36-Too Much Food on My Plate

So it's finally time! As promised, here are a ton of photos of my grilling, cooking, and baking adventure with my best friend. I know I took a ton of pictures, but let's be honest, who doesn't love a little bit of food porn every now and then?! I know there are some days I just can't get enough of it. So enough rambling, and on to the food. I hope you enjoy, because I know that we sure did! All the good stuff is after the jump, so click, click, click!

First thing's first, you've gotta start off with your ingredients!

Step one: rub down pork chops with cajun seasoning. I will admit, I'm not the biggest fan of handling raw meat (I have a tendency to get semi-paranoid about bacteria), but I tackled the rub-down with fervor and (after washing my hands really, really well) went on to the next step!

Step two: toss 'em on the grill. This was my first time attempting to man a grill by myself, and as nervous as I was, I think I did a mighty fine job, if I do say so myself!

Flip those bad boys over!

Pork chops are all cooked and ready to go!

Time to make the sauce! We threw everything into a pan (in this case, it happened to be a wok, because we're fancy like that).

Give it a few good stirs.

Heat it up!

And give it a few more good stirs for good measure!

Toss it all on a plate with some green beans...

And you've got, quite possibly, one of the most delicious (and simple!) meals ever. Seriously...we had seconds, and thirds, and fourths, and fifths. The leftovers are...phenomenal, which is a bonus.

I got the recipe from this website, but of course, we made a few of our own adjustments. One of the most notable adjustments (catering mostly to our gluttonous ways) was adding more cream cheese into the sauce than the recipe called for. Really what it comes down to is what you personally prefer and how much you're willing to deviate from the recipe and experiment. Don't be afraid to spice things up (yes....pun definitely intended!) and do things your own way.

Now on to the cupcakes!

I wasn't able to get pictures of the initial mixing process for the batter of the cupcakes because I was the one doing the mixing and my timid friends were much too shy to man the camera.

Plop, plop, plop. Put the batter into the cupcake tins and get them ready for the next step:

The oven! (I'm half-tempted to throw in my friend Tommy's muffin joke here, but I'll spare you all)

Once they were done, we took them out of the oven and put them on cooling racks to cool down. While they cooled we got down to business and started making the frosting. I'll admit, we were kind of scared.

The first step of the instructions was to "cream the butter", so of course we ended up spending a good 10 minutes Googling "How To Cream Butter" with our Blackberries. Once we figured we had a good enough idea of how it worked, we got back down to business.

Added all the ingredients (which took all of ten seconds) and spent a good 15-20 minutes whisking, stirring, beating, and mixing. It was intense to say the least. However, once the frosting was done and our cupcakes were cooled we attempted to frost them. Of course, being women, we wanted "pretty" cupcakes, so we did our best to make them look fancy, but alas, all we had were ziploc bags, a pair of scissors, and two over-eager sets of hands. Needless to say, we had a few cupcakes come out looking pretty. But mostly we had a lot of what we ended up referring to as "the accident babies".

You can clearly tell which ones are the "accident babies" and which ones aren't, but regardless, they were beyond delicious, and I definitely recommend that you make them asap!

I got the recipe for these from this website. I was a bit intimidated at first, but the entire thing from start to finish (as far as the cupcakes were concerned) was far easier and less time-consuming than I thought it would be. They not only turned out wonderfully, but beyond delicious and not nearly as sweet as I thought. I will definitely be making this again (and maybe switch it up a bit with the recipe).