Chai Tea Cupcakes

I myself am not a big fan of chai tea, but someone I adore does. When I see chai I always think of Elisha so when I saw these Chai Tea Cupcakes, I knew I'd make them for her. The original recipe that I found on Mady by Melis is below.

For me, the recipe made 8 cupcakes. I like a little dome top on my cakes so I may have filled the cups more full then others would but I think that the recipe really could yield about 12 cakes if you only fill the cups about half way. Or even better, 24 mini cupcakes.

For the frosting I used Magnolia's Vanilla Buttercream recipe, which I found on the Food Network site along with Magnolia's recipe for vanilla cupcakes. The recipe can frost about 24 cupcakes so I cut it in half and there was still plenty left over. Maybe I made it wrong but the consistency wasn't what I was expecting (not as stiff as I would prefer) but the good thing is it gave my cupcakes a frothy topping, like a chai latte.

Oh, and of course I used eco-friendly unbleached cupcake liners for my always green conscience friend, Elisha. They are made by IF YOU CARE® and also have a variety of other environmentally friendly products.

Chai Tea Cupcakes

Ingredients

1/2 cup milk
1 or 2 chai tea bags
1/2 cup sugar
2 oz butter, softened
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamon
pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place liners into cupcake pan.
Heat up milk on stove, remove from stove. Place tea bags into milk, cover and steep for 5-10 minutes.
Cream sugar and butter together. Mix in egg and vanilla. Mix in milk.
Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt together. Mix dry and wet ingredients together.
Divide batter into cupcake liners. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a tester inserted comes out clean.
Allow to cool before frosting with your favorite buttercream frosting. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Peanut Butter Silk Pie

Before we left for Hawaii, I promised Phil that I'd make him any dessert he liked when we got back. He chose this recipe for Peanut Butter Silk Pie.

I had a number of other things to do today, so I didn't make my own graham cracker crust as originally planned. My good friends, the Keebler Elves, helped me out with that. All I did was brush a little beaten egg onto the crust and stuck in the oven for about 8 minutes to make it crispy and golden.

The recipe calls for a layer of fudge on the bottom, so I got a chance to bust out my new candy thermometer. I've never made fudge before and I didn't want to "fudge it up" (that one's for you Lisha) so I watched that thermometer like a hawk. Making the fudge was pretty easy so you might see more fudge recipes in the future. But it looked like the fudge layer was a little too thick and dense, which later caused problems when I cut into the pie.

The recipe told me to mix the all the filling ingredients at once. Next time, I would beat the cream cheese and peanut butter until smooth, then add the sugar, vanilla and milk. This time, what I got were lots of little cream cheese lumps.

I finished the pie with dollops of what I had left of the Cool Whip (piped from a ziplock bag and a star piping tip) and shavings of chocolate.

Homemade Samoas

This weekend is Jennifer's wedding and tomorrow we're making all the flower arrangements for the big day. Our Aunt Danette suggested that we each bake some cookies so that we have something to snack on while we work.

I've been wanting to try this recipe for Homemade Samoas for a couple months now because Samoas are my all time favorite Girl Scout cookies. I go on a hunt from them every year and last year I couldn't find any Girl Scouts selling cookies in the city and I almost had them deliver boxes to my house. It's probably a dangerous thing that I found a way where I can have these cookies all year round.

The recipe calls for a 1 1/2 inch cookie cutter, but mine were slightly bigger. So, my cookies are bigger than what you'll normally find. Eating one of my cookies is probably like eating two regular Samoas (and that's definitely not a bad thing). This recipe uses caramel candies, but I've seen others where you can make your own caramel from scratch.

I liked very much how these came out and I think they really taste like the real thing.