Tag Archives: guest blog

Cuisine - Desserts, Places - Milwaukee, Recipes

Christmas Caramel

Homemade caramels by Stacey MuellerI’m so excited to introduce another new guest blogger to the All’s Fare family! Stacey Mueller is a dear friend and mentor of mine from back in the Milwaukee area. She recently tried her hand at making homemade caramels for gifts.

With 10 days left of shopping before Christmas, here’s one way you can impress your friends and family this holiday season…and avoid the crowded malls and shopping centers!

Take it away, Stacey!

My family is all about food gifts: cheeses and smoked meats, game harvested by the hunters in our group, homemade treats and home-assembled gift baskets. Last year, I visited Penzey’s spice shop (locate one near you) in Greendale, Wis., bought 4-packs of spices and turned to the staff at my local liquor store for some great wine pairings to go with the spices.

This year, I’m trying to reconnect with cooking skills set aside in the last few years when I was busy with other things. My mother-in-law makes awesome cookies, so I don’t ever want to compete in that venue. My mom also makes some lovely cookies and also fudge, toffee and nut brittles. Taking a cue from my mom but also wanting to offer something different, I decided to try homemade caramels. And, since I made just about every possible mistake with the first batch, I thought I’d share the experience to help you fast-track toward rich, creamy, sweet success.

This recipe makes about 6 pounds of caramels. A pound is a nice amount for a gift.

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Taste Test

Taste Test: Blueberry-Flavored Greek Yogurt

I’m happy to welcome another guest poster to our little family here – My dear hubby Brett! We recently switched to Greek-style yogurt at home. So we decided to do a taste test of one of the most popular fruit flavors out there.

Take it away, Brett!

Yogurt has always been one of my favorite snacks. The all time greatest for me is Dannon’s coffee-flavored yogurt. The rich taste of coffee in a fun-size snack was enough to fill me up. Recently, my wife has discovered a love for Greek yogurt. It is a love bordering on obsession. Every time we head to the supermarket we end up with five or  six packages to head home with. I may pick on her about her new-found food crave, but Greek yogurt has less sugar, less fat and is higher in protein than it’s regular yogurt brothers and sisters. Because of this, it is a snack that I am happy she enjoys.

Christina decided that she wanted to do a taste test of blueberry Greek yogurts. We decided on blueberry because almost every company has a blueberry yogurt. The seven contenders in alphabetical order are Chobani®, Dannon®, Oikos™ (by Stonyfield), Fage™, Trader Joe’s, YoCrunch® and Yoplait. To keep it fair, we decided to leave the crunchies out of the YoCrunch yogurt.
Greek Yogurt Taste Test ContendersMy job was to come up with a grading system and help with the tasting. I decided on a scale of 1 to 5 to rank the yogurts on the amount of blueberry flavor, the consistency, the amount of fruit and sweetness. Our ideal yogurt would have a lot of blueberry flavor, be thick in consistency, have a lot of visible fruit and not be overly sweet.
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Cuisine - Desserts, Recipes

DIY: Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

Carbomb CupcakesI’m so psyched to introduce this next guest blogger. She’s one of my favorite people and a great baker!

Stacey LeBlanc is no stranger to the All’s Fare community. Her and her hubby Jake have been along with us on a few of our outings around Boston – The Barking Crab and Sake.

Stacey has been wanting to get into the blogging world so when she told me she would be baking these Irish Carbomb Cupcakes for her company’s St. Paddy’s Day potluck, I knew this would be the perfect debut for her. I hope you enjoy this excellent and tasty-looking post (and I also hope it isn’t the last time we hear from Stacey’s kitchen adventures)!

Take it away, Stacey!

To the faithful All’s Fare finest, thank you for welcoming me to your foodie world for the day! I was honored when Christina asked me to guest blog here and couldn’t wait to find the perfect topic to share with you all.  I knew it had to be something a) delicious b) fun and c) visually appealing.  As St. Patrick’s Day approached I knew I had the perfect idea – Irish Carbomb Cupcakes! Yummmm….

Last year, I thought these little beauties were my own unique brain-child. I thought I was the one who came up with the idea to model a cupcake after one of the holiday’s punchiest cocktails. For those of you who haven’t experienced this beverage-based treat (if you’re not one for chugging, the beverage may not be a treat to you ), an Irish Carbomb shot is a nice, frosty glass of Guinness, with a shot glass filled with Bailey’s Irish Cream and Jameson Whiskey dropped in. You have to gulp it all down as fast as you can, otherwise the mixture curdles and is no longer anything CLOSE to a treat.  To me, it tastes like a coffee frappe. DELISH!

Guinness and Jameson for Carbomb CupcakesSo, in 2010 I went ahead and put together a nice Guinness Spice Cake, made vanilla buttercream and stirred in some Bailey’s and Jameson for good measure. The end result was good, but not GREAT so I Googled “my” idea and found that a lot of bakers out there had the same thought, but on a much better, tastier level than my own.

Enter one of my favorites, the one and only Smitten Kitchen. That smartie pants made a CHOCOLATE Guinness Cake, ANNNND filled them with Jameson-infused chocolate ganache before topping with a light and sweet Bailey’s buttercream.  A severe chocoholic at heart, I knew this was the recipe I had to follow for 2011.

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