Cupcake Bakin'!

Today I decided it was time to break in my kitchen in my new apartment and bake some cupcakes.

For a long time I've been holding onto a recipe for "Irish Car Bomb" cupcakes (Guinness cupcakes with Jamison's Whiskey ganache and Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream icing).  I'd set out to make them today, but failed to pick up two of the major ingredients - Bailey's Irish Cream and Jamison's Whiskey.

Since it was rainy and gross out and I was feeling lazy and just wanted to start baking, I decided to wing it.

I was a little hesitant to try this recipe at first because I am NOT a Guinness drinker, but I'd heard such amazing things about it that I figured I'd just go for it.

Anyhow, since I was missing the Bailey's Irish Cream, I figured I was going to just go with my standard vanilla whipped topping or a basic vanilla buttercream once I saw how heavy the Guinness flavoring was for the cake itself.  If it was too "dark" tasting, I figured a sweeter topping (the buttercream) would be the way to go.

20 minutes after I popped the batter into the oven, I tasted a little bit of heaven.  Holy cow those little cakes came out amazing.  The flavoring came out delicately rich, light, and moist.  A perfect, not overly sweet cupcake.  Since the flavoring ended up being very delicate, I decided to go with the whipped topping - I think the buttercream would have been to heavy.  Obviously this is a personal taste choice.

Once I started on the topping, I felt like for such a lovely flavored cupcake, the topping needed to have a little more flair than just simple vanilla.  I still had 3/4 of a bottle of Guinness from the cakes themselves, so I figured why not add a little and see how it tasted.  I didn't add much, but it made just enough of a difference to give it the flair I was looking for.  I also added in Bailey's - but a bit at a time - I didn't want to overwhelm it.

Being a design nerd, of course I wanted them to be pretty too, so I wanted a little something extra for the top.  I had some caramels on hand that I heated up and figured a little drizzle would be the perfect little tasty aesthetically pleasing finish.

RECIPE:

Cupcake Batter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups baker's sugar (superfine sugar)
3/4 cup cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda1
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons shortening
3/4 cup of water
3/4 cup of Guinness Stout
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs

1. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Stir to combine. Add shortening, then use an electric mixer on medium speed to blend shortening into dry ingredients. Mix until no chunks of shortening are visible. This is your cake mix, which you can keep in a sealed container for several months until you are ready to make the cupcakes.

2. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans. Batter will make approx. 24 to 30 cupcakes.

3. Blend dry cake mix (from step #1) with water, Guinness, oil and eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer at low speed until moistened. Increase speed to medium and beat for 2 more minutes.

4. Pour batter into lined cupcake pans and bake for 19 to 22 minutes.

5. Allow to cool for 1 hour.

Topping
2 cups heavy cream
2 tbsp powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 small pkg vanilla instant pudding mix
Guinness Stout (to taste)
Bailey's Irish Cream (to taste)

Beat heavy cream on high speed until soft peaks form. Turn speed down to low and slowly add in sugar, vanilla, pudding mix and Guinness (to taste). Turn back up to high until stiff peaks form. Keep in a chilled environment.

Print recipe here.

A New Apartment Calls for an Inspiration Board! (Part 4: Living Room Design)

Gosh! Mid-August into the beginning of September has been pretty busy! I've been slacking on my apartment updates!

Anyhow, without further adieu, here's the fourth installment of inspiration boards and design for the new apartment: the living room!

Here's what we're working with:

We've sort of gotten to the point where we are in a little bit of a holding pattern with actually FINISHING the apartment - we still need to purchase 2 pieces of furniture, acquire 2 awesome chairs for the living room (which are kindly being donated by sweet hubs' great aunt), and get some organizational tools for the closets. We can't finish hanging things until we get one of the two pieces of furniture and we've just gotten a little lazy since we've both been incredibly busy.

Regardless, here is our inspiration board for the living room. We've got a great space to work with - it's a sunken living room with an adorable wrought iron railing and steps off of a very generously sized foyer, which really lives up to the whole 1960's mid-century modern style that the building has going for it. I love it.

We figured that since the living room is such a large space (I believe its approximately 20ft x 10ft), we could go a little bit darker on the walls - not too dark though.

(Clockwise: Behr "Marina Isle" - 2 qt. of paint, West Elm Sunburst Wire Wall Art, Ikea Barometer
Floor Lamp, Corduroy Rug in a Bag, Ikea Expedit Bookshelf, vintage lounge chairs (photo from a
similar chair on Ebay), West Elm Modern Media Console (no longer sold), Room and Board
Lenox sofa (no longer sold).

Summer's A-Windin' Down!

It's true. We're now into the last days of August, so this past weekend, sweet hubs, Christina and I decided to make the most of the mini-heatwave and hit up Coney Island for some beachy fun and also so I could play with my new camera.

It was surprisingly un-crowded, especially since it was such a beautiful day! We spent time wandering on the board walk, exploring Luna Park (the new park) and what's left of Astroland and Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park (the old parks), said hello to Lola Star at her namesake shop, Lola Star and peeked into the gift shop of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. Oh yeah, and stuck our feet into the chilly Atlantic Ocean. I adore Coney Island.

I was quite excited on the train to Coney Island. 

We visited the gift shop, but intend to actually attend the show in a few weeks since we didn't get to go on Saturday.  I'm excited!

The Coney Island boardwalk.

The "chefs" of the Coney Island boardwalk.

"Shoot the Freak" - always a Coney Island classic.

Apparently Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park has been around for 90 years!

CREEPY Michael Jackson dolls that you can win at Luna Park.  Yikes.

The new Luna Park.

Christina was happy to be at the beach.  (I think!)

As was i.

Sweet hubs enjoys drinking beer on the beach.

Sadly, this was my first trip to the beach this summer. Kind of pathetic since I live a 20 minute train ride from Coney Island, but that's alright. I'll do better next summer.

View more photos here.

Have you seen this?! "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"

Thank you, Christina, for sharing this amazing gem.

If you haven't already seen it, I recommend you watch it immediately. It brightened this rainy Tuesday for me by about 1000%.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Colorful Finds for a Rainy Monday

It's a chilly (yay!) and rainy (boo!) Monday here in NYC, so I thought I'd share some bright and colorful finds to hopefully bring some cheer to everyone's day.

Image courtesy of L.L. Bean.

This Moonbeam Clock from L.L. Bean is adorable.

Image courtesy of Home Sweet Home.

How cheerful and sweet is this window with sky blue brick and cherry red flowers in the window box!?

Do you read Color Me Katie?  If you don't, you should.  Her blog will cheer you up in two seconds flat. She is the epitome of colorful!  How can you NOT be perked up immediately by a blog that contains images such as this:

Image courtesy of Color Me Katie.

I'd love to visit Brussels, Belgium one day and stay at the Pantone Hotel.

Courtesy of their website:
"Travel to a Colorific World -
The Pantone Hotel invites you to experience the city of Brussels through a lens of color and a spectrum of comforts. From the moment you arrive, our “hotel of colors” will awaken your senses to an array of delights and playful surprises.

Impeccably designed by Michel Penneman and Oliver Hannaert, The Pantone Hotel, Brussels showcases the color of emotion with a distinctive hue on each colorous guest floor. From vivid to subdued, for business or leisure, our unique boutique hotel perfectly suits your savvy palette and colorful imagination.

From a design perspective, The Pantone Hotel, Brussels is built on an exceptional use of contrast; a white canvas provides clean space for saturated colors to pop. Guest rooms feature unique photography by esteemed Belgian photographer Victor Levy.

Welcome to the center of the color universe."

(Also, all rooms feature "Pantone Universe Shower Gels and Lotions"!)

If you aren't a nerd like me and don't know what Pantone is, learn here.

Images courtesy of the Pantone Hotel website.

If someone wants to buy me a present...

I will absolutely accept this.

So, if you want to send me a present for no reason at all, that would be lovely and it would look fabulous in my new home.

Thank you.

You can buy it here.

A New Project: Want Font!

The lovely Christina and I decided to take our love for fonts, typography and excellent typographical design and create a Tumblr blog. If you too are a font dork like us, please check out the blog, follow us on twitter or like us on facebook.

A New Apartment Calls for an Inspiration Board! (Part 3: Bathroom Design)

Onto the third installment of inspiration boards and design for the new apartment: the bathroom!

I'll admit - I always like a somewhat girlie bathroom.  I just can't help it.  In the room which I make myself pretty, I need it to FEEL pretty too.  It helps make my morning a little brighter.  Not much to say about it except I kept the colors bright and clean feeling (always important in a bathroom!) and tried to not make it TOO girly so that sweet hubs will be happy with it too.  Sweet hubs and I love the vintage feel of the bathroom, so we wanted to play up the black and white tile floors and the vintage fixtures, but find accessories that blended in with them.

Progress wise for the rest of the apartment, this past weekend was spent finishing the last bit of painting and LOTS of unpacking, so hopefully we'll be finished getting all set up soon.  It's definitely starting to feel like home, which is nice.

Here we go!

(Clockwise: Behr "Ice Folly" - 1 qt. of paint, Lenox Chirp Shower Curtain, Wamsutta Palace Classic Bath Accessory Collection, Ikea Grundtal Glass Shelves)

A New Apartment Calls for an Inspiration Board! (Part 2: Bedroom Design)

Well folks, our move is complete.

Last weekend was spent with my parents, since they so kindly offered drive up from Virginia and let us use their muscles to help us move and paint the new apartment. I am so thankful - if they hadn't, sweet hubs and I would be painting for the next month and I'd be one tired and cranky lady.

My step-dad and sweet hubs spent their days moving things, running to Lowe's and Home Depot as well as various other stores while my mom and I hunkered down at the new place and painted. And painted. And then painted some more.

The end result is GORGEOUS. I'm so proud. We scrubbed and polished the floors, painted all the walls, trim, radiators and cabinetry. It was so worth the time and effort. And let me just mention that I adore Behr paint. We didn't need a second coat on anything. Amazing stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised that we even managed to fit in going to a fancy dinner at The Good Fork in our old neighborhood as a well deserved treat on Saturday evening. It was a great and productive weekend, to say the least.

Now that my parents have gone back home, sweet hubs and I have the tasks of unpacking, organizing and decorating. We've done quite well so far. We managed to luck out on quite a few deals on things we needed to buy or to replace and only have a few more big purchases to make.

Obviously its not quite time for us to do a big reveal of the final product, so instead, I'll share my inspiration boards for decor which includes the furniture and accessories we currently own, what we've purchased so far and what we intend to purchase, just to see how things will work together.

Here's the first edition, our bedroom.

The bedroom is quite large (12ft x 16ft), at least compared to our previous bedroom, which was approximately 8ft x 9ft.

Here are the photos from when we viewed the apartment. Apologies on their grainy quality, but you can at least get an idea of what we're working with. We've got a HUGE closet and two really nice sized windows.

This is what we've decided to do, decor and color wise, with the bedroom. I'm not an overly girly girl, and my style is more clean lined and mid-century modern inspired, which works well since I can't picture sweet hubs being a happy man living in a frilly apartment. That being said, we decided to paint the bedroom Behr's "Bon Voyage", which is a beautiful, rich and deep blue with a little bit of a muted grey tone to it. We painted the trim and doors bright white which really makes the wall color and the beautiful hardwoods pop.

We found that one thing that seemed as though it was going to break the bank was buying rugs. As most of you know, once you go above a 5ft x 7ft rug, the price usually doubles or triples. Yikes. Well we did a lot of researching and managed to score some great deals. For this room, we found a pretty awesome, and really quite soft diamond textured 8ft x 10ft brown rug ($70!!), which nicely compliments our brown throw pillows.

For our bedding, we went with a simple textured charcoal gray quilt with square european pillows. We didn't want to get too crazy, so we kept our bedskirt and curtains white.

(Clockwise) Behr Ultra Premium Satin Paint, Ikea "Hemnes" 8-Drawer Dresser, Cream Colored Barrel Lamp Shade, Portfolio Rustana/Satin Nickel Table Lamp Base, Casual Home Grommet Top Window Collection, Brown Diamond 8' x 10' Rug, Brown Felicia Cushion Cover, Charcoal Alina Bedspread and 2 cushion covers)

Random Post

Hey! Look at that - it's my half birthday! Which means... nothing really.

30 and 1/2.

I am working on a nice big post, its just not quite done yet, so I didn't want to leave my blog unattended for too long. Haha.

Sweet hubs and I are almost finished moving - we will officially be in our new apartment as of Sunday night, which is awesome.

I can't wait to come home to my new apartment!

Also, let me take a moment to do a shout out to sweet hubs. He really has been a trooper in taking care of everything with regard to setting up utilities, moving things and lots of other things that we should be doing together for this move that I just haven't been able make time for. He's the best. I'm really lucky to have such a rad dude for a husband.

Sweet hubs and I in the subway.  Photo courtesy of Wes Hargrave.