Love at First Whip

Oh. My. Gosh. I freaking love my new Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer. My dad got me this beauty for Christmas, and because I was only home for less than 12 hours before a 48 hour shift, it's only natural that when I returned home the next 48 hours were nearly all spent having quality time with my mixer. Furthermore, I felt the need to make recipes that utilized more than one attachment for the mere excitement of how capable my mixer is of multitasking. The menu? ha...

Chocolate- Coffee Cupcakes

Dark Chocolate Espresso Mousse filling for Cupcakes

Blue Buttercream Icing

Wheat and White Pizza Dough

Sweet Quickbread

Cracked Wheat and Sesame Loaves

Delectable Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes

First, let me inform you of my new project! In congratulation of my good friends Laura and Kevin on their engagement, I have offered to make their wedding cake! And of course, they accepted my offer. They set the date for March 5, 2011 - which gives me about 2 months until the big day to taste flavors, practice my piping skills, and make a few practice cakes. I have ordered the Wilton 3 tier wedding cake set with 8", 10", and 14" tiers - each a 3 layer cake. Laura and Kevin are avid coffee drinkers and most of our friends delight in coffee also - which made me want to incorporate it somewhere in the cake. I started by making this rich chocolate cupcake with a 70 % dark chocolate - espresso mousse. The cupcake batter included 8 0z. of freshly french pressed extra bold coffee and a heaping serving of dutch pressed cocoa powder. The dark chocolate mousse was a first for me. Mousse is really an interesting concept - and I like it! This mousse wasn't sweet. Instead, it was a dark - pure - very chocolatey fluff. I got to use my whisk attachment for my mixer 4 times in the making of the mousse! It's funny, because Vincent and I refer to our dog Pepper as "Peppoose the Moose" and we often just call her the "moose" - so every time I referred to my making of the Mousse, Vincent always had to rearrange his thought process from the dog "moose" to the filling Mousse!

Next, we had Laura and Kevin over for dinner to talk about wedding plans and hang out - so it was necessary for me to find something delicious to make, using my mixer. PIZZA! A favorite in our house :) I make a very simple pizza dough with 1/3 whole wheat flour and let it rise for a little over an hour, roll it thin, top it, and get it onto a hot stone in a 450 degree oven. Perfect every time - no matter what toppings you use! But speaking of toppings, I wanted to cut up plenty of fresh vegetables because they all go well on pizza and Laura + Kevin do not eat meat. Thus, we have bell pepper, baby portobellos, greek marinated olives, red onion, fresh tomato, spinach, roasted tomatoes (courtesy of Laci Burton), sauteed shrimp, cilantro, and fresh pesto. As far as cheese goes - I like a variety of them on my pizza. We had italian blend, feta, and a romano parmesan blend.

My Pizza - All Veggie + Pesto, Shrimp, and Cilantro

Laura's Pizza - Sauteed Spinach with Red Pepper Flakes,
Mushroom, Feta, and Roasted Tomatoes - Yum!

Vincent's Pizza - Green Machine... Bell Pepper, Olives,
Onion, Spinach, and Shrimp

Phill's Pizza - a Flavor Explosion of Every Topping!

Kevin's Pizza - Strawberries, Red Onion,
Feta, Romano, Roasted Tomatoes

Yes, we were stuffed afterwards - especially considering there were so many cupcakes to be eaten! But The pizzas were all less than 10 inches and there were 5 of us. I was good and had a small piece of each, but I think some of the boys were hurting afterwards haha. Pizza night is always a hit!