Easter Basket Cupcakes

These edible Easter Baskets are a great treat for kids and adult alike. They look adorable, but the best part is – they’re relatively easy to make.  A simple cupcake acts as the “basket” base (I chose coconut cupcakes), green-colored coconut is strikingly realistic Easter grass, tuck in a cookie handle, and mini chocolate eggs finish off the look.  Just a couple of do-ahead steps, and you’ll be ready to assemble your own baskets!

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Basketball Cake

It’s March Madness time again, and that can only mean one thing – my annual basketball cake extraordinaire.  My husband, Scott, works for ESPN and along with a myriad of perks, one of the best days of the year is the first day of the NCAA tournament.  His group (.com) gets together and organizes a food drive so that their two-day event of watching b-ball games all day (they claim they do some work here and there) can be fueled properly with the likes of 13 different kinds of chips, various cookies, baked goods, wings, pizza, and all other culinary delights that would make any chef’s stomach turn!  My annual “showing” at this event started Scott’s first year working for ESPN when he called me at 4 pm on Wednesday afternoon and (an advance apology  to all the men reading this blog) very typically asked “I need to bring in something for work tomorrow, can you go pick up some cookies or something?”  I then patiently explained to Scott that I am a pastry chef, everyone knows this, and that I look like an idiot if I send him in with store-bought cookies!  So off to the grocery store I went (at this point as a dutiful girlfriend, not even a ring on my finger!) to bake something for the ESPN.com group.  The first year were basketball cupcakes (very do-able with short notice.)  The second year – a sheet cake decorated as a basketball court.  Each year I felt the pressure to one-up myself, so the third year I made the basketball hoop cake that many of you have seen already on the blog.  The next year (last year) we had literally just moved the week or two before the tournament, so I, in trying to grow as a person, said that I was bowing out for the year – usually I can’t say “no” and take on much more than I can handle (to the joy of my family and friends around me!)  Some of Scott’s colleagues, however, recently reminded us that I managed to send in basketball cookies (we sell them at the store) with a little personal message “GO ‘Cuse.” Yes, I am an Syracuse grad.  So, this year, I needed to come back in a big way.  So ta-da!  This is it – I have decided this is my basketball cake swan song – I am not sure there is much more I can do with cake, fondant,a ball and a hoop.  (Well…that’s not true…I have one more idea up my sleeve, but I am not promising anything…) (more…)

Hello to all my long lost fellow cyber chefs.  I apologize for the very long absence from the blog, but unfortunately my struggle with my migraine headaches took much longer (a full two years fighting) than I had anticipated.  Luckily, thanks to what my husband and I refer to as my “miracle drug,” I am just now starting to put my life back together, and part of that includes picking the blog up again.  So thank you to my loyal readers who have stuck with me, and welcome to those of you who have signed on during my silence.  Hopefully you will all enjoy the new posts to come.

And I hope you especially enjoy this particular dish – I think I have chosen a good one to start with.  This recipe comes from the most recent issue of Bon Appetit – from their “Fast, Easy, Fresh” section.  For those of you not familiar with the magazine, every month they designate a couple of pages to “every day” recipes that you can prepare quickly that are relatively healthy.  This section is what I consider to be the unsung hero of the magazine.  The flashy cover stories, the big photo spreads and the recipes featuring exotic ingredients are fun, but some of my best go-to meals have come from “Fast, Easy, Fresh.”  So if you are a BA reader, don’t skip over this section next time (as I admit, I used to do).  Instead, give the recipes a close read and see that several of them are very enticing, especially when they are offering exactly what the category promises – meals that are “Fast, Easy, Fresh.” (more…)