Food Adventures #2: Regular Cheeseburgers, Coconut Rum Cupcakes

These are some (admittedly very bad) pictures of the mushrooms in red wine reduction I made for the Missus so she could have a mushroom and Swiss burger. Basically, sautee some mushrooms, add a shitload of red wine and the wine boils off while absorbing into the shrooms themselves. Hate mushrooms. But according to the Missus, I can, at least cook them.

Regular Cheeseburger: Didn't really intend on making MORE burgers, but I wanted to try a regular burger with a little bit of seasoning instead of mixing things in with my burger meat. A quick dig in the spice cupboard revealed a few seasonings from something called The Spice Hut in Evanston, IL. Weirdly, I can't remember going to The Spice Hut when I was in Evanston over the summer which means (and since the seasonings in questions had congealed quite a bit so I'm probably right) that they were a Christmas gift from many, many moons ago. They weren't coming apart so I had to make something up on the fly.

A quick mixture of onion salt and chili powder were applied and away we went on the George Foreman. The seasoning glazed nicely on the burger giving it a little bit of crunch which I liked. I also went all out with the cheese- getting some sharp Cheddar from the New Pi out in Coralville (it was made with Raw Milk so I was interested in seeing what, if any difference you would see in taste) and added a tomato slice and a slice of red onion (the flavors are sharper, I noticed immediately) to complete what I genuinely feel was a really, really good burger.

Coconut Rum Cupcakes: I found this on this wonderful website. I plan on making all 33 cupcakes, by the way. I set to work following the simple recipe and it worked really, really well. (Thanks to The Pale Man for leaving his bottle of Malibu here last weekend). I had some problems right off the bat: the recipe called for me to cream the butter and brown sugar. I had no earthly idea what that entailed- so with an assist from the Missus, I turned the hand mixer onto maximum and got 'er done. One egg followed, then buttermilk and a mixture of flour, baking soda and salt followed by rum. Then the cupcakes went in and I started making the frosting. The frosting was amazing (I still have some left in the fridge)- it involved butter, cream cheese, confectioner's sugar and yes, more coconut rum. Once the cupcakes were out, cooled and frosted I added flake coconut to the top (and the Missus added Christmas sprinkles) and that was that. My first cupcakes and they were... really really good if I do say so myself.

I'm not sure when cupcakes became some hip and trendy in the food world but consider me a convert. If I'm going to make cupcakes I want them to knock the socks clean off of people.