Creme Puffs

2011. Those four numbers put together are very significant to me. In 2011, I will be married to my wonderful husband for 10 years. In 2011, our oldest child will start kindergarten. In 2011, I will turn 30 years old, and look back at my life so far with the utmost joy. In 2011, I will have the same best friend for the last 20 years. We have experienced first kisses, first broken hearts, college, weddings, breast cancer, and child birth together.

So many things about life have built me into the strong, smart, independent woman I am now. Every time I've been tripped up by life, I've had someone there that loves me to help me back up. Every struggle I've gone through I've had a best friend there to comfort me.

I didn't make any new years resolutions this year. Resolutions seem to be made to be broken. But I have so many dreams and wishes that I am going to watch come true this year instead. In 2011, I am going to not care about my scale, but instead my energy level and how my body feels. I am going to treat my body like I do my family...with love and respect. I will respect my body by feeding it healthy food, exercising regularly and sleeping plenty.

In 2011, I am going to do a better job at being a friend, a wife, and a mom. Somewhere along the line, the calendar started flipping my months instead of days. My children grew, my friends became busy with their children, my husbands business flourished. And now it feels like I'm missing chunks of time. So this year, I will stop for coffee with friends, I will bake cookies for no reason and drop them off at friends' houses, I will eat dinner by candle light with my husband, and I will waste entire Saturdays at the park with my kids. I will neglect nothing by my dirty laundry.

So here's to a great year ahead of us!

Pastry Puffs

1 Cup Water
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 - 2 cups flour
4 large eggs

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper or a sil-pat.

In a saucepan, bring the water, butter and sugar to a boil over high heat. Immediately remove from heat once boiling starts and with a wood spoon stir in all-purpose flour. Continue to stir until the mixture begins to pull away from sides of pan (about 2 minutes), as pictured below.

Let mixture slightly cool (about 2 minutes) and add eggs, one at a time and stirring after each addition, until batter comes together.

Transfer batter into a piping bag or ziplock bag and cut off corner of bag about 1/2" up the side. Pipe into desired sized mounds (1" apart) onto lined baking sheets.

Bake 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake until your puffs are golden brown and feel light and hollow in the center...about 20 minutes.


I filled mine with whipped cream and dipped them in melted semi-sweet chocolate! Delicious!!
(To make whipped cream, combine 1 cup heavy whipping cream and 3 tablespoons sugar, then whip until light and fluffy).

Enjoy!

Fudge

What do you have better to do then make fudge when you wake up in the morning and find 2" of snow blanketed across your front yard? Well, make fudge and pumpkin chocolate chunk blondies and a LARGE cup of coffee. Make sure you get your chocolate fix so that when you come to the reality that for the next 4 months you'll have to get up 30 minutes earlier every morning so that you can wrap the kids in hats, scarfs, mittens, snow pants, jackets and boots you'll be able to handle it. It is very important to be properly caffinated and sugared when you come to such realizations.

Fudge (Recipe from My Baking Addiction)

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Line a 9" or 8" square pan with tin foil so you can easily lift the fudge out to cut it into chunks. Set aside.

In a sauce pan over low heat, add chocolate, sweetened condensed milk and salt and stir until all chips are melted. Remove from heat and stir in chopped nuts and vanilla extract. Spread evenly into foil covered pan and chill for 3 hours until fudge is firm. Remove from foil and place on a cutting board and cut into desired size squares.

Store covered in the refrigerator.

Turtle Cupcakes

Warning: This cupcake may contain extreme amounts of all around goodness that will cause the corners of your mouth to point upward in a huge smile all day long! This cupcake is so stinkin' sweet it is hard not to love it...

Turtle Cupcakes

1 recipe chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting
1 1/2 cup crushed pretzels
1/2 chopped pecans
11 tablespoons melted butter
3/4 cup sugar
Caramel Apple Dip


Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 30-36 cupcake tins with cupcake wrappers.

Place pecans in a food processor and pulse them for about 3 seconds just to get a rough chop started. Then add pretzels and continue to pulse. You want the pretzels to be a little chunky...definitely do not turn them into a powder!

Pour pretzel and pecans into a bowl. Add melted butter and sugar and stir until combined. Scoop a rounded tablespoon of mixture into each cupcake wrapper and lightly press to bottom to form the crust.

Prepare chocolate cake as directed. Scoop cake batter on top of pretzel crust so your cupcake liners are about 3/4 full. Bake cupcakes for 20-25 minutes...until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

Completely cook cupcakes. Using a handheld apple corer, cut a hole in the middle of the cupcake. Place Caramel Apple Dip in a piping bag with a large round tip. Fill hole in the cupcake with caramel.

Prepare frosting as directed by recipe. Place in a piping bag with a 1M star tip and pipe frosting on cupcakes making sure to cover the caramel. Sprinkle with chopped pecans if desired.

ENJOY!!