As you may know my wife works for a non-for-profit and last weekshe had an appreciation event for her volunteers. I volunteered to make cupcakes. After some trial and error I came up with a recipe that is a hybrid of two others. The first is a yellow cake recipe from Taste of home . The recipe can be found here https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/old-fashioned-yellow-cake/print The second is a cupcake recipe that can be found here. https://noopurskitchen.com/2017/01/11/vanilla-cupcake/

Here is the resulting hybrid recipe. I listed amounts for 8 cupcakes but it can easliy be upscaled for more. If you muliply the amounts by 3 you will get the same amount as a box cake mix.

Ingredients

• 1/6 cup Butter
• 1/6 Cup Oil
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup 2% milk
• Possible Variations to add
• 2 TablespoonCocoa Powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Mint Extract

• 1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Line a 12-muffin tray with 8 cupcake liners.
• 2. In a bowl, sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
• 3. Add the butter and mix till you get a crumbly texture.
• 4. In a separate bowl, add the milk, oil, vanilla and egg and mix slightly.
• 5. Add the liquid mixture to the dry slowly and mix until well combined.
• 6. Scrape the bowl once and mix again for about 30 seconds.
• 7. Using an ice-cream scoop or 2 spoons, scoop the batter equally into the tray. They should fill a little more than half.
• 8. Bake the cupcakes for about 15-18 minutes till the skewer inserted comes out clean.
• 9. Remove from the pan and let them cool completely on a wire rack.
• 10. Serve them with a frosting of your choice – I frosted them with buttercream.
• 11. These should be stored at room temperature in an air-tight container. They taste best the day they are made.

Last night I cooked my first paella. To the purist it was not really paella but it was a good first attempt.

I used Food Wishes' Sausage and Shrimp Paella recipe. It turned out really well. I did one minor change and one major change.

The minor change was I used fresh Andouille sausage and left it in link form rather than slicing it.

The major change was I did not have any saffron. I used a substitution suggested by The Spruce Website. For every 1/4 teaspoon of saffron I used 1/8 teaspoon of tumeric plus 1/2 teaspoon of paprika. While I can not speak to how authentic the taste was, the taste was very good.

While not an authentic paella my wife loved it and is that not the true measure of a recipe?

Sometimes when you are working at home you just need a brownie. I came across this brownie recipe and it came out pretty good.

I did not use the original recipe but the modified recipe in the comments. Here is a list of the changes I used from the comments.

1. Decrease the cocoa powder to 3/4 cup.
2. Decrease the sugar to 1 1/2 cup.
3. Increase the butter to 3/4 cup.
4. Mix the wet ingredients together.
5. Mix the dry ingredients together.
6. Combine wet and dry ingredients.

I would also suggest two other modifications.

1. Use a smaller pan than a 9 x 13. I would use a 9 x 9.
2. Watch your time. Your brownies my not take the full 30 minutes. Mine were done in about 20 minutes.

I liked this recipe for several reasons. First, it makes a chewy brownie which I like better. Also, the recipe is quick, easy, and uses standard pantry ingredients. Another plus is it just uses cocoa powder so no need to melt chocolate chips.