Kahlua Cupcakes

So this is me late night posting and finally posting again after over a year. I swear the past year was filled with so many ups and downs, it was like a roller coster I couldn't get off of. I should of blogged instead of spend my time over analyzing every aspect of my life and watching a lot of episodes of random shows on Netflix. Don't get me started on Netflix. I know there's a post in here about me loving Netflix and wishing I could spend my days just watching show after show on there. I almost did this past year, all because I was depressed for part of it or just in need of a distraction. I have learned my lesson partially. Still use Netflix, but have learned that other things can be a better form of coping with my emotions. Case in point: Baking. It helps me focus more on what I'm doing instead of the drama that might have occurred that day with the boyfriend or the narcissistic friend(that's too long a story to tell). So here I am finally getting to what I said I would do more than a year ago. I am finally going to give you the recipe to one of my favorite cupcakes. These were so good. I'm not a big fan of chocolate. I mean of course I love a good hershey bar(with almonds) here and there, but I'm not going to run out and buy a chocolate cake to devour when I'm in a really low mood. I'd rather turn to gelato. So when I had to use my Kahlua for something, cause my roommates last year didn't enjoy it either, I turned to the internet to find a recipe I could use it in. When that recipe turned out the kailua filled, double chocolate chunk cupcake, I was like, hey, I don't usually care for that much chocolate but I'll go for it and maybe my friends and roommates will like it. And they did. Too bad the recipe made around twelve, which caused me to make more. Even ended up telling my boss about them and taking her some. I must say I enjoyed the taste of the kahlua in the buttercream. It added a flavor I didn't expect. And since I didn't have the proper tools to shave the chocolate, it ended up being chunkier than what I guess it was suppose to be, but everyone seemed to like that. So I say the chunkier the better!
So here's the recipe to Kailua Double Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes:

ingredients:

1 1/8 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup kahlua

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

4 ounces of high-quality dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Frosting

1 cup (2 sticks) sweet cream butter, softened to room temperature

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon kahlua

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

directions:

Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a bowl, whisk egg and sugar until smooth and no lumps remain. Add melted butter and vanilla and mix until combined. Sift dry ingredients together and add to wet mixture. Mix until batter is smooth with a large spoon, then whisk in kahlua. Fold in chocolate. Line a muffin tin with liners and using a heaping 1/4 cup measure, add batter to each cup until 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 15-18 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

Beat butter in the bowl of your electric mixer until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add in powdered sugar gradually (about 1/2 cup at a time) with the mixer on low speed, slowly increasing the speed until it's combined. Add in vanilla extract and kahlua, then beat on medium-high speed for 3-4 minutes, occasionally scraping down the sides if needed, until white and fluffy. Frost cupcakes and garnish with grated white and dark chocolate.

Got the recipe originally from: howsweeteats.com

Cupcakes, Oh How I Love Them!!!

So I'm a baker, and one of my favorite things to bake is cupcakes. Since turning 21 a few months ago, I have started making all of them with alcohol. I find it more interesting. So I've decided that I'd start posting the recipes for these cupcakes. I've found pretty much all of them online by using google(that wonderful thing!) I tend to make adjustments depending on if I think something else will do better. I may one day just decide to make my own recipe. I might just do this because I always have excess alcohol and don't always want to drink it. So making random desserts, of course mainly cupcakes, would probably be a better use of it than getting drunk haha. Also sometimes the types of alcohol I buy I try it, and I don't always like the taste of it even mixed with things. Case in point: Kahlua. It's fine, I just won't drink it. I didn't much care for it, so I started making a lot of cupcakes with it. I had bought it for a tiramisu I was making. The recipe was from Drunken Desserts and this was the tipsy version and it called for other liqueurs too. So the tiramisu recipe barely used any of it, so I was left with a lot of Kahlua. So to me the best thing was to find cupcake recipes that would use it, yet I still have some left. I guess I'm going to have to make some more cupcakes. haha. So here are some tipsy cupcakes I've made these past few months.

Margarita Cupcakes

Pink Champagne Cupcakes

(Sorry my piping skills sucked that day because I didn't have the proper cupcake tip)

 Strawberry Chocolate Vodka Cupcakes

(This was a variation on Raspberry Chocolate Vodka from The Food Network)

 White Russian Cupcakes

Kahlua Double Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes

So I will definitely post the recipes soon. I'll also be making a whole lot more. I have so many more to try and so much more alcohol to use haha. 

For now this is all,

Alisha 

Tattoos

So these are my tattoos. I got both of them over a year ago, the pink breast cancer ribbon as a Christmas gift and the other as a 20th birthday present both from my brother. They mean more to me than I can express in this post. I do know I want another one either on my shoulder, behind my ear, or my ribs. I want the one on my ribs to say "when there's no one else left to burn, you set yourself on fire." I got it from To Write Love On Her Arms, the same organization that my other word tattoo comes from. I really admire what that organization does, and I support it completely because they help people who struggle with the same type of problems I have gone through since high school.

Well I don't know what else I could say, well there's a lot I could say, but I'm going to end it here. I just thought I needed to post my tattoos. They're on my arms, at the wrist.

Adios,
Alisha

So it's been almost a year...

And a lot has happened since I last posted. One being that my hair is many different colors yet still looks perfectly normal(weird, I know). Another is I got a new phone a few months ago and I guess I can post more because I got the blogger app and don't have to worry about having my laptop with me. Another is that i couldn't go back to school this year due to financial reasons. I got a new job that is more stressful than it should be. There's still a guy, the same guy. I actually had a boyfriend over the summer, not the guy I've had a crush on for nearly 2 years. A different one, but that ended because it turned out to be more trouble than anything else. I at least found out that while I'm still trying to get through school, I don't need to be in a serious relationship unless I really want to be. Case in point: one of my guy friends keeps trying to get me with my long time crush, but he doesn't understand that I don't want anything more especially since it would be long distance, been there done that, not doing it again. This guy friend is a close enough friend that I tell him a lot but I can't seem to tell him about my crush. He knows the guy, but I don't tell him everything that's going on, just too awkward. So I can't really explain that my crush and I are just friends, really just "friends" and right now that's all I need. He thinks we should be couple but I don't want that and if I did I would talk to said crush about it. So that's where I am now with the guy situation. I feel I need a new crush, just to get my friends to leave me alone about the current one.
Another thing that is going is that it's my birthday next week, my 21st birthday! I'm excited, yet not. See I have a guy friend(different one) who has the same birthday as me, he's also turning 21. We've known for 2,3 years that we have the same birthday, so we celebrate together. This year has been particularly annoying because he hasn't been a lot help with deciding what to do. We're turning 21, we should do something special, but what we've decided doesn't seem special to me at all. And recent events with other friends has made rethink celebrating with some of them at all. I'm not there this year, but my closest friends are in Clemson, and I really want to see them, but I've just gotten so fed up with all of it. I tried to tell them that this stupid planning out things business has just upset me, but they don't get it or ignore it. I want to be spontaneous, so something adventurous. But a lot of them don't seem to want to go for that. I'm so tired of it that I don't care anymore if we just sit on our asses and be a bunch of homebodies. One of friends really suggested we stay in and watch movies. I wanted to smack her. I'm not watching a movie for my 21st. Another suggested the park, what about the park screams 21st birthday??? That's for 5 year olds. The problem is I don't know what to tell them I want I do. I tried suggesting something I thought would be fun, a scavenger around campus, but my friends are too lazy to come up with any clues for it. I either need new friends, or to pretend I'm happy with what we do, I'll probably choose the latter. I'm not the type of person to drop friends over something like this. Oh but typing this is just making me even more upset, so I give up know and will post what else happened over the past year later.

Adios,
Alisha

Curly vs. Straight

Just thought I would post a photo of my hair as it is now, straight, and how it is usually, curly.

So this is how my hair looks straight and curly. I don't know which one I like half the time. Most of the time I like my hair straight more, but I feel when my hair is curly it's more me. I feel like I look like a different person with my different hair styles. 

Decided to try Something New...

By this I mean I've decided to start talking about something different. I notice that I mainly talk about school and guys, but this blog is about who I am(yea I know since I'm a college student, school and boys are pretty much who I am, but there is more to me). One thing I wanted to start talking about is my hair. I believe my hair is a big part of me. A lot of people Identify me by my hair. I'm also mixed, so I have a really interesting hair type or so I've been told. My hair has a mind of it's own, and I've been trying to get it to listen to me, so I thought while I was trying to figure out what I want to do with my hair, I would start posting about it. This blog is not going to be only about my hair, it's still going to include anything else that goes on in my world. But this is about who I am, and again I tell you that my hair is a big part of my life. I have days that I love it and days that I absolutely hate it. Well anyways, that's all I wanted to post about. Keep a look out for more. 

All I Want to Do is Sleep...

I've been so tired lately. I just want to sleep, but can't. I for some reason stay up all night, and when I do finally get some sleep, it's not very much. Right now I'm extremely tired but know that I probably won't get to take a nap. I've gone through this before, basically for years now. I use to take something to help, but I have nothing now, and it had stopped helping anyways. Well anyways this post really has no point to it. I've just decided that I wanted to start posting more, and I guess that means that I will have a lot of posts that are just random, and pretty much about nothing(case in point: this post). So to leave this one a bit of a happier note: I may get to see the guy that I've had a crush on since last year. I'm trying to decide whether I still feel the same or I just want to move on. I don't know, maybe I'll figure it out soon. Anyways, I'm just happy to get to see him, and that ends this lovely post. OH and Happy Friday!! It took it forever to get here, but it's here! And if I don't post on Valentine's day, Happy early Valentine's Day! I'm not much of a romantic, I really only care about the candy such as is the reason I love Halloween(besides the cool costumes), but other than that Valentine's Day isn't that big of deal. So I hope it's good for everyone who loves this holiday.

Adios,

Alisha