Battening down the hatches!

Hm. The state of Virginia is quite the magnet for natural disasters. In the past couple weeks we've had a swamp fire, an earthquake, and now Hurricane Irene is headed our way. It's only supposed to be a category 1 or 2 by the time it reaches us, but we've made plenty of preparations anyway.

First of all: we clipped all of our lovely roses off the rose bushes since the bushes will probably be destroyed in the storm.

Next: our patio furniture had to come in. Thought it looked kind of funny sitting in the middle of the kitchen/living room area.

Thirdly: apparently, garages in this neighborhood flood after just a couple inches of rain, so we brought in quite a few boxes of books and Christmas decorations. It feels as though we just moved in again!

Finally: we've been cooking up a storm (pun unintended). In case the power goes out and we can't cook, we want to have plenty of prepared food ready, including hard-boiled eggs, banana bread, and bread pudding. Bread pudding was a new venture for us, so I decided to post the picture and recipe from that in place of my normal cupcake post. (Don't worry though; I'll be back with Jelly Donut Cupcakes soon!)

The best part about bread pudding is that you can use ANY kind of bread- white, wheat, hot dog buns, whatever you have in the pantry. Here's the recipe I used. Oh, and it's good with either chocolate chips or raisins or both! We did half of each.

Whisk together:

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 1/2 cups milk

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 tablespoons margarine

Tear one loaf of bread into a greased 9x13 pan. Cover with pudding mixture and allow to settle for ten minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Anyway, I should get back to buckling down for the hurricane.

~Hannah Grace

Birthdays, earthquakes, and cupcakes. OH MY!

A couple days ago, August 21st, we celebrated Andrew's tenth birthday.

As he is the baby of the family it was a pretty big deal to see him go

into double digits! Even though Dad and Jordan

were gone, I think we were able to make it a special day for him. We started by opening presents (at the crack of dawn I might add). He requested Softies donuts for breakfast, so that's what we ate. After we got home from church, he and his friends from the neighborhood played with some of his new toys; next, was a scavanger hunt in our house and then cupcakes. We ate his favorite for dinner- hot dogs with acini de pepi (a pasta/fruit salad).

We planned to go to a water park today for further celebration, but there ended up being an earthquake just a little while before we were going to leave. Yes, that's right: an EARTHQUAKE. It was really weird. Having lived on the East Coast all my life, I had never felt anything like it. 5.8 magnitude and all that. There haven't been any aftershocks though, and the quake itself was nearly six hours ago now. So, hopefully, we'll make it to the water park on another day soon.

Anyway, our baby boy is a big boy now. So, even though this is a little late, HAPPY TENTH BIRTHDAY, ANDREW!!!

Oh! almost forgot. I just had to share a picture of yet another cupcake venture. My mom actually made these simply from a cupcake mix, but I decorated them, so I think it's fair to count this in my cupcake-journal.

Get it? "10" cause he turned ten? Hehe. I obviously need to go get some sleep, so I'll sign out now.

~Hannah Grace

Cupcake Venture #2

I made another cupcake recipe today to take over to some neighbors and came out with a product that looked more like a muffin than a cupcake. Picture:

And recipe:

Applesauce & Cinnamon Cupcakes

1/2 cup sweet butter, softened

1/2 cup, plus 1 tbsp. superfine sugar

1 cup self-rising flour *

2 eggs

3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional; I left them out)

1/2 cup golden raisins (optional; I also left these out)

1 small red eating apple, thinly sliced

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan. Place the butter, sugar, flour, and eggs in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and pale, about 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the applesauce, cinnamon, pecans, and raisins.

Spoon the batter into the cups. Lay the apple slices on top (*note: lay them very lightly on top. I pressed mine in a little with the first batch and they sank to the middle of the muffin while baking). Sprinkle with a little granulated sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove pan from oven and cool for 5 minutes. Then remove the cupcakes and cool on a rack. Serve warm.

Serve in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze up to 3 months.

*Here's a quick and easy substitute recipe if you don't have any self-rising flour in your pantry. Simply add 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt to every 1 cup of all-purpose flour.

Holding down the fort

In an interesting turn of events, our van ended up going in for repairs the day before we were supposed to drive Jordan to college (Monday). So, Mom took Jordan and the boys and I are staying home alone. It's been pretty easy so far, although I have never stayed alone at night before. But one night is down, just one to go! I'm looking forward to having Mom back.

This has actually proved as a very nice distraction. Taking care of two younger brothers, a dog, a cat, and a parakeet is a full-time job, so I haven't had much time to sit around and be sad about Jordan leaving. I was able to chat with her last night on the computer which was nice. It's just strange to think she won't be coming home with Mom tomorrow.

I have had time to plenty of cooking and baking, which is fun. Yesterday morning for a treat for the boys I made beignets. It was my first time, but they turned out pretty well. The only tricky part was getting the oil to just the right temperature. For dinner I made taco salad. Easy and yummy. This morning I'm working on blueberry muffins and I'm not sure what we'll do for dinner yet.

All in all, it's been fun playing "mom", but I look forward to having MY mom back tomorrow afternoon :-)

~Hannah Grace

Disclaimer: this is not a healthy recipe...

One thing that almost anybody who knows anything about me is that I love both cooking and baking. Last Christmas my Grandma Trip gave me this huge cookbook of cupcake recipes. I am guilty to admit that my mom pointed out the other day that I had hardly even cracked the book open, no less ever tried one of the recipes. So, tonight I made my first in (hopefully) a series of ventures into the world of cupcake-baking. I am pleased to say that the cupcakes turned out rather marvelously. I started with just about the simplest recipe in the book: Chocolate Mud Cupcakes. Here is a picture:

The picture doesn't show it well, but there was this gorgeous fountain of chocolate "mud" right in the center of the cupcake.

And here is the recipe!

1 cup (7 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips

1 1/3 cups (2 1/2 sticks) sweet butter

5 eggs

2/3 cup superfine sugar*

3/4 cup self-rising flour

2 tbsp. Duth-process cocoa powder, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Place 12 paper baking cups in a muffin pan (I just used Baker's Spray)

In a double boiler, or a medium bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter together, stirring well. Leave to cool a little.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until pale and thick. Fold the flour into the egg mixture and then stir in the melted chocolate and butter until well blended.

Spoon the mixture into the cups and bake for 20 minutes. The cupcakes will be soft and gooey in texture and appearance. Remove pan from the oven and cool for 5 minutes. Then remove the cupcakes from pan. Serve swiftly, dusted with cocoa powder (*I would recommend a little scoop of vanilla ice cream)

Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

*Superfine sugar: I made my own by just throwing normal granulated sugar into our food processor and pulsing it for a couple of minutes.

Best sister ever.

Jordan came home from a shopping trip today with all the right ingredients for me to start working on an Illustrated Oratory. I have been wanting to do one of these speeches for the past three years, but haven't been able to get up the gumption necessary, as they require quite a few purchases and just a lot of hard work. I think this will put the right pressure on me to get to work! In 2008-2009, I helped Jordan out with her IO (then Expository) all about Starbucks. The year after, I helped Noah prepare his IO on the Rubik's Cube (although I never could solve the Cube :-). Anyway, I'm extremely excited to start working on my own speech.

Now I just need to figure out what to write about...

~Hannah Grace

9 1/2 hours of fun

After living only forty-five minutes from Busch Gardens for almost two months now, today my family finally spent a long, fun day there. We were blessed to be able to participate in the Here's to the Heros program which allow members of the military and four of their dependents or friends to enter the park for free, so we only ended up having to pay for my youngest brother.

The day included everything a good amusement park should: fun and thrilling rides, exciting music- some of it live- and, of course, cotton candy. Haha! We all had a blast.

It also felt somewhat symbolic. With Dad only just returning home yesterday from a week out to sea, and preparing to leave again tomorrow for the rest of the month, as well as Jordan packing up for college in just nine days, it was both lovely and sad to have one last fun family time together. Everything these days seems to go back to the fact that we are moving into a new and extremely foreign season of life.

Anyway, enough of the melodramatic musings! It really was an excellent day and I simply can't wait to go back. Now I need to go floss this cotton candy out of my teeth...

~Hannah Grace