As usual, when Jas told me that his coworker was hosting a cookout, my first thought was what I could bring. Of course, I was excited to finally meet some of the people he works with, but I love having occasions to try out new recipes. Since Jas frequently brings my cupcakes to his office, he said I just had to bring them to the cookout. After checking with the hostess that dessert was ok to bring, I started thinking about cookout cupcakes.

Once I scoured Pinterest for ideas, I found a few pictures of hamburger cupcakes and settled on those. I discussed (several times) with one of my friends whether the “hamburger” should be frosting or brownie. The brownie looked more authentic but I love frosting, so I didn’t want the frosting to cake ratio to be off. I finally settled on using the brownie, but hollowing out the lid of the cupcake and filling it with frosting.

First I got all my supplies ready by making one batch of butter cupcakes, and one batch of Ghirardelli brownies (my favorite boxed version!) Since I wanted the brownies to be thinner to fit better in the cupcake, I took what should have been one 8×8 pan, and spread it into two. After cutting out the brownies into circles, I ended up with 18 “hamburgers”, and lots of tasty leftover corners to snack on. Since I had 30 cupcakes, this left plenty of taste testing for those too!

After making one big batch of buttercream, divided into plain, chocolate, and two dyed red and yellow, I was ready to start. I unwrapped all the cupcakes, cut them in half and placed a brownie on a dollop of frosting on the bottom “bun”.

Next came the lettuce (coconut dyed green) topped with ketchup and mustard frosting. Then I scooped cake out of the top “bun” and filled it with white frosting. This was mainly to have extra frosting, but if it leaked a bit, I figured it’d just look like mayonnaise. Stick the lid on top, and add a few seasame seeds, and you’ve got a hamburger cupcake!

I can never bring just one thing though, so I also decided to make mini pies in a cupcake pan. I thought this would be difficult, but it was much easier than I expected, and a great way to use up leftover fruit! I had two apples, two peaches and a pint of strawberries, so I figured I’d just see how many pies I got out of that. I already have recipes for all three of those pies, so I just scaled the filling down based on how much fruit I had. I also precooked the apples so that the pie crust wouldn’t burn while the apples were still crunchy.

I saw a tip online to line the cupcake pan with strips of parchment paper, and I would highly recommend this. It made it a breeze to lift them out of the pan, and also allowed me to peak at the bottom to check if the crust was browned.

(Peach left, strawberry right)

I think it was a good idea as well to put a different top crust on them to help people know which pie was which. Since you don’t have to cut into them, it’s hard to tell! I loved bringing these pies along and not having to worry about needing a knife and pie lifter. I think it prompted people to eat them too since it’s less hassle then trying to find a plate. I will definitely be making mini pies again!

We knew we were getting new neighbors upstairs at the start of this month, and in an effort to make them like us so they’ll be nice to our ears, I decided to make cupcakes. And let’s be honest, I’ll use any excuse I can get to make cupcakes. Our landlord informed us earlier in the summer that they’d be college students. Immediately I wished for grad students. Preferably girls. Everyone knows that girls don’t party at home if they are inclined to be partiers. Only guys don’t care what their house looks like. And grad students are always much tamer than undergrads. I was ideally hoping for a college student who was like me.

Shortly after moving in, my mom (who had come out to help me move) heard rumors from the neighbors about our house. It was confirmed when Jaz and I met a lady down the street that our house is known as “the yellow house”. Having a name is never a good thing. Apparently the previous tenants over the last 5 years or so have been quite bad. Including having open fires in the side yard, weekend long parties, and numerous police reports. When we moved in, it seems everyone was quite glad that the house was taking a turn for the better. And when the upstairs people were kicked out shortly thereafter, it seems it wasn’t just us waiting to see who the new tenants would be.

So back to the cupcakes. I decided straight off the bat that they should either be chocolate or vanilla to be the most generic. I had bought vanilla wafers to make banana cupcakes a week or so ago, but I figured that probably wouldn’t be the most popular flavor. After combing my Pinterest board, I made the unheard of decision to do a repeat. I don’t usually like to make things twice because I always have so many new ideas that I want to try. However, these cupcakes needed a redemption.

The last time I made s’mores cupcakes was for the first meeting of Jaz’s and my parents. Like most of the normal, pre-marriage milestones in a relationship, Jaz and I hit this one fairly late. It came almost a year after we were married, right before our Michigan wedding. I will use any gathering as an excuse to make new things, so I found these s’mores cupcakes that I wanted to try from Baker’s Royale.  I have no idea what happened to the cupcake batter, but I could tell before I even put it in the oven that something was wrong with it. It made nowhere near as much as it should have, and it had the consistency of brownie batter. Which is pretty much what they turned out like, dense little brownies in a cupcake wrapper. With no time to try again, I went ahead with decorating them. I burnt my finger many times toasting the frosting. (I really should buy a torch, doing these things with an average lighter is not easy!) But I thought they turned out super cute, which at least helped with the fact that the “cupcake” was totally stuck to the wrapper.

Luckily I had made backup chocolate cookies, which were well received, and the family get-together went off without a hitch. (Minus the fact that Jaz’s family got turned around on the way to my parents and ended up taking an extra hour to arrive!) Jaz and I had come up with a game where the opposite family had to answer trivia questions about us, and everyone had many laughs over it.

From this experience though, and a few prior, I finally learned my lesson. If a Pinterest recipe calls for a basic chocolate or yellow cake recipe, I need to just use recipes that I’ve tried and enjoyed. Oftentimes I’m making something to take somewhere, and I can’t afford to try untested cake recipes when I have a lot that are fabulous in my recipe box. So for the neighbors, I found an old chocolate cake recipe and combined it with the marshmallow frosting recipe from Sweetopolita that I had used making Jaz’s birthday cake from the last post.

Saturday morning I made the cupcakes, and immediately encountered a problem with the frosting. It was too runny to pipe onto the cupcakes. It is very tasty frosting, but made more for a filling than for decoration. Even after adding at least twice as much powdered sugar, I couldn’t get it to hold up. So I abandoned the cupcakes to go out to the Hanson concert for the evening, figuring I’d deal with it later. Once I arrived home however, I discovered the new college kids had moved in (Jaz thinks it’s three boys and a girl) and were already having a party. So even after discovering that once chilled, I can pipe the marshmallow frosting, I’m debating whether the new neighbors deserve any cupcakes. We shall see. In the end though, the remade s’mores cupcakes may not be quite as cute as the originals, but are much tastier!

Many people these days begin living with their future spouse before they get married, the rest move in together after their wedding day. For Jaz and I though, that day was a year and a half after we got married. Those of you that have read this blog in the past probably know that we got married in Sydney as part of our three month trip. After travelling New Zealand for a month together, we had to say goodbye at the Auckland airport. Needless to say, the tears were worse than at any other time we had previously had to say bye. And they didn’t really stop. I cried for well over a month after getting home. (Thank you to the few friends and my mom who had to deal with me!) We quickly settled back into our routine, although our few times a week phone calls turned into every day talks.

As soon as I got home, I started the marriage visa process, an ordeal that began with the U.S. Post Office. Our marriage license had gotten lost from Sydney, and it took me over a month to replace it. After finally having proof we got married, we could file the paperwork! I never imagined what immigrants go through, or how long and intrusive the visa process can be. Luckily we had found an immigration lawyer, conveniently located 6 floors below my office, who was a huge help in filing. All I had to do was provide the necessary documents. Letters from family and friends proving our relationship was real, pictures of the two of us together, 3 years of my past tax returns to prove I could support Jaz should he not have a job, a police report from England showing Jaz had no record, and the list goes on. We were told this process would take around 10 months, but possibly up to a year.

Our rule of visiting every 3 months was still in place, and I went to England for Easter. Since I had only met Jaz’s family briefly on my first trip to England, it was great to be able to spend time just hanging out and getting to know everyone. I brought all my Easter traditions with me as well. Jaz said he’d never dyed eggs, so we did that. Everyone was a bit grossed out by blowing out the eggs, but they turned out very pretty. I made Jaz an Easter basket, filled it, and hid it once I got there. I requested he make me a basket as well before I arrived, but I think he was a little surprised by how all out I went. I did get my chocolate fix though, so he got points for that, as well as pointers for later!

I also started what became a bit of a tradition for me. I brought baking supplies to make chocolate cupcakes. It is very exciting for me anytime I have a larger audience than just me, and perhaps my dad, to try out new, pretty recipes! These are the cute “carrot” cupcakes I made, which were served to rave reviews.

Next up on our visit schedule was actually a trip we’d started planning over a year prior. Jaz managed to get us tickets to two Olympic events! So in August, I went back to England and we got to see an afternoon of beach volleyball (my choice), and a whole day of tennis at Wimbledon (Jaz’s choice). We also had a side excursion to Budapest for a few days, which I’d asked Jaz to plan to round out the number of tables I wanted at our Michigan wedding :). On top of that, I made Jaz a belated monstrosity of a birthday cake, so we had quite a busy week.

In case these visits seem one-sided, our lawyer had warned us that it might be difficult for Jaz to visit the U.S. while going through the visa process. The airport people could think he was trying to skip the waiting process, he could miss a request for information that would hold up the whole thing, etc. So back to England for me in October! We scheduled this visit over my birthday, and Jaz surprised me with a day trip to Brussels! It was moments like these that made me feel sometimes like we were on The Bachelor. All our times together were marked by big adventures and seemingly extravagant dates, with not much time actually spent in each others company.

Jaz received approval on the first part of the visa status in August, which meant all he had left was the interview portion. We were told that once you’re past the first step, you’re not going to get denied, so we breathed a sigh of relief after this. But it also meant we had to make a big decision. Although we both loved our wedding in Australia, we went into it knowing that we wanted to be able to celebrate at home with our families as well. The big question was whether Jaz’s visa would be wrapped up in time for him to come to the U.S. and have our one-year anniversary “wedding”. We ultimately decided that it’d be better for us in the long run (although not in the moment emotionally) for Jaz to be able to transfer, which wouldn’t be possible till May of 2013. Which meant our second wedding was just another visit, but luckily Jaz didn’t have any problems entering the country.

This all led to lots of stress for me (some of it self-imposed, I am addicted to Pinterest), planning a wedding and work was going crazy all at the same time. All of it was worth it though when Jaz arrived in December. He immediately got put to work on the leftover projects, and we wrapped things up in time to enjoy Christmas. It was exciting for the families to meet for the first time, and we were both thrilled to be able to share our marriage with our close friends and family.

Dropping Jaz off at the airport this time did not seem as bad, the end seemed to be quickly approaching, and we both had to get to work to accomplish that plan.