You Live and Learn

So I always have new ideas and love experimenting with ingredients. Sometimes its' amazing (see these cupcakes and these cookies) and sometimes I screw up. Bad. (See my giant mousse disaster). This is another one of those not-so-smart instances. I thought it'd be a good idea but maybe my execution was off.

Peanut butter and jelly brownies. Sounds like it would just work. Chocolate, peanut butter and my favorite, grape jelly. I figure I'd give it a shot, can't be too bad right? Well, there's something to be said about jelly.

Looks are deceiving. I thought I was genius and so excited to try these. But the jelly. When jelly gets hot it's gooey and would be pretty good in the center of peanut butter and chocolate. Well, once the brownies are cool enough to be removed, it kind of turns into a rock. 

You could break teeth with these things after a day. I was extremely disappointed and am currently trying to figure out ways to fix it because I still like the idea. Moral of the story: Jelly is not so good after it's been heated and cooled. Unless you need to get rid of some teeth.

I'm still going to shoot for brownies. My boyfriend constantly tells me to just make "normal brownies." I can't help it. I have to add something extra. After all, we've learned that even with cookies, I need a little something extra.

He'll get normal brownies but I'm also going to experiment with Reese's Pieces again. To Be Continued…

No Such Thing as Too Much…. Peanut Butter

So I'm not a huge fan of just regular old peanut butter cookies. I'll eat them but I'd rather make something a little more. I am a big fan of Reese's Pieces and I bought them with intensions of using them in Puppy Chow but changed my mind. I had a craving for cookies and I know my boyfriend loves peanut butter cookies. I like candy in cookies so I made peanut butter Reese's Pieces cookies. Genius. I impressed myself on this one.

I had a few worries. One being that it may be too much peanut butter. The candy coating evened it out nicely and the consistent and even taste of peanut butter in Reese's Pieces is different than that in a cookie. It was rather harmonious, if you will.

Another worry was that I got a little happy with the Reese Pieces. I put the entire bag in one batch and at one point it looked like more candy than cookie. Again, I was wrong. You really can't put too much in I guess. The more the merrier.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised and amaze myself sometimes. These will be made again.

Pretty in Pink

Last Friday I had the pleasure of babysitting my three-year-old niece for a few hours and I thought, what better way to have fun than teach her my favorite hobby: baking!

This little cutie patootie is kind of partial to the color pink. Kind of as in that's all she talks about so of course we had to translate it into a cupcake. Now I'm new to the whole "pinkalicious" movement but she loves it. So I went with it and we created the Pinkalicious cupcake.

Nothing too fancy, just some food dye, sprinkles and yellow cake. But hey, pink cupcakes are a big deal.

I've decided to always make my own frosting from now on. I never really noticed how much of a difference there is before but it's definitely there. It makes my teeth hurt thinking about the stuff in a tub so I taught Erin how to make it and well, she got a little heavy on the mixer. 

After letting the cupcakes cool we were ready to frost and no pinkalicious cupcake is complete with out some pinkalicious sprinkles. I've never seen someone so excited over pink cupcakes and sprinkles but that made it all worth it. 

And there you have it, super simple cupcakes that taste great and a super fun project for you and your favorite little one. 

Baking into Halloween

I always say holidays are a perfect excuse to bake. Not just to bake but bake with themes and decorations. The pumpkin craze continues and I still wanted to make something with pumpkin but without actual pumpkin in it. Long story short, one of the people I'm baking for cannot have actual pumpkin. To the spice cabinet!

All I needed was cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger to give it that fall/pumpkin flavor. You can even by Pumpkin Pie Spice at the grocery store.

For once, I didn't want to go too crazy with the cupcakes so I made a simple yellow cake and a simple-ish frosting. I used shortening in the frosting to help it hold a little longer too and you can't even tell the difference. There's vegetable shortening but and vegetable shortening with butter flavor. I suggest the butter so it's not too greasy and actually tastes like what it's supposed to.

One reason I didn't want to go too crazy is because I had fun Halloween stuff to add. 

Found these at HomeGoods. Make sure you don't rip the entire seal off, otherwise you may end up with way too many sprinkles on a cupcake. 

Anyway, I added some of the pumpkin spice mixture to the cake batter but mainly saved it for the frosting. A last-minute thought was also adding some brown sugar with did add a lot without overpowering anything. 

The frosting also had a chance to stand out by using a simple yellow cake recipe. All that's left is to frost, decorate and enjoy!

Wait until you see the cookies I made with the leftover frosting. Happy Halloween!

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It's Zucchini, So It HAS To Be Good For You, Right?

Zucchini bread may or may not be good for you but it sure is good, especially when I get to use my favorite kitchen appliance. Again, the Ninja.

Again, I LOVE it. Those are huge chunks of zucchini and it chops it up as small as possible to mix into the batter perfectly. 

You don't want it too chunky or too soupy to the point where your bread doesn't rise but use your discretion on how fine you want to chop it. It takes about two seconds to get it to that consistency then you just fold it into your batter. 

For the batter, I found a recipe that was super easy to follow, on my phone! I loved the feature it had to check off ingredients as you add them, I just had to show you. 

Now the recipe calls for walnuts, but I actually found it quite tasty to add a can of mixed nuts. Just dump a can in the ninja and chop them as fine as you want and fold that into your batter as well. Or, make it without nuts, whichever you prefer. 

Most zucchini bread recipes may call for an hour baking time, but if you making them this small it won't be that long, maybe 30-40 minutes. However, I'm going to warn you about using a pan like this. I assume they'd come out all cute and in one piece, kind of like this. 

Boy was I wrong. I never use non stick spray in my pan because it's already nonstick. I ruined part of it from excess spray and I have had luck with it so far. However, this bread stuck like glue. It may be safe just to use a porcelain dish and cut them up. They were difficult in the end, but totally worth it. 

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Good morning, pumpkin!

Fall is my favorite time of year. The cool weather, the colors of the leaves changing and of course, pumpkin. Pumpkin is huge now. Everything comes in pumpkin and pumpkin scones from Starbucks were always my favorite. I've never ventured into the scone world but I had been on a baking hiatus and was itching to try something new. It surprisingly wasn't as difficult as I thought. The only difficult part is some of the ingredients you may not have on hand. Which isn't necessarily difficult but annoying. I got over it though. 

Most scone recipes call for molasses which you can easily find next to the pancake syrup at the grocery store. You'll also need pumpkin spice. I actually found a bottle of pumpkin spice in the baking section of the store and it smells wonderful. If you can't find it, an easy mix of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger will do the trick. You'll still need pumpkin of course, which if you're like me you've stocked up while it's in season. Make sure it's canned pumpkin and not pumpkin pie. You'll also need your basic flour, brown sugar and butter. Make sure your butter is cold! 

Not working with softened butter kind of freaked me out but just chop it up into small pieces and mix it into your flour and sugar mix, you want it to be crumbly but still completely mixed together. Mix in your pumpkin and other liquids separately and you'll form a dough. You'll want to knead it on a floured surface like you would any other bread and then you can take a pizza cutter to cut it into the normal triangle shape or however you'd like. Can't lie, I had some issues making triangles so I just scooped them up like cookies. 

While they're baking you can make the glaze which is super easy. All you need for the initial glaze is to whisk powdered sugar and milk together until it's thick. For the pumpkin, you'll still use powdered sugar but you'll add your canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix), pumpkin spice and milk to drizzle on top. I found it easier to make the white glaze in a wide enough dish so you can just dunk the scones in upside down when they're cool. Then take a spoon and drizzle the top with the pumpkin glaze. (Apologies for the lack of photos, I lost most of them when my phone had a heart attack)

They don't look like Starbucks scones but they definitely taste good! Enjoy for breakfast, after dinner or whenever you feel like a pumpkin treat. 

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Super Cupcakes for a Super Birthday

I was asked a very big favor a month ago and was very excited. I was asked to make cupcakes for a five-year-old's birthday and not just any kind of cupcakes (why be boring?), super hero cupcakes.

I found out he likes chocolate so I obviously had to make a chocolate cake but I didn't stop there. I added cream cheese and Nutella in the center. It definitely broke up the chocolate without losing too much of the chocolate flavor. Different textures usually help. 

My original intention was to put a hot chocolate mousse in the middle, but that didn't go so well.

Now onto the decorating. I made a normal buttercream frosting and divvied it up to make different colors per super hero. Spiderman obviously got red, Superman was red, blue and yellow (I bought the appropriate cupcake paper too) and Batman was blue. I found some toothpicks with the characters and decided to add M&M's on top, for another different texture. 

Needless it say it was a success and I'm really excited for more themed cupcakes. Shoot me an email if you're looking for something sweet for your next event! In the meantime, I can't wait for October...

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Tea and Crumpets? Kinda...

Crumpets are a griddle cake that pretty much look like an English Muffin and are mainly eaten in the United Kingdom with tea. Well around these parts, I bake cookies with my tea.

Let's start with the tea. Chai tea has always been my favorite, especially the chai tea lattes at Starbucks. Chai is a black spiced tea from india and the word Chai simply means 'tea' in Hindu. There are strong notes of cinnamon and cloves that stand out but also cardamom and ginger.

I wanted to play off the cloves and cinnamon aspect of the chai. I've made chai frosting before with pumpkin bars but that's a whole new ballgame that we'll get to come fall. I've ironically not been much of a fan of cinnamon but I do enjoy cinnamon sugar so I wanted to incorporate that into the cookie but not too much to where it would take away from the spiced chai flavor.

So I turned to the snickerdoodle. I haven't experimented with the snickerdoodle much but I'm glad I did. The dough is stickier and more doughy than normal cookie dough which gives it a little flakiness. I rolled the dough into balls, rolled it into some cinnamon sugar and baked about 10-12 minutes at 350.

While they were baking I made a chai glaze. It's easier than it sounds. All I used was powdered sugar, water, ground cinnamon and ground cloves. I combined everything with a whisk until I reached a taste and consistency that I wanted and dunked the cookies in. The advantage to the square shape is that it sinks a little in the middle and holds onto more of the glaze that hardens in the fridge after awhile.

I dont mean to toot my own horn but I continue to impress myself and definitely see myself making these in the future. Tea party or not.

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Super Simple Cobbler

Okay, I found this on Facebook and I couldn't believe how easy it was until I tried it. And how good it is. You no longer need a fire pit and a grocery bag full of ingredients to enjoy a good chunk of cobbler.

No joke, all you need is frozen berries, cake mix and 7-up. Any berries you'd like or any frozen fruit even, lay them in a cake/brownie pan and sprinkle cake mix - your own or store bought - over them. Finally, pour a can - or two - of 7-up/sprite on top. Don't stir because the bubbles will give you that crisp topping but make sure all the flour and cake mix is covered and not dry. If you don't, you'll have small groups of unbaked cake on top. The second time I made it I used two cans or a can and a half of 7-up just to be safe.

I went with blueberries because they're my favorite. It looks weird, but trust me, it's amazing. 

After that, all you need to do is bake it for 45 minutes! 

(Side note - Weight-conscious or dieting? Try sugar-free cake mix and diet 7-up!)

Second time around I sprinkled some cinnamon and brown sugar on top about before baking and it made it even crispier and perfect on top. Scoop out and serve with whipped cream or ice cream and you're done! That simple. 

(Side note - Not dieting? Try Cinnamon Swirl cake mix!)

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