Rhubarb - Two More Ways

With plentiful spring rhubarb from our gardens, we've made two more rhubarb desserts in addition to the rhubarb upside down cake that I made for Mother's Day. I had extra fresh rhubarb that my mum had brought to me and I decided to try making some rhubarb bars to take to my sister. They were easy to make and were quite like a coffee cake that is traditionally made with a brown sugar crumb topping or sometimes with fruit, like blueberries. This was all rhubarb and while it wasn't my favorite creation or even my choice use of rhubarb, it was a good way to use the extra and turned out quite tasty.

The recipe indicated using butter and parchment for the pan and leaving a few inches of extra parchment on either side to end up with handles to take the bars out of the pan after baking. This was a great idea, but we'll see if it works.

I made a simple crumb topping with butter and blended it with a pastry cutter.

I weighed out my rhubarb and this was mixed with flour and sugar.

I simply forgot to capture anything about the cake batter, but there was indeed a cake batter that went first in the pan, the rhubarb mixture was next and then the crumb topping was sprinkled on top.

The topping was golden and crispy when it came out of the oven.

The handles worked! I lifted the entire pan out to set down and cut the bars. We all thought they tasted good, but could have used even more rhubarb as there was a lot of the crumb topping on them.

Since my sister also had a lot of rhubarb in her garden, she decided to try another rhubarb dessert while we visited. She made these yummy rhubarb custards. They turned out very good and reminded me of the rhubarb custard pie that my mum has always made. Ok, that's enough rhubarb for a while!

Irish Coffee Cupcakes

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I wanted to make a fun dessert to adorn with my cute marzipan shamrocks and found this interesting Irish coffee cupcake recipe to try. My sister and I both get Martha Stewart Living and often try the different recipes and she brought this to my attention. I love coffee, love Irish cream and love cupcakes, so what's not to love with these?

Here are the secret ingredients. Bailey's Irish cream and instant espresso powder turn ordinary cupcakes into Irish coffee cupcakes!

While I had the espresso powder out and the water boiling, my mum and I decided to enjoy an espresso while I tried this recipe. It sure kept me alert through the rest of the day to stay up and decorate them!

I was excited to use my new curly Q baking cups from Bake It Pretty!

Here is the espresso infused cupcake batter. It looks like coffee, right? It sure tasted like coffee!

Here is the coffee batter in the cups and the nicely baked cupcakes just out of the oven.

Now we let them cool and waited a while to frost and decorate them.

The frosting was a simple whipped cream frosting made with heavy whipping cream and powdered sugar with a hint of Bailey's Irish cream. It has such a nice flavour!

I experimented with decorations and even tried to turn my Irish coffee cupcake into a mug with the addition of a partial fudge pretzel.

Some were topped with my marzipan shamrocks and others were dusted with espresso powder. They were not my favourite tasting cupcakes, but were perfect for the occasion and fun to make.

A Latte for Here

Don't you find that most coffee shops just automatically give you your cappuccino or latte in a paper to-go cup? It seems like they used to ask you if it was for here or to go so you actually had a choice. But, now you simply are handed over a paper cup assuming you're on the run, which we often are. In fact, with a child, I tend to seek out drive through coffee shops, like the local Biggby's or Starbucks so I don't have to even get out of the car. However, on this particular day this week, I was not in a hurry and I was happy to not even be asked, but handed my latte in a real china mug at MadCap Coffee in Grand Rapids. It was topped with a nice design in the foam and I sat down to read and enjoy it and some relaxation.