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.

Newlywed Chocolate Cookies

Lately I've seen a lot of articles on the internet about how your spouse makes you fat. Let's talk about this for a minute. You just got married, theoretically happy and in love, and everything is right with the world. Except those pounds that have crept on. And it's totally not your fault! It's that horrible person that just promised to love you forever!

Good grief, people.

Then again, maybe they got a cookbook as a wedding gift, and made these cookies. They will not last the day.



The secret is the melted chocolate in the batter. Oh dear. Just trust me on this one: go out to the store now, buy some chocolate, and get to work.

Have a good weekend!

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?

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.

Baklava

Guys, I hate baklava.


Just so you know.

Yes, the knife was standing up on its own.

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.

Donuts

Cooking fancy dishes is fun, but sometimes cooking with a neat trick is even more fun. Did you know you can make donuts out of pre-made biscuits?


I wouldn't recommend it.

1. Frying is a pain. No matter what. You can see some of those little guys are burned, and that's because I hate frying.
2. Pre-made biscuit dough sometimes has these enormous salt crystals in them. For whatever reason, that grosses me out a little.
   
3. Those little holes? They don't stand a chance. (I won't judge.)
4. You could easily eat a whole can of biscuits, which is about 1,200 calories not including any glaze you might want to add. Again, I won't judge, but just think about that a minute.
   

Just walk yourself down to 7-11 and pay the $2 for coffee & donut tomorrow, OK?

Easter Eggs

This is a cute idea to make candy Easter eggs. They were pretty tricky to make, and I wish the instructions were a little more detailed. For instance, I've since learned that if you want smooth, shiny chocolate coating, you need to temper the chocolate.

I made a huge batch for my parents for Easter. Let's just say ... they had to get out of the house.


These are a reasonable approximation of Cadbury eggs, my super favorite candy of all time. In fact, I have a couple of boxes from last year saved in the freezer. You know, in case of emergency.

From what I heard, these didn't last long at my parents' house either.

Monster Mac

One of my friends came by to learn how to make those fad-tastic little French cookies.

Not one to waste batter, we used the last in a piping bag to make ...


The MONSTER MAC!!!

That, my chickadees, is a single macaron with a regular-sized one for comparison.



Monster mac was about the size of a slice of bread, which we filled, folded in half, and ATE.

Seriously, am I the only person that's Americanized such a refined treat?

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.

Pi Day

Did you know that March 14 is Pi Day? Probably, if you're reading my blog. If not, I'm not making it up. I put it on the calendar and everything.

The only question is: what kind of pie to make?

Years ago, when I first started collecting recipes off the internet, I printed instructions to make hand pies. The recipe was specifically for blackberries, but I had blueberries. Same difference, if you ask me.

Since there's no link to be found, here's what I did:

Blueberry Hand Pies

For the filling:

• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 tbs cinnamon
• 1/4 cup sugar

Boil these all together until it gets thick and syrupy. It should only take a few minutes, and the thicker the better so the filling doesn't run all over your crusts.

For the crust:

• 1 & 1/4 cup flour
• 6 tbs butter
• 3 tbs water
  
• a little salt

Mix these together until it gets crumbly. I did it in my mixer, but I know some people do it with a food processor or by hand. Whichever you like, just make it doughy. Depending on how you mixed it, you should probably throw it back in the refrigerator to get the dough stiffer. I went straight to the rolling out, since the mixer doesn't really heat up the dough at all.

Roll the dough out pretty thin - it will get a little thicker once baked. I used a mini tart pan (about 4-5" wide) to cut out pretty ruffly circles. Put each cutout on a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop a spoonful of filling onto one side of the circle. Fold the dough over in half, and seal them with either a little water, extra dough, or a fork.


Bake for 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

My circles were on the bigger side, so I only got five out of this recipe. But oh, they were good. The perfect size for just a little pie, and not overwhelming with blueberries.

Oh, and I entered the nutritional information into a calculator for you, if you're interested. You're welcome.

Ice Cream Pie

Prepare yourselves, my dears.

Remember that whole one-ingredient ice cream fad? Leslie has one-upped us all. And of course I show this to my husband and over the drooling I think he said something like "make this please!"

So I did.

First, we need a pie crust. For whatever reason I could get to Target, but not the grocery store, so I ended up with nilla wafers upon request rather than a pre-made graham or chocolate crust. Unfortunately for waistlines everywhere, I used this Southern food recipe. I baked it much longer, about 20 minutes, because it wasn't going to go in the oven again.

Then I dropped two bananas and a big scoop of peanut butter into the food processor. Two layers was just a little too much work! Once in ooey-gooey state, I spread it into the pie crust and plunked the whole deal into the freezer.


What's that in the background? Oh yes. No chocolate syrup here. I topped slices with Nutella.


Something about the freezing really brought out the peanut butter flavor. I was a little worried that it wouldn't be peanut-buttery enough. And as an added bonus, nilla wafers seem to be a fairly light alternative!

I think I'm off the hook ever spending $30 on the smallest ice cream cake available at Baskin Robbins.

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.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

OK, time to start knocking posts out and catching up on the kitchen escapades.

I've mentioned before and I'll do it again: I'm really not good at the traditional, wonderful, chocolate chip cookie. Nope. I've tried different recipes, different tricks, different places ... nothing. I halfheartedly saved this recipe to try, figuring I'd get the craving at some point and that would be the one I'd try.

It ended up that a game night at our house, a glass of wine, and yelling "who wants cookies??" is a completely appropriate time to try a new recipe.

Check these babies out!


Forget the Tollhouse recipe. This is the one to use. It doesn't make too many cookies - and I'm not a fan of making especially large ones. They were gone almost immediately!

Sugar Cookies

Have you seen those beautifully decorated sugar cookies? The ones with the beautifully smooth decorations in cute shapes? I won't tell you how many blogs I subscribe to that feature these at least weekly. Let's just say it's possible to read that much about a cookie.

I don't find myself particularly creative, but I really wanted to make pretty cookies like that. I don't have any friends with impending baby or wedding showers, where I could show up with adorable and insanely appropriate cookies. But I can make them anyway!!

I made the basic recipe for sugar cookies from Oracle Betty. They came out perfect! I don't think I've ever had a rolled cookie come out that perfectly. Actually ... I still haven't. The dough never really firmed up enough to roll out and cut, so I just rolled bits of dough into a ball and flattened them out. Maybe that's been my problem all along?


Who cares about the cookie, though. They're just frosting vehicles for this experiment.

I took some tips from this great tutorial on decorating cookies. In fact, I'd recommend you follow those instructions over the insert that comes with Wilton's meringue powder. The #1 lesson to learn is: don't be afraid of runny icing. It won't run that much, and is probably easier to work with.


Ah, displaying my lack of creativity. Or lack of artistic skill. Or both. I made these around Thanksgiving, so fall leaves seemed like the perfect pretty design. These look more like the Batman insignia than pretty leaves. Part of this is because I let the white icing dry, so the decoration would sit on top. The other part was that the meringue powder makes the icing stiffer.

With a little fiddling, this could make pretty and smoothly decorated cookies!

Pumpkin Pie

Of course this holiday season couldn't have passed without making a ubiquitous pumpkin pie. Especially since I'd stockpiled cans of pumpkin because of that bogus "shortage."

I made the usual filling based on the back of the Libby's can. As for the pie crust, I had a half a box of mix left over to use. Not too exciting, right? I didn't even take a picture, it was so uninspiring.

But does anyone else ever end up with about two cups worth of filling left over? I always do! And I just can't bring myself to waste tasty pumpkin pie filling!

Looking back on this idea, I realize that I had phyllo pastry sheets and puff pastry sheets confused. I'm perfectly aware that these two aren't the same thing. All of the blogs I read talk about cooking things that require simply popping out a sheet or two of frozen puff or phyllo pastry from your freezer to make something fantastic. But before this point in time, I've never purchased any of this magically handy stuff.

So, somewhere along the way I flipped the two and decided to use the phyllo as pie crust.


This can't be billed an absolute fail; the pastry actually held the filling just fine. Which is good, because I used mini tart pans, and if it had leaked out the bottom that would have been a mess.

But I can't say that I'm a fan of phyllo sheets in particular. First, I didn't defrost it. So it was hard to unroll. Second, it was annoying as all get out. When I wanted to tear it, it was tough as plastic wrap (my arch nemesis). When I didn't want it to tear, it crumbled. Argh! Won't be doing that again.

Seems like I'll be looking for puff pastry sheets. Anyone have any good ideas for prepared phyllo?

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!