homemade magnolia cupcakes and the muffin man!

magnolia bakery in new york has the best cupcakes i've ever tasted...and i get to eat them once or twice a year. as it so happens, i was in ny for less than 24 hours a few days ago, and was sad because i couldn't remember the exact location of magnolia, and my Not For Tourists little booklet (which contains everything) didn't have the listing.

turns out, according to their website, there are now three locations - soon to be a fourth. and i missed all of them. sad.

but not all that sad, because my aunt and uncle happen to own the magnolia bakery cookbook. and, a few weeks ago, my cousin, jenny, made some and sent some down to me via some other cousins. and they were awesome - just like the bakery.

and so...(you can see where this is going) since i missed the actual magnolia, and happened to be spending the night at said aunt/uncle/cousin household...i made them. and, while i don't have the recipe to re-post here, i can tell you that healthy cupcakes these are not: lots o butter and lots o sugar. in short, these were my last big holiday treat.

you see before you one of the trays of cupcakes right before they went into the oven. the liners were picked out by jenny, btw.

and here they are, puffed up, after the oven.

but, everyone knows the real star of magnolia cupcakes is actually the icing. its butter, a bit of milk, and a million cups of powdered sugar. here we are halfway in AKA 6 cups. i lied about the million.

look - its turning pink!

as for frosting the things, i was told magnolia does not use a piping bag, and so i did not, either. sugar coma / bad flash heaven.

and, finally, i salute my uncle emy, who wants to be known here as 'the muffin man.' he's been on a muffin kick lately (everything from blueberry to weird muffins like pizza), and is a muffin-baking fool. as i made my coma cupcakes, he made some healthy oatmeal apple raisin muffins. and he wants everyone to know they were indeed healthy, and contained no butter. here they are, in all their glory.

thank you and please have a nice day.

apple butter and rosinenstuten aka raisin bread!

sunday i went to the annual apple butter festival in grands rapids, ohio, where, amidst various living history american war demonstrations ranging from revolutionary right on up to wwii, they were also making food.

you will never guess what kind.

i'll give you a hint with a pic taken with my phone:

ok. its apple butter - made with apples, cider, and sugar. they cook it for hours in these big copper kettles, and then ladle it into jars. i bought four. here are the details, as you can see in a close up from the apple butter jar itself:

i wanted a fun bread to eat it with, and i was inspired by 'seiten is my motor's' post of german stuten bread. you may (click here) for the recipe.

everything would have been perfect...except for what i feel is was bad yeast. when you click over for 'seiten's' recipe, you'll notice a description of a light, challah-esque bread, and a lovely picture of a tall, risen thing that delivers what was promised.

here is a picture of what happened to the dough BEFORE i realized it needed to go into two loaf pans:

and this is what they looked like after baking:

interesting. let's see what happens when we open up the jar of apple butter....

and put some on top....

tastes pretty good...looking back...it just didn't rise. it is not light and fluffy, but rather chewy. some sort of coffee cake/stuten hybrid. with bad yeast, i have created...hmmm....i dunno. will think of clever name once i have eaten several more pieces.