Vintage Recipe Book

I recently found a really fun old recipe book at Value Village.  It has blank pages so that you can fill it with all your favorite recipes.

I love that it has space to put who gave you the recipe.  Particularly now that I am collecting more recipes from family and friends.  Now I can know that it was my mom's soup or my friend Lisa's cranberry sauce.

I stamped my name on the front and embossed it with clear embossing powder.  You can't really tell here but it gave it a nice, raised finish.

Inside, I've started adding my recipes.  I'm slowly copying in the recipes from family and friends that I have saved in email, as well as adding a few favorites from other sources.  I'm even including some notes on special times that I cooked the recipes.

How do you store your recipes?  In a book?  Box?  Maybe on pinterest (I have a lot there myself :)

Iron Craft Challenge #15- Peeps!

This week, we were challenged to make something using Peeps as part of the Iron Craft Challenge.  This meant using the actual peeps themselves, not just making something peep related.  I didn't really want to have peeps sitting around my house as permanent Easter decor (sorry little guys), so I went the edible route.  In honor of my bird-inspired craft business, here are some peeps dressed up to look like another species.

"Well Mr. Peep, we certainly look sophisticated." "We sure do Mrs. Peep, do you think we pass as goldfinches?"

I used melted chocolate to "paint" on the coloring of another bird species, the American goldfinch.  I used chocolate chips and toothpicks as my materials, but I'm sure you could get more fancy-schmancy with it.  Although the female does not get as bright yellow as the male, I like to think that this is a mating pair.  They are shown here sitting on a cheerios nest.

Moments after this photo was taken, the cheerios nest was consumed.  As of the writing of this blog, the birds were still alive.

Mocha Cupcakes

Last night, I baked some mocha cupcakes for a party.  They were pretty tasty, so I wanted to share with you.

 

 I used a basic chocolate cake recipe from Better Homes and Gardens.  This cook book has never steered me wrong and I highly recommend it.  I thought about posting the recipe here, but just click on the link :)  These cupcakes take about 15min to bake.

One thing I will add is that I scooped the batter into cupcake pans using a cookie scoop to dish out the batter.  We recently bought one of these using a wedding gift card and it is AMAZING.  You can scoop cookies, muffins, cupcakes.  Anything.  One scoop is the perfect size for mini-muffins.

I then iced the cupcakes with coffee icing.  This was the tricky step.  I used this recipe from Paula Deen for coffee buttercream frosting.  I imagined big, fluffy frosting.  It turned out rather thin, more like that glazey frosting that you see on sugar cookies.  I added more and more powdered sugar before finally accepting fate and using what I had.  But, it turned out rather good!  I just dipped the cupcakes into the frosting and they ended up with a pretty, light-brown glaze.  (although after some man-handling, they don't look quite as pretty in the picture below-consequences of a potluck I suppose)

Plus, I got to use my dessert tower.  Oh yeah.