Chocolate Cupcake with Mocha Swiss Merengue Buttercream

What can be better than chocolate cupcake with yummy mocha buttercream frosting? Well nothing. For those days when you are craving chocolate.

What I did different (Cupcake):
*I don't like really sweet anything so only used 1/2 cup of brown sugar and about 3/4 cup of regular sugar. If you are not sure, make original recipe (half it first, experimentation needs lesser quantity and the original recipe makes about 2 dozen cupcakes) and adjust accordingly next time.
*Used instant coffee because I did not want to make fresh coffee so I put a cup of water in the micro and then coffee powder to hot water.
*I also didn't have cocoa powder so I just used 1/2 cup of Starbucks dark hot chocolate (I just added that with coffee to the hot water). If you use regular hot chocolate reduce the amount of sugar even further.
*Note: This really is very yummy and easy chocolate cake recipe. You just mix everything in, pour and bake. It might become my staple choc cake recipe :)

Cupcake recipe: http://www.diddlesanddumplings.com/2012/05/marshmallow-filled-buttermilk-mocha.html?m=1

Buttercream recipe: http://sweetapolita.com/2011/04/swiss-meringue-buttercream-demystified/

What I did differently: Only used 2.5 cups of butter. Melted chocolate and instant coffee and folded that to the buttercream after its done (about 5-6 chalets of dark chocolate melted in a double boiler)

Thai Red Curry Shrimp

So I bought this tin of red curry paste to try and see how I like it. It isn't bad but not as good as when you make it from scratch (which I have done before but that is another post).

What I used (coz I had them on hand): onion, ginger, garlic, frozen vegetables, mushrooms, coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce and shrimps

What I did: Sauté onions with garlic and ginger. Add frozen vegetables and a little curry paste (use your discretion as it can be pretty spicy). Add some coconut milk (I don't like it really creamy so I only added a little bit but adjust according to taste). Any extra coconut milk can be frozen in ice cube trays and then used as necessary. A little water or stock to thin the sauce out. Add fish sauce to taste (the paste itself is salty). When it starts bubbling add shrimp and mushrooms. Cook until shrimp is curled and pink. Garnish with cilantro (optional).

Serve over white rice (or any other rice you like). Vegetarians can skip adding shrimp and add any veggie you like. Thai eggplants are really good in this and so are peppers.

Kaiser Schnitzel with spaetzle

We recently went to a German restaurant for dinner and I had some Kaiser Schnitzel and since then I have been inspired to make this dish. So what's a girl to do? Look up the recipe and make it of course.

So I did. Here are the recipes that I used:
Kaiser Schnitzel:http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/3264234-Wiener-Schnitzel-with-Kaiser-Sauce
Spaetzle: http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/11793/german-spaetzle-dumplings

What I did differently:
Didn't change anything for spaetzle. It was delicious but next time a little less nutmeg. Maybe 1/4 teaspoon and I did put it in ice water as soon as I took it out of the boiling water.

For Schnitzel, use seasoned breadcrumbs. It was very tasty.

For Kaiser sauce, used lemon juice (abt a tsp, taste and adjust) instead of capers (of course I was not going to go buy capers). Used way more than 4 mushrooms but didn't measure anything else. I just love mushrooms :)

Emoticon cookies!!!

I was totally inspired to learn some cookie decoration. They look so pretty and fascinating!

I used the basic cookie and icing recipe from this website:

What I did differently:

For the cookies: I really like shortbread. So I used 1.5 cups of regular flour and 1/2 cup of rice flour to give my cookies that shortbread taste. YUM! Also after I rolled the cookies I put them in the freezer coz I only have one silicone mat so I baked them in batches. Needed to be baked only 6 mins in my oven.

For the icing: I made the small batch recipe and even that was too much! I did not use the entire 2 bags of icing sugar. Had about 1/4 bag left. Everything else I kep the same.