Carrot Cupcakes with Pumpkin Frosting

So they are DEFINITELY autumn cupcakes, but they were requested for a bonfire, and I love a chance to experiment. Actually, what was requested was 'a batch of carrot cupcakes, and a batch of pumpkin'. I really didn't want to do 2 different kinds, so I decided to mix them.

Here is my go-to carrot recipe. It's super moist. A bit on the sweet side, but VERY delicious. As cupcakes they got made the wrappers a little oily (I never said they were healthy) but they are SO GOOD.

http://cakecentral.com/recipes/7567/old-fashioned-carrot-cake

The frosting was pumpkin-cream cheese. Oh yeah. You heard me. And it was DELICIOUS! I used my cream cheese frosting recipe I usually do, but I added pumpkin. Here it is:

CREAM TOGETHER
~ 1 cup butter (salted cuts down on the sweetness- not tons, this is very sweet, but a little)

~ 1/2 cup vegetable shortening (adds stability)

1 8 oz. package of cream cheese

ADD:
2 tsp vanilla extract

and..
This is tough... I'm not really sure how much pumkin I ended up adding in the end. I added about 1/4 cup and tasted, then kept adding more about 1 tbsp at a time until it was pumkin-y enough. My guess is that in the end I added 3/4 cup. All this liquid made the frostins a bit runnier than I like, bu for these cupcakes it worked.

After that is all blended, add 1 bag of powdered sugar, or 8 cups.


Last of all, I added a garnish of candied carrot strands to be fancy. This was really simple. I just took peeled a carrot, and then kept peeling off strands. I added this to a sauce pan with approx. 1/2 confectioners sugar and 1/2 cup of water. I let this boil and simmer until the carrot strands started becoming translucent.

Soo.. I think that's it! I will DEFINITELY be making these again. They were a big hit at the bonfire, and a new personal favourite of mine.

Fettuccine Alfredo

Today I just had a sudden craving for some fettuccine alfredo. We had these spinach fettuccine noodles (which I don't think add a lot to the taste, but they look so pretty!)and I wanted to use them. So, on I went to the grocery store to get some real parmesan cheese and try my hand at a homemade alfredo sauce. I used a really simple looking recipe that turned out SO delicious. I found it here

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/alfredo-sauce-2/Detail.aspx (Note, I left out the parsely)

Just to add some vitamins (to balance out the cream sauce? No? Oh well...)I sauteed some of my favourite veggies (a.k.a. whatever wa already in the fridge) and threw that on top.

Not much else to say about that, except it was delicious! My and my dad finished our plates in silence, which I think says a lot. For instance, that we were hungry.