Halloween

Ah, Halloween. Such a great holiday on it's own, on top of kicking off the Holiday Season.

The holiday weekend kicked off with my work party. I love potlucks where people take great pride in what they bring. You have never seen so much food in your life! I made a giant candy corn cupcake cake for my contribution.



We started the holiday proper with the annual Pumpkin run, and reminisced about the previous years when 3.1 miles seemed like crossing a continent. Even though a 5k has become a "light" run for me these days, I didn't feel so great that morning. I still did extremely well, but I missed my PR and 3rd place in my age division by five seconds. Ouch.

In fact, I'm sort of embarrassed about it. First, that I didn't keep up my continuous improvement. And then second, that I was upset about my time at all. Four years ago, breaking 30 minutes was my ultimate running goal. This year I did 27:53. The lesson here is to make this motivate me to work harder for next year!

Afterward, we had some celebratory pumpkin spice lattes and finished setting up the house for wine and Halloween candy tasting. It was a spur of the moment idea, and it came out well!


Even though the day was supposed to be about candy, I made a veggie platter and bruschetta. I'm happy to say while there was candy left over, the healthy stuff was gone! I have such smart friends. I also made popcorn balls and apple chips, although these were both fails. The apple chips were in the oven nearly all day, and never quite got crispy. The popcorn balls turned into a solid ball when I put them in a bowl; I didn't have a candy thermometer to check the temperature. But I'm sure these will appear in the future - they were much easier to make than anticipated!

When it got dark, we handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. My favorites were the under-five set; you can immediately tell they don't know what's going on yet, and they're not sure if they want to be a part of it. Too cute! We gave out candy until we ran out, except I discovered another two bags today! Those will have to go to the Operation Gratitude drive.

I used leftover cake batter from the cupcake cake to send candy corn cupcakes to work with the husband. From what I hear, they went over pretty well. And they do look rather cute, if I do say so myself.


I hope your Halloween was fun, happy, and safe! Now, on to Thanksgiving. I can't wait!

Cherpumple

Alright. This is the story of the Cherpumple.

It started with a link on my facebook page. That my husband happened to see and declare the most awesome thing he had ever seen. I saw it on a couple of cooking blogs, too; apparently it was a short-lived meem (although now it seems to have broadened into a bake-something-in-a-cake meem).

Here's the video. It's actually funny, even if you're not interested in cooking.



Here's the thing: I kind of laughed, and that was it. People don't seriously make this, do they?? Ah, but they do make cherpumples.

Husband was serious. Friend was serious. Suddenly a cherpumple was about to be born.

Basically, a cherpumple is three pies baked into three cakes. In this case, an cherry pie baked in a chocolate cake, a pumpkin pie baked in a spice cake, and an apple pie baked in a yellow cake.

In other words, a logistical nightmare on the proportions of cooking Thanksgiving dinner in one day.

Let's start with the supplies. Three cakes, three pies, and enough cream cheese frosting to last through Christmas. If you were wondering, here's proof cakes are better than pies: a pie costs around $5-6 to make, but you can totally make a cake for $3-4. I did manage to get a pre-baked apple pie from the bakery, but the cherry and pumpkin had to be baked. I got frozen pie crusts and canned filling. What, it's going inside a cake. No points for pretty.

Pie issues: the frozen crusts were underwhelming. They didn't come with a top for the cherry pie, but it doesn't really matter. They take an hour to bake. And, they're nine inches. My largest cake pan is nine inches. Leaving no margin for error dumping the pie in between layers of cake batter.



That, times three.

Cake issues: they took forever to bake. We used all of the cake batter, not 75% of it. Apparently the heat doesn't go through the pie very well, so it was jiggly on top in a circle over the pie. Each cake ended up taking around an hour to bake.

Six hours later ...


Yes. SIX HOURS.


This monstrosity was in the refrigerator. We kind of rushed through stacking and frosting because after six hours you just want to eat some cake! Refrigerating helped it cool and set and stop tilting over.

After a week, a third is gone, a little slice is still in the refrigerator, and half is frozen. It's good, but only so good. At this point you could safely say baking a cherpumple should be an Olympic event.

Would I make one again? No. Not unless someone paid me, and it was for a group of ten or more people. I would consider making a single layer, though. That is way more manageable, and still funny.

Birthday Cupcakes

Gratuitous cupcake shot!!


These were for my coworker's birthday. I know she likes chocolate and ... chocolate. The sprinkles were a risk I was willing to take.


Who doesn't like sprinkles?

Chunky Monkey Cupcakes

Banana. Peanut butter. Chocolate.

Our neighbor gave us this book, the Cake Mix Doctor. I say us, because seriously, do you think the mister doesn't benefit? It's a great book, if you want/need a souped up dessert. The good doctor has a website, too.

And in this case, gave me the right proportions to turn a plain white cake mix into banana cupcakes!

There wasn't too much banana called for in the recipe. But believe me, they were certainly banana-y.

As for frosting, I made peanut butter frosting with some leftover chocolate chips. Which came out looking like cookie dough, confusing everyone at the event. Oh well. I didn't hear any complaints.

Ice Cream & Cake

For his birthday, my lovely husband likes ice cream cake. He's a summer birthday, just about the time of year that ice cream is necessary.

A couple of years ago, I spent an amazing amount of money on a ridiculously small ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. The girl at the counter kindly offered to write on it, but who knows where the writing would have gone, and how small it would need to be!

I was kind of sour on the whole thing. (At the time I did not know that Albertson's sells them, but there are only two of us anyway so a cake is bound to last.)

Then Real Simple comes along with blah blah making an ice cream cake is so easy! And you know what? It is. And it only cost around $8, all things considered.

Step 1: Bake the cake. I used a regular chocolate mix in my 9" springform pan. The springform is key, because it makes for easy assembly.

Step 2: When the cake is cool, unhinge the cake and split it. Take off the top half, and rehinge the pan around the bottom half.

Step 3: Set some ice cream out to soften. Spread it to the edges of the pan on the bottom half of the cake. You might want to consider melting a light layer of chocolate on the bottom half of the cake so it doesn't get soggy while you're adding the ice cream, but it's not really necessary. I used almost a whole carton of Breyer's chocolate, minus an enormous glop on the floor. Whoops.

Step 4: Drop the top half of the cake back in, and throw the whole thing in the freezer. No need to cover it, although you might want to later if it's going to be a while.

Step 5: Frost the cake however you see fit. I just did the top with some plain buttercream so I could leave the sides of the pan on in the freezer.


A funny thing to notice: the cake shrinks way more than the ice cream will in the freezer. You could always cover that up with frosting. Don't worry; the cake and frosting doesn't get weird when it's frozen.


I'm not a big fan of ice cream cake. I don't like the ice cream melting and making the cake all soggy. But it's honestly just like Baskin Robbins. So plan ahead and experiment with your own ice cream cake.

Angel Food Cake

For one of my coworker's birthday this year, I decided to make an angel food cake. I reeeeally wanted to make one.

In hindsight, I hardly make angel food, because I've never really liked it. Give me chocolate anything any day.

Did you know it takes nine egg whites to make it from scratch? Nine egg whites, some sugar and flour to make a bowl full of pretty white fluff.


Getting these out of the pan seems to be a little tricky. By the way, covering up a mess with sticky vanilla glaze doesn't make it less of a mess. I felt bad taking it in, because the cakes at the store are all smooth and lovely looking.


No one at work seemed to mind.

You might ask, "but what do you do with the nine egg yolks?" Silly question.

Gratuitous creme brulee shot!!

Pumpkin Cake

Splenda's website has a wealth of healthy recipes. And, I'm kind of a Splenda fan. Probably only because it dissolves fast in my coffee, and doesn't make nasty coffee-sugar sludge at the bottom.

Here's what you do with an extra can of pumpkin, aging walnuts, and two giant bags of Splenda: pumpkin cake.



It's really more of a pie.


I did use some regular sugar, but here's an important lesson: baked goods made with Splenda will not rise. Whatever sugar does, Splenda (regular, not the type especially for baking) does not.

Although, I made a loaf of my failproof blueberry quick oat bread using 1/4 sugar and the rest Splenda, and it came out perfect. But that's why it's failproof.

Guinness Cake

In the theme of Irish foods: how about a beer cake?

Here are a couple of recipes to use as a guide, one with sour cream and one with coffee. I didn't add either, so it was essentially a chocolate cake with a bottle of Guinness instead of the water you'd normally use.


The rather disappointing thing is, it doesn't taste like beer at all. It's a great cake, but I was kind of hoping for a unique flavor. Mint flavored frosting, though.

The decoration was a very cute idea stolen from Martha Stewart. I drew a clover on a sheet of paper, cut it out, and laid the paper on top of the cake. It helps if you press it down a little, so the sugar doesn't get under the template. And stick with a simpler design; the clover might have been a little detailed.

Given the meh results, I may or may not be interested in trying the diet Coke cake any more.

Depression Cake

No, I'm not depressed. But if, say, you were depressed, a chocolate cake would surely cure it, right? As the story goes, during the depression eggs and butter were hard to get, so people figured out how to make a chocolate cake without them. Of course, I want to try!

The vinegar in the recipe was kind of a turn off, though. It's just there for the chemical reaction, but doesn't it sound gross?


(Sorry for posting giant pictures of delicious cake.)

This was probably the densest, moist chocolate cake I've ever eaten. Almost like the cake you'd get at a restaurant. Which makes me wonder - do they not use eggs or butter in their cakes either? I could see that being a sweet cost-cutting trick.


I tried making Martha Stewart's champagne truffles a while back, and it didn't go so well. So I melted down the leftovers and poured it over the whole cake. It eventually hardened to a fudge-like consistency. Yum.

Cupcake Hero!!

See, I read all these blogs. Mostly about cupcakes. And one has this contest, Cupcake Hero. I kind of always wanted to enter but it's kind of intimidating. And this month the secret ingredient was caramel, and hey, I know how to bake pretty well, and I have a blog, so ... here I am entering a cupcake contest.

I'm not used to, um, actually documenting what I do. Or measuring. But I actually took notes. Yeah, I'm really trying this time.

So on to the good stuff! I humbly present Devil's Caramel Cupcakes.

For the cupcakes:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup butter (OK, I used my good buddy Imperial. So that's 60% vegetable oil margarine.)
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 and 1/4 cup water
• 1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• 2 egg whites
• 5 tablespoons caramel

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Step 2: Cream the butter and sugar. Start slowly lest it fly all over your kitchen (not like I know anything about that).

Step 3: Add the flour, soda, salt, baking powder, eggs, and water. I sort of did it in that order.

Step 4: Pour out one cup of batter and put it aside. This will become the caramel layer.

Step 5: Add the cocoa to the batter. Mix it for a good few minutes to get everything smooth.

Step 6: Fill the cupcake liners a little less than half full with the chocolate batter. We have these really big soup spoons that came with our silverware set, and I used about one giant spoonful of those.


Step 7: Whisk together 5 tablespoons of caramel with the cup of cake batter. I used a fork in a bowl, but if you have two mixing bowls (lucky!), you could do it with the mixer too. Also, I used Smucker's Sundae Syrup. 'Cause making cupcakes was daunting enough without being super industrious and making caramel too.


Step 8: Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full with the caramel batter. This was about the same giant spoonful, and ends up was just exactly enough for 12 cupcakes.

Step 9: Top with a dollop of chocolate batter. Keep in mind that I kind of overfilled, because I love when the cupcake puffs out over the top of the cupcake liner.


Step 10: Bake for 3o minutes. I'm basically at sea level, though, so check with a toothpick if you're not quite sure. The coloring reminds me of rottweilers.



For the frosting:

• 1 cup butter (Yes, real butter this time!)
• 1 lb. powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup caramel

You know the drill. Mix together.

Then go get your husband to use his fancy expensive camera to take extra nice pictures in exchange for eating said cupcake. Yeah, I could have done it myself. But I carpeted the garage steps today. I already had my "I am woman, hear me roar" moment. Plus, eating cupcakes with someone you love is that much more fun.

Pumpkin Cake

Since I didn't have a proper treat to take in to my last day of work, I wanted to make something quick. And impressive. And tasty.

What did I have on hand? Pumpkin.

I also had an untouched springform pan. Normally they're for cheesecakes, but why not a cake? But, I was a little squeamish about making a pumpkin cake from scratch given my recent track record and short time frame. Pumpkin bread is pretty fluffy, so why not that?

I can't remember which recipe I used, but they're all pretty close to each other. Here's a big list of them for you. Take your pick.



Springform pans are generally a little larger than regular cake pans; therefore, it came out pretty short. To be honest, it came out pretty meh. So I made a simple, quick vanilla glaze out of my Betty Crocker. I've been meaning to learn how to make it, but was always kind of intimidated. Sometimes the simplest recipes come out the hardest! Now that I know what to do, though, I expect it to be a quick add for a lot of my baked goods.

I had some green frosting left over from a previous project (I don't know what, but it wasn't the Halloween cake. This actually came before Halloween.) and these awful, awful pumpkin spice kisses. They only taste good mixed with something else. So I made a little quick pumpkin-esque decoration around the edge.

It went over pretty well at work (and, I heard later, the next day). No one knew it was bread rather than cake. This is the perfect kind of thing to bring in: sturdy, travels well, keeps for a while, and easy to make!

Halloween Cake

This Halloween was totally awesome. Hectic, but awesome.

Friday night I stayed home to get the house in order, and put the finishing decorations on the cake. The preparation ended up more work than I expected, but it was worth it.

Saturday morning was the Pumpkin Run. I'll be the first to admit: I didn't want to be there. It was early, cold, I'm out of shape (with a few extra self-conscious pounds to prove it), and far enough for me to worry that we wouldn't have enough time to get cleaned up. I was not pleasant.

It ended up I ran faster than I ever have. My time was a boggling 28:37. Under 30 minutes!! I'm crediting the local hills, since the path was fairly flat. I think I scared the spectators toward the finish line after I saw the clock and hauled it across the finish line (but for the record, the clock was under 28 minutes when I crossed). You can read more about it here.

We came home, got cleaned up, and started partying. People came and went as they pleased, but I loved having everyone over. Where's this cake, you ask?


Of course, everything was edible. I used the doll cake pan to make the "hill." The fences were pretzels stuck together with chocolate. The tree was just chocolate chips melted in a pastry bag and squeezed out onto a sheet of wax paper. The same chocolate (Albertson's brand chocolate chips, to be exact) held together the graham cracker coffin. And if you look closely, you can see the green fingers creeping out. The tombstones were fun-size Heath bars, cut in half, and decorated with white frosting. Oh, and the dark gravelly road? Crushed Teddy Grahams. They were cheaper than regular graham crackers, albeit disturbing to crush up. The cake was chocolate, like dirt, according to my husband. Oh and those pumpkin spice kisses? Nasty. Just FYI.

I also roasted pumpkin seeds from our carved pumpkins. Thirty minutes at 375 degrees, coated in cooking spray and Lawry's salt. I roasted almonds in cinnamon sugar at the same time, but really that's not the right method. I should have melted the sugar and cinnamon in a little butter on the stove. Que sera.

We had an evening of trick or treaters. My favorites were the toddlers who, at the start of the night, didn't quite understand what was happening, but by the end of the night were totally in to getting candy from the strange lady who was oh so excited to see them. Cute.

Thank goodness Sunday was daylight savings day. We needed the break!

Rainbow Cakes II

Here's another funny story. See? Full of them.

A couple of weeks ago I started a new job. I was in a rotation program at work, and "graduated" a little early into my permanent job. That makes three jobs in one calendar year. Whew. There are a lot of pros and cons to a rotation program, but mostly I'd liken it to being on Quantum Leap. You go somewhere, do good, and go. Well, hopefully. I like to think I did good.

This permanent job was a long time coming, because I'm finally at a site close to home. I don't have to get on the highway to go to work. And I can carpool. But I was still kind of sad, because all of my really cool friends are now 25 miles away.

For my last day at the site, I thought I'd make a cake. The rainbow cupcakes came out so well, and I had everything out, I thought I'd try a cake out. But not just a plain, round or rectangular and boring cake. Can you tell I love my fluted pan?

Here's the funny part. I got everything all set, put the pan in the oven, set the timer for an hour, and watched the Biggest Loser. Spent the hour alternating between horrified and teary. Anyway, the timer goes off, I open the oven and ... it was liquidy. See, once you set the oven, you're supposed to press start. Oy.



It didn't rise. At all. But oddly enough, the layers formed arches! Like a rainbow! Completely unintentional and I will bet I can't recreate it. But I'll probably try (and turn the oven on this time).

Rainbow Cakes

Here's a funny story. I'm full of them lately. Funny how most things I make are the collision of two wholly unrelated events that one day, due to stars and planets unexpectedly aligning, suddenly make perfect sense together.

Event #1: Months ago, the internet collectively gasped upon seeing this beautiful rainbow cake. Well, the part of the internet I read, anyway. We oohed. We ahhed. I promptly did not think about it until almost a year later, because apparently that's how long it takes me to process things.

Event #2: Funny thing. Just before my friend's birthday, for which I had made our special pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, I got sick. I've been living pretty high-throttle lately, so it's not that surprising. Anyway, I had the box sitting on my desk at work but was not there to deliver it, and by the time I did get back they just weren't fresh. Also some of the oil had leeched out into the paper box, causing my coworkers some concern. Anyway.

I used my from-scratch cake recipe, that so far has only failed me when I tried to deviate from it. This time I didn't, but the butter wasn't soft enough. Not really a big deal, but it made the batter kind of lumpy. But, it was important to under-mix it, since there would be significant mixing later.

I have exactly six of these pretty amber ramekins. There are six colors in the traditional rainbow. Coincidence?

The most daunting part of this cake is evenly distributing the batter not once, but twice. It came out to be about two generous soup spoons plus a little extra. If you're looking for an exact recipe ... you have come to the wrong place. Ultimately you end up with this:


Kind of reminds me of those watercolor paint kits from grade school.

Dropping the batter into 12 muffin cups was, by far, the hardest step. Although I wouldn't say it was particularly hard. By the time I got to yellow I was doing pretty well - it took about a regular table spoon's worth of batter to make it through (and the last one I used a spatula to scrape the ramekin, so I think I measured pretty well). I even rotated which muffin cup I started with. I am not obsessive at all.

I checked them at the 30 minute mark, and they were still really bubbly, so I set them for another 15. Ten minutes would have been better (total cook time, according to my oven, 40 minutes). It took me a long time to distribute the batter, though, so I wasn't very confident that the colors hadn't bled together at the bottom.



Obviously everything came out just fine. They make a huge visual impact, which is really cool. Imagine bringing these to your kid's school bake sale. You'd be the coolest mom (or dad) ever.