Brothers…

As I was going through some of my ses­sions over the past year or two and clean­ing out old files, I noticed I had quite a few ses­sions with broth­ers. I love sib­ling pho­tos (I have three sis­ters, 2 step-sisters, and 2 step-brothers myself!) Here are a few of my favorite pho­tos I’ve taken of broth­ers. My favorite is the last photo — it was towards the end of the ses­sion and they wanted to play in the mud pud­dle so I thought “why not?”. I clicked the shut­ter just as the youngest acci­den­tally flicked mud on his older brother!

Recipe: Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes {Perfect for Valentine’s Day!}

I love cup­cakes and I love the choco­late and rasp­berry fla­vor combo, so I couldn’t wait to try this recipe for choco­late rasp­berry cup­cakes. The cake base for this recipe is ten­der and moist.  I’ve tried dif­fer­ent choco­late cup­cake bases and this is by far my favorite.  It will be my “go-to” choco­late cup­cake base from now on.  The base is filled with a chocolate-raspberry ganache and then topped off with a chocolate-raspberry frost­ing. I have to warn you that there is a LOT of ganache left over. It makes a cou­ple of cups of ganache and don’t think I used even one quar­ter of it to fill my cup­cakes. I plan on mak­ing these cup­cakes again this week for a party, so I kind of liked that there was ganache left over. It would also be won­der­ful over vanilla ice cream! How­ever, if you don’t want a lot of left­over ganache I would sug­gest cut­ting that part of the recipe in half.

These cup­cakes are won­der­ful and per­fect for Valentine’s Day!

Chocolate-Raspberry Cup­cakes

Serv­ings: 30 cupcakes

Ingre­di­ents:

Cup­cakes:

3 ounces semi­sweet choco­late chips

1 and 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee

3 cups sugar

2 and 1/2 cups flour

1 and 1/2 cup cocoa powder

2 tea­spoons bak­ing soda

3/4 tea­spoons bak­ing powder

1 and 1/4 tea­spoons salt

3 eggs

3/4 cup veg­etable oil

1 and 1/2 cups buttermilk

3/4 tea­spoon vanilla

Chocolate-Raspberry Ganache:

18 ounces bit­ter­sweet choco­late, chopped (or chips)

2 and 1/4 cup whip­ping cream

2 table­spoons seed­less rasp­berry jam

Frost­ing:

1 pound semi­sweet choco­late chips

1 and 1/3 cups sour cream

6 table­spoons seed­less rasp­berry jam

1/4 cup light corn syrup

2 tea­spoons vanilla

3 table­spoons unsalted but­ter, at room temperature

Gar­nish: fresh raspberries

Direc­tions:

1. For the cup­cakes: Pre­heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Line cup­cakes pans with paper liners.

3. Place the choco­late chips in a medium bowl and care­fully pour the hot cof­fee over the choco­late; let sit for about 1 minute. Whisk until smooth; set aside.

4. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa pow­der, bask­ing soda, bak­ing pow­der, and salt.

5. With a stand or hand mixer, beat the eggs on medium-high speed until smooth, about 2 minutes.

6. Reduce the speed to medium-low and slowly add the veg­etable oil, but­ter­milk, vanilla, and melted chocolate.

7. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingre­di­ents, mix­ing until com­bined, scrap­ing down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

8. Divide the bat­ter among lin­ers and bake until a tester inserted into the cen­ter comes out clean, about 18–20 minutes.

9. For the chocolate-raspberry ganache: Place the bit­ter­sweet choco­late in a bowl.

10. In a small saucepan over medium heat on the stove, gen­tly bring the cream to a slight boil.

11. Remove the cream from the heat and pour over the bit­ter­sweet choco­late; let sit for about one minute, then whisk until smooth.

12. Add the rasp­berry jam to the chocolate/cream mix­ture and whisk until smooth.

13. Refrig­er­ate until ready to use.

14. For the frost­ing: In a heat­proof bowl set over sim­mer­ing water, melt the choco­late chips; stir until smooth. Let cool to room temperature.

15. Once cooled to room tem­per­a­ture, add the sour cream, rasp­berry jam, corn syrup, and vanilla, and beat (using your stand mixer or a hand mixer) until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

16. Add the but­ter to the mix­ture and beat until thor­oughly com­bined. Set aside until ready to use.

17. To assem­ble the cup­cakes: Once the cup­cakes are com­pletely cooled, gen­tly cut out a small hole in the cen­ter top of each cup­cake. Using a pip­ing bag or a small spoon, gen­tly place a tea­spoon or two of the ganache into the cen­ter of each cup­cake. Pipe your frost­ing, as desired, onto the tops of each cup­cake. Gar­nish with fresh raspberries.

Source: Slightly adapted from The Curvy Car­rot (adapted from var­i­ous other sources includ­ing Annie’s Eats, Smit­ten Kitchen, Gourmet & Bon Appétit magazines.)

Kephart Family Photos

I love when clients ask me to take pho­tos at their home. It’s always a lit­tle bit of a chal­lenge for me because I never know what the light­ing will be like, what back­grounds will be avail­able, etc. It is also really fun because I know these pho­tos will be unique and very spe­cial to the fam­ily because they are so per­son­al­ized. I was lucky this day because we had an old barn as a great back­drop plus shaded woods in the backyard!

Hope for the New Year

Due to my daughter’s ill­ness I am not sched­ul­ing any por­trait ses­sions until sum­mer. My 6-year old daugh­ter Emily has leukemia and will be under­go­ing a bone mar­row trans­plant in February. The new year was going to bring a lot of changes to KWP — it was going to be an excit­ing year. I hope it still will be but it will be delayed until the sec­ond half of 2012! Until I am sched­ul­ing and post­ing new ses­sions again, I plan to post my favorite pho­tos from years past. I also plan to share my favorite pho­tos of Emily.

If you would like to fol­low our jour­ney you can do so here: http://www.facebook.com/emilybrookewhitehead

and here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/emilywhitehead

We are hop­ing for a health­ier, happy new year!

Happy 2012!

Tom, Kari, Emily & Lucy