Adventures with Amy and its Everyone's Birthday

Last night I had a fabulous evening with Amy over at Fruit Salad Life that was filled with shopping (both loehmans AND TJMaxx) grocery shopping (my favorite kind), making dinner, baking, and just general girl time hangs.   Ever since Amy moved to NYC I have been overjoyed! She has the best outlook on life and the most upbeat and contagiously happy personality. Last night's adventure was nothing short of wonderful. 


We spent most of the day online gchatting about our evening plans.  As Amy said, we are both planners which allows us to organize very fun activities on our busy busy schedules.  We decided that we could do a little shopping.  Amy was in desperate need for new swim suit bottoms- yay summer!  We hit up Loehmans, which obviously meant Jessica bought a new shirt.  Amy grabbed a shirt and a fun pair of swim suit bottoms that were a very exciting pattern (very Amy!).  On our walk over to Trader Joes (obsession!), Amy spotted TJMaxx which, of course, meant we were going in.  A full swim suit, swim suit bottoms and a cool reusable coffee mug later, we were off to Trader Joe's to get our dinner.  We had decided earlier in the day that we were going to cook dinner because we both want to avoid the going-out-to-dinner-ever-night disease that many people in the city catch.  I had chicken so we decided to grab some sweet potatoes for sweet potato fries and last minute purchased some brussel sprouts! nom nom nom.


Amy whipped us up a delicious meal:

 Sweet Potato Fries:

Baked Brussel Sprouts.


These of course accompanied some protein.  Grilled chicken with melted cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel thing. It was phenomenal.


If you are looking for recipes for the sprouts, head over to Amy's blog and check it out!


After dinner, baking was done, Birthday Cupcakes were made!   Today is a big birthday day for a lot of this girls friends. Therefore, BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT TIME:


HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEVON!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDIE!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAR!


In honor of everyone's birthday I decided to make birthday fun cupcakes for Lisa who lives in NYC too! I am going to surprise her at work and drop them off... shhh dont tell her :)


This recipe was adapted from about a bajillion things (one of which is this go to Weight Watchers recipe) so I will just lay out the recipe for you. 


Easy Peasy Recipe for Birthday Funfetti Cupcakes.


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 egg whites

3/4 cup fat free vanilla greek yogurt

1/4 cup fat free vanilla yogurt

1/4 cup fat free skim milk

1/3 cup sprinkles

Steps:

1) Preheat oven to 350°F.

2) In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt 

3) In a separate bowl, combine butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy with an electric mixer

4) Add eggs and yogurt to the wet mixture and mix until well-combined with an electric mixer

5) Alternating between the flour mixture and milk, add to the wet mixture while the electric mixer continues to run until batter is fully blended

6) Blend in sprinkles

7) Spoon batter into muffin tins that have been pam-ed and lined. Each muffin should be about 3/4s full.

8) Bake until tops are slightly golden about 18 to 23 minutes. 

9) Let cupcakes cool

10) Spread on frosting. (This time I used some store bought frosting as I am going out of town this weekend and didn't want to make a huge batch of frosting)

These turned out very well. I may or may not have had 1, or 2.  Perfect dessert from Amy and my amazing meal!


And now they are all packaged up to take to Lisa at work :) Hope she is surprised!

Not going to Starfabulously Rate these as they are very similar to the birthday cupcakes made for roommate in early May

Happy Birthday Everyone!