Bethany J. Mitchell » food

Muppets Cupcakes

Bethany — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:20:58 +0000

My family and I are loving the explosion of creative Muppet-related items appearing in the world! And I’m always on the look out for new ways to decorate cupcakes. There are no how-to instructions but I think I can figure it out with a little work. Love these!

The Muppets by ~gertygetsgangster on deviantART

Kermit and Fozzie Bento

Bethany — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:18:20 +0000

Muppets: Kermit and Fozzy Bento by ~mindfire3927 on deviantART

TOP: Kermit (kiwi, asian pear, nori details), rainbow (pickled radish/food color), shredded carrot.

BOTTOM: Fozzy (riceball, unagi furikake, radish/nori details, potato hat), sauteed brussels with pecans.

Penguins Celebrating Winter Cake

Bethany — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:36:20 +0000

Penguin Cake by ~sparks1992 on deviantART

There is so much to love about this wonderful winter cake: the igloo, the diving penguins, the snowballs…it’s all fantastic!

Sweet Homes for the Holidays

Bethany — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:36:58 +0000

Our annual family Christmas outing to downtown Seattle was a wonderful day this year. It was the baby’s first year with us and our niece joined us again. It was a whirlwind day of Teddy Bear Suite, Seattle Center, Westlake carousel and, of course, our favorite part: the gingerbread houses at the Seattle Sheraton. This year’s theme was “Home for the Holidays” and the creations were spectacular. I am always impressed at the level of detail and the imaginative use of candy.

I take hundreds of photos of the gingerbread houses every year…here are just a few of my favorite details: Left – Fremont Troll, Center – Huskies fans ready for the big game, Right – Santa taking a well-deserved sandwich break.

Our Gingerbread Creations

Bethany — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:17:05 +0000

About this time every year, I force the family to join me in an afternoon of messy edible fun decorating something made of gingerbread. Sometimes it’s a gingerbread house…one year it was a gingerbread train…and another year it was a gingerbread Christmas tree. This year we decorated gingerbread boys and girls. I used the word “force” up above because I almost always have to bribe and cajole everyone to start the process and then we all get into the moment and have a great time.

This year the baby joined us and while he was too little to help much (and too little to eat any of the goodies), he seemed to have a great time being in the middle of all the fun. This year’s results were quite adorable. After all these years of practice, we’re all becoming quite adept and creative at working with frosting and candy!

Catch Me if You Can!

Bethany — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:33:31 +0000

We are quite fond of gingerbread people here in the Mitchell household. It’s one of our favorite holiday traditions.

We found some wonderful gingerbread people designs over at Zazzle.com that are on the top of our wish lists! We really like the dissected gingerbread man and the gingerbread man with the “no-bite-himself” collar. Too cute!

Gingerbread Fun Couple by Spice

Gingerbread Man Dissected Triptych by moistproduction

Gothic Gingerbread Man by opheliasart

gingerbread man cookies greeting card by camerashyphotos

Funny Bit Himself Gingerbread Man by doonidesigns

I’m Sweet by pinkinkart

Trophy Cupcakes. Yum.

Bethany — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:47:07 +0000

Allyson savors the first bite of the first cupcake from the box

I know cupcakes are trendy right now and I can certainly understand why. They’re small which makes them so cute when they are decorated and they are the perfect portion for those folks who care about stuff like that. I like them because I get a variety of flavors all at once and most bakeries are experimenting with the most surprising and delicious flavor combinations.

Through Groupon (yay, Groupon!), I discovered that I have an award-winning cupcake bakery right near my neighborhood: Trophy Cupcakes. It was surprisingly difficult to select the flavors for my first dozen…so many choices and I definitely wanted to see how they treated my old favorites like red velvet. I also included a few “standard” flavors like chocolate and vanilla for my less adventurous family members.

The verdict? Every bite was superb! I could tell the ingredients were high-quality even in the standard flavors: the chocolate was rich and the vanilla had a wonderful depth of flavor. In the name of research, I convinced everyone to give me one bite of each of the flavors (some folks took more convincing than others) and I must admit that I enjoyed every bite. The more exotic flavors (like Salted Caramel and Strawberry Lemonade) were outstanding. I still think my favorite was my old standby: red velvet. The cupcakes are a great size and, while some of my other testers thought there was too much frosting, I found the frosting to cake ratio to be perfect.

I definitely recommend these amazing cupcakes. They feature different flavors on different days (see their website before heading to the store) and will run out of flavors later in the day so stop by early to get the best selection. The cupcakes won’t stay fresh long so plan to share with friends if you buy a dozen or more.