Today is Ellen’s birthday, everyone! Ellen’s birthday always brings a challenge to my plate, somehow more than others, and for that, I am so grateful! Each year we try to outdo ourselves, from the Rose Cake of 2011 to the Flapper Cake of 2012.

This year, since Ellen has changed her diet to be paleo, I knew that it might be a challenge. So I asked her if she wanted anything specific, and she said anything would do, so I decided to trust one of my favorite special diet bloggers, Elana, in a recipe I was sure would make everyone happy.

Oven Temperature: 350
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 16 minutes

¼ cup coconut flour
¼ cup cacao powder
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
4 large eggs
¼ cup coconut oil
1/3 cup honey

Frosting:

1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/3 cup coconut oil
1 tbsp vanilla

Combine dry ingredients in your food processor, then add your wet ingredients. Scoop into lined muffin tin. Bake for 16 minutes at 350.

I used Elana’s recipe for frosting, too, but it ended up more like ganache, which wasn’t a bad thing. I poured it over the cupcakes, and I ended up with extra frosting – I bet you could half this and still have enough.

The cupcakes were good, not too sweet, but I do wish there had been more – this recipe only makes 8 (exactly) so if you want more, you’re going to have to double it. That said, 8 was enough for our needs!

Happy Birthday, little one, and I hope these paleo cupcakes made you smile! We love you, and are so glad you’ve been helping out with the blog for years and years!

Two of our fave friends (Hi, J and M!) recently graduated from their Masters program to become librarians (I know, they’re the coolest) so to celebrate, we went out for gluten free dinner, then made a delicious NOT gluten free apple cake for dessert.Basically, J requested something with apples, and Ana said, “You must make this apple bread.” And proceeded to send us the recipe immediately, which we made immediately, and folks, we have stumbled upon something amazing.

Now, I know that apples aren’t in season, but this was a special occasion. If you’re a seasonal eater, you’ll have to wait another couple of months, but trust me, it’ll be worth it – just throw it on your “Autumn” Pinterest board, and dig it out come September.

Oven Temperature: 325
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to celebrate our Independence Day, one friend’s birthday, one Red Sox baseball game, and one grad school graduation party all in the same weekend, a decent respect for one’s bodily health and well-being requires that we follow up our celebrations with specific stomach and liver-friendly foods.

In other words, are you near death? If you’re anything like Jennie and me, the holiday weekend left your stomach and your liver in desperate need of some tender love and care. There are only so many days in a row that we can eat hot dogs and drink beer, and somewhere between the Fourth of July cookout and the Red Sox game (which we tragically lost, and no, we don’t want to talk about it), we had one too many of those days.

And so, my friends, we came up with a plan. It involves several days of chicken and vegetable soup, and this amazing green smoothie full of liver-friendly foods. Be forewarned! This smoothie tastes very green, which of course means that I love it.

Ingredients:
1 cup almond milk (we used vanilla flavored)
1 cup fresh spinach
1/2 apple, chopped
1/2 avocado
3 tbsp applesauce
fresh parsley
1/2 tsp turmeric

The applesauce and vanilla almond milk make this pleasantly sweet, while the spinach and parsley give it a fresh, clean bite that your taste buds and your tummy will love. Blend until smooth and enjoy!

Happy Fourth of July, y’all! In honor of this most wonderful holiday, we made a truly American dessert – vanilla bundt cake with fresh berries!

We used a recipe from Lick The Bowl Good, and we’ve adapted it (below) for 1.5 the recipe, which is what you need for a 15-cup bundt pan.

Oven Temperature: 325 degrees
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 55 minutes (I promise)

Cake:

1.5 teaspoon bourbon
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
1.5 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/8 cup sugar
3/8 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
3/4 cup buttermilk

Glaze:

1.5 cup powdered sugar
3 teaspoons (or more) whole milk
1.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
.75 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
blueberries/raspberries/strawberries (optional)

Directions:

1. Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 325°F. Butter and flour a standard Bundt pan, then spray pan with nonstick spray. Pour bourbon and vanilla extract into small bowl. 2. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into bourbon-vanilla mixture; stir to blend well (reserve scraped vanilla bean for another use). (If you don’t have or want to use bourbon, just substitute with vanilla extract).
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl to blend.
4. Using electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and egg yolk 1 at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Beat in bourbon-vanilla mixture.
5. Add flour mixture in 2 additions alternately with buttermilk in 1 addition, beating just until blended after each addition. Transfer batter to prepared pan; smooth top evenly (batter will come only halfway up sides of pan).
6. Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes. Invert cake onto rack and cool completely.
7. Top with fresh berries and powdered sugar, or make glaze by whisking all above ingredients.

Kelly of Studio DIY made me this lovely cake banner to go across the top. Isn’t it adorable and patriotic? For more DIY Fourth of July crafts, including our collaboration from last year’s rocket-topped inside out cupcakes, check out Kelly’s post!

Hope you have a lovely Independence Day!

Hey everyone! With the fourth around the corner, we thought it’d be fun to report the 4th of July Inside-out Cupcakes from last year we made with Kelly from Studio DIY. We hope you enjoy this post, and have fun plans for this Independence Day!

A few weeks ago, Kelly from Studio DIY™ and I got together to brainstorm ideas for Fourth of July – and I think we came up with something really fun! After we came up with our idea for what I’m calling inside out cupcakes, I had some planning to do. I needed a jelly roll pan, a star shaped cookie cutter, and a ruler.

Here’s the plan – one inch rows of blue and red frosting. The stars are about two inches, so I would cut them out of the sheet cake on one side (above, right) and then cut stars out of the frosted side (above, left.) Make sense? Here we go.

Step one: Make a sheet cake. For sheet cake tutorial, check this out. Freeze the cake in the freezer after it has been fully cooled, for about thirty minutes.

Take the star cookie cutter, and cut some stars. The sheet cake should be enough to make ten inside out cupcakes.

Place your stars onto a flat surface (preferably a nonstick baking surface.)

On the other side, you’re going to frost in rows. First, your red or blue, and then your other color. If you make skinnier rows, I suppose you could even use three colors! Stick it back into the freezer for about 10-15 minutes. You want the frosting to firm up, but you don’t want it to be too firm, or else you won’t be able to cut through!

Take your star cookie cutter and cut away!

You’ll end up with something that looks like this.

Make another row, and keep going. See those little pieces that broke between stars? Eat those when you get a minute. You’ll thank me later.

Stack your frosted star onto your non frosted star. You now have an inside out cupcake! Repeat until all star cupcakes have been built.

[Photo by Studio DIY™]

You now have a delicious beautiful cupcake, patriotic and all! If you want to get fancy, which I usually do, you can do something fun on the top of the cupcakes, such as this:

[Photos by Studio DIY™]

Thanks to Kelly for crafting such fun toppers – and for coming up with such a great idea!

And, bonus: when you’re done making your inside out cupcakes, make cake balls with the leftover cake and frosting – your coworkers (or family/friends/neighbors) will surely thank you!

Happy Fourth of July baking/crafting, everyone!