Fruit Gusher Cupcakes: An Experiment of Sufficient Deliciousness

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since you all have heard from me, and I apologize. Turns out that when you've got holes in the roof of the place where you usually cook... it causes some problems.  Especially when it's rainy season. Yeah. If anyone knows where to go to protest to get Murphy's Law repealed, let me know.

That aside, I've got a new recipe for everyone today that's actually my husband's idea. I was kind of surprised when he brought this idea to me. Don't get me wrong -- he's a great cook, he's just usually not into sweet things, which is what caught me as odd about his suggestion. But, whatever. I present: Fruit Gusher Cupcakes! (As I typed that, there were fireworks going off outside. Heh. Makes me feel like I did something important.)

Now, I'll admit, I'm no professional chef or anything. As stated, I have a *very* different day job. I'm just the kid that figured out through trial and (more than I'll ever admit) error, how to feed herself through means other than the takeout window. Although I'm guilty of using that option more than I should. That having been said, these are very much an experiment. We kind of just... rolled with it, really, and went on a grand scavenger hunt through the house for ingredients. Over all, things turned out fairly well. My only real complaint was that it was storming at the time I was doing the frosting, so the humidity and the decoration didn't dance to the same tune.

Spoiler Alert: the Fruit Gusher doesn't melt. I was kind of surprised by this, as I've seen what happens to these if you accidentally leave them in your car. Yes, I am an adult. Yes, I am eating Fruit Gushers. I am old enough to make my own decisions and buy my own groceries.

Anyhow, here's what you'll need for to set up your own laboratory:

Equipment:

• Mixer and Bowl
• Mini Muffin Pan
• Mini Muffin Liners
• Mini Muffin Holder (Optional)
  • I used the Wilton 3-in-1 caddy. I really like the design as it keeps the cupcakes nice and secure
• Piping Bag + Tips
• Spoons
• Mixing Bowl
• Whisk

Cupcakes:

• White Cake Mix
  • I used a Pillsbury Moist Supreme White Cake mix
• Fruit Gushers

Icing:

• 4c Powder Sugar, + Additional
• 1/2c Butter or Similar
  • I used the store-branded "vegetable oil spread". What can I say? Real butter is **expensive**
• 1tbsp Whole Milk
• 6tbsp Tang Drink Mix, + Additional

The cupcakes themselves are pretty much straight forward. Follow the directions on the back of the box for making the batter. Yes, I am that much of a bum. What can I say? Fill your muffin pan full of liners, and fill each cavity roughly half way full. Much fuller than that, and they'll overflow when cooking. No dentistry here. Then, push a singular Fruit Gusher into the middle of each batter cup. Okay, I somewhat lied. The dentistry will have to come later. 

I got a hold of a mixed box of Fruit Gusher packs, where apparently half the packages are strawberry, and the other half are some sort of tropical roulette. I wound up drawing out 3 strawberry packages and 1 fruit roulette. The odds were not quite in my favor. Hence why most of them are red. 

You'll want to bake these until they're fully cooked. For me, that was 10 minutes at 350F, in a convection oven. Baking times may vary. Just keep an eye on them. That's the most important part here.

While the cupcakes are roasting, start on making the frosting. Start off with the butter and milk in the bottom of the mixer, and mix in about half the sugar and Tang drink mix. Slowly add in more powdered sugar until the icing is thick enough to use. Humidity can play a huge part in the amount you'll have to use. You'll want for the icing to be fairly thick so that it'll stay together when you put it on the cupcakes and not slide right back off. Unless you want a glaze. Then by all means, go for runny. Your call. 

Making judicious use of ye olde taste test, add in more Tang mix as needed. Just do it in small increments, because you can quickly turn from barely being able to taste it to having your face turned inside out. Anybody remember the face from the warhead candies? Yep. Right there.

Let your cupcakes cool completely, so that they don't melt the frosting, then go to town with all your icing and frosting skills. I used a star tip and just did a generic swirl about the cupcake, but feel free to turn loose with it. Also, general note: I found that they were *much* easier to apply frosting to once they were in my cupcake carrier, because the edges of the mini cupcake tray held them perfectly in place and apart at a decent enough distance. Do yourself a favor and start on the row away from yourself and work across then forwards. Yeah, there's a nice streak of delightfully-flavored frosting running up my arm that says I speak from experience. 

Enjoy!

Oreo Mousse: A Dessert Fit For A Queen

Hello everyone! It's story time. When I was a little kid, I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents' house. I'd usually wind up having a lot of fun. Or maybe that's the sugar from all the treats I was given while there talking. Oh well, consuming treats is fun too, right? Among other things, I'd help my grandfather with his penny collection while I was there. He couldn't really see the numbers on the coins well, and that was pretty much the part where I come in. We'd spend hours out on the enclosed porch, me reading off what the coins said, and him placing the relevant ones into the collection books.

He collected Lincoln pennies, and every so often would wind up with a "new" bag to sort through. One day, though, this lone Canadian penny had made its way across the border and into this sack. Needless to say, when I saw a coin with my name on it, I freaked out something serious. Now, I'll admit, I was slightly disappointed when I realized that there wasn't a spot in the collection book for said penny, but that was quickly washed away by the pure excitement that my name was on a bit of currency! 

Grandpa decided to let me keep the coin, and I immediately showed it to Dad when he came to retrieve me. He then explained that the person on there was the Queen of England. Now, you have to understand something. For a little girl growing up in very rural America, the idea of a queen having my name was a HUGE thing. Granted, this also may have had something to do with the fact that I was riding on the Disney Princess train, like a lot of girls that age tend to do, and I knew that Queen was what happened when a Princess grows up (or at least that's the rough gist of it). Understanding why the Queen of England was on a coin from Canada took a few more years, but you can only expect a two year old to understand so much about politics.

For the next several years, I obsessively went through every bit of change that my parents got, sorting through them for more of the "my coins." Turns out that in the early 90's, Canadian currency was working its way into the middle of America fairly often. I wound up with a fair sized stash of them. My infatuation with this particular monetary denomination became so well known among my family members, that one year my uncle built me a small jewelry box with one of the coins embedded in the lower right hand corner of the lid. 

Flash forward a lot of years. When I found out that Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating her 90th birthday this year, I knew that I had to do something. More accurately, when I found out that her "public" birthday fell on the same day as my actual birthday this year, I kind of found it delightful, flashing back to all of those times as a kid that I basically crawled up my Dad's arm at the bank to check the pennies. That having been said, I'd actually like to do something in honor of the British Monarch. Here's hoping I don't make a total fool of myself. Wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary, really.

Your Magesty, in the event that you're actually reading this, I'd like to thank you for filling my childhood with wonder, and I wish you the best.

Honestly, I thought that the best way to go about this whole operation was in a nod to the place where this whole party started, so in remembrance of my grandparents, I present a modified version of my grandmother's Oreo Dessert. Honestly, I think if she knew what I was doing right now, Grandma would be getting a kick out of it.

Equipment:

• Food Processor
• Mixer

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pkg Oreo Cookies
• 8oz Block Cream Cheese, Softened
• 1 Tub Whipped Topping, Thawed
• 1 pkg Hershey's Chocolate Pudding, Made According to Instructions, With Whole Milk
• Chocolate Stars

Oddly enough, this recipe is super quick and simple, but tastes amazing. Grandma never really broke out the heavy machinery to get this put together, but as we've discussed previously, I'm a bum. So plug-in-ables it is. 

The first thing you're going to want to do is load the Oreo cookies into the food processor, grinding them into powder. I found that this works best if you turn the blade on and drop the cookies in one at a time, giving each of them time to get a head start on the powder process. 

The Carnage Of The Great Oreo Vs Blade Battle

From there, the Oreo bits and everything else except the stars (and the food processor, for my friends that want to get real technical with me) goes into the mixer bowl. You'll want to mix on medium-low speed until everything's well combined, and then take some cover and mix on high to get it all nice and fluffy. If you have a mixer shield, use it. Trust me, there will be chocolate in ALL THE PLACES.

Everybody's ready to start the party

All that's left to do at this point is serve it, and, as you can see, I garnished mine with a whole Oreo cookie and chocolate stars. Honestly, serving it is the hardest part, because, at least with my Oreo Mousse, the food liked to make a mass detour directly into my stomach.

Bonus Content: Every time that I see the word "Mousse" in this post, my brain processes it as "mouse," which is funny given the number of references to the Queen of England in here, mostly because I keep thinking of The Great Mouse Detective, in which the Mouse Queen of England was celebrating her Diamond Jubilee, which, as I understand it, happened recently-ish with the current human Queen of England.

Quick & Easy Meaty Mushroom Cream Sauce: For Those Days When You Need Good Food With Minimal Effort

As anybody who knows me knows, noodles with cream-based sauce is pretty much one of the staples of my existence. However, I kind of have a love-hate relationship with it. Said food always makes me feel better, but cream sauces are rather temperamental and can be quite a pain to make after coming home from a long day. Which is, you guessed it, right when they're needed the most.

After a bit of trial and error, I finally found a way to expedite the process and end up with satisfactory results. I mean, in all honesty, nothing ever beats a fully made from scratch cream sauce, but this comes in at a **really** close second.

In the spirit of keeping this on the "quick & easy" train, I'll try to keep the banter to a minimum, because there's a good chance that if you're reading this bit, you're hungry now and don't want to worm through a bunch of blabbering to get to the edible results part.

Equipment

• Skillets 
• Whisk
• Spatula
• Measuring Equipment

Ingredients

• 1 can of Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup
  • Do yourself a favor and get the good stuff... not the super cheap bland stuff. If you get the kind with roasted garlic, omit additional garlic.
• 1/2 lb Ground Meat
  • As usual, I broke out the wonderful beef-pork blend, otherwise known as Boston Burger
• 4oz Cream Cheese, Softened
  • For those of you that aren't wanting to plan ahead, cream cheese can totally be softened in the microwave on reduced power.
• 1/4c Sour Cream
• 2oz Milk
• 1/2 pkg Angel Hair Noodles, Cooked to Al Dente
• Spaghetti-type noodles are one of the few things that actually survives in a good enough state to be used again, if made the night previous and stored in the fridge in a sealed container. Nothing quite like getting assaulted by a poorly-perched gallon baggie of pasta. Just warm it up before eating.
• 3tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 1/2tsp Onion Powder
• Pinch of salt

You'll want to try and run the skillets simultaneously. In the event that you can't do so, make the meat first, and make the sauce, because the meat will be okay if it sets out for a bit, but if the cream sauce is made first, it'll do that weird thing that cream sauce does and get all thickened up and covered in skin. Blegh.

Skillet 1:

This is your meat pan. So, obviously, this is where you put the meat. Medium heat, and scramble fry like you're making tacos.  Season with 1tsp garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp onion powder. Drain once it's cooked all the way.

Skillet 2:

This is going to be your designated sauce skillet. Medium heat, turning down as needed to prevent boiling. Add the soup, and fully whisk in the milk. Melt in the cream cheese. It helps if you cut it into little blocks first. Add the sour cream, salt, and remaining powders of onion and garlic. Once it's all mixed in and hot, stir in the meat.

Put the sauce on the noodles and boom! Best quick-dinner you've made in a while.