Cuppycakes!

My mom made cupcakes yesterday, which I welcomed with an open mouth after running. Spice cupcakes with a simple icing (spice cake is her favorite).

The cakes had a decent spiciness, and the texture was sort of between dense, fluffy, and soft. Dense in that the crumb wasn't quite open, but the feel was fluffy and soft. The icing was a quick buttercream and provided enough moisture and a little burst of extra sweetness to the cupcakes without being overkill.

This was my second cupcake with whipped cream and a raspberry. I also ate another, but plain, which I didn't take a picture of.

Strawberry Muffin Top and Banana Pancakes

Despite the "allure" Seinfeld brought to the muffin top craze, I never really got into it. Seriously, you're paying the same amount for about 75% less than if you bought the entire muffin. Then one Saturday when I stopped by Victorian Pantry I saw the most incredible baked good I had ever laid eyes upon. Normally I would have gone with my standard, the cinnamon roll, but the strawberry muffin top looked too good to pass by.

Besides the fact that strawberry slices are embedded into the top, the sprinkling of sugar lends a nice crunch that leads into the soft, spongy, lightly sweetened innards with a hint of almond made for a perfect eat. It was neither heavy nor coma-inducing, and I can't say enough about the almond essence I tasted, which paired perfectly with the strawberries. And the strawberries! I love to see real fruit, a plethora of fruit, in baked goods. It's rare, and usually the fruit has been dried first. Due to the giant size of this muffin top, it's perfect to split if you want, or eat half now and the other later, but I ate all of mine, enjoying sips of coffee between bites of strawberry muffin top goodness. Once again, Victorian Pantry does not disappoint.

Jack Johnson's song 'Banana Pancakes' only mentions banana pancakes twice, and the song really isn't about banana pancakes at all. Since making pancakes usually pertains to weekends when the pace isn't as rushed as the weekdays are, making banana pancakes during the weekday is a way to slow down the rush and enjoy the moment.

The song makes me hungry.

My mom created what I consider to be the most perfect pancake recipe. It produces fluffy pancakes that don't become soggy disks weighed down by syrup, and cooks up to a great height. (I hate thin pancakes, but if you like thinner pancakes just adjust the liquid-to-flour ratio. DO NOT press down on the pancake -- that's lunacy.) These pancakes are so tender without being rubbery, moist without falling apart, and just delicious. Besides the banana slices, I think I also added sliced walnuts, too.

Gordon Ramsay and Joyofbaking.com

A while back, I saw Gordon Ramsay make sticky lemon chicken on the Rachael Ray show. It looked pretty good, and seemed like a simple way to make lemon chicken with a twist. The recipe comes from his latest cookbook, Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food.

The main flavors came from lemon, soy sauce, and thyme. I usually put thyme in my roux for chicken pot pie, but never have paired it with soy sauce. It seemed to work, as I enjoyed it.

Thinking of the cooking process again, I made two mistakes: I didn't allow the chicken to brown enough, and I didn't cook down the sauce enough. For whatever reason, sauces like these seems to take longer than the directions state to cook down to the proper consistency. I needed to have just raised the heat and kept cooking it down.

The chicken was served with brown basmati rice and carrots and peas. In Ramsay's book he suggests serving it alongside mashed potatoes, but it was pointed out to me that potatoes with anything that has soy sauce is odd.

Dessert was strawberry shortcake. I didn't have a really good sweet biscuit/scone recipe, so enter Google. The brief search lead me to Joy of Baking, which I frequently read (and yet have not added to my blogroll... Until now.) I liked that it was a scone instead of a sweet biscuit, and after looking through the recipe I was fairly certain the scone would be soft in texture.

I made a few changes to the scone recipe, using buttermilk in place of the cream, replacing 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder with baking soda, and using brown sugar instead of white sugar.
The dough was a bit tacky, so I added 2 tablespoons of extra flour and worked quickly while patting and cutting the dough. Keep the surface well-floured, too.

Running Update

During the past month of June I have been training for another 10K that's coming up soon this month. My mileage has been upped a bit, and the intensity is also a bit higher than previously. The goal for this 10K is to run it under 55 minutes. If I keep pacing myself correctly, that will be attainable because I'll, of course, have more energy during the latter portion of the race than if I screw up the pace at the beginning.

Also concerning running, I'm going to start blogging about running more, not just adding sidenotes to ends of posts. Half of this blog, after all, is supposed to be about running. =D