Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

June 12, 2014 ~ Emily ~ 1 Comment

Pinterest is my favorite social media network. By far. In an effort to legitimize the time I spend on Pinterest, I’ve committed to be a doer, not just a pinner. I want to be crafty, save money, have fun with my kiddo, and make delicious food, not just pin those things.

Since I need (and love) to feed my family, making that delicious food I’ve been pinning has been an easy way for me to do, not just pin. I have quite the cookbook collection, but when I meal plan at the beginning of the week, I purposefully choose a recipe or two from one of my food boards to include. My favorite is when our small group needs dessert and I have an excuse to scour my cookies and sweets boards.

Though you can control the visual quality of your Pinterest boards, you can’t always control the quality of the finished product. Not everything I’ve pinned has been as good as it’s looked. I recently pinned a boxed cake cheat (how to make a boxed cake taste like a bakery cake) and made a mental note to test the claim ASAP. I got the chance a week or so later when Tim needed treats for a co-worker’s birthday celebration.

I made the suggested additions and substitutions – with a few tweaks of my own – and was super pleased with the results.

I buy cake mix when it’s on sale and usually have one or two in my pantry. I had one left – a Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic White Premium Cake Mix.
I used 4 whole eggs instead of 3.
I didn’t double the amount of oil, but substituted 1/3 cup melted butter.
I used unsweetened almond milk instead of water. (Don’t be weirded out by the brown spots in my milk in the photo below. I dipped my teaspoon in the milk to get the excess vanilla off.)
Amen to the vanilla extract addition.
I had frozen strawberries on hand so I chopped up a few, tossed them in flour, and added them to the batter.
My oven is a bit unreliable, but I made an effort to preheat then reduce. Not sure if that actually happened.

boxed mix - bakery cake

There was still a hint of cake mix flavor (which doesn’t bother me), but the crumb was tighter and the cake itself was sturdier. Overall, this was a great way to amp up a pantry staple in a hurry. Pinterest success!

Beyond the method, these cupcakes were a flavor success, too. I’m a rule follower when it comes to baking, but I’m glad I threw in the strawberries on a whim. The butter makes these cakes quite moist and the fruit just adds a little burst of sweetness. I made a simple vanilla buttercream to top the cupcakes (not pictured), but they look so pretty unfrosted and taste delicious plain.

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes 2

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

Author: Emily C. Gardner

A simple way to amp up boxed cake mix transforms classic white into strawberries and cream perfection.

Ingredients

1 White Cake mix (Yellow or Devils Food would be delicious, too)
4 eggs
1 1/4 cup milk (whatever kind you have on hand)
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 cup frozen strawberries, diced

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Place contents of cake mix in a large mixing bowl. Add eggs, milk, and melted butter. Whisk until no (or very few) lumps remain.
Sprinkle diced strawberries with a tablespoon of flour. Mix until all berries are lightly coated.
Add coated berries and fold into cake batter.
Scoop batter into muffin pan. Fill 3/4 of the way full.
Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees F and bake for 25 minutes.
Allow cupcakes to cool in pan before removing.
Serve plain or with vanilla buttercream frosting.

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camping and the god who goes before us

June 9, 2014 ~ Emily ~ 4 Comments

We were a camping family. Most Summer vacations would find us packed in the mini van, gear and luggage tied to the top, driving to the Redwoods, the Snake River, Yellowstone, or the like.

We were a tent camping family. I was too young to really be involved in the nitty gritty planning involved – kudos to The Parentals for organizing and wrangling us on these adventures – but I wasn’t too young to help set up camp. Campsites needed to be chosen and cleared. Tents needed to be assembled. Firewood needed to be gathered. It was a family affair.

Those things – the deciding, the clearing, the assembling, the gathering – are tedious and, often, tensive. To this day, the anticipation of those tasks remains a hurdle between me and the great outdoors.

I would love to arrive at a campsite where my sleeping bag was already nestled into a constructed tent, my evening coffee was percolating over a crackling fire, and my water containers were full.

the God who goes before us The Israelites were also a camping family. In fact, they were basically professional nomads. I marvel at families who go on extended road trips across the country or around the world, but the Israelites have us all beat. They went on a rather epic forty-year camping trip through the desert. That is a lot of clearing and assembling and gathering and organizing and tearing down and moving. No thanks.

I can imagine the arguments that erupted from so much camping.

“I don’t want to move those rocks. Why can’t we pitch our tent over there…”

“Mattias, you need to find two more bundles of wood before you go play.”

“We’ve been walking for-ev-ver. Are we THERE yet?”

The sad thing is, the Israelites could have avoided that decades long camp fest.

See, the Lord your God has placed the land before you; go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. Do not fear or be dismayed…It is a good land which the Lord our God is about to give us.

Deuteronomy 1:21 & 25

God had already prepared a campsite for them – He had done the hard work of picking the perfect place, clearing it of obstructions, and making sure there was plenty of food and water. But, what God picked wasn’t what the Israelites had imagined. Instead of seeing the bounty and beauty of the land God had prepared, their trust in God’s provision was blinded by the potential threat of giants.

Along with the whole setting up tents thing, the idea of bears invading camp is enough to make me balk at going camping. My husband is an old-hand at camping. I’ve heard about his past experiences and I’ve seen his expertise first hand. If he says our campsite is not at risk, I should have full confidence in his decision.

The same goes for the Israelites. God had been nothing but faithful to His people – liberating them from Egypt, giving them victories over their enemies, supplying food to eat. If He says the land is safe and ready to be occupied, they should have full confidence in His decision.

God promises to go ahead of you and prepare the way. He may not take the route you expected. He may not pick a campsite with the view you wanted. He may not pitch the tent as fast as you had hoped. He may not rent the space for as long as you’d like. But, God goes before us.

The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place.’ “But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go.

Deuteronomy 1:30-33

Let these words of Moses encourage you. He will carry you. He will seek out what is best for you.

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Can I Ask That?

May 27, 2014 ~ Emily ~ 4 Comments

It all started with the apocrypha. My Intro to the Bible course required a Bible with the apocrypha. I hadn’t ever heard of the apocrypha, but since it wasn’t in the NIV Bible I had been using most of my life, I was instantly wary. My expectations were high going in to my first year at a small, Christian college and this wasn’t the start I was picturing.

While my classmates and professor discussed different theories behind the canonical order of the gospels, I sat cringing in my seat. By the time we started reading from the Gospel of Thomas, I had mentally, emotionally, and spiritually checked out. Biblical criticism was a new concept for me and I wasn’t prepared for the inner conflict welling up as we studied various viewpoints on Scripture. I was confident, maybe a little cocky, in what I believed, but I found myself unable to explain many of my convictions in the face of these new concepts.

I hadn’t expected my beliefs to be academically challenged. That’s certainly not what I had been looking for in a “Bible class.” Since I purposefully didn’t take another religion course in college after that, God found other ways to break through my spiritual comfort zone, which, in retrospect, was one of the best things about my college experience. Those four years became a turning point in my spiritual journey. I began to wrestle with my beliefs and make faith decisions for myself. There was less spiritual assumption and more circumstances that required me to articulate my beliefs.

As I continue to follow Christ, I’ve realized that questioning your faith and having your faith questioned is an essential part of spiritual formation. Unfortunately we live in a Christian culture that doesn’t always encourage questions. Especially if you’ve grown up in the church, questions are associated with doubting and woe be unto thee who doubts…

As someone who comes in contact with youth on a regular basis (my husband, Tim, is a youth pastor and I’ve volunteered in middle and high school ministries for the past four years), I want to be someone who embraces and encourages questions.

Tim models this very well in his own life and in ministry. He’s chosen a book for the high school group to walk through on Sunday mornings together that encourages students to explore their faith and ask tough questions. I was challenged to grapple with my convictions about the character of God, women in ministry, and the validity of Scripture while reading through this book.

Despite being geared towards students, I couldn’t help but wish everyone would read Can I Ask That? 8 Hard Questions About God & Faith. Even though it was written as a curriculum for students, the content promotes conversation and critical thinking about common questions asked by believers and non-believers alike.

The authors of Can I Ask That? don’t give answers to the 8 difficult topics covered. They guide readers in discovering their own convictions and help them to articulate the why.

Beyond the important themes and values supporting the content, here are some other reasons I love Can I Ask T hat?:

Design: The graphics, layout, and illustrations are just plain cool.
Format: Each question is approached from five different angles – story, questions, notes, scripture, and dialogue. The stories and dialogue are fictional but so relevant and relatable. I’m not too old to know the authors have taken an accurate pulse on the current generation.
Conversation: You can just tell Can I Ask That? was created and crafted to promote conversation. The authors provide tips for promoting healthy dialogue (in the leader guide) and the question sections are designed like conversation bubbles. Readers may not recognize the hints, but this book is filled with the subtle message to get talking!

Can I Ask That? would be an awesome book to go through as a family, too. I’m excited to be part of the conversations we will have on Sunday mornings with our high school group this Summer and I’m even more excited (and somewhat terrified) about having these conversations with James as he grows.

I never want to be too old or too comfortable in my faith to ask questions. Can I Ask That? is a great place to start.

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are you addicted to blogging porn?

May 22, 2014 ~ Emily ~ 18 Comments

are you addicted to blogging porn You flip open your computer with innocent intentions. You’ll only spend a few minutes here and there before you get down to business. But a few clicks later and your hooked. Again. You wonder how things got this out of hand, how you could let yourself waste so much time doing something you know you shouldn’t.

It’s seductive. It’s destructive. It’s blogging porn.

Blogging porn is voyeuristically viewing how other bloggers write, design, and monetize, fantasizing about their careers, lives, and circumstances, thus, avoiding the real work and goals of your own internet space. Blogging porn is hurting bloggers everywhere, killing creativity, stifling individuality, and sabotaging productivity.

We are quick to recognize how sexual pornography can ruin lives, but do we realize other forms of porn exist and have related negative effects? Consider some of the problems with actual pornography and you’ll begin to see why blogging porn is a similarly slippery slope.

5 dangers of blogging porn

Porn damages relationships. It hurts both the user and the people around them, not only in the present, but in the future as well. Scanning the internet, endlessly comparing yourself to others, leads to jealousy. You covet the platform, the design, the writing ability and soon you are too consumed with envy over what they have and you don’t that your friendship dwindles. Existing relationships are tainted and future relationships are stopped before they have a chance to blossom.

Porn promotes unrealistic expectations. It capitalizes on out-of-the-ordinary (often digitally enhanced) people doing out-of-the-ordinary things that most real people don’t do. Similarly, blogging porn pits your skills against industry leaders who have teams working behind the scenes, who blog full-time, who are exceptionally gifted with talent and resources. The average blogger can’t dish out thousands for a stellar design or devote hours to creating viral content. Comparing your blog to the top 1% of bloggers will leave you dissatisfied with reality.

Porn is distracting. The internet has made pornography easily available to the masses at any time of day or night. Blogs are equally accessible. How many of us have allowed a quick “inspect element” turn into hours of drooling over other blogs’ theme and social media icons? The time spent oogling other blogs and judging that post could be spent investing in our own blog.

Porn cheapens the real deal. Something is always lost in translation when you endlessly consume the unrealistic. What was once fun, meaningful, and fulfilling is left wanting because you’ve been inundated with a deceptive standard. However small or amateur your blogging efforts, they are worthwhile because they come from your heart and your passions (I hope!). They are the real deal. Don’t let blogging porn diminish the work you do and the effort you put forth.

Porn leads to more, more, more. It’s never enough. The pornography vortex redefines success. You can’t be satisfied with what you have – you need to have a podcast or an online course or an ebook. Those things often come at the expense of time and energy you should be expending elsewhere. And for what end? Another platform for you to compare to others?

I’ve fallen into this trap too many times. I’ve let hours go by as I Iooked and coveted. Repeat. My envy has driven wedges between friendships and kept me from connecting with others. I’ve let blogging porn make blogging more of a commodity than a ministry.

I don’t think you need to delete your feed reader or stop looking at blogs for ideas and inspiration, but blogging pornography is a real danger if you let those practices consume your time and energy.

Blogging is hard work; but it can have a real impact and build real relationships. Don’t let blogging porn cheapen your work and steal your blogging joy.

photo credit: AhmadHashim & Ivana Vasilj via photopin cc

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