No Storm... Time to BAKE!!

Once it was determined that there was going to be no storm -- at least nothing that was going to interfere with cooking -- I decided to go ahead and bake.

I bought a bag of avocados from my favorite Sam's Club and I was worried that they were going to go south very, veryyyyy soon.  Two of them had that squishy feel. OH NO!  But, thankfully they were A-OK! I bought them to make "avocado cupcakes."  I found this recipe in United Cakes Of America by Warren Brown on page 185-186.  C#1 and C#2 asked me what I was making and they made a resounding, " EWWW!" *insert sarcasm* Realllllly. Ewww. They hadn't even tried them yet. I was gonna force them to try them whether they wanted to or NOT!  These lovely babies had cream cheese frosting to boot. These are definitely NOT ewww!

Anywayyyyy, I mixed the ingredients in the wrong order and it really didn't seem to matter. Plunked them in my too hot oven and about 8 minutes later, they were done. Anddddd, I did use their cream cheese frosting recipe. I had to control myself to NOT lick out that bowl. IT-WAS-SO-DELICIOUS!!!  Once those little buggers cooled off I frosted them and only licked the knife off once (and of course, when I was done...)

All cooked.

All frosted.

I only added a little bit more frosting. I swear!

Survey says: They were delicious! No ewwwing necessary!

Ingredients:

Flour 1 1/2 cup

Cornmeal 3TB

1 TB or more of cinnamon (their spices were allspice and nutmeg and I said NO!)

Salt 1/4 tsp

Raisins (1/2 cup)

Walnuts, crushed 1/2 cup (I did not add walnuts, since no one will like me if I did.)

Baking soda 1 tsp

Buttermilk 1/2 cup (I used the milk/lemon juice trick.)

Avocado, cut into chunks 1 cup (I used two avocados and didn't cut them up. I just scooped them 

into the bowl.)

Unsalted butter 1/2 cup (I used salted - I'm a rebel!!)

Sugar 1 cup

Eggs 2

VANILLA!!!!

Preheat oven to 350. Spray cupcake pan with nonstick spray and place paper liners in the cups (I didn't have the liners, so I didn't do that.) 

Combine the dry ingredients, except raisins and walnuts. Toss 3 tbl dry ingredients with the raisins and walnuts, set aside.

And then the recipe gets long and wordy and annoying. 

I seriously just threw all the last seven ingredients together and mixed them with my hand mixer. Then once that was a sloppy mess, added the rest, minus the raisins. Mixed that until it was a thicker sloppy mess. Then folded in the raisins.

I used an ice cream scoop to deposit the batter into the cupcake pan. I cooked them until a toothpick came out clean. The recipe says 18-24 minutes, but, with my super heat it only took 8-10.

Take out of cupcake pan. Cool. Then frost (cream cheese frosting - whatever is your favorite would work.) Delicious! (Please pardon the weird order of the ingredients -- this cookbook was set up weird.)

And since my oven was on, I decided to make a funky pizza for lunch. I drug out Mr. Food Pizza 1-2-3 and found "Hearty Artichoke and Pesto Pizza" on page 93.

1/2 cup pesto sauce

1 can (14 oz) artichoke hearts, quartered

4 oz mozzarella cheese (grated)

For the dough I used two frozen bread doughs, thawed.

Preheat the oven to 450 (mine's super hot, so it was set to 250.) Spread the pesto sauce evenly over the prepared base, then scatter the artichoke hearts over the sauce. Cover with the cheese (I also sprinkled it with Parmesan cheese.) Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Cut and serve.

C#2 was the only one who didn't like this. But, she's sometimes hard to please. 

There you have it. Today's cooking. Till next time...