Summer Love

 

It has been a while since I updated my blog. Honestly, I have no real excuse; I just got caught up with work. There was something about today that made me want to start blogging again. I needed to be surrounded by positive energy; the kind of energy that comes from your house smelling like vanilla bean. Though I was stuck under piles of work today I needed to remind myself that the best way to de-stress  was to bake something that would make me smile. The other day when I went to the fruit shop I was excited to see so many boxes of strawberries; I think the shopkeeper got scared as I enthusiastically grabbed at every box. The poor man did not see that coming. He started yanking the boxes out of my hand and putting them back and pretended like I was a 5 year old; embarrassed, I asked for two boxes, paid the grumpy man, and walked out really fast holding the boxes to my chest in fear of losing them on the way to the car. The same evening I went to another grocery store to pick up more groceries and I ended up buying another pack of strawberries; I digress. The point is that I got overly excited and bought three boxes of strawberries forgetting that my fridge can't handle so much pressure. I think it gets nervous when I over-stuff it and it just stops working after it makes a loud cranky noise. So, I ended up making an entire jar of strawberry preserves and now it is my duty to finish the jar of jam. I made pancakes for breakfast this morning and I served it up with strawberry jam. Around three this afternoon I decided to take a break from work and I made orange vanilla strawberry cupcakes with white chocolate frosting. I created this recipe to use up the strawberry preserve but the cupcakes themselves came out extremely light and airy. Perfect treat for a summer evening! So here's the recipe:


Ingredients:

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 cup of butter
• 1 cup of flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup of orange juice
• Strawberry preserve (look under my February 2010 archives for the recipe)
• 1/2 cup melted white chocolate
• 1/3 cup cream

 Directions:

• Cream the butter and sugar. 

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• Beat in the orange juice and vanilla essence.
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• Add the flour and fold in the eggs.
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• Spoon the batter into a lined cupcake tin.
• Bake for 30 minutes at 150 degrees Centigrade or till the fork comes out clean.
• Cool the cupcakes. 
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• Melt the white chocolate and cream together in a double broiler stirring continuously. 
• Spoon the white chocolate mixture over each cupcake and top it up with a little bit of preserve. Done!
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