocolate to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and to be delicious, until you are both eaten?

I now pronounce you cupcake and frosting!

May you make many, many babies together!

Being able to visit my big brother in San Francisco for 4 uninterrupted, action-packed yet relaxing days was incredible. What’s even more incredible was getting to see how absolutely amazing he doing, not just in his career, but with life in general.

My trip started with an uneventful early-Thursday-morning flight from Toronto to SF. I had a window seat by the emergency exit with lots of leg room but no TV (or so I thought, until I asked the guy beside me to switch seats cause he was just sleeping anyway, only to have him pull out a TV from the arm rest about 10 minutes later *embarrassing!*). I got off the plane, made my way to baggage claim and gave him a giant hug. We headed to ‘The Bart’ (SF’s transit system, a mix of the GO Train and TTC) and chatted as we made our way towards the downtown area (I’m sure there is a specific neighbourhood name for it, because SF seems to be filled with different neighbourhoods from one block to the next).

Before heading to his kitchen (he's an Excutive Pastry Chef, at Absinthe Brasserie & Bar and Arlequin Café & Food to Go by the way) we grabbed a Vietnamese tofu sandwich (marinated tofu with hot pickled veggies on a french baguette) from Saigon Sandwich, this tiny little hole-in-the-wall that was overflowing with who I imagine to be regulars. We then walked a few more blocks in some direction to his kitchen, which is about half-a-block from his restaurant. We went in, he introduced me to his staff (yes, he has his own staff!), sat down and ate. If you’re ever in SF and have 3 bucks in your pocket, go to Saigon Sandwich and order the tofu. For real.

His kitchen was nice and big, bright, uncluttered, clean and lively. There were 4 or 5 other people milling about doing what they do. Within about 5 minutes of getting there he had checked in with everyone to see how they were, that things were going well, that they were feeling better; making menu decisions, sharing new ideas, and other impressive things like that. Like he knew what he was doing or something!

After we finished our lunch we got “chef-suited up” and he put me to work. My first task was to make rhubarb stock for a Rhubarb Ice Cream Float he was adding to the menu. It involved chopping rhubarb, peeling lemons, splitting vanilla beans, adding sugar, wine and water, and letting it simmer for an hour or so. He was constantly pulling things from shelves, the fridge and freezer, handing me spoons and saying “try this”. I can’t remember everything that I sampled, but I know it was all good (check out his menu). The best though was the Espresso S’more he saved for me (he even put it in a container and wrote my name on it!).

Next I cut about exactly 120 Mylar (I think it was Mylar) sheets for molds he was making for an event he’s doing in Pebble Beach. It started out being really tedious, but being the crafty person I am I just created a template and banged them out like it was nothing. Hopefully he’ll continue doing it that way and it’ll streamline the process in the future. Then we went for a tour of the restaurant (Absinthe Brasserie & Bar) and café (Arlequin Café & Food to Go).

It was amazing getting to spend the day in my brother's kitchen. See how he works. Tasting his desserts. Contributing!

After he was done with everything he needed to do we grabbed a latte from Blue Bottle Coffee, got back on the Bart and headed to Oakland, where we were greeted by his lovely wife and chauffeured to their home where we were then greeted by two very excited dachshunds. We hung out for a bit until it was time to head back to the airport to pick up the boyfriend. By the time we got back to their place I had been awake for 23 and a half hours and was more than ready to hit the hay!

Over the rest of the weekend we toured around San Francisco, saw all the sights, like Lombard Street, Alcatraz, the Ferry Buildings, sea lions, Bonita Point, Muir Woods. We covered a lot of the city on foot and ate the most amazing food, including an 8-course dinner and 5-course dessert at Michael Mina that might just be the best-quality meal I’ll ever have the pleasure of eating in my life – they don’t mess around.

We went to the farmers market at the Ferry Building on Saturday morning where my brother seemed to know everyone, and everyone knew him. It was like walking around with a celebrity! He’s going to be famous one day. Soon.

To say that I am proud of him is an understatement. I am in awe of everything that he has been able to accomplish for himself through hard work and raw talent. If you are ever in San Francisco go to Absinthe Brasserie & Bar and order one of everything on the dessert menu. Guaranteed you won’t be disappointed!