Dessert Before Dinner

TGIT! Thank God it's Thursday! Am I right or am I right?

Last night I met my friend Nicole for girls night. We get together every month or so and usually go to the same place, The Dove Parlour, which we adore. You may remember my ravings about it here. Though we would pledge our allegiance to The DP, when we found out about Sweet Revenge, a beer, wine and...wait for it...cupcake bar in the Village, we just had to check it out. Since we meet directly after work, it meant wine and cupcakes for dinner!

Their happy hour special consists of a glass of wine and a cupcake for $10. Not a bad deal, considering many glasses of wine in a city bar are $10 on their own. I went with a glass of Pinot Noir and the Sweet Revenge cupcake, a peanut butter cake with chocolate ganache filling and pb frosting.

Nikki went with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and a Dirty cupcake, a dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate truffle.

It was a fun, tiny little place. My cupcake was not the best I've ever had, but I love this whole concept. By the time I arrived home at 9, however, my stomach was feeling like it needed something more substantial (and not completely sugar or alcohol laden). Though I'm always happy with a plate of crackers or carrots and hummus as a replacement dinner, Shaun swooped in and saved the day with one of his famous grilled cheese sandwiches! I devoured this while we caught up on Shameless from Sunday evening.

So that's how I ended up with dessert before dinner. Admittedly, this was not my healthiest night of eating (but that's what the treadmill is for, right?), but it was certainly fun :) So what about you? Do you ever eat dessert before dinner? Or, dessert instead of dinner?

Banana Cupcakes + Nutella Frosting

Thanks for all of the kind words of support & concern for Shaun's severely damaged finger. To give you an update, he had a good follow up appointment yesterday and is on the mend!

So yesterday's post was a pretty big hit and I'm so excited to add some of your book recommendations to my reading list! If you have any others, please send them on! Meanwhile I'm reading the sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and am already hooked!

Meanwhile this past weekend, we had quite a few parties to attend. And we all know that parties equal devising fun dishes to share. I love coming up with new ideas for parties!

After I spotted some pesky overripe bananas in my fruit bowl (yet again), I had a small stroke of genius. Why not use those guys in a cupcake? And while I was at it, I wanted to create a pretty fabulous frosting to bring it all together but would also add a bit of fun. Nutella frosting was born!

These cupcakes were very easy to make and turned out like mini banana breads topped with sweet frosting. Can you imagine anything better? These cupcake are very moist but not overly sweet while the frosting satisfies a serious sweet tooth with an unexpected flavor twist!

Banana Cupcakes + Nutella Frosting
*Adapted from Gina Neely
For the cupcakes:
2 C all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs
4-5 large, very ripe bananas, peeled, and mashed
For the frosting:
6 tbsp butter, at room temperature
2/3 C Nutella
3-4 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 C confectioners sugar (depending on the level of sweetness you want)

To make the cupcakes:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Gather up your ingredients.

Line 2 muffin tins with cupcake liners. I used my new fancy red ones that my friend Lindsey gave me as a holiday gift!

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Meanwhile in another bowl, peel and mash the bananas. I find that a fork works best for getting ‘er done, followed by a good mix with a wooden spoon.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer) beat together the butter and sugar until combined. Beat in the sour cream and the vanilla extract. Slowly beat in the eggs, one at a time.The mixture will look a bit curdly, but don't despair! It will turn out fabulously.

Add the dry mixture to the wet a little at a time until the mixtures are completely combined. Stir in the bananas until just mixed in.

Fill each cupcake liner about 3/4 way full. I had particularly tall liners so I intentionally only did them about half way. I planned to nest the frosting in the liner atop the cake. Bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the oven to a wire rack. Cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting:
While the cakes are a’coolin’ make the frosting. And feel free to break out some crackers or bread for Nutella sampling in the process.

Beat the butter until smooth. Add the Nutella and vanilla extract. Beat in the sugar, one cup at a time, adding milk 1 tbsp at a time to thin out and make spreadable. Now frost those babies! Decorate however you want. I loved these tall liners so much and how I was easily able to nest the frosting inside without sacrificing the amount of frosting I wanted to use. It turned out so pretty and sophisticated looking! Oh and by nesting the frosting, I didn't have to stick my fingers in the frosting to move them into my cupcake carrier. A win for all!

We brought these cupcakes to Shaun's uncle's 60th birthday celebration and also to our Superbowl party. They were a huge hit! The flavor combination was so unexpected and fun change up from standard chocolate and vanilla (not that there's anything wrong with those!)! So what do you think? What are your favorite flavor combinations? And bonus question, have you ever baked with Nutella?

The Time I Made 150 Cupcakes For My Own Engagement Party

Don't forget, we are collecting your favorite cookie recipes for the Virtual Cookie Swap! Email them on over to theavidappetite [at] gmail [dot] com, we'll start posting them later this week!

This time of year, particularly the weekend after Thanksgiving, always takes me back to one of the best celebrations I've ever attended - Shaun and my engagement party, which took place on the Saturday following Thanksgiving in 2007! Since we had decided to get married on a beach in Aruba, where surely many friends and family would not be able to attend, we were lucky enough to have a huge engagement party thrown by our parents at my parents house. With about 150 of our closest friends and family. Had we not gotten married in Aruba, I would have loved to get married in the fall. Rich, deep colors and breezy cool weather has always been my favorite time of the year! So instead of planning a fall wedding, we planned a fall engagement party! I thought it would be fun to relive this as the last weekend went by and share it with all of you!

Though it was long before the blog days - and pre-cupcake obsession days to boot - I knew that I wanted some fun and festive touches to mark the occasion. I wanted fall-themed cupcakes. After researching well-known Manhattan confectionaries, including Crumbs and Magnolia Bakery, I someone had the genius idea to simply make the cupcakes myself. Why?

Well...

In hindsight, I do not know.

I'm not going to lie to you (remember how I hate that?), it was a lot of work. And so I spent the week before the party baking cupcakes, freezing 'em and making lots and lots of frosting in deep, fall tones. I do know, however, that icing 150 cupcakes with a piping bag can injure your hands to borderline carpal tunnel syndrome. You were warned.

But aren't they pretty? My mom and I devised the entire tablescape and I couldn't have been happier with the outcome. Mom picked up Fall tableclothes and giant styrofoam pices that we covered with fabric. For the cupcakes themselves, we chose vanilla cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook along with both vanilla and chocolate buttercream.

In addition to the glorious cupcake display (which, by the way, only about 75 of them were eaten, so we had a veritable freezer's worth of cupcakes for months...), I thought I'd take you on a little tour of the party! The house was so jam packed with guests that at times it was tough to move! We had set up tables in the kitchen, dining room and family room.

So many friends and family joined us to celebrate and we considered ourselves the luckiest people in the world to have such wonderful people in our lives!

And you know it wouldn't be a party in the Cannon house without an overload of food! In addition to a catered buffet, we also had some hors d'oeuvres trays, veggie crudite and some other desserts, including cheesecake made by my mother-in-law!

We even set up a bar (with bartender...who I think we pushed out of the way so we could get in there at the end of the night) in the entryway between the living room and my dad's office. Here's a bunch of us toasting a great night with great friends!

It was also so wonderful to have all of my bridesmaids together. I was thrilled to have my sisters Christine and Kimberly, along with my long-time besties Jen, Catherine and Lindsey as part of the wedding. Now we all live so far apart and it's so nice to look back at a time when I could be with all of them together on this great evening!

And can we take a moment for this guy?

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I just had to include this great photo of my dad and me (can you tell we're related?). I always regale you with tales of my mom here on the blog, and Dad usually doesn't make an appearance. But I have to tell you. My dad is the best ever. In fact, he was the first one rejoicing when we announced that we wanted to get married in Aruba (he loves travel, warm climates, and making his 3 daughters happy :)). Since I was a child, he has always told me that I could do and be anything I wanted and I doubt that I would have even had the guts to share this blog with the world if it weren't for him. And...oh alright. Now I need to share my favorite throwback photo of Dad and me...

I'm sure my mom would want me to mention that she has since removed the floral wallpaper in her kitchen.

But I digress. It really was the best party, and only the beginning of so many happy times to come in Shaun and my life together. 

And as I sit on the couch typing this article, with my beloved playing Christmas music DJ and tickling my feet as I try to swat him away while giggling, I look back on that night as one of the best of my life - the night I celebrated with all of my friends and family, basking in happiness that I was about to embark on a new chapter with the man I loved.

Oh and I almost forgot the whole point of this article. The cupcakes were pretty good too.