Our vote goes to these bacon-and-eggs jelly bean cupcakes by Eileen E. Photo courtesy Jelly Belly.
Are you ready for The $10,000 Jelly Belly Cupcake Challenge?
The challenge is to create the “world’s most creative cupcake,” using Jelly Belly jelly beans as the decoration.
The winner will receive a check for $10,000, so it’s worth a bit of thought. There are also “instant win” prizes, just for uploading a photo of your cupcake.
The top five cupcakes will be selected by What’s New, Cupcake? authors Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. Fans will then vote to determine the overall $10,000 grand prize winner.
Baking cupcakes from scratch is not a requirement. This is a cupcake decorating contest, so cake mixes or store-bought cupcakes are fine.
The online contest runs through July 31, 2011. For additional information, visit JBCupcakeChallenge.com.
You can make these clever shamrock cupcakes for St. Patrick’s Day.
Using Jelly Belly jelly beans in six different green colors and flavors provides lots of variety.
Each large shamrock pulls apart into three mini cupcakes. If you don’t have time to bake the cupcakes, you can purchase them and focus your time on decorating.
SHAMROCK CUPCAKES FOR ST. PATRICK’S DAY
Ingredients
45 mini cupcakes, baked in green paper liners
6 thin chocolate cookies
2 cans (16 ounces each) dark chocolate frosting
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with green jelly
bean shamrock cupcakes. Photo from the
book Hello Cupcake by Karen Tack and Alan
Richardson.
3/4 cup each (about 6 ounces) Jelly Belly jelly beans in Green Apple, Kiwi, Lemon Lime, Margarita and Watermelon
Preparation
1. Trim the chocolate cookies with a serrated knife into fifteen 1/2-inch- by 2-inch-long strips for the stems. Spoon 1/4 cup of the chocolate frosting into a small zipper bag. Press out the excess air and seal.
2. Working on one shamrock at a time, arrange 3 mini cupcakes close together in the shape of a shamrock.
3. Spread the tops of the cupcakes with some of the chocolate frosting. Add a piece of chocolate cookie in between 2 of the cookies allowing it to overhang about 1 inch to make the stem.
4. Starting on the outer edge of the cupcakes, press like colored green Jelly Belly beans, lengthwise around the cupcakes to make the shamrock shape. Fill in with more jelly beans as close together as possible.
5. Snip a small corner from the bag with the chocolate frosting and pipe a line on the top of the cookie piece. Add 2 like colored jelly beans on top to make the stem. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes, jelly beans and frosting.
Does anyone need a gadget to remove the
avocado pit and slice the flesh? If so, here it is.
Have you purchased a kitchen gadget, only to try it at home and wonder why it was manufactured in the first place?
Some tools, like a garlic press, an egg separator, a cherry- or olive pitter and an egg slicer make a difficult job easy. Others, like a vegetable peeler and a mandoline, are indispensable.
However, the vast majority of gadgets we test are such a waste of money and drawer space that we get angry at free enterprise for allowing them to exist. All they do is replace a sharp knife, and often not as well.
Here are some of the time- and money-wasters we’ve tried over the past year.
Avocado Pitter/Slicer. Is anyone truly incapable of removing the pit from an avocado and slicing the flesh with a knife?
Corn Zipper. It couldn’t be easier to remove corn from the cob with a sharp knife. You don’t need a special device.
Herb Mincer. A total waste for us. Our chef uses a knife to mince. Our knife skills are not as strong, but we happily mince herbs by snipping away with a sharp kitchen scissors. It’s fun, too.
Herb Shears. The only difference over a normal scissors are circular openings above the blades that can be used to strip the leaves from woody stems like oregano, rosemary and thyme. Using our fingers is far easier than using this feature.
Mango Pitter. We actually spent our hard-earned money on this one, because we find pitting a mango a chore. But what a disaster this item is. We’ll have to get hands-on lessons from THE NIBBLE’s chef, a knife-skills pro.
Mozzarella Slicer and Tomato Slicer. Please avoid these and use a knife! Last summer, we received a combination unit that sliced both mozzarella and tomatoes, a “Caprese salad maker.” Everyone at THE NIBBLE laughed their heads off, and we donated the item to the thrift store without taking it out of the box. (Most of what we receive is donated after we test it.)
And so on and so on to the point of sheer skepticism. So don’t get seduced by the fantasy in the aisles of Bed, Bath & Beyond. Don’t impulse buy. Go online and read reviews before buying.
Save your money. Save your drawer space. And spend your money on a good knife and keeping it sharp.
Which gadgets have you found to be a waste of space, and which can’t you live without?
February is National Fondue Month, but chocolate fondue is a dessert that can be used to celebrate any occasion. It’s fun served to a group; it’s romantic enjoyed by two.
Chocolate fondue is easy prepare, so why don’t we have it more often? You don’t need a special fondue pot: You can use a standard sauce pot and a portable burner to keep the chocolate warm. However, long-handled fondue forks are needed.
A fondue sidebar: Back in the day, we were big fondue fans, hosting frequent fondue parties. We owned the specialty pots dictated by convention for each type of fondue:
Cheese fondue was served in a wide, short ceramic dish with a handle (i.e., a pot) that made dipping into the bubbly cheese easy
We’re trading in our sterno-heated brazier for this electric fondue pot from Rival.
Beef fondue was served in a taller metal pot with a narrow mouth, so the cooking oil didn’t spatter and the fondue forks could rest against the mouth while the meat cooked
Chocolate fondue required a much smaller than either of the main course pots
The cheese and chocolate, and the oil for the beef, were heated on the stove. They were brought to the table and placed atop a brazier, a portable metal frame with an underneath heating source: alcohol, Sterno or butane (or the original, less effective heating source, a tea candle).
We’re actually moving our fondue party into the 20th century, donating our three fondue pots to a good cause and purchasing one electric pot.
Back to the chocolate fondue:
Chef Trey Foshee of George’s at the Cove in La Jolla, California, goes a step beyond the traditional chocolate fondue recipe and adds creamy mascarpone cheese (a key ingredient of tiramisu).
Thanks to Chef Foshee and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board for the delicious recipe.
What the king ate after the speech: A Stilton from purveyor Neal’s Yard. Photo courtesy Whole Foods Market.
We’ve received dozens of recipes for themed cocktail recipes for Oscar parties. For example, combine gin with Earl Grey Tea, and call it The King’s Speech cocktail.
Fatigued at the idea of 12 different “Best Picture” cocktails, we’ve published just two over the past month.
But the idea of an Oscar-themed cheese board caught our interest. Here are suggestions from ArtisanalCheese.com, one of the finest online cheese purveyors, on how to create an Academy Awards cheese board:
The Fighter: Aged Roquefort (it’s a salty punch)
The Kids Are All Right: Goat cheese (goats are kids, too, and goat cheese is always all right)
The King’s Speech: Cheddar, Stilton or Wensleydale, iconic English cheeses
The Social Network: Any mixed milk cheese—two or more milks connecting socially
Toy Story 3: Flosserkäse, an aged Swiss cheese with woody notes
True Grit: A washed rind cheese like Epoisses or Livarot, a challenging stinker for turophiles with true grit
Winter’s Bone: Comte, the great Swiss mountain cheese, as complex as nature
