cook - vegan chocolate cupcakes

The recipe for these cupcakes came from the exquisite cookbook Organic and Chic by Sarah Magid. Absolutely full to the brim with amazing recipes for beautiful treats, this cookbook is a delight. For the chocolate icing, I wanted to go vegan as well, but did not have vegan margarine on hand. I'll share what I did, but according to the gods of chocolate, it really should NOT have worked, but it did, and was delicious and beautiful too. If you don't want to risk my crazy recipe, the internet abounds with simple vegan chocolate icing recipes.

"easiest chocolate cake" from "Organic and Chic" by Sarah Magid:
makes two 8 or 9 inch layers or 24 cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Butter and flour two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans or place liners in muffin pans for 24 cupcakes.

In large bowl, sift together the following:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups cane sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda

In smaller bowl whisk together:
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2/3 cups canola oil
2 teaspoons white vinegar
2 cups cold water

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, being careful not to overmix. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes for cake layers, about 25 minutes for cupcakes.

Cool in the pans for ten minutes, then remove from pans and cool on wire rack.

"emily's really weird this-should-not-have-worked vegan chocolate icing":

I melted two squares of unsweetened chocolate in a small sauce pan, then poured that into my mixer. With the mixer running I poured in about 2 tablespoons of canola oil, a generous teaspoon of vanilla, and started beating in some powdered sugar, a bit at a time. What resulted was icing-like, but way too thick to spread. I added a splash more oil, but that made it really oily looking, and not a nice texture, and I thought this was a failure. But, before I gave up, I tried adding a little bit of lukewarm water, a spoonful at a time, while the mixer was running, and suddenly, I had icing! And it was lovely, delicious, shiny and really chocolatey. Definitely use this icing right away, since as the melted chocolate cools the icing "sets up" a bit, but it did remain spreadable long enough for me to ice the the cupcakes. Please note, this made enough icing for only a dozen cupcakes.

For the decoration I tinted some marzipan with violet icing color, and cut out little flowers, then sprinkled the cupcakes with violet edible "cake sparkles."

craft - jack-o-lantern chandelier shades

This craft is something I saw on Martha Stewart's website and thought would be a fun, kid-friendly craft. It turns out that papier mache is kind of tricky when you do it with tissue paper! Not at all as simple as old school newspaper papier mache. But, we prevailed, and ended up with some adorable little jack-o-lanterns to make our dining room more festive for Halloween!

For this craft you'll need some small round balloons (I got a bag of miscellaneous water balloons), some orange and yellow tissue paper cut up into small (one to two inch squares), some white glue and some black paper (not tissue paper though).

Blow up the balloons. You'll want your finished product to be big enough that they fit over your chandelier bulbs generously. Mix some glue with water in a shallow bowl until quite thin, like maybe the consistency of heavy cream. Dip pieces of the cut up tissue paper into the glue mixture and place them all over the balloon, overlapping the tissue, so no balloon peeks out (except at the base around the balloon's knot. Leave that area bare for the extraction of the popped balloon later on.) The trick here is that you want to thoroughly cover the balloon with tissue paper, but you also don't want too many layers of paper, since you'll want lots of light to shine through! Don't worry if you have problems with the tissue tearing, wrinkling, etc. It won't really matter to the finished product.

Once your balloons are all covered with tissue, place them on a cooling rack to dry. This takes time. A long time. Like maybe a day, or more, if your weather is cool or damp. When they are thoroughly dry they'll feel slightly hard and crispy. Now is the time to add faces. Martha's website had a template for a cute little face, but we just winged it. In fact, L. was very proud of the shapes she cut out for eyes, nose, mouth, etc. and even J. got in on the shape cutting action. We then glued the face shapes on (remembering that the bottom of the balloon, where the knot is, will be the bottom of your shade as well). Once the faces were completely dry, we popped the balloons, pulled them out through the hole in the bottom of the shade, and popped them on our chandelier. The children were enchanted with the finished result!

Fire Hazard Disclaimer - I don't know how fire safe these little beauties are. To be safe, I would not use them with a bulb higher than 40 watts, and even at 25 - 40 watts, I'd be inclined to keep a close eye on them.