Prickly Pear Cupcakes

In my plan for the week, I actually didn't intend to make Prickly Pear cupcakes, or much by way of desserts. But things change. 

For a few weeks I'd casually mention to Darrow that if he'd use the toilet I'd make him any treat he wanted. He'd say "Nope!" or "No, thank you." and we'd leave it at that. Well yesterday it happened and he promptly remembered the promise of treats and cupcakes were the prize of choice. So I got to looking for Prickly Pear cupcakes (because he doesn't have a preference yet). 

I almost just did a substitute in a cake mix like I did for the waffles, but wanted to find something that might have a stronger Prickly Pear flavor. Through Pinterest I found a great recipe by Cupcake Project. It looked like it'd have good flavor and would be very doable. And it was! It was easy to put together and baked up beautifully. I got 23 cupcakes out of my batch. Weird. But oh well. 

But then it came time for the frosting. I didn't wan to make the prickly pear lemon bars to blend into the frosting that she had, and it sounded like there wouldn't be much prickly pear flavor, so I went on the hunt for a frosting that would do the flavor justice. 

In my searching, I remembered reading about a flour frosting, so I searched it and found an easy recipe quickly. It involved combining flour and milk, and cooking until you get a thick batter before adding vanilla, butter, and sugar. With the recipe calling for 2 cups of milk, I got curious if I could substitute the prickly pear juice for the milk in the recipe. I wanted to use as much juice as possible in the recipe, and this one fit that bill. I figured it was worth a try!

And it worked!! That was the best frosting I've ever had. Light, but so totally yummy! The substitution worked perfectly! I only did a half batch because a full batch covered 3 dozen cupcakes and I didn't need that much frosting.

Now, I'm not an expert frosting applicator. So my frosting looks meh...but we weren't going for pretty, we were going for yummy! Taste before beauty!

So they baked fine, and the frosting held together. But if it doesn't taste good, what's the point?

Luckily these taste great! There is a subtle fruity flavor without being truly fruity. Great description there, huh? The frosting was light, fluffy, and had the perfect flavor without tasting like sugar! It was sweet, but not overwhelmingly so like many frostings. The cupcake was moist and yummy while being fluffy and cohesive. These are definitely some new favorites!!

So there it is! Prickly Pear recipe test #2 done! And it was a success! 

Prickly Pear Waffles

The first food I decided to try out for Prickly Pear week was Prickly Pear Waffles! I did a quick search online for a recipe and didn't see one come up, so I decided to just go for it and see how it came out! 

I thought about going completely from scratch, but then I decided with the lazy and easy route. Krusteaz mix for the win!! We actually really like the Krusteaz mix pretty good. It's yummy on its own and easy to tweak if you want something more. 

So I did the basic recipe, just substituting Prickly Pear juice for the water. 

It mixed up nicely and looked like normal batter, only prettier because of the natural color of the prickly pear!

But we all know that something can look good and taste bad. And we still had the cooking to do. I was worried that somehow the juice would change the consistency and that it'd crumble or stick to the waffle iron bad.

It was a slightly thicker batter than normal but not by much so I left it thicker, scooped some onto the waffled iron, and crossed my fingers.

This is where I left you all off on the Instagram Story. What's your guess...fail or yummy goodness?

Did you guess? 

Okay...here were the results:

Beautiful pink waffles that held together perfectly (better than normal waffles in fact)! They were a little more dense than a normal waffle, but I like that. I served Darrow's to him with regular maple syrup and that tasted good. The waffles sucked up all the syrup faster than normal. If you've had a whole wheat pancake or waffle, think of that syrup suction action! It was the same.

The flavor of the waffle wasn't as strong as I'd hoped, but it was definitely different from a normal waffle. It had a slightly sweet after flavor, and an almost watermelony taste to it. That's the closest I can describe it. But it was good! After that bite of Darrow's I knew I needed to get me a plate made up!

But then I got to thinking. This needed a different flavor of syrup to complement it better. Something less sweet and more subtle. So I found a vanilla pudding sauce by This Grandma is Fun on Pinterest (where else!) and whipped that up. I discovered I didn't have any corn starch though, so took a risk and substituted flour. It worked! And it was the PERFECT flavor combination with the prickly pear waffle. Yummy yummy!!

Prickly Pear Recipe #1: Success!! We will be having these again! P