Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Happy spring! It's been a while since I have written an official post but I promise I've been making a lot of good stuff. With work and traveling the past few weekends, I haven't been so great about documenting all my creations. These, however, I knew I had to share. I baked these cupcakes for my co-op manager Jaime, who has since left for maternity leave. (We miss you, Jaime!) I found the original recipe on my favorite blog, Love and Olive Oil.

Since I do not have a hand mixer here in New Jersey, I decided to come up with my own frosting. I have the same strawberry cake for my birthday every year and I will definitely use this strawberry frosting from here on out. I think I might have eaten about four cupcakes-worth of frosting just by licking the bowl. Not even kidding. And I don't even regret it because the frosting was that freaking good. The cake itself was sooo delicious, exactly what I expected from such a great blog. All in all another cupcake success. Round two, please?

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes (Adapted from Love and Olive Oil)
Makes: 24 cupcakes  Prep: 20 minutes  Total: 45 minutes

Ingredients
Cupcakes:
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 cup coconut milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp lemon juice

Frosting:
2 sticks butter
4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbs cream
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
4 tbs pureed strawberry (or 1/2 cup strawberries
tsp lemon juice

Directions
Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, coconut milk, vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. Pour into cupcake tins and bake for 25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out dry.
To make frosting, puree strawberries in a food processor and combine with softened butter, cream, vanilla and lemon juice. Add powdered sugar gradually until perfect texture is achieved.

Citrus Veggie Quinoa Salad

I suppose you can't really have a food blog these days and not have at least one post about quinoa, right? If you've never had quinoa, there are a few things you need to know:

1) It's pronounced "KEEN-wah", not "ki-NO-wah" or "qui-NO-wah" or any other easily mistakable pronunciation.
2) Quinoa became very popular because of influential food bloggers like Heidi Swanson, who turned an unusual grain into a multi-functional health food staple.
3) Quinoa is kind of a grain, but kind of not. It's like a seed, but more like a grain? Whatever it is, it's surprisingly really good.

So, I made a huge batch of quinoa salad to use as a grab-and-go snack, lunch and dinner this past week. Somehow I've managed to eat the same thing all week and not get sick of it, meaning I'll definitely be experimenting with more quinoa recipes in the near future.

Citrus Veggie Quinoa Salad
Serves: 10-12  Prep: 25  Total: 40 minutes

Ingredients
1 pound boxed quinoa
1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
1 small eggplant
2 Roma tomatoes
1/2 cup green onion, chopped
lemon juice
olive oil
garlic salt
pepper

Directions
Prepare quinoa on the stove as directed.
In the meantime, chop eggplant, pepper, tomato and green onion. Cook eggplant in a medium skillet until slightly softened, or about 5 minutes. Add the pepper into the skillet and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Lastly, add the green onion and tomato and cook for one more minute. Remove from heat.
When the quinoa is full cooked, add in mixed vegetables and toss with citrus dressing (1 part lemon juice, 1 part olive oil, garlic salt and pepper).