Zucchini Cupcakes Part Two

Well, my zucchini cupcakes went over so well that I thought I would make some more. After a long discussion with my lovely boyfriend and my lovely brother, we decided that quadrupling the original recipe would be the best way to go...yield=6 dozen. For those of you who don't love math, that is 72 cupcakes. We had a late night trip to the grocery store and I was off. I have two muffin tins, but they are different shapes and I wanted them all to be uniform, so I baked 6 different batches. It took forever, but I had a great time doing it. 

The Dry Ingredients

 

The Wet Ingredients

 The Combination

 

The Final Product

 

I am delighted to say that there are still some of these left after 3 days, but they are going quickly. I am going to add this recipe to my list of go-tos, which also include baklava, caramel popcorn, and chocolate cake. 

Zucchini Cupcakes!

A while ago, my sweet grandmother gave me a HUGE zucchini she had grown in her garden. I love zucchini but it sat in the refrigerator for a while and I didn't know what to do with it. I am an avid baker and decided that zucchini cupcakes might be a fun thing to try. So off to the internet I went. I found the recipe for Zucchini cupcakes and "the best cream cheese frosting". To be honest, this appealed to me because of the frosting. 

I started with the cupcakes. I began shredding the zucchini and as I was doing it, I realized that my zucchini was so big that there was a large amount of juice and I didn't want to use the center with all the seeds in my cupcakes. I doubled the recipe because of the large zucchini and the amount of people I was planning on feeding. Once I had the zucchini shredded I drained off some of the juice. I followed the rest of the recipe as it was listed and found that 18 minutes was the perfect cooking time. The texture is somewhere in between a

As I started making the frosting, I realized I don't have a hand mixer at my new house and started thinking of ways to mix the butter and cream cheese. I ended up putting about a cup at a time into the small attachment of my ninja blender and it came out so smooth. I used so much confectioners sugar and was worried it would come out too thick. It didn't. This IS the best cream cheese frosting ever! I put copious amounts of frosting on each cupcake. I did garnish it with the sugar-coated zucchini, but my zucchini was so wet that it didn't look the way it does in the pictures.

I took 2 of the 3 dozen cupcakes I made to work and they went fast. Everyone wanted the recipe and they held up great in the car. I left a dozen home and they were gone the next day. This recipe is fantastic!!

Zucchini Cupcakes

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 med. zucchini coarsely shredded (about 1 3/4 cups)

1/3 cup Canola oil

2 large eggs lightly beaten

1 tsp imitation vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In bowl, mix flour, both sugars, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

In separate bowl, combine zucchini, oil, eggs, and vanilla.  Add this to flour mixture and mix until just combined.

Use 1/4 cup measuring cup or ice cream scooper and scoop into prepared cupcake pan.

Bake for 18-22 minutes

The BEST Cream Cheese Frosting Ever

1 package cream cheese (8 oz)

1 stick butter (8 tablespoons)

4 cups confectioners sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons imitation vanilla

Refashioning Cargo pants into Cargo Carrier

So, I went to campus the other day to take a test and when I got in my car to go home, I realized there was a huge rip in the butt of my pants! Embarrassing. So I decided to get revenge on the pants by turning them into a cute purse! 

BEFORE

 After lots of thinking, I decided to just start cutting. I left the pockets on the original fabric it was sewn to so I didn't have to deal with picking or complicated seams. I designed the front of the bag with the cargo pockets. The back of the bag has a regular side pocket and a back pocket. I used the waste band for the top band and assorted pieces for the shoulder straps and bottom panel.


AFTER

 I love this bag, it is the perfect size and exactly how I want it because I made it!! It's amazing what you can do with a sewing machine and a little time. This project took about 6 hours or so from the designing to completion.

 

Tuning a Uke

Having to retune my uke everyday started out as a pain. I don't have the most developed ear for notes and the tuner I have is not great for the uke.  Apparently those 2 years playing the trumpet from 6th to 7th grade did nothing for me. I found the greatest tool that has helped me figure out this problem. This online uke tuner is simple and quick for tuning a ukulele.

Online Ukulele Tuner

Learning Chords

Learning the uke has been a lot easier than when I tried to learn guitar. I never really understood how chords work and my hands are a bit to small to handle all six strings at once. I was able to learn the strum from my last post, and after realizing I was playing it without the final thumb strum, I fixed the pattern and now have it down. 

The chords I have learned so far: 

A7

Am

C

Cmaj7

D7

F

G

All of these chords use 3 or less fingers and are rather simple. This means I have learned 7 of the 32 major chords. It's a start. I also find that I have to retune my uke every time I play because the nylon strings stretch like crazy. I am thinking about restringing with Aquila strings that have high reviews and seem very popular for ukuleles. Maybe I should just invest in a electric ukulele, since that is what my ultimate goal is. Definitely things to consider.

New Stum

This is the strum I have been working on today. I think it sounds amazing.

Videos of the day

This little guy is so awesome! 



This was one of the first videos I came across that made me choose ukulele

Here I am Again

New blog time, here we go.

Forget about what I said my blog was going to be, obviously I wasn't that interested in it, so now I am changing direction. For a while I have wanted to play an instrument and I decided to play something that was unique and would be fun to play my favorite kinds of music. Well, I settled on the ukulele. Eventually I want to play ukethrash...which is my word for ukulele metal. But for now I am a beginner.

So I am going to talk about my adventures in ukulele and, lets face it, I am self indulgent so I will probably talk about my life somewhat and the things going on in said life. My crazy, whirlwind world that is being turned on its head because I am moving out of my parents house and into a house an entire valley away with my boyfriend, trying to make it in school, and working. Amongst all of these changes I really want to learn how to play the ukulele, so hopefully trying to document it will help me.

Today I worked on Ingrid Michaelson's "You and I" as well as Regina Spektor's "Folding Chair". I love both these songs and they are fairly simple.