Choc. Cupcakes w/peanut butter frosting....( Ina Garten)

Yesterday, the weather was horrible. We had major snowsqualls and most of the roads were closed. My neighbor has a snow plow attatched to his truck and he always plows our driveway. I usually always give them some sort of baked goods in return. I have the new Ina Garten( barefoot contessa) cookbook out of the library and these cupcakes looked good. I cut the recipe in half and I still came out with 12 cupcakes.

My go to chocolate cake/cupcake recipe is Hershey's Black Magic, its supereasy to make, uses one bowl and oil instead of butter. Ina's recipe used butter with less sugar and more cocoa. Funny though, I didnt think the choc. flavor was that pronounced, but the crumb was very tender. The cake was the perfect foil for this lucious Peanut butter frosting( As I was making it, I remembered Paula's MIL's recipe), I'll have to make that next time. It's interesting to note though, that this PB frosting recipe isnt really Ina's( as most of the recipes in the book are credited to someone else).

I didnt measure the PB so I might have used less than I needed, but it still had a great PB flavor( I used Jiff, btw). Robin and I enjoyed one or two with a big glass of cold milk.

On Thursday, I cook for the Seniors again. Its going to be a labor intensive meal. Roast Chicken, mashed spuds, spinach salad with bacon, sauteed zucchini and bread pudding w/ vanilla sauce for dessert.

This weekend I plan on baking more challah and lots of hamantashen to take to Florida( we leave on Tuesday) with us. My grandpa loves cookies and since he isnt eating much these days, I figure I'd make him what he likes. This might be the last time I see him.

Lemon Yogurt Cake( Barefoot Contessa)....

Try as I might, I couldnt get a decent picture of this cake. I checked Ina's new book out of the library to see if it was worth buying( it isnt). A lot of the recipes look good, but most are pretty basic. One thing I notice about Ina is that she "borrows" a lot of recipes from different people. Case in point, this lemon yogurt cake. Ina says " she wanted to see if she couldnt lighten her infamous lemon loaf cake" She saw a recipe from Dorie Greenspan for a yogurt cake so she decided to try that method with her lemon cake. In the headnotes, Ina says this cake is good for you. I wouldnt go that far, the cake still uses 1/2 cup of oil and 1 cup of whole milk yogurt. I wasnt thrilled with the cake, it was very lemony and a tad oily. After the cake comes out of the oven, you drench it with a simple syrup made with lemon juice and sugar. Ina also calls for 1 cup of powdered sugar for the glaze, but I only used a few tbls because I thought that was plenty.

Another recipe in the book is for Beatty's chocolate cake. This recipe is the exact same recipe as Hershey's Black Magic cake. For some reason, that really bugged me. I've been making Black Magic cake for years and years.