Italian Lemon Cream Cupcakes

Hi!

After spending yesterday attempting to complete as much wedding planing as possible, watching Jurassic Park with my nephew, and grabbing some delicious Chinese food I realized it was much too late to blog. So, here I am at 1022, four hours after I woke up and I have decided to blog about the yummy recipe which Brittany used to make cupcakes yesterday.

As a family we all took my grandmother out for her birthday at this lovely Mexican restaurant. No joke, everyone should take someone to a Mexican restaurant on their birthday (funniest thing ever watching them make her put on a sombrero while singing Happy Birthday).

On to the actual reason for today's blog. Which should actually be called, yummy-deliciousness lemon flavored goodness.

Just as a heads up, these are so similar to Olive Garden's Lemon Cream Cake its scary. 

The ingredients for the cake are:

-5 large eggs (separated at room temp)

-2 cups superfine granulated white sugar

(which was homemade because my local store did not carry it)

-1 stick unsalted butter

-1/2 cup trans-free shortening

-1 tsp sea salt

-zest of 1 medium lemon

-1 tsp vanilla extract

-1 tsp baking soda

-1 cup buttermilk

-2 cups cake flour

(this was also homemade because my grocery store did not have any)

1. Go ahead and preheat your over to 325 degrees. 

2. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form and gradually add 1/2 cup of sugar until it thickens and looks like meringue. (Set it aside)

3. Cream the remaining 1 and 1/2 cup of sugar, butter, shortening, salt and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Scrape down sides and add vanilla. Mix and add an egg yolk one at a time.

4. Stir the buttermilk and baking soda together and add 1/3 to the butter mixture. Mix and then add 1 cup of flour and mix again. (Repeat until ending with buttermilk)

5. Fold in egg whites with spatula

6. Bake 30 to 35 minutes

7. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing.

***If you do not have buttermilk substitute heavy cream or 1 cup milk and 1 tsp lemon juice until thick.

Congratulations! You now have cupcakes! But they are not technically done yet.

Oh and just so you are not worried that your cupcakes do not have that cute dome on top? They are not supposed to. It will stay a flat cupcake.

Lemon filling ingredients:

- 8 oz. cream cheese, softened

- 2 cups powdered sugar

- 1 cup heavy whipping cream (whipped to stiff peaks)

- 3 tbsp lemon juice

1. Blend the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and lemon juice together. In a medium bowl, whip heavy whipping cream to stiff peaks. Gently fold into cream cheese mixture. Chill until needed.

2. Hollow out your cupcakes with a knife or apple corer and put that yummy-ness on the inside.

Now you are even closer to chowing down on some of the yummiest cupcakes you will ever eat.

These will be served at my rehearsal dinner and I am more excited about that than my actual wedding the next day.

Now on to the icing!

Lemon Buttercream ingredients:

 - 6 egg yolks

- 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

- 1/2 tsp salt

- zest of one lemon

- 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar

- 1 and 1/4 cups  (3 and 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter - cool

- 1 vanilla bean

- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. add egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, lemon zest, and sugar in a double boiler and turn on medium heat. Whisk constantly for 6 minutes until mixture is thickened, light in color and hot.

2. Pour mixture into standing mixer bowl fitted with a whist and whip on high for five minutes (it should be a pale yellow color)

3. Once the mixture has cooled- add butter, 1/4 stick at a time- add vanilla bean and extract and whip again.

And that is all folks. 

You can make your amazing cupcakes from here. 

This recipe is from a Martha Stewart cookbook with a little bit of a change.

 

I hope you enjoy the post and follow us!! Also send us comments and feedback! It would be greatly appreciated!!

-Brittany and Lindsey

Canning Those Cucumbers

Hey!!
Well if you cannot tell, it has been a crazy weekend. After attending the USATF (USA Track and Field Junior Olympics) I had no extra time to blog which was not fun at all. That was one solid week of being outside in ninety degree weather watching these kids do their amazing acts. I was quite impressed by all of the age groups competing in these different categories but watching 3 and 4 year old children run like they did was awesome!

Okay, so on to today's nifty review of a product. I am a new gardener this year and I decided to also try some canning with my cucumber plans which did surprisingly well. (Well the truth is mine did okay but Brittany's did pretty well)
I took my morning trip to Walmart and picked up some Mrs. Wages Kosher Dill Pickle canning mix.
We then headed to Brittany's house and started slicing our neverending mound of cucumbers.
During this we started to heat the mix and continued on with our canning.
We ended up with 14 pints of pickles which the mix was the perfect amount to fill.  We sealed them in the canner for around 8 minutes then left them to fully seal.

So my review is that I love this stuff!! It is so easy to figure out and make! My fiance was so impressed on how domestic I seemed today. I also made it out to be much more difficult than it actually was but who says he has to know. ;)

Well that's it for today. I am off to cook some homemade chilli for my handsome man who has been working hard all day. I cannot wait to surprise him with his favorite food, ice cream, and these new cookies I found at the store. Who can turn down strawberry cheesecake cookies and dark chocolate cheesecake cookies?
Exactly, that answer is no one.

-Lindsey and Brittany

Bananas in a Beer Box

It has been one of those days. It is so hot outside you cannot breath and I spent my day cheering on the lovely young people strutting their stuff at the Junior Olympics at the A&T campus in Greensboro. It was awesome!! It looked like a herd of gazelles running through the desert. I must say I am quite happy my parents never made me do things like that, they were just happy that I stayed out of trouble.

So onto today's random post, because I really do not have much else planned for today's post.... Have you all looked around Pinterest and saw the little life hack pins that take up six screens? Well I love those things but I only "like" them so no one knows I think they are awesome...Okay, so one of those amazing life hacks was to keep bananas from ripening so fast. The suggestion was to not store them in a bunch and to separate them and put them individually in an empty six-pack carton.

That sounds brilliant, right?? No, it is actually not.
My fiance is a big banana fan and he eats at least one every day. So my smart self suggested we do this six pack storage and it would help them last longer. Let me just show you what actually happened to the slightly green bananas that had been on the counter before....

Yep, they ripened even faster than had they been sitting on the counter. But honestly who cares, I just went and purchased a whole new little cluster of them and replaced the old ones. I was quickly found out though when my lovely Shepherd came running out of my room with a receipt in her mouth telling of my dirty deed.

Well that's all for today guys :)
I promise we will do better tomorrow, like I said....It has been one of those days.

-Lindsey and Brittany

Arizona smoothie!

As promised, we will be doing product reviews every now and then to help make your lives as easy as possible.

This review stems from a day a few weeks ago in which I was so bored out of my mind that when my mom called me and offered Chick-fil-a for lunch there was no questioning whether I would go or not. (Which I will put this out there, I never question going to Chick-fil-a)
My question was why are we going at 1045? Well she had actually tricked me into going to Sam's Club with her, but this trip would open my eyes to something amazing.


As we turned a corner in the back area of the store I was completely distracted by the massive wall of spices and questioning what I could make with Cardamom and what it even was. Then my thrifty mother pointed out these awesome Arizona smoothie mixes.
My world changed after this.
I also must point out that they were only $4.98!!! I was immediately sold on two of the three flavors. It comes in strawberry, mango and coconut. I'm not a fan of coconut so I passed on that.
Anyways....back to the review. I ran home and made them in my nifty Magic Bullet. (That's another nifty household item.)
I was amazed at how great they tasted! Simply add the Arizona mix and ice and blend....it could not be easier. Plus they have green tea in them which helps me justify eating three or so because they have to be healthy ;)



Just a few things to add to the instructions on how to make these things:
Use crushed ice- it blends much faster
You might want to add a little bit of water to thin it down after you blend it all up...I had a problem with mine being way too thick. (I just grabbed a spoon and ate it anyways)
And....yea that's all I got, these are amazing!



 In my opinion, you all need to go check them out because they will rock your world. 

Well, that's all for today folks! I have an appointment to go pick up my wedding dress and I cannot wait to be in it again!

-Lindsey and Brittany

Beehive Bacardi Rum Cake

Hey guys!
Have you ever had one of those weekends where you wanted to have a good time then realized you have kids so that bottle of Bacardi will never actually get the chance to give you that nice buzz?
So rum cake was the next best option.
Plus I have this super awesome beehive cake pan I have been wanting to use all summer.

Here's the goods:
For the cake
1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)
1 box yellow cake mix
1 small box vanilla pudding
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup white rum
2 tbsp. cinnamon
3/4 cup brown sugar

For the glaze
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white rum (this makes it pretty strong so use less if you prefer)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Cake:
1. Mix all ingredients
2. Mix for 2 minutes
3. Grease inside of a Bundt pan really well, then add a layer of nuts to the pan
4. Pour the batter inside the pan
5. Bake 50 minutes to an hour, until brown

Start making the glaze when the cake has about 10 minutes left to cook.

Glaze:
1. Melt butter in saucepan
2. Stir in water, sugar and, brown sugar
3. Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly
4. Remove from heat
5. Let cool for a couple minutes and stir in the rum
6. Once the rum is mixed in well pour half the glaze on the cake
(if you let it sit too long it will separate and ruin the glaze)

7. After the cake has cooled off some invert it onto the serving dish
8. Pour the remainder of the glaze on top of the cake

Saturday Salt Dough Garden Mosaic

On Saturdays we plan to bring you tons of ideas on how to keep your little ones busy. Whether they love playing in the outdoors or they could be stuck inside on a rainy weekend day we will be providing several ideas to keep them up and active. Most of these ideas take supplies that are usually sitting around your home.

Today it was way too hot to play in the little kiddie pool in the back yard and not to mention its slightly green from yesterday's rain, so we had to keep the boys busy on the inside. I'm not one to put on the television and let them vegetate so I dug through the junk cabinet to find supplies for an indoor craft. Besides the fact it was my mother's birthday on Monday and I'm yet to give her a gift, things like this always make you look crafty yet heartfelt in your gift.
I found the article to make this craft in a stash of magazine pages my grandmother keeps for us. It is super easy and safe for the kids. I know my little one loved it and enjoyed tasting it.

Our first kid's activity is a Salt Dough Garden Mosaic:

Supplies:
3 Cups flour
1 Cup salt
1 1/4 Cups water (plus up to an additional 1/4 cup as needed)
(I ended up adding about 1/2 a cup to get it to a consistency I liked)

Go turn your oven on to 275 degrees real quick.

I recommend using an electric mixer on a medium speed.
After mixing all of the ingredients together you do not want the dough to be crumbly.
(this is where that extra water comes in)

This is also the step where you can add in any food coloring to change the color of the dough. I didn't want the dirty gray/white color so mine is blue. Well, more of a teal since I was using the neon collection food coloring.

Knead the dough until it is smooth and go ahead and divide it into pieces based on how large you want them. I broke mine into two pieces so the two little men could each make their own.
After I separated mine and put them on a piece of foil, I made them into the disk shape (make them a ball then flatten for an easy way to make a disk)The foil really helps with cleanup as well.

I was super lucky and found a bag of dollar store rocks in the craft closet.
(Which I believe every woman should have a craft closet)
I set the boys down, gave them each a handful of rocks and let the creative juices flow.

 
Transfer the foil and dough onto a baking sheet and leave them in for two hours.
Let them cool and check for any loose stones. If any did fall out then take some tacky glue and replace it. No one will know but you.

Now you have a gorgeous decoration for your porch or a heartfelt gift for that grandmother who swears she never sees her grand babies.
Thanks so much for checking us out and we will be back tomorrow!

-Brittany and Lindsey

Welcome :)

Hey Guys!

Let's start with an intro! I'm Lindsey and I'm accompanied by my partner in crime and older sister, Brittany. 
Here is a little bit about us:
Brittany: She's a stay at home mom, wife to a deputy, and pretty much the small town North Carolina (and not criminal) version of Martha Stewart. She has a lovely almost two year old little boy who looks just like his daddy. Along with the little man she has a ferocious, fighting pitbull who is afraid of thunderstorms and anything that goes bump in the night; plus a grumpy old beagle that has the demeanor of a cat.
She lives the simple life with her garden, clothes-line and backwoods living.

Lindsey: I'm a bride, and soon to be Army wife. My life currently consists of wedding planning, redecorating our new home and training our German Shepherd. I am proud to say this was my first year with a successful garden and I sort of see myself as a farmer (a small, small scale farmer).
I'm slowly learning to adjust to the no longer single way of life. Cooking, cleaning and preparing to start a family has been quite a daunting task for me.  Pinterest has overtaken my down time and made me want to cook more, workout and organize everything...get out while you still can.

Well that's about it on us. So now on to our blog.

We plan to cover great recipes, product reviews and the great tutorials that we have found.
We are open to suggestions so feel free to tell us what you want to hear about and if you have any questions for us go ahead and ask away.
Down the road we will be connecting our blog to our online store where we will provide supplies needed in recipes or tutorials. We will also offer the items from the completed tutorials for those who do not have time to complete them.

I think that will do for now, thanks for visiting and we cannot wait to provide you with some great posts in the future.

-Lindsey and Brittany

And just so you know this was for our yearly ugly Christmas sweater competition. I, Lindsey (the blonde) won!