Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes When you send them out without you

Daughter #1 left the roost for two nights yesterday.  Last year, she did a one night sleepover on campus at our local day camp, which is only a 10 minute walk from our home, and she loved it.  This year, the same day camp takes the slightly older kids on a wilderness camping trip for two nights and three days.  I said good-bye to her Wednesday morning, and I will not be seeing her again until Friday afternoon.

I asked her if she wanted to go, since it would be camping, something she has only done once, and it was done with me nearby.  She was quite keen and eager to go and wouldnt be dissuaded.  I had some doubts, for Daughter #1 is a strange combination of independent and helpless.  She can figure out complex situations and work through difficult emotions and feelings but she cant get her own food in a buffet line.  I wasnt sure how she would fare on a camping trip, so once she told me she wanted to go, I decided to prepare her a bit.

How to Survive Away From Mommy

Step 1.  Learn how to pack your own essentials.
Campers were given a list of things to prepare and since I was extremely busy (I actually was), I told her to take care of it.  I gave her a bag and the list, a few ziploc bags and told her to figure things out.  She did.

Step 2.  Learn how to stuff your own sleeping bag into the appropriate bag.
This job stymied her for a bit because the bag seemed so small compared to the volume of the sleeping bag.  I told her to start slowly and keep on stuffing.  She did it and 8 minutes later, she had stuffed the sleeping bag into the bag and there was the sheen of sweat on her face.

Step 3.  Learn to take inventory and keep track of your things.
We borrowed a very nice sleeping pad from a friend and I basically instructed Daughter #1 that we COULD NOT lose it.  She had to keep track of everything that was hers - her duffel bag, her sleeping bag, her pillow, her sleeping pad.  All of it, she had to keep track of. (I did get a bit crazy with the label maker and label a bunch of stuff, but still.)

Step 4.  Learn how to get your own food.  When its time to eat, no one is going to serve you a perfectly arranged plate of food. (I know that this is partly my fault.)  Think about what a balanced meal is, what mommy would normally put on your plate (protein, starch vegetable) and try and make healthy choices for yourself.

Step 5.  Always go places with another person.  Find a partner to go to the bathroom, to go back to the campsite, to go anywhere.  Do not travel alone.

Daughter #1 survived my intense survival-away-from-mommy crash course without any tears and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Under my breath I thought that it was far easier keeping her under my own room, under my own protection, than sending her out into the wide world without me.

And thats when it struck me.  How much have I been preparing Children for their eventual leaving of the nest?  I had much hesitation about this camping trip, simply because I was worried that she wasnt ready.  Did I prepare her correctly?  Did she have the right emotional tools to deal with being without me?  Was she confident enough to handle herself on her own?  A stream of questions poured in and out of my brain, and I worried, I did not prepare her ENOUGH.

But then again, we never can, can we?  We will never prepare them enough for the outside world.  We never feel we have given them all the perfectly right tools to meet every single sticky situation.  We want to protect them from horrible things, from harsh realities, from sadness, but our desire to do so prevents them from being prepared.

Mostly from this experience, I realized that Im not prepared.  Im not prepared to let her go.  Shes only 8 after all, but two nights, three days is a long time to be without a child.  The house is way too quiet without her presence, and suddenly the days are far too empty and missing action.  The piano is being played only half of the time, there is only 1/3 the amount of fighting that normally happens, and Im even less motivated to cook since there is one fewer mouth to feed.  Id like to keep my family all together for a little longer I think.

With all of my new found free time with one gone, I decided to make these little cupcakes as I ruminated on all the ways I havent prepared Children for the real world.  Thankfully the scent of lemons, strawberry and sugar distracted me from the harsher realities of parenthood and I began to relax in the euphoric smell of sweetness.  These little strawberry lemon cakes can be enjoyed without frosting and the lightest sprinkling of powdered sugar or can get the fully pampered treatment and be topped with a delicious strawberry cream cheese frosting.  Either way, the taste is pure summer, absolute fun, and total yumminess.

Note:  Freeze dried fruit generally come with a pack of silica gel on the inside.  REMOVE this before pulverizing.

Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes
Makes 30 regular cupcakes, 60 mini cupcakes

Lemon Cake
Ingredients
2 cups regular sugar
2 tablespoon lemon zest
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs (taken out of the fridge the same time as the butter)
1¼ cup buttermilk
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup diced fresh strawberries

Method
Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake tins with paper liners.

In a food processor, pulverize together lemon zest and sugar. (Doing so releases the lemon oils.)

In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl with a hand mixer or a stand mixer, blend softened butter and lemon sugar until thoroughly combined. Add eggs, one at a time and beat until well mixed, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is well blended.

Add half of flour mixture and mix until just combined. and add half of buttermilk and mix until just combined. Scrape down sides of the bowl. Add remaining half of flour mixture, mix until just combined and then add remaining buttermilk. Mix until just combined.again. At this stage, the less you mix the better for your cake. (too much mixing makes for a tough cake.)  Remove mixer blades, and gently fold in strawberries with a spatula.

Divide cake into prepared muffin tins. Bake for mini cupcakes for 20 to 22 minutes, regular cupcakes for 22 to 24 minutes, or until cake springs back when gently pressed with fingertips. Cool for 20 minutes, then remove cake from pans and cool on wire racks until completely cool.

Strawberry Frosting
Ingredients
Makes enough to frost 30 cupcakes

1 cup of butter, slightly softened (room temperature for about 20 minutes)
8 oz of cream cheese (room temperature for 5 minutes)
1.2 oz (34 grams) freeze dried strawberries, pulverized in a mini food processor (but not too far ahead of time, otherwise they will begin to absorb moisture)
5-6 cups of confectioners sugar

In a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer or a stand mixer, mix butter until it is softened and uniform. Add cream cheese and beat together until it is uniform. Add pulverized strawberries. Add 3 cups of sugar to the mixture and mix. 2 more cups of sugar. Mix again until mixture is creamy and spreadable. Add more sugar if necessary, otherwise prepare to frost cupcakes.

You can frost with a knife, or you can using a pastry bag and a 1M Wiltons star tip to make the rosettes. Start in the middle of the cupcake, hold the tip perpendicular to the cupcake (pointing straight down) and swirl outwards.

Printable recipe

inside the cake, before I ate it.

Freeze Dried Strawberries - Trader Joes has these for $3.49 for the pack.  If you cant get there, try Target, Walmart, or Whole Foods


I got these mini cupcake liners (pictured above) at Sur La Table.


I am thinking I will get these since they are so cute for mini cupcakes.

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Poached Chicken with Three Sauces Friends show up when you need them most

To SH - my hero in my time of need

You know the saying that friends are the ones that are with you when times are hard?

I experienced this, this past weekend when I was under the weather.  The symptoms, to my confusion, were very much like those I had when I was pregnant, only I was sure I was not.  But the overall malaise, inability to feel like my normal self, and the strong desire to lay down and stay down for hours on end were very debilitating to my ability to mother my children.  Add the fact that Husband was out of town for work and it meant that it was me and me alone to care for three rather nice Children.

But cooking was the last thing on my mind.  And there were many commitments to push through which I did, by barely eating and drinking little.  I slept when I could and lay down when I could.  And finally on Sunday, although I was feeling a bit better, I was in no mood to do anything but stand.  Cook?  HA.  I figured out a meal that would require minimal cooking (rice porridge made with frozen rice in the fridge, bacon, and some sliced cucumbers) and sat there feeling proud of my ability to think of throw something together despite my complete desire to just tell the kids to starve.

But, like a spark in the night, I got a text. "Are you home?  Im bringing you food."

"Yes.  Im home.  But you dont need to."

"Im bringing you food.  Make rice if you dont have any.  Be there in a minute."

My friend and neighbor SH brought me a complete meal.  Poached chicken, three sauces (with a special one of ginger made just for me because she knows I like it) and some vegetables.  And Children attacked that meal like there was no tomorrow.

"Mommy?  Is there more chicken?  Why does this chicken taste so good?"

"Mommy, why is Auntie S a better cook than you are?"

"Mommy, can Auntie S make this chicken for me tomorrow?"

I was too grateful to care that Children had decided that someone elses cooking far exceeded my own.  After all, it had been a long while since Id seen Children gobble up food that quickly.

I texted friend SH lots of thanks and then asked if she would teach me her chicken method.  She readily agreed and I get to post it.  YIPPEE!!

The most lovely thing about this chicken is that the great bulk of the time is cooked without your help.  The chicken is allowed to sit in hot water, on a stove that is OFF, until it is poached to perfection, which according to my friend is a Chinese method.  We talked about the merits of cooking it this way, one of them being the ability to make it ahead and the other being that it is energy effective.  Once the heat is set, you just allow hot water to do most of the work, which is really very smart.  The method may seem a bit finicky at first as there are two separate water boil markers, as well as a time when you have to lift the chicken out of the water to drain lukewarm water out of cavities, only to fill them up again with hot water.  But give it a try, because once mastered, you can have poached chicken without barely thinking about it.

The result is a super moist and succulent poached chicken. It is not dry, it is not stringy, but rather, lush and silky.  It can be served warm, room temperature, or even chilled, as long as you have hot rice and delicious dipping sauces.

Poached Chicken with Three Dipping Sauces
Serves 8

Ingredients
4 ½ to 6 lbs whole chicken (the better your chicken, the better your flavor, since there isn’t a lot of extra going on in this recipe) - this chicken needs to be fully defrosted if frozen with no frozen bits. A fresh chicken will work better here.
5 slices of ginger
1 onion, or leek, or a few cloves of garlic (to flavor the water)

4 inches ginger root, peeled finely chopped (I use my mini food processor)
3 scallions, finely chopped
½ cup vegetable oil
¾ teaspoon salt

2 jalapenos, finely chopped (I use my mini food processor)
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ cup rice wine vinegar

5 scallions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup soy sauce (I prefer low sodium, Kikkoman green)

Method
Fill a large stockpot with water. The water should be at a level which will allow you to completely SUBMERGE your chicken underwater, with no problem. Bigger is better here. (I tried a smaller pot only to have to dump and start over in my bigger pot.) If in doubt, until you master this recipe, err with the bigger pot. You don’t want overflow of chicken water all over your kitchen. You can do a test run with your raw chicken, by submerging in water to see how much you need. Remove chicken before boiling water.

Cover your stockpot and bring water, ginger, and onion/leek/garlic to a boil. In the meanwhile, salt chicken liberally and give it a bit of a salt scrub. Rinse thoroughly and set aside, until water is fully boiling.

Once water is fully boiling, place chicken into the water, making sure that it is completely submerged in the water. Leave pot uncovered and bring chicken and water to another rolling boil again. While waiting it to boil again, you can skim off any scum off the surface of the water, if you intend to use the broth for rice porridge or something else. If you don’t want to use the broth for anything, go ahead and just wait for the chicken and water to boil again.

Once water is boiling, using tongs carefully lift chicken out of the water. You want to drain all the cavities of any lukewarmish water. While water is boiling, carefully re-submerge chicken into the water to fill all the cavities with hot boiling water. Cover pot with lid and TURN OFF stove. Do NOT remove lid of pot for the next 1 hour if your chicken is under 5 ¼ lbs, or the next 75 minutes if your chicken is over 5 ¼ lbs.

While your chicken is enjoying a nice soak in the hot water, begin making your 3 dipping sauces.

For the ginger sauce, mix together finely chopped ginger, finely chopped scallions, oil and salt together in a bowl. Mix and set aside.

For the jalapeno sauce, mix together finely chopped jalapenos, sugar, and vinegar. Set aside.

For the scallion sauce, place chopped scallions in a bowl. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a small, fry pan or sauce pan. The oil should be hot enough that it shimmers or you can test by carefully putting one scallion piece in the oil to see if it sizzles. If the oil sizzles the scallion, then carefully pour the two tablespoons of oil over the scallions in the bowl and allow the scallions to be cooked by the oil. Add soy sauce and mix. Set aside.

Once the 60 minutes or 75 minutes of chicken cooking in water is up, uncover pot, and remove chicken from water and place in a bowl (in order to catch residual liquid). Allow chicken to cool enough so that you can handle it without screaming OUCH!

Once chicken has cooled sufficiently (30 minutes or so), begin cutting chicken as you wish. I don’t like skin so I removed skin, cut of drumsticks, wings, and removed the meat from bones and roughly cut it into bite-sized, dippable pieces.

Serve chicken warm, room temp, or cold from fridge, with dipping sauces. Allow diners to dip however they please. Perfect with hot rice.

Printable recipe

Something for everyone

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