Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue...Cupcakes.

I have a feeling that this year's 4th of July is going to be a little depressing.  No, there wasn't a recent death in the family or anything along those lines (fortunately). It is depressing because I am living in Iowa this 4th of July, not Missouri. Why is that depressing? Because fireworks are legal in Missouri and they are illegal in Iowa, and well, I'm a bit of a closet pyro. Shhh, don't tell anyone. So, in an attempt to make this coming weekend better, I decided I was going to make some red, white, and blue cupcakes. I remembered seeing a recipe for rainbow cupcakes in one of my Taste of Home magazines I'd had for years and thought, why not do something like that but just do patriotic colors? Can't be that hard. Don't be quick to judge me, but yes, tonight I made up a white cake mix batter...from a box. GASP! Now, I have a wonderful white cake recipe from my grandmother, but since I was making this up on the fly I didn't want to waste a whole bowl of batter on a screw up. Once my box cake mix (I know, I know) was all mixed up, I  divided into thirds, intending to dye one bowl blue, one red, and leave one white. Then I decided that just wasn't good enough...I needed to up the ante. But how? Flavoring the layers! So, since I luckily live across the street from a grocery store, I ran over quick thinking I'd find some blueberry flavoring and strawberry flavoring. Wrong. No such thing, at least in my small town grocery store. So, after purusing the shelves for a while, I decided to REALLY up the ante and go with Blackberry POM and Dragon Fruit POM for the blue and red layers, respectively. Oooooo. I got home and proceeded with my usual method of winging it, and I'm happy to say on my first try my winging it worked and produced these delicious cupcakes, which I topped with a vanilla cream cheese frosting:

Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue...Cupcakes

*makes 24 cupcakes

1 box white cake mix (and ingredients listed on box to make batter)

2 teaspoons Blackberry POM and 3-4 drops blue food coloring

2 teaspoons Dragon Fruit POM and 3-4 drops red food coloring

--I used blackberry and dragon fruit POM juices, but you could use probably any juice or flavoring here

Preheat oven to 325F. Prepare white cake batter according to package directions. Divide batter into thirds. Place blackberry POM and blue food coloring in one bowl of batter, dragon fruit POM and red food coloring in a second bowl of batter, and leave one bowl of batter untouched. Line 24 regular muffins cups with paper liners or spray generously with nonstick spray. Layer batter evenly (make sure to use a clean spoon for each color of batter) between muffin cups. I layered mine blue, then white, then red. Bake for 18 minutes then cool on a wire rack. Once completely cool, top with vanilla cream cheese frosting.



Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz package of cream cheese, room temperature

2 sticks (1 cup) of unsalted butter, room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extra

1/2 bag of powdered sugar, roughly

1-2 tablespoons of milk

Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until thick and fluffy. Slowly beat in powdered sugar. Add 1 tablespoon of milk and whip on high, about 5 minutes. Beat in more powdered sugar to thicken or more milk to thin.



Salt River Bars. OMG.

So I just got home from a beautiful two hour hike at the state park south of town. Beautiful hike on a beautiful day. And it reminded  me of a funny story (though some of my friends may not find it quite as funny as me). A few summers ago, while still in high school, I took 3 friends on a 7 mile canoe trip down river. I love kayaking and canoeing, but Megan, Nikki, and Kelsey, the friends I brought with me, were not particularly experienced. But regardless, off we went on a beautiful summer day, and for the most part the trip went pretty smoothly.

That is, until we reach a set of rapids. Long story short, Meg and I decide we're adventurous and going to paddle over them, and we end up getting stuck. We tell the other girls to hang back while we try to get out. But they let the river's strong current pull their canoe up against ours and get stuck as well. Meg and I decide to get out of our canoe and try to pull it loose, so we tell Kelsey and Nikki to be ready. Meg and I pull our canoe loose, and in movie-like slow motion I see the other canoe starting to tip. I let go of my canoe (and Megan is just a wisp of a girl--I don't know how she held on to it herself) and lunge for the other canoe as it flips and throws Kelsey and Nikki into the water. Meg is yelling, I am yelling, there's a few seconds of utter chaos--and then Kelsey and Nikki both pop up a little ways downriver past the rapids. I let go of their canoe so I can help Meg get ours down the rest of the way. Their canoe rolls down the rapids, filling with water as it goes, and then lodges against a fallen tree at the bottom of the rapids, half submerged in water. Mind you, this is not MY canoe, this canoe belongs to a nearby state park. Well, shit. After getting our canoe to the beach and making sure Kelsey and Nikki are ok, I go to the other canoe, which is slowly bending in half at the middle from the force of the river's current. I am so screwed. I can't get the canoe out of the water myself, and have to wait for the DNR officer to come later that afternoon at our scheduled pick-up time (oh yeah, because my cell phone was in that canoe that is now half buried in the river). Fortunately, when the DNR officer comes to get the canoes, he decides to call it an accident and not make us pay to replace the canoe. THANK. GOD.   

So, what does that story have to do with salt river bars? Ok, so here's the thing you have to know about me: I tend to have very random thought processes and connections that don't make sense to anyone but me. This is how this post came to be: I was hiking across a set of rapids at the state park today which made me think of that canoe trip which made me think of the river which made me think of river bars. So rapids > canoe trip > river > salt river bars. Which are sinfully delicious and ridiculously easy to make. And which will now make my two hour hike today null and void. But I don't care, because they are that good. So here is the recipe:

SALT RIVER BARS

1 box Club crackers (I've used Saltines before but I don't think they taste as good)
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips
Coarse sea salt (or fleur de sel if you want to be fancy/spend more money than me today)

Line an 8x8-inch pan with foil, allowing the edges to hang over the side, and lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray (this is VERY important because these bars are VERY sticky when setting). Place 15ish crackers in the bottom of the pan (3 rows of 5). For three layers, divide the peanut butter chips into thirds and sprinkle 1/3 over the crackers. Melt butter and brown sugar in a pan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until bubbly and smooth and a creamy caramel color, about 4ish minutes (another thing to learn about me--I'm tend to be a "just wing it" person who doesn't necessarily time or perfectly measure). Pour 1/3 of the caramel over the peanut butter chips and crackers, then add another layer of crackers, peanut butter chips, and caramel, then repeat again for the third layer, topping the last layer with crackers. Melt the chocolate chips and pour over the crackers, spreading evenly. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the top. Allow chocolate to start setting in refrigerator (about 30 minutes), then lightly cut through the partially-set chocolate (VERY imporant-once these babies set all the way through they can be verrrry hard to cut if you don't do this first). Place bars back into the fridge. Once cooled completely (about 3 hours), remove bars by lifting out foil. Cut accordingly and serve. Store in a sealed container a week (as if they'd last that long, HA). OMG. So good.

Oh Goodness...

Well...I finally caved. Drat you, peer pressure! After blatant prodding by friends, I've decided to go ahead and start a food blog to map my experiments in baking. I love to try new recipes and new techniques, as well as make stuff up as I go along, so this should be fun, yes?  We shall see. Unfortunately at the moment I don't have a good working camera to photograph my creations, successes, and failures, so for the time being I may just have to borrow some pictures (because let's be honest, no one wants to read a chocolate chip cookie recipe if there isn't a mouthwatering picture to make them crave chocolate chip cookies along with it). No worries, I'll give credit where credit is due. So stay tuned, as I think you will be pleasantly surprised once I really get this cake ball rolling...