QueenLeilani

Whisper Challenge

11:40 AM

My best friend and I did a video tag that has been going around called the "Whisper Challenge" - have you tried it? It is so much fun!

Basically, the rules of the game is that one person will wear headphones with music playing loud and has to guess what the other person is saying. My best friend's favorite color is pink, so we were using her daughter's rhinestone Hello Kitty headphones lol. Let me tell you...it looks much easier than it is. Man was it hard! But it was so much fun! It's a perfect game to do with kids, family and friends. I hope you enjoy watching as much as we enjoyed making fools of ourselves. Haha

Items shown in this video:

Pink Hello Kitty Bejeweled / Rhinestone Headphones

All About Arlene

Kitchenaid Mixer

9:49 AM

I hope you guys are enjoy your new years so far! Wow it feels like 2014 just passed us by so fast...like where did the year go? It felt like we just celebrated New Years for 2014 not too long ago! I hope you guys enjoyed the holidays and are on a good start 2015.

As for me, after years of wishing...I finally received for Christmas a KitchenAid Mixer 5QT. Yay!! I've been wanting this bad boy for years but it's so darn expensive. I specifically wanted the one with the clear bowl for video purposes. Since I film baking tutorials for my YouTube channel, I wanted what I made to be visible. It usually runs between $250-$500 depending on the version you get. But they had a great sale at Costco for $229 until Jan 18, 2015... so if you ever consider getting one, consider getting it there.

So the first thing I wanted to make with my mixer was bread. But not just any bread. Challah bread! According to Wikipedia, it's a special Jewish braided bread eaten on Sabbath and Holidays. My friend who is Jewish taught me how to make it. I had never heard of Challah bread before until I moved to New York and when I took my first bite I was completely hooked. I felt like I was living under a rock my entire life for not discovering this bread sooner. So delish! Stay tuned for the video tutorial on how to make this - and if you're not subscribed to my YouTube channel, just a heads up, I always post the tutorial on my YouTube first before I post it on my blog. Until next time, see you on my next post. =)

All About Arlene

Disney FROZEN Cupcakes! - Super Easy Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting!

9:30 PM

Hey Guys!!

So my friend Sirin's daughter, Maia just had her birthday and she is absolutely OBSESSED with the new Disney movie, Frozen!

All I hear her talk about is....

"Frozen this...Frozen that....

Can you do my hair like Elsa?

Do you want to watch Frozen with me?

Do you want to build a snowman?"

Geez!

Talk about excitement! haha. I had to watch the movie myself to find out what all the excitement was.

I do have to admit. I cried ~~like a baby~~. Don't judge me. So hey.... I thought it was a perfect opportunity to surprise Maia and make her these Frozen themed cupcakes. I figured I'd record the process while doing so. I hope you guys like it. If you have been a follower of mine, then you might have already seen my 3 tier cake that I made her for her past birthday. If you missed it, then you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zq6C0SRyDQ

As far as for the cupcakes goes.....can we just take a moment and just talk about how excited I am to share this with you. I've made so many different versions of Vanilla Cupcakes out there...but I must admit. This is my all time favorite. I had to do some tweaking to find what worked best for me by making some adjustments, but I think i finally got it! The sour cream works wonders and it really does help make the cupcake super moist and fluffy. I find that it's important to have an oven thermometer to make sure your oven reads the correct temperature...since it can really make or break your recipe. Also, the trick to a perfect cupcake is...after you finish baking your cupcakes...you don't want to leave it in the muffin pan to cool because it can continue to bake and become dry. So once they finish baking, immediately take them out of the pan and let them cool on a wire rack. The easiest way to take them out of the muffin pan when they are still hot is I drape a kitchen towel over the cupcakes....and flip the entire pan upside down allowing the cupcakes to gently fall into the towel. While they are upside down, I just transfer them to a wire rack. Don't worry about any indentations, because if you baked this right, the cupcake should spring back to form.

As far as the frosting goes... I hate it when the frosting is just too darn sweet that it just overpowers the entire flavor of the cupcake. The frosting is suppose to compliment the cupcake, not overpower it. For this reason exactly is why I add just a pinch of salt to the frosting. It's not entirely noticeable that it tastes "salty". It just helps to tone down the sweetness and give it a balance. If you on the other hand, loves the sweetness, by all means, leave the salt out.

Ok, on with the recipe...

Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting

(12-14 cupcakes)

Vanilla Cupcake Ingredients

1/4 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons of vanilla extract (use the real vanilla, the the imitation)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1/3 cup of sour cream

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour (sifted)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2/3 cup whole milk.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit

2. Beat the butter and sugar till crumbly.

3. Add the vanilla, oil, eggs and sour cream till combined.

4. Slowly sift in all purpose flour, add salt, baking soda and baking powder.

5. Mix with a spatula while slowly stirring in the milk.

6. After incorporated, you can mix it with your hand mixer till smooth.

7. If you prefer the classic white vanilla cake, then skip to steps 8-9 and transfer to a cupcake lined muffin pan, proceed to step 10.

8. Evenly divide the batter in 3 separate bowls and tint each bowl a different shade of blue.

9. Take a spoon, and scoop 2 spoons of batter into cupcake lined muffin pan, starting with the darkest color first....then repeating the same steps for the medium blue, layering it over the darkest color.....then layering the lightest color on top.

10. Bake for 15 min, 350 degrees

11. Remove immediately from the muffin pan once baked to prevent over baking and let them cool on a wire rack.

Buttercream Frosting Ingredients

1/4 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

1/2 cup crisco (room temperature)

1 tsp vanilla

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar (confectioner's sugar)

1/4 cup whole milk

Pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Blend the butter and crisco

2. Mix in vanilla

3. Slowly mix in sugar, salt and milk

4. Texture should be thick and should hang on to the spatula

5. Start piping!!!

Note: If you are in a warmer area and find that your frosting is still a bit soft, easy trick to fix this is to let it sit in your refrigerator for 15-20 minutes to allow the butter and crisco to solidify a bit to make it easy to work with.

List of items I'm using in the video:

Elsa Miniature Frozen Doll

Camera that I am using

All About Arlene

Blueberry Peach Galette

9:30 AM

Hey guys! So it's finally a New Year!! Happy 2014!! I can't believe how fast the time has flew by. Well here is my last video from 2013, a Blueberry Peach Galette that I made with my family. Things have been crazy on my end lately. I have been working on some new content for my YouTube channel and also been busy with something else that I will announce shortly. Even though it's been hectic, i'm enjoying every single moment of it. So if you're a follower on my blog or on my YouTube channel, Instagram, Twitter, or heck...all of them....then you will know about it soon. It's funny how at first I used to think that people never really read my blog since my follow count wasn't exactly anything to brag about. But it was when I don't post....I get messages from people who say "hey, you haven't posted?" or "hey, when are you posting your next video?" or when people approach me on the street and say "hey, I watch your videos!" that I realized that wow....people are actually reading this thing and watching my videos! Ha! They just don't have a blog themselves to subscribe to it or a YouTube channel to subscribe to my videos, and so forth. So thanks for reaching out to me and approaching me. I love it when I meet my followers. Well, until my next post....stay warm (it's snowing here in New York)....and I'll talk to you on my next post.

xoxo,

Arlene

All About Arlene

MULAN - Disney Princess Collab!

7:53 AM

So Halloween came and gone so fast it seems! I did a Disney Princess Collaboration with a few of my friends on YouTube. We all did a look inspired by one of the Princesses and I chose MULAN. It's one of my favorite Disney movies along with Little Mermaid. I was actually feeling very sick when I initially filmed this and I still am sick as I write this with a fever of 103 degrees. Boo! This flu bug has been floating around during this drastic weather change and I've been trying to avoid it as much as possible. But it came around the hidden corner, jumped out at me and said "Tag you're it!' Haha. So here we are. Well I hope you like my Disney look and hope you enjoy watching my video as much as I enjoyed making it.

xoxo,

Arlene

If you can see the video, click here to view.

Older
Stories

Whisper Challenge

Kitchenaid Mixer

Disney FROZEN Cupcakes! - Super Easy Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting!

Blueberry Peach Galette

MULAN - Disney Princess Collab!

LinkWithin

Search This Blog

Hi there, I'm Arlene!

Social Media

SUBSCRIBE

My YouTube Channel

Labels

Blog Archive

Popular Posts

Translate

Social Media