Carrot cupcakes

The hardest part?

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Grating the carrots.

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But I used my food processor this time.  The grated carrots were a larger grate than I wanted but the cupcakes still turned out fine.

Actually the hardest part is not eating all of them at once!

Recipe:

2 c. flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups cooking oil
3 cups grated carrots
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

Add eggs and oil to all dry ingredients.  Beat till smooth.  Add carrots and nuts, if using.  Place in a greased 9×13 pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  Cool before icing.

For cupcakes: Fill cupcake pans with liners and fill 3/4 full.  Cake is dense and doesn’t rise as typical cupcakes.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Cream cheese icing:
1 pound powdered sugar (approx. 4 cups)
8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 tsp. vanilla

Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until smooth.  Add powdered sugar and beat until fluffy.  Ice cake or cupcakes.

For icing carrots and stems: reserve 1/4 cup icing and add orange (5 drops yellow, 1 drop red) food coloring and place in a zip bag.  Cut small hole in a corner and make carrots.  For stems: take 1 tablespoon icing and add 1-2 drops green food coloring.  Place in zip bag and pipe two stems at the top of the carrots.

Creative cookies

While at our daughter’s house, we baked cookies for Valentine’s Day.  Because of the mishap on Friday evening and E’s not feeling well on Saturday, we waited until Sunday, February 15, to bake and decorate cookies.  Mom and Dad were expected home on Monday so the cookies were a day fresher.

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We used half of the recipe of Royal icing as we didn’t have a lot of cookies to decorate.

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Red, pink, and white icing and red colored sugar.

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I found these little squeeze bottles for the icing so the twins would have more control over their decorating.

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I spread most of the cookies with a solid color and the twins decorated the tops.

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You can never have too much icing.

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For some reason the pink icing got a little too thin and was running everywhere.

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When we finished up with all the cookies, we decorated animal crackers.

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The good, the bad, and the ugly

Happy Day-After-Thanksgiving to all my American readers!  Did you have a nice Thanksgiving Day?

Today is Black Friday.  Are you shopping today?  I not but I might go out tomorrow for Small Business Saturday to help support our local small businesses.  Like my local yarn shop.

Anyway we had some good, some bad, and some ugly for Thanksgiving.

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We discovered that we have “pantry moths“.  And they lay eggs that turn into gross larvae.  We’ve seen these moths for a couple of weeks but no nest.  I did find some larvae near a bag of macadamia nuts and killed the larvae and tossed the nuts.  The moths are still around but the larvae are hiding.  Bad and ugly.

I was making my pumpkin pies Wednesday evening and needed more flour.  I sifted through the new bag of flour as I put it into a Tupperware container and found none.  Good.

I also needed to refill my sugar container as I only had about one cup and needed more.  The new sugar bag had some webs and larvae on the outside and in.  I put the bag into a zipper bag and tossed into the garbage can outside.  The second bag of sugar had larvae inside so I tossed as well.  I had no more white sugar.  Bad.

So I substituted brown sugar for the rest of the white sugar I needed for my pies.  Good.

I hate to tell Mr. Aitch about any substitutions so I waited to tell him about the brown sugar until he had some of the pumpkin pie after dinner.  As I was getting the pie out of the refrigerator, he  told me that pumpkin pie was not his favorite and was edible for Thanksgiving.  We’ve been married for 40 years and this was the first time I recall him telling me he was not a fan of pumpkin pie.  Whatever.  He took a bite and raved about how good it was.  He said he might have to reconsider he ranking of pumpkin pie.  I told him what happened and said I need to substitute brown sugar for the white sugar every time.  He even ate a second piece.  Good.

We were supposed to have the traditional green bean casserole.  It was in the oven and just needed the sprinkle of onion rings on top and five more minutes.  I pulled the casserole out and Mr. Aitch sprinkled on the onion rings.  Then as I was putting it back in the oven. the dish slipped off the rack and bounced onto the hardwood floor.  Upside down.  Bad.

We scooped up the mess with some spatulas and cleaned the floor.  We were fortunate that the casserole dish didn’t break and no one got burned.  So I just opened a can of plain old green beans to have instead.  Good.

I planned on having home-baked rolls, too.  But they didn’t thaw or rise in time.  I think some had freezer burn as once they did start to rise, they were rather deformed.  Ugly.

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The meal was still good – turkey, stuffing, mashed potaotes, green beans, Conumdrum white wine, and pumpkin pie.  We are very thankful for all our blessings.

Did you have some good, bad, or ugly for your Thanksgiving?