Last year, we watched the Barefoot Contessa make chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing and thought it was a brilliant combination. We actually made them for dessert in our first post (scroll down) on the site. They were a big hit, so we made them again this past Sunday.

Although we loved Ina's union of chocolate and peanut butter, we thought her cupcake recipe had too many ingredients. I'm sure the cake part tastes great, but we would have bought sour cream and buttermilk, used half, and eventually thrown the rest away.

Instead, we turned to one of our favorite chocolate cupcake recipes by Gale Gand (BTW, her fudgy frosting is killer). We love the simplicity of the cupcake batter... no eggs, no butter, no mixer required.

We don't make risotto very often, but when we do, Hungry Bear makes a cauliflower and mushroom risotto using sticky rice (glutinous/sweet rice). I love all things made with sticky rice, and this risotto is one of my favorite sweet rice dishes. The best part is that minimal stirring is required to make it.

The recipe is adapted from the Susanna Foo Fresh Inspiration cookbook. For the most part, we like to reduce the butter and fat in a recipe whenever possible. But we also know when not to mess with a good thing, e.g. potato salad, nicely marbled meats and dessert. The main changes Hungry Bear made to the recipe were — removing the butter, swapping out milk for chicken stock, and increasing the quantity of mushrooms and cauliflower. Before anyone boos the removal of the butter (ahem, Jane!), Hungry Bear added extra coconut cream.