Graduation cup cakes

I have a group of friends that have been friends now for over 18 years and we call our selves "The Village".  This comes from the saying it takes a village to raise a child. When we first were connecting our children were very young, and as all parents, we were doing the best we could and appreciated any help we could get in maintaining our sanity.  Our children grew up in what was almost an extended family of cousins with second and third mothers.  I am proud to say that I am identified as a family member one these now grown children's face books.

This June the youngest of the "Village" children graduated from high school, it hardly seems possible that all those sometimes wild children have now grown.  Some have fledged, left home and are working full time making their own way, while many are still testing their wings going to college and University, trying to decide what it is they want to do with their lives.

With each June came new graduates and for each graduate or graduates we hold a Village party to celebrate their safe arrival to adulthood. This year was the last of such celebrations so a little nostalgic.

Nancy and I had offered to make graduation cupcakes for the party and so with the help of the Internet we came up with the design for the topping.  The base of the mortar board is a mini peanut butter cup and so I decided to make chocolate, chocolate chip cup cake with peanut butter icing. I found this recipe on food.com and changed it just a little, I made double the recipe which made about 50 cup cakes, but I have given ingredients for a single batch.


2 1/2 cups white flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons of cocoa
2/3 cup butter, at room temperature
1  cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Mix all the dry ingredients together

satay with peanut sauce

I love satay with peanut sauce, but most sauce recipes call for using peanut butter, I am sure that they do not use peanut butter in Thailand.  Any way I searched on the Internet and combining several different recipes I came up with this, which though it was delicious, was really an accompaniment rather than a sauce.  But this could have been because I made it in my mini chopper which is not very powerful and therefore did not pulverise the peanuts in to a paste.

1/2 onion finely chopped
1 garlic clove sliced
1 inch of ginger grated
1 tablespoon of oil
1 red Thai chili pepper chopped
1 cup of roasted peanuts
juice of one lime
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
handful of cilantro
2 tablespoons of water.

Cook the onion garlic ginger and chili pepper in the oil until softened.

Add this along with the remaining ingredients into a food processor or mini chopper.