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Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Ingredients

Makes 34

* 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
* 1 tablespoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
* 2 1/4 cups sugar
* 3 large eggs plus 1 large egg white
* 1 cup whole milk
* 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
* 2 cups finely chopped strawberries, plus small strawberries for garnish
* Strawberry Buttercream

Directions

1. Make cupcakes as directed in Basic Cupcake How-To, using milk and vanilla for wet ingredients. Stir chopped strawberries into batter. Once cupcakes are cool, frost tops with strawberry buttercream. Frosted cupcakes will keep, covered and refrigerated, for up to 2 days. Top with a strawberry just before serving.

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Easy Dessert Recipes

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

Always finding ourselves short of time in today’s world, easy dessert recipes are more important than ever. Have you ever wanted to make a wonderful and delicious dessert to magnificently top off a gathering meal but found yourself short on time? Or maybe you are new to making desserts and need some help? I’m sure it happens to all of us now and then.

As a dessert lover myself, I always try to make sure that the dessert I make will at least result in some words of praise from my guests. One of the best things about having great dessert is not just that it gives you that wonderful feeling, but it also makes you happy when you see how much your guests or family members are enjoying it. But how do you do that if you are new and find dessert-making difficult, or if you’re constantly busy and making dessert is too time-consuming?

This article gives you some simple tips for making life simpler by choosing the right easy dessert recipes, and some advice for making almost any dessert recipe easier.

1. Recipe Size

Often we overlook the fact that the dessert recipes we make can be downsized to fit our needs. This can be as simple as taking a normal dessert recipe and dividing all the ingredient portions in half or in quarter, but not every recipe may be so appropriately scaled down. When searching for easy dessert recipes, be on the look out for the serving sizes listed for each recipe. Some recipes are specially designed for a small number of guests and these will save you a lot of hassle and worry.

Small dessert recipes are easier to make and they bake faster too. This is especially so if your kitchen isn’t as big as you want it to be, or you don’t have enough large bowls. Also, keep in mind that desserts are normally eaten after a large, full meal, and smaller easy dessert recipes will go well with the guests. If you have any guests who are trying to keep control of their weight, they will thank you for this too.

2. Ingredients Required

The best easy dessert recipes to choose are preferably those with convenient ingredients that you can easily find in your local store. If you are in a rush, then you might want to opt for an easy dessert recipe that can be made with the ingredients you already have on hand in your pantry or refrigerator. Recipes that require fewer ingredients will generally be easier to make. Try searching for recipes with three to five ingredients for maximum easiness in making.

3. Component Substitution

Many long-winding recipes can be made easier to some extent by simple component substitution. If certain components of a particular easy dessert recipe can be store-bought, it will save you a lot of time and effort. For example, when making a tiramisu, instead of having to make the ladyfingers and cheesecake filling from scratch according to the recipe, it would also be possible for you to buy pre-made packages of ladyfingers from the store, and ready-to-eat cheesecake filling too. Then just add coffee syrup or other flavoring according to your tastes, and assemble it for a quick tiramisu dessert.

Some people may frown upon this saying that those ready-made components do not make a dessert that tastes as good as the ones you make yourself. Well for me, I feel that this in itself is an art. It takes a certain amount of knowledge and experience to know which brand of ingredients is of the best quality and go well together. Of course easy dessert recipes that are made from scratch will often taste better, if done right, due to the effort and thought put into them. But the difference is not always that large, and there are times when we don’t always get things done right. If you’re just a beginner who is just starting out, then this is a good place to start too.

source: ezinearticles.com

Recipes Together!

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Here a few methods I have found to organize recipes:

PHOTO ALBUMS

Your can place clipped recipes and recipe cards in a any type of photo album (hint: go to the thrift stores and pick up inexpensive albums) although the type of albums that you can add pages to would be best because this will help you organize the album better. You can place tabs on pages to divide the album into categories then simply place your clipped recipes into the appropriate category. This method is a great way to keep all loose recipes together. The plastic protection will help keep your recipes clean.

A RECIPE FILE

Get an accordion-type file to organize clipped recipes and recipe cards. Label each section with a different recipe category then simply file your recipes. This method will at least keep them all together and is quick, but you will have to sort through all the recipes in a certain category when trying to find a particular recipe.

A RECIPE BOX

With a recipe box, you can put different categories onto tabbed dividers and you can buy more dividers if necessary. You can file clipped recipes but it is neater if you write them onto recipe cards which is time consuming. As with the accordion file, you’ll have to sort through recipes in a category to find one.

A COMPUTER RECIPE PROGRAM

If you have a little spare time this is a great way to compile all of your favorite recipes–including ones in your recipe books. These programs are pre-formatted so you just fill in the blanks. It can get time consuming entering in all your recipes, but if you stick to entering in 1 or 2 recipes a day, you’ll make some progress.

There’s a number of benefits using this method, one being that you can easily find recipes and print them out. You can print out recipes and make homemade cookbooks to give to your friends and relatives. The program will figure the nutrition information for your recipes. Some programs offer a menu maker and a shopping list. It’s also easy to locate certain recipes with certain ingredients. For example, if I have ground beef on hand, I can do a search for ‘ground beef’ and the program will bring up all recipes with ground beef in it. Also, these programs come with recipes–so if you don’t want to enter your own, you’ll still have a great cookbook to use all these features on.

source: ezinearticles.com

Cooking and Recipes Online

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Whether you are looking for some new recipes or having some question concerning cooking or food, the Internet is the right place. There are an uncountable number of websites related to cooking, food and recipes. You find general cooking or recipes websites, you can also find websites specialized in a specific type of food or ingredient, and you still find the cooking forums.

To find these websites is very easy – you just have to do a search at Google, Yahoo, MSN or another search engine that you prefer. By typing in, for instance, ‘Italian recipes’ you will get a countless number of websites that provide Italian recipes. Not to forget that you can search for a specific type of cuisine (’Chinese’, ‘German’, ‘American’, etc.) as well as for a specific ingredient (’chicken recipes’, ‘lobster recipes’, ‘rosemary recipes’, etc.) or cooking method (for instance, ‘grilling recipes’). You can see on the right side or on the bottom of the search engine page related terms that you can search for when you type in a more generic term, like ’shrimp recipes’. Another tip is to use quotation marks (” “) if you want to find a precise recipe or information (example: “Brazilian Coconut Shrimp”). Well, once you get the search results you just have to browse and look for the website that provides the recipes or information that you are looking for. And once you find a website that you like very much, donĀ“t forget to bookmark it so you can always go back to it.

Another option is a directory, where you can browse through categories to find cooking and recipe websites. Usually recipes and food related websites can be found under the category Home Cooking – where you usually will find many sub-categories. The best known directory is the Dmoz.org.

Then we have the cooking forums. Cooking forum is a great place to get help with cooking or recipe questions, to discuss cooking methods and techniques, and to exchange food information, recipes, tips, and advice. The great advantage of forums is that they are made by real people with real experiences, interest, doubts, and feelings. You may check the forum Discusscooking.com. Another tip is the food site Grouprecipes.com – there you can create your own food page and organize your recipes, and of course discover new recipes and get in contact with many food and cooking lovers.

Well, as you can see the Internet is a wonderful resource to get recipes, food and cooking information. And the best of all is that it is for free – and if it is not, just search further that you will surely find information for free.

source: ezinearticles.com

Organizing Your Recipes

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

While many of us enjoy cooking, it isn’t always easy to keep track of our impressive recipe collections. In order to make your recipes easier to find (and not to mention giving your patience a break!), we’re going to talk about a few ways you can get your recipes organized.

Recipe Book

Instead of storing your recipes in the “haphazard shoebox” fashion, how about converting them into a nice recipe book? If most of your recipes are on index or recipe cards, a photo album with plastic sleeves may work particularly well for you as long as the card fits comfortably in the slot. If you have quite a large collection of recipes, try obtaining a large family photo album that allows eight to twelve slots per sleeve (front and back). The order you put the cards in is totally up to you, as your recipe book should reflect your preference. Some people prefer to sort based on main dishes, desserts, breads/pastries, beverages, etc., while others prefer alphabetical order.

If you don’t have your recipes on cards, or if you’re like most people, you might have your recipes on papers and cards of all shapes and sizes. If this is the case, you might want to think about typing them all up and printing them off. After all of your recipes are transferred to this new format, the next step is to get a binder (three ring binders work well) and some tabbed dividers. Label each divider by the category you wish (ie: type of meal, alphabetical order, etc.) and get to work punching holes in your recipe sheets to accommodate the binder’s rings. If you prefer, you can purchase plastic sleeves to keep your sheets spill-proof-which is highly recommended to counter those splatters of sauce, batter, or grease that always tend to smudge our favorite recipes.

Whether you use a photo album or a binder, don’t be afraid to get creative with your recipe book. Get some construction paper and glue or clip clip pictures from magazines. There’s nothing wrong with adding a dash of imagination that might even inspire your cooking!

eRecipe Catalog

The Internet is not only a great place to search through millions of recipes, but it’s also handy for storing the ones you already have. Sites like WeGottaEat and OneTSP are free to sign up and allow you to add your own recipes by simply typing them up. Yes, this can be quite tedious if you have a lot of recipes, but just imagine how easy it will be to find a recipe by simply typing in a keyword and clicking “search.” You can also browse thorough members’ recipes and send recipes to friends and family. Online recipe storage sites are very user friendly, so you don’t have to be particularly computer savvy to utilize this great feature. Also, by storing your recipes online you can easily include pictures that would otherwise mean added bulk to your recipe collection.

Software

Say you like the idea of easily searching for and pulling up your recipes, but you aren’t too keen on relying upon an Internet connection. You might not want to totally rule out the option of a computerized recipe book. There is a wealth of recipe software available for download on the Internet. Many of them are classed as “freeware,” which means that you can download and use the software for free. Some cooking software is available online for purchase, but they do throw in some handy “extras” that are worth the money, such as measurement calculators and converters, meal planning and shopping lists, and nutritional value calculators.

These are just a few ways that you can free up that recipe drawer and simplify the entire task of cooking from a recipe. Best of luck in whichever method you choose to organize your recipes-and happy cooking!

source: ezinearticles.com