Madonna of the Kitchen

I just spent about 3 to 4 hours in my kitchen and now I am exhausted....

I made Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Buttercream Frosting. The picture below is off the Martha Stewart website. Mine do not look like this. The cupcake itself is good. It came out really moist. My only complaint is that all the chocolate chips fell to the bottom. It was an intense recipe. Instead of just adding eggs like you usually would I had to take 5 egg whites and make a meringue and then fold it in to the batter. Weird. I had never made meringue before. It was labor intensive. I had to sit there with the mixer on for a long time. We only have a hand mixer so my thumb gets tired from pressing on the button.

The frosting...ugh. I think its too sweet (and that's saying something cause I have a sweet tooth) and Mike thinks its not sweet enough and it tastes like sour cream. Awesome. This is not my idea of good frosting. Damn me for not using my mom's butter icing recipe and using Martha's buttercream recipe. Will never do that again. I'm tempted to scrape the icing off the cupcakes and make my mom's icing. Hmmmm....

So I put the cupcakes and remaining icing (remaining because at this point I still have 9 cupcakes cooling) in the fridge to see if it will set up a little. It is a really thin icing. Why??? Because I think I am a baker and can tweak recipes. Once again this is an epic fail. Basically buttercream icing has 3 components; an obscene amount of softened unsalted butter, an entire pound of confectioner's sugar, and a tsp of vanilla extract. Now let me tell you what I put in it. I started with the recipe. Tasted it. Hated it. So I put 3 tbsp of Crisco in it to cut the sugar a bit. Then I could still feel the powdered sugar in my mouth so I added about a tbsp or two of milk. BIG MISTAKE! Now its thin and apparently tastes like sour cream. Awesome (sarcasm). Just writing this is making me want to go throw it all out. Yuck.

Overall Michael rating: 7 out of 10

I guess I can't complain. Now I have 33 of these cupcakes. Definitely giving some of these away.

Before I went on the cupcake adventure I made Club Chicken Salad. This is a great breakdown of a chicken club sandwich. Mike and I enjoyed a very light and late (just about 4pm) lunch with this on a flour tortilla. A wrap basically.

This recipe was also pretty involved. But I would say worth it. Basically, anything with bacon in it is worth it. :)

You take bacon and bake it in the oven on aluminum foil. When it is ready to be flipped you move it to one side of the pan and put chicken breasts seasoned with salt and pepper on the other side. I added Montreal Chicken seasoning for a little extra something. So basically you are baking the chicken in the rendered bacon fat. Awesome (no sarcasm, it's really awesome). Then you chop up some celery, red onion, celery stalk leaves, and some tomatoes. This required the most time. I bought little cherry tomatoes because I figured it would be easier. It was! Except seeded them was a disaster as I frequently got tomato juice and seeds all over my WHITE shirt. Then I just added some mayo and white vinegar. Then I chopped up the chicken, crumbled the bacon, and tossed it all together. The outcome was a really refreshing spin on chicken salad.

Overall Michael rating: 7 out of 10

I think he low balled my chicken salad. But apparently he said he tasted some seeds in a few bites. He probably just got some residual tomato seeds that I missed.

Meal plan for this coming week: Cayenne Rubbed Chicken with Avocado Salsa (this will be our second time making this because its amazing), Seared Spicy Fajitas (beef) with grilled onions and red pepper (and of course a few wedges of lime), and Broccoli and Cheddar Quiche (excited about this as I've only ever made Spinach and Swiss or Mozzarella Quiche and Mike is a little sick of it. haha)

Now I am off to make flashcards of normal and abnormal arterial blood gases,normal blood counts, and the dreaded electrolytes. Critical Care starts Wednesday. Yikes!