PROMOTE: colorMEcupck

This is Joanna Aton, shes a graphic designer, photographer, and cooking extraordinaire. Of course her specialty is cupcakes but shes a jill of all trades. Shes an amazing artist and of course her new found hobby is culinary arts, please follow her work and hopefully you'll be amazed by her delicious recipes!

Get To Know Jo:

Brief introduction about yourself:

28 (almost 29 yrs old) single-mom to an almost 3 yr old. lil boy. Full-time mom and full-time student, baker, designer, photographer and the list goes on. I love teaching myself new stuff to include baking.

How long have you been cooking and have you always liked cooking?

The first thing I learned to cook was rice (in a pot and stove none of that rice cooker stuff) when I was 6 yrs. old From there my mom taught me to fry stuff like eggs, chicken, fish easy stuff (except for frying chicken bone-in, that wasn't as easy) My first try at really cooking was when I was 9 yrs. old I made some sauteed green beans with ground beef over rice. It was good but super salty lol.

Who taught you how to bake?

I taught myself. I've used the box mixes before (for cake) made brownies from scratch when I was in high school. I really got into baking in 2007. I just kind of fell in-love with cupcakes and it just took off from there.

Who are your inspirations?

I'd say anything. I sometimes get a flavor combo in my head and I just run with it. But also other bloggers that I follow and talk to all over the place.

What's your favorite type of food?

Everything really well almost everything except for blue cheese or gorgonzola cheese.

How many different recipes of cupcakes and cookies do you have?

I've no idea. quite a few really.

Do you cater for parties or sell them?

I could and would but I haven't really done much in terms of marketing myself. Occasionally, I get special orders from friends.

Can you share a recipe with us?

Just pick one from the blog. I know I haven't updated in a while but there's a few there.

Contact:

colormecupcake@gmail.com

http://colormecupcake.blogspot.com/

Is there any motivation or inspiration you can share with some of us who cant cook but wish they could lol?

You may not know how to cook right now but you'll never learn till you just try it. Start with something easy and go from there. Read, watch and learn from cook books to cooking shows, blogs to even youtube. It's all a matter of what you want to learn. Nothing is ever perfect but you work with what you have.

Featured Recipe (check her blog for more):

Gimme S'more Of That!

So, I am cheating a little bit on this post. This is an old post from my old lj (livejournal) just edited.

My go-to chocolate cake recipe is always Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate cake it's moist, chocolate-y and yummy! Usually I substitute the cocoa powder with dark cocoa powder and it's Deeh Vine! You can use whatever chocolate cake or even graham cake recipe you want but this is what I used. It yields about 24-32 cupcakes

These bad boys have a graham crust bottom. What kind of s'more will it be without graham crackers?!

Graham Cracker Crust
2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs
1/2 cup Melted Butter

• Mix butter and Graham Cracker crust till the graham crackers soaked-up the butter.

• Scoop a spoonful of the crust into each cupcake wrapper and press down with either a spoon or the bottom of a shot glass. Once all the cupcake liners have graham crusts, pour in batter filling 2/3 up. Don't over fill!

• Crush some graham cracker (not the crumbs) and sprinkle on top. Bake cake as directed in recipe.

Marshmallow Frosting
1 1/4 cup sugar
4 egg whites
1-2 tsp. vanilla extract (optional)

• Combine sugar and egg whites over double broiler, whisk constantly till sugar is melted (160 degrees)

• Pour on mixer with whisk attachment, whisk on medium high till u reach stiff peaks. adding vanilla a teaspoon at a time.

• Pipe over cooled cupcakes. Then "roast" the marshmallow frosting and add a piece of Hershey's chocolate as garnish.

One of the things I love about making this cupcake is the fact that I get to break out my culinary torch! It's the best part of this whole thing! (I think so anyways lol)

*If you have left over marshmallow frosting, you can pipe it into a baking pan lined with parchment paper, bake at 350 degrees till brown and cracking. Yummy meringue!