Burger Buns

Hello readers! We hope you're having a wonderful long weekend. Here in Toronto, we are finally getting some lovely sunshine and the temperature is slowly increasing. We can't wait to stow away our bulky winter coats!

A lot of our friends went away this weekend to visit New York City and Chicago, but for those of us still at home, we decided on an impromptu dinner. We had arugula, spinach, red and yellow peppers, sausages, and burger patties. Let's have our first BBQ of the year!

Except . . . we didn't have buns for the burgers. The grocery stores were closed for Good Friday. What do we do? We search the world wide web of course and the answer was there!

We came across a recipe for beautiful burger buns and had all the ingredients on hand. This review had gotten a five star rating from so many people, we were pretty sure it would be fail proof.

Of course, it was only when we reached the flattening stage that we realized there was a step-by-step photo blog about the recipe too. We would highly encourage you to read that before starting!

Since it was an impromptu dinner, we had to cut some of the dough's rising time. The first time we let it poof was shortened to an hour and the second time was shortened to 45 minutes. We did want to eat before 7 pm.

Oh and we would recommend doing the egg white wash instead of the butter. Just follow the blog post.

See, not much colour with the butter wash. The burger buns turned out to have more of a biscuit quality to it. We will point out again that we didn't have enough time for the dough to rise and didn't use egg white.

Regardless, it would have been difficult to eat the burgers without the buns. So in the end, it did save dinner!

One Million

Hello friends! Something special happened this weekend . . . our all time history count tells us that we've reached over one million views! It's a little unbelievable, but hopefully the stat isn't tricking us, because we we want to thank you.

Thank you for visiting our blog. Thank you for commenting on our posts. Thank you for following us on facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, and all of the other neat platforms. Thanks for sticking around and reading about our food adventures and kitchen stories. We wish we could give each and every one of you a bouquet of cupcakes. Since no one has invented a cupcake-teleportation device, we hope that you'll accept this for now:

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from Martha Stewart Cupcakes
(Makes about 22 cupcakes)

2 large eggs
3/4 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup of warm water
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
3/4 cup of cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
3/4 teaspoon of salt

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F) and line your tray with cupcake liners.
2. In your bowl, mix the eggs, milk, vanilla extract, warm water, and vegetable oil together.
3. Sift in the cocoa powder, all-purpose flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the mixture. Mix until incorporated (don't over mix).
4. Using an ice cream scoop, evenly distribute the batter into the cupcake liners.
5. Bake for about 20-22 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cook before frosting.

You can use your favourite buttercream or frosting recipe. Make sure the consistency is firm enough to hold the shape of the flowers.

Vanilla Buttercream

1 stick of unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups of icing sugar
1/4 cup of milk
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
Gel colour dyes

1. Using a stand mixer, put the butter into the bowl and cream until smooth. Add in the icing sugar in three batches. Slowly start the mixer as you don't want the icing sugar to fly out! When it is all incorporated, add the vanilla extract.
2. You will need to use your own judgement here, add the milk a tablespoon at a time and check the consistency of the buttercream. It should not be so stiff that your spatula can stand upright if you stuck it in the middle of the ball of buttercream. It shouldn't be so soft that it won't hold it's shape after piping.
3. Add the gel colour you prefer and scoop the buttercream into your piping bag. Fit it with a large petal decorating tip (we used Wilton 127).

Holding both the cupcake and your piping bag, with the wider end of the tip on the bottom, rotate the cupcake as you pipe a small volcano. There should be a small opening on the top and a wide base at the bottom.

Then, pipe three petals around the middle, notice that these are not full petals. They don't go all the way around. Try surrounding the middle tip in three overlapping parts.

Continue and slightly angle your piping tip so that the petals eventually lay flat on the edge of the cupcake.

Even if the buttercream ruffles, tips over, or doesn't fold exactly where you want it to, it'll still look beautiful!

Try a different colour! It is almost spring!

We can't say it enough. Thank you!

Now let's eat cake!