BRONZE BUDGET BRIDE

You can find clear cups, that would be perfect for cupcakes, at your local Dollar Tree in packs in 12.

photo source: Fiskars

These are cute, fun, pink cupcakes to add to your cupcake buffet and below is the recipe for you!

photo source: jayscatering.com

Memorial Day will be here soon and these Stars & Stripes Cheesecake Shots would make a great treat for the unofficial start of Summer.

Ingredients:

– 4 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
– 1/3 cup + 1T  sugar
– 1/2 tsp. vanilla
– 1 tub  (8 oz.) Cool Whip, thawed
– 8 – 10 graham crackers
– Fresh Berries
– Finely crush graham crackers

Directions:

Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until smooth. Gently stir in cool whip until well blended.

Fill individual glasses half way with cream cheese mixture, either using a spoon or a piping bag fitted with a large round tip for a more polished presentation.  Top with 1 tsp graham cracker crumbs.  Shake glass to level crumbs.  Fill to the top with more of the cream cheese mixture.  Lightly sprinkle with additional graham cracker crumbs and top with berries.  Add a star pastry for an extra fun little touch.

Refrigerate 4 hours or until firm.  Serve chilled.  Makes roughly 16 mini servings, depending on the size of your shot glass.

Tips:

*Use a Ziploc bag to fill glasses if you don’t have a piping bag.  Just fill it partially, seal and snip off one corner.  Squeeze out!

* Set out cream cheese ahead of time so that it is room temperature.  This will help everything blend together and create a smooth consistency.

*Serve with a bowl of berries and additional Star Pastries for a patriotic display. 

This recipe came from Carrie of Half Baked but I found it on Hostess Blog.com!

 
photo source: APublic Affair

photo source: Hostess Blog

photo source: wedding chicks

These Spanakopita Bites look delicious, right? That is why I am sharing this recipe that I found on What's Cookin' Chicago? with you. You can serve these up at cocktail hour on your wedding day and you'll be sure to have some happy guests.

Ingredients:

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 10 ounces frozen chopped spinach. thawed and squeezed dry
• 4 to 6 ounces domestic feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 1 egg
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 pound phyllo, thawed
• 8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), melted
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in medium skillet over medium heat. Add white and green chopped onions; cook until softened, 3 to 4 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, mix spinach, feta, cottage cheese and egg in medium bowl. Add cooked onions and season with salt, and pepper. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

4. Combine the remaining butter and oil and set aside until ready to use.

5. Remove the phyllo dough from the package and stack up. Carefully cut the phyllo dough into 2 inch by 2 inch squares; set aside.

6. Prepare your mini muffin pan by brushing butter in each well. Place 1-2 squares of phyllo dough into each well, pushing down to create a cup or crust. Brush the top phyllo filled wells with more melted butter and repeat by placing 1-2 squares of phyllo dough into each well and pushing down to create a cup or crust again. Repeat with another layer of 1-2 squares of phyllo dough and brush with more melted butter.

7. Place a heaping teaspoon into each well, filling the phyllo cup. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

These lovely Coconut, Almond and Current Macarons were made by Whisk Kid using this recipe with one part coconut and two parts almond. They were filled with a quick jelly and cream cheese swiss meringue buttercream.

I posted the recipes for you below!

French Macarons

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces (115g) blanched almonds or almond flour, or whatever nut you like
• 8 ounces (230g) powdered sugar*
• 5 ounces egg whites (144g), temperature and age not important!
• 2 1/2 ounce (72g) sugar
• the scrapings of 1 vanilla bean or 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp (2g) salt
• 10 ounces (290g) Swiss buttercream (approximately)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 300° and have ready a large (18”) pastry bag, fitted with a plain tip, along with two sheet pans lined with parchment paper.

I am hopelessly impatient and given to rushing, even when I know better. So to prevent my macarons from growing ever larger as I pipe, I use a 1 1/2” cookie cutter to trace out guide-circles (about an inch apart) and then I flip the parchment paper over, ink side down.

If you use almond flour, you lucky dog, simply sift it with the powdered sugar and set aside.

Otherwise, bust out your food processor. Process the almonds and powdered sugar for about a minute. Take out the mixture and sift it, reserving whatever bits don’t pass through the sieve. Add these bits back to the food processor and run the machine for another minute. Sift again. You should have about 2 Tbsp of slightly chunkier almond bits, but hakuna matata. Just add those into the dry mix.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the egg whites, sugar, vanilla bean (not the extract), and salt and turn the mixer to medium (4 on a Kitchen Aid). Whip for 3 minutes. They will not seem especially foamy at that point.

Increase the speed to medium-high (7 on a Kitchen Aid) and whip another 3 minutes, then crank the speed to 8 for go another 3 minutes.

At that point, turn the mixer off and add in any extracts/flavor/color and whip for a final minute on the highest speed, just to show it who’s boss (and to evenly distribute the color/flavor).

At the end of this minute, you should have a very stiff, dry meringue. When you remove the whisk attachment, there will be a big clump of meringue in the center, just knock the whisk against the bowl to free it. If the meringue has not become stiff enough to clump inside the whisk, continue beating for another minute, or until it does so.

Now dump in the dry ingredients all at once and fold them in with a rubber spatula. Use both a folding motion (to incorporate the dry ingredients) and a pressing motion, to deflate the meringue against the side of the bowl.

First timers: the dry ingredients/meringue will look hopelessly incompatible. After about 25 turns (or folds or however you want to call “a single stroke of mixing”) the mixture will still have a quite lumpy and stiff texture. Another 15 strokes will see you to “just about right.” Keep in mind that macaronage is about deflating the whites, so don’t feel like you have to treat them oh-so-carefully. You want to knock the air out of them.

Undermixed macaron batter: quite stiff. If you spoon some out and drop it back into the mix, it will just sit there and never incorporate. Do this test before bagging your batter and save yourself the trouble of baking of undermixed macarons!

Overmixed macaron batter: has a runny, pancake batter-like texture. It will ooze continuously, making it impossible to pipe into pretty circles. Um, try not to reach that point.

You can evaluate your batter one stroke at a time, no rush.

Essentially, the macaron batter needs enough thickness that it will mound up on itself, but enough fluidity that after 20 seconds, it will melt back down. I’ve heard people describe this consistency as lava-like, or molten, and that’s pretty apt.

Transfer about half the batter to a piping bag. (When your bag is too full, the pressure causes the batter to rush out in a way that’s difficult to control, making for sloppy macarons.)

Pipe the batter into the pre-traced circles on the baking sheet. Stop piping just shy of the borders of the circle, as the batter will continue to spread just a bit.

After piping your macarons, take hold of the sheet pan and hit it hard against your counter. Rotate the pan ninety degrees and rap two more times. This will dislodge any large air bubbles that might cause your macarons to crack

Bake for about 18 minutes, or until you can cleanly peel the parchment paper away from a macaron. If, when you try to pick up a macaron, the top comes off in your hand, it’s not done.

Once the macarons have baked, cool thoroughly on the pans, before peeling the cooled macarons from the parchment. Use a metal spatula if necessary.

Recipe from Brave Tart!


Cream Cheese Buttercream Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 sticks (170 gr) butter at room temperature
• 4 oz (120gr) cream cheese, softened
• 3 egg whites
• 1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
• 2 Tb water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste or 1/2 vanilla bean split open and seeded.

Directions:

In the bowl of stand mixer, whip the egg whites until they have soft peaks.

In the meantime, combine 2 Tb water with the sugar to a boil in a heavy saucepan and bring the syrup to 250F.

Slowly add the sugar syrup to the egg whites. If you use hand beaters, this is even easier and there is less hot syrup splatter on the side of your bowl and in the whisk attachment of the stand mixer.

Continue to whip until the meringue is completely cooled. Slowly add the butter, one tablespoon at a time. The mass might curdle but no panic, continue to whip until it all comes together.

Add the cream cheese, the same way, a little at a time until everything is smooth.

Whisk in the vanilla extract, or paste or bean. Keep it to spreadable consistency for the macarons and refrigerate the leftover for cupcakes or mini toast in the fridge up to 3 days or in the freezer.