Each fall I search for an apple or honey spice cake recipe that will be both moist and flavorful for the High Holidays. This year I decided to make cupcakes rather than a cake – since many people only want a bite or two of something sweet and cupcakes add a touch of whimsy to the dessert table.

Sunday afternoon, I prepared Tea, Honey & Lavender Cupcakes. They are light, moist and make flavorful combination. Our son Jason and the grand boys agree – giving the cupcakes multiple thumbs-up.

Tea, Honey & Lavender Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes

For the Cupcakes:
3 spice or chai tea bags (I used Good Earth Original Sweet & Spicy Tea Blend)
2/3 cup boiling water
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup honey
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg, at room temperature

For the Frosting:
1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
8 ounces confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup honey
blue food coloring
1 tablespoons dried lavender flowers, ground

Preparation:

For the cupcakes, make the spice tea and allow to cool.

Heat oven to 350º and line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper.
In medium-size bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, combine the honey, melted butter, buttermilk and egg. Add the flour mixture and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed to combine – do not over beat. Add the cooled tea and beat until just combined. The batter will be very thin, almost like soup.

Divide the batter evenly among the cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 18 minutes. The cupcakes should be nice and brown.

For the frosting, beat the cream cheese and confectioner’s sugar in a medium bowl with an electric mixer, until light and creamy. Beat in the honey and a few drops of the food coloring. Stir in the ground lavender flowers.

Spread the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes.

Store without frosting in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.

Cupcakes adapted from: Shelly Kaldunski, Cupcakes: Chai and Honey Cupcakes.
Frosting adapted from: Fergal Connolly, 500 Cupcakes: The Only Cupcake Compendium You’ll Ever Need: Lavender and Honey Cupcakes

Make a double batch everyone loves them!

To thank our amazing marketing and graphics team at Lenz Marketing, Mama Iris & Mama Lynn brought them lunch (of course, food!!) the other day.

In addition to yummy Roly Poly sandwiches, we shared one of our favorite cookie recipes – Date Nut Bars. In response to the incredible clamoring for the secret recipe, we’ve decided to share it, for the first time, here on our blog……get out your aprons, and happy cooking!!

DATE NUT BARS

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups chopped dates

2 cups chopped walnuts/pecans

4 eggs, slightly beaten

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

powdered sugar

1. combine sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, dates and nuts in a large bowl. mix. add eggs, butter and vanilla – mix until ingredients are moistened.
2. Spread in a greased 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool bars on a wire rack. Dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Enjoy! And thanks for joining us in the kitchen!!

View at Picasa 17-Sep-2008 07:45, CASIO COMPUTER CO.,L EX-Z600, 4.3, 6.2mm, 0.017 sec

Mama Lynn here — baking cupcakes. After a busy morning, I am whipping some snacks for the Braves/Mets game tonight, organizing our CSA bounty for the week, and making cupcakes.

View at Picasa 20-Sep-2008 20:25, Apple iPhone, 2.8

The cupcakes are for a meeting tomorrow – a fund raising committee meeting. I started with a Betty Crocker Super Moist Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix cake mix and added mini-chocolate chips to the batter before baking. Bake. Cool. Frost. Top with sprinkles. Viola. Instant happiness for all ages.

Here’s to lots of smiling faces tomorrow. Have a great day.

Blueberry Picking

Hey blogger boys & girls, Mama Iris here. You must think that all Mama Lynn and I do is travel since that seems to be all we blog about. Well, wouldn’t THAT be nice???? Can you even imagine what always being on vacation would feel like? I sure would like to know…

I spent most of August here in the ATL – hot, sticky, bad ozone, but GREAT for picking blueberries in my backyard! We live on the Chattahoochee River, and every few years the wild blueberry bushes in my backyard have a party (which really means they get enough sun AND enough water), and we get to pick blueberries for the entire month of August.

Which is lots of fun on August 1.

And not so much fun on August 31.

How many blueberry pies, cobblers, cheesecakes, muffins can you make? How many jars of blueberry jam can you make? How many friends can you bribe into coming over to pick blueberries with you (thanks Kristina!)? How many darn blueberries can you eat? The answer is…..one heckuva lot.

So here’s my favorite quick and easy blueberry pie recipe – always come out perfect.

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

4 T flour

3 T water

1 quart blueberries

1 10” baked pie shell

Directions

Combine sugar, flour, water and ½ the blueberries in a small pot. Heat on the stove on medium heat , stirring until bubbly and thickened.

Put the remaining blueberries in the already baked and cooled pie shell (bake according to instructions on the package). Pour the hot mixture over the blueberries.

Chill for 1 hour. Serve at room temperature with ice cream. YUM.

(Anyone have any great blueberry recipes? Send ‘em on over – I’m always looking for something new and yummy to try.)