Egg Roll Interlude

Before I begin the Year of the Cheese Cake I decided I needed an interlude of Egg Rolls.  Mostly because I found a bunch of recipes I wanted to try and I didn’t want to wait or devote a whole year to egg rolls.

Some are sweet like the cherry Cheesecake, Strawberry Cheesecake and the S’more roles.

Some are savory, like lumpia, bacon Mac and Cheese and Jalapeno cheese.

Year of the Cupcake: A year in review

I really enjoyed the year of the cupcake, even if the fam has stopped eating them.  I got to share a lot of cupcakes, try a bunch of flavors, and learn lots of new techniques.  Cupcakes are easy to share on a plate, tote or bubble, and don’t need to be refrigerated so that made it easy to spread the love.  I also sold a bunch to support a knitting club.

This past year I learned how to make a moist, domed cupcake, that does’t stick to the wrapper, Swiss Meringue buttercream frosting and orange curd.

My favorite flavors have been:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Salted Caramel

Triple Chocolate

Cherry Almond

Toffee Crunch

Chocolate Orange

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Raspberry

Total number of cupcakes: 1026

Unique Flavors: 37

Year of the Cupcake: July

This is the last month for the year of the cupcake.  I would say I am sad, but the whole family has stopped eating cupcakes.  I have an Egg Roll interlude planned before the Year of the Cheese Cake starts in Aug.

To go out with a bang I planned what I thought would be two favorites: Death by chocolate and Chocolate Raspberry.

Death by Chocolate has chocolate cake, chocolate chips in the cake, chocolate cream cheese frosting, topped with chocolate chips and chocolate gauche.

The chocolate raspberry is very good with chocolate cake, raspberry jam filling and raspberry cream cheese frosting.  So yummy!  But raspberries and chocolate are two of my favorite things.

Year of the Cupcake: June

For June I made Strawberries and Cream cupcakes with a white cake mix and Strawberry Fanta soda, stuffed with strawberry Jam and cream cheese frosting.

The second flavor was Chocolate Truffle with chocolate cake, a chocolate truffle center and chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream frosting.  Both flavors were awesome!