A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Blueberry Pound Cake

2009-05-29T22:53:00.005-05:00

Aren't blueberries the best? When they're in season, they are just so plump and beautiful and juicy. They are easy to eat - just grab a handful and go. And, turns out they are a 'superfood' which means they have things called 'antioxidants' which apparently do something good for my body, so yay! Blueberries!

I haven't posted lately because most of what I've been baking lately has failed in one way or another. It's really upsetting because baking is one of the few things I'm good at. I made some cupcakes with chocolate butterflies on top that ended up looking stupid, I made Martha's dessert of the month and they stuck horribly to the parchment (that Martha TOLD me to line the pan with), and then I made this blueberry pound cake. Don't get me wrong, it TASTED good, but it is not. pretty. And I just don't understand why.

My ingredients: blueberries, heavy cream (you can substitute milk or half and half), SELF-RISING flour (I'm normally an AP kind of gal, but I've been looking to use up this self-rising flour that my ex-boyfriend accidently got. *ahem*. ), sugar, butter (softened), eggs, vanilla. The lime juice in the picture is because I originally was going to make a lime glaze to pour over the cake, but in the end I decided not to. So ignore it.

First, butter a loaf pan and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

This is my new orange KitchenAid mixer!!!!! My parents got it for me as a graduation gift. I love it soooooooooooooooo much. It's my favorite color! As I baked this cake, I found myself singing "you... are... so beautiful... to MEEEEEEEE" to the mixer. This is why I don't have friends.

Not as cool as the mixer, but this is my new apron from Salvation Army - 1 dolla! It has a dishtowel attached at the waist so you can wipe your hands as you go. Brilliant!

Also, I'm not naked under the apron. I have shorts on. Just FYI.

Anyway, dump 3/4 cup butter and 1 cup sugar in your mixing bowl and cream them together. You can do this by hand if you don't have a kickass stand mixer like I do.

Light and fluffy!

Add two eggs and beat together.

Add 1 1/4 cups self-rising flour, 3 tablespoons of heavy cream, and 1 tablespoon of vanilla. Yes, a whole TABLESPOON of vanilla.

Wash and pick the stems off a bunch of blueberries. I used a pint, minus about a handful (which I couldn't resist eating).

Toss the berries in a tablespoon of flour. This, theoretically, should keep the batter from turning blue and also keep the berries from sinking to the bottom. As you will find out shortly, this did not happen.

Gently fold your berries into your batter...

...and dump it all into your loaf pan. Bake for 50 minutes, or until a skewer (knife, whatever) comes out clean.

Ta da... the cake is done. But it looks... bad. Just not good.

I don't have pictures of what happened next, because I was too busy cursing and getting frustrated. I let my cake cool, I dumped it out onto a pretty plate, and... ALL the blueberries were stuck to the bottom of the pan. My poundcake, which was SUPPOSED to be delightfully studded with berries, had turned into a very messy upside-down cake.

Why did this happen?! I did the flour thing with the berries...

Anyway, it still tasted delish. I guess it all gets mixed up in my stomach in the end. Any advice to keep this from happening in the future?

Martha's Black-And-White Cheesecake Squares

2009-04-07T14:09:00.003-05:00

I was super-bummed when I found out that the 'cookie of the month' feature in Martha Stewart Living magazine was discontinued! I find something so appealing about the idea of a 'cookie of the month.' Though mad at Martha for taking away one of my favorite things, I was somewhat relieved that there would still be a dessert on the last page each month, even if it wasn't a cookie. I had some cream cheese in the fridge, so I decided to give this month's "Last Course" recipe a try.

You need: flour, cocoa powder (Martha says to use 'dutch-process' but I used 'natural-process' because I do what I want), baking soda, salt, unsalted butter (softened), sugar, eggs, vanilla, cream cheese, and confectioner's sugar.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and butter a 9X13 pan. I also lined the pan with foil for easy lift-out-ness. Cream 2 1/2 sticks of butter and 2 cups sugar.

Once the butter and sugar are creamed together, add 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Beat until smooth.

On top of the wet ingredients, add 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour, 3/4 cup cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix it up on top, and then beat together with wet mixture. (Martha says to combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl first, and then add them to the wet ingredients. Again, I do what I want. And I don't like doing dishes, so I just added it on top. The bars still tasted good, so there.)

Look at this beautiful batter!!

Take out 1 cup of dough, cover, and refrigerate for later.

Press the remaining dough into the bottom of your pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes (I cheated and only refrigerated for 25!), then bake about 25 minutes.

Let your base cool on a wire rack, still in the pan.

Once your bottom layer is cool, mix together 8 ounces of softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, one egg, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

Do you notice how my lighting changes in each picture? That's because these bars took FOREVER to make. The sun was like "well, I'd love to stick around, but it's time for bed! Sorry, Carson - your pictures are going to suck." And I was like, "Blah. These are taking forever."

Spread the cream cheese mixture over the cooled base.

Remember that cup of batter you reserved? Crumble it over the top. For about two seconds, I thought it would be cute to cookie-cut the little batter clumps into hearts and put them on top in a pattern. Then I remembered that it was already about seventy days after I had started to make the recipe and they were never going to be done. So I just crumbled.

Bake until filling is set, about 25-30 minutes. Let cool in dish on wire rack, and then refrigerate. These bars are not that good warm, but they are super-delish right out of the fridge. Do you agree, Dusty Springfield Jr?

"Yup! They sure smell yummy, mom! Can I be on your blog?!!"

These bars were delicious, but the mix, refrigerate, bake, cool, mix, bake, refrigerate process took way longer than I would prefer. I do feel less angry about the loss of 'cookie of the month' now.

Banana-Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-03-26T15:12:00.008-05:00

I haaaaaaate brown bananas. Ick, ick ick. I like to eat bananas when they are still slightly green. If there is a single brown spot on a banana, I will not eat it because that is disgusting. Ewwwww.

The problem comes when I have a banana that is slightly too green one night, so I plan on eating it the next day. OF COURSE, by the next day the banana is brown and rotting. Because that is how my life works.

The obvious solution to this problem is to make banana bread, but I saw this recipe on Taste & Tell and decided to give 'er a try. I made a few little changes, and the end result is delicious!

You need: flour, rolled oats, salt, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, butter (softened), an egg, icky brown bananas, chocolate chips, and cinnamon (optional).

NOTE: The one banana looks weird in this picture because it is frozen. When I have nasty bananas, I usually stick them in baggies and put them in the freezer. Then I can use them in smoothies, or I can pull them out when I want to make banana bread. Or cookies.

I didn't have any chocolate chips on hand (gasp! horrors!!!), but I did have this bag of mini Hershey kisses, which are smaller than normal Hershey kisses but bigger than normal chocolate chips. I like to eat these by the handful. For proof of this habit, see my butt.

First, cream together 3/4 cup of butter and 1 cup sugar until light and fluffy.

Then, add an egg and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Mix well.

Once the wet ingredients are fully combined, add 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 3/4 cups oats, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (I don't really like cinnamon, so I left it out). Add 1 cup of mashed banana on top (about 2 bananas). Mix well until everything is evenly combined.

If I were using normal chocolate chips, I would mix in 1 cup of them at this point. With the big chips I was using, I was worried that they wouldn't distribute evenly throughout the dough, so I decided to stud them on top.

Whichever method of chocolate-chipping you prefer, blop your dough on a parchment-lined cookie sheet in generous tablespoons. Bake at 375 degrees for 12-14 minutes.

Once they're done, let them cool on wire racks. The recipe made 3 dozen plus 2 cookies for me.

Overall, I think this is a great cookie. I like the sweetness of the Hershey kisses, and the little chunks of banana. They're really good with milk (which, duh, all cookies are good with milk. But these are especially good with milk).

Sheila Bars

2009-03-06T21:42:00.006-06:00

I'm on spring break! Whoooooo! I decided to make some bars to celebrate. I saw this recipe for Sheila's Dream Bars on Schweet 'n Savory, and decided they would do the job nicely. I made some changes to the recipe, and they turned out really delicious.

"Hello, my name is Sheila! I'm a delicious bar. Please eat me."

You need: AP flour, brown sugar, butter, eggs, quick-cook oats, vanilla, baking powder and chocolate chips.

First, mix together 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, and 1 cup flour. They will end up looking like a shortbread dough.

Ta-da!

Press this layer into the bottom of a 9x13 pan. It will be a pretty thin layer. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

While the bottom layer is baking, you can make the dulce de leche that goes in the middle. In the original recipe, it says you can use caramel ice cream topping from a jar, but I didn't have any. In the future, I might just use the jarred topping, because I don't think my bars ended up caramelly enough. Or, I might just make more caramel. In any case, what I did next was melt 2/3 cup butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar over low heat, stirring constantly. Once it reached a boil, I let it boil for a minute (still stirring!) before removing from the heat.

Yummmmmmmmmmm. You could just eat this and I wouldn't judge you.

Once your bottom layer has baked for ten minutes, spread the caramel on top.

Now, mix together 4 eggs, 1 cup of brown sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup oats. The original recipe called for half of each of these amounts, but I wanted a thicker top layer.

Dump your top layer on top of the caramel layer, and throw 'er back in the oven (still on 350 degrees). Bake for 20 minutes.

The end result? A chewy, chocolate chippy bar with a slight caramelly accent. If I made these again, I would add more caramel, but these were still deeeeeeeelicious. AND, they have oatmeal in them, so you can eat them for breakfast!

Three-Sugar Cake with Marmalade Yogurt Glaze

2009-02-22T13:31:00.008-06:00

I really really like to bake with yogurt. It makes me feel trendy and cool, even though I'm not. I bought some plain yogurt the other day to make blueberry muffins, but then I ate all the blueberries before I could make them. Oopsie. Since I don't like to eat yogurt (ylech), I didn't know what to do... until two spoons posted this recipe for three-sugar cake. Crisis averted!

I made a few leetle changes to the recipe. It calls for "stone-ground" flour, and I have no idea what that is, so I just used good ol' AP. Also, it calls for three kinds of sugar: dark brown, raw, and white. I only had light brown and white, so I just used those. So it's really a two-sugar cake.

You need: 1 cup plain yogurt, 3 eggs, 2/3 cup white sugar, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 1/4 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/3 cup oil.

First, mix together your yogurt, eggs, sugars, and vanilla. I had a few little lumps of brown sugar left after I whisked it all, but I figure that they add character to the cake so I didn't freak out. (Fun fact: this is also how I rationalize the cat hair on all my clothes).

Now add your flour, baking powder, and salt to the bowl. Mix these ingredients together on the top a little bit before folding them into the batter. Alternately, you could combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl before adding them to the wet ingredients. I didn't want to have to wash another bowl.

Once those are combined, add the oil and mix until combined.

Pour into a loaf pan, and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let it rest until it is pretty cool before turning it out onto a plate.

Yum, cake!I still had some yogurt to use up, so I decided to make this glaze from Pioneer Woman. You need 1/2 cup marmalade and 1/4 cup yogurt.

Heat your marmalade over low heat until it is melty.

Then, remove the saucepan from the heat and add the yogurt. Mix until it's all combined.

Spoon that glaze on your cake!

Oh, yum. Oh yum oh yum oh yum.

This cake made my house (*ahem*... dorm room) smell so very good. And, most importantly, it is delicious. It was nice and moist, and I think the orange glaze added a nice tang. I will definitely make this again - next time I might add some orange zest and raspberries to the batter.

Lori Mantz Bars... oh sweet mama.

2009-02-07T13:51:00.010-06:00

I'm not sure who Lori Mantz is or was, but I know that she made these bars, and I know that I love her. Lori Mantz bars are a combination of a brownie and an oatmeal cookie, except better. The bottom is a bit salty and chewy, the top is sweet and soft and chocolatey, and the overall effect is similar to what I imagine an angel would taste like.

You make these bars in three parts: bottom, middle, top.

For part one, you need: 1 cup flour, 2 cups rolled oats (NOT instant oats, the 'old fashioned' kind), 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, and 12 tablespoons butter.

First, butter a 9x13 pan. Please ignore my arm hair. Also, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine your flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. And if you see dirty dishes in the background of this picture, you should probably go get your eyes checked because there are no dirty dishes in this picture. Nope. No, sir. None there.

In a separate bowl, melt your butter. You could wait to melt your butter until you actually need it, but I like to melt it early so it has time to cool down a little bit. I don't know why. It just feels right.

To the flour mixture, add your oats and brown sugar. Mix 'er up.

Now, pour in your melted butter, and mix until you get...

...this!

Press the mixture into the bottom of your pan, and bake for 10 minutes.

Part 2! You need: 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, 8 tablespoons butter, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 2 eggs, 1 1/3 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 cup milk, and 1 tsp vanilla.

Throw your chocolate, butter, and sugar in a bowl, and microwave it until it's all melted, stirring every minute or so.

Here I am stirring after about two minutes. It is not ready.

Here I am stirring after about five minutes total. Oh mama, that looks goooooooood.

Let it sit for a minute so it's not too hot - we don't want to cook the eggs when we add them. Then, add the eggs and mix well.

Add your flour...
...baking soda...
... and salt. Stir well to combine.

Now add the milk and vanilla. It may take awhile to fully combine it with the chocolate mixture, but keep stirring. It'll get there.

Yum.
Spread the chocolate batter on top of the oatmeal layer (which you took out of the oven after ten minutes of baking.) You can use a Christmas-themed spatula, even if it is not Christmas, because we can celebrate Jesus' birthday every day! Right? Throw the pan back in the oven for 25 minutes.

Layer three! All right! We need 1 oz unsweetened chocolate, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla. And 2 tablespoons of water, which I forgot to put in the picture. My bad.

First, melt together your butter and chocolate.

Add your powdered sugar and vanilla and stir well.

Now, add 2 tablespoons of hot water slowly to the bowl until it reaches a lovely pourable consistency...

...like this. Yummmmmmm, frosting!!!!!

Naked brownie top after 25 minutes in the oven...

Spread on your frosting! AND LET IT SET. These bars are NOT okay to eat warm from the oven. You must let them rest until the frosting has set. Please trust me. These bars need time to meld.

Hello, beautiful.

You're definitely going to want milk with this bad girl. Oh, these bars are so good... sweet and salty and chocolatey and delicious. Plus, they have oatmeal in them, so they are healthy. Go make them!

Smothered Vegetables

2009-01-31T15:54:00.021-06:00

I love my crockpot so much. I got it for seven dollars at Goodwill, and it makes cooking so easy - not a lot of cleanup, not too time-consuming, and my dorm room smells so very good by the end of the day. Smothered Vegetables is a variation on my mother's Smothered Steak recipe. I am a vegetarian, so smothered steak does not appeal to me, but these veggies sure do. Yummo.

You need: a can of diced tomatoes (I use no-sodium-added), frozen green beans, flour, soy sauce (I use low-sodium), salt, pepper, peppers and an onion.

You also need molasses but I forgot to put it in the picture. Please do not forget the molasses. It is essential. Also, this recipe is the only thing I use molasses for. I know I could make cookies with it, but I don't.

First, cut up your peppers. I just do them in strips, but if you want to dice them it's fine. Do what feels right.

Chop, chop, chop.

Dump them in your crockpot. They looks so festive and pretty! Full disclosure: I only used one green pepper and one red pepper in this batch, even though there is an extra green pepper in the ingredients picture. Again, just do what feels right. I was worried my crockpot would run out of room.

Add your chopped-up onion.

And some frozen green beans. I just looooooooooooove green beans. I eat them all the time.

To your veggies, add 1/3 cup flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp pepper.

Give it all a good mix to coat the veggies.

Now, dump in your can of tomatoes (undrained!).

Add 3 tablespoons of soy sauce...

...and two tablespoons of molasses. Do you like my nail polish? It's called "Electric Pink."

Give 'er a stir. As you can see, it just looks like messy vegetables. But in a few hours, oh how lovely and saucy and melded and delicious it will be!

Set your crockpot on low and leave it there for eight-ish hours.

(Time elapses)

Oh my. Oh my head. Look at this beautiful pot of deliciousness.

The vegetable juices and soy sauce and molasses have all turned in to the best sauce in the world, and the vegetables are all soft and mushy. This stuff is seriously like crack, except it's good for you. And not illegal.

I like to eat my smothered veggies over rice. They would also be good with some crusty bread for sopping up the sauce, or maybe even over noodles. Yum, yum yum. Please make these veggies.

Rainbow Cake

2009-01-26T13:50:00.023-06:00

I've been looking for an excuse to try out this technique I saw on The Omnomicon - it just looks so FUN! Some of her commenters whined that the cake seemed too chemical-y. I personally love chemicals. The pills I take whenever I have a headache? Chemicals! The goop I put on my face every night so I'll stay pretty forever? Chemicals! A little food coloring never hurt anyone (and I say this as a person who had a childhood allergy to red food dye).

The opportunity presented itself this week when it was birthday time for three special kids. I was trying to decide how to decorate a cake for a 2nd grade girl, 2nd grade boy, and 8th grade girl - not the most cohesive group. Then it occured to me: CANDY!!! Who doesn't like candy?! So I decided to make a candy-covered rainbow cake. Here's what I did:

Ingredients: Two boxes white cake mix, 2/3 cup butter (softened) or oil, 2 cups water or milk, six eggs, food coloring and spray stuff for the pan.

I feel a little guilty for always using box cake mixes, but not guilty enough to stop using them.

Preheat your oven to 350, or whatever the particular cake mix you chose says. Butter and flour your pan - or just spray it:

Dump the mixes, eggs, water, and butter into a big mixing bowl, and blend together with the hand mixer your mom got you for Christmas:

If the noise of the mixer interests your cat, throw her a cupcake paper to keep her distracted and out of the kitchen. Watch her play with it happily until you try to take a picture of her. Watch her walk away as if she was never interested in the cupcake paper in the first place.

I'm not going to say that you should lick these...

but I'm not going to say that you shouldn't.

Figure out how many colors you are going to use. I am using six: red, orange, yellow, green, blue purple. Then, divide your batter into that many bowls. On the Omnomicon she measured out the batter to make sure they all were equal, but I just estimated. Also, I am a poor college student. Most of my dishes are from Goodwill. So, if you have pretty bowls that are all the same size and match each other, good for you. Please don't judge my bowls.

Now, dye your batter! I love my gel food coloring because it gives really intense color without watering down your batter the way liquid coloring does.

Pretty!!!

If your hands look like this when you're done, and your friends ask what happened, tell them you killed a unicorn with your bare hands. Because unicorn blood is rainbow. Obviously.

I made my cake in a rectangle pan, and decided it would be to hard to spread out each color perfectly so that every slice had every color in it. So, I just blooped spoonfuls of batter into the pan randomly on top of one another:

I think this is what it looks like when the cartoon bluebirds in Disney Princess Land poop.

You don't want to even out the batter by spreading it, because that will mix the colors together. Instead, just pick up the pan a few inches from your counter and drop it. Do this three times. The top kind of flattened out for me after that.

Pop this baby in the oven!

Set your timer for the time listed on the back of your cake mix box, and do your dishes.

This rainbow thing sure creates a lot of dishes.

Look! The cake is done! Take her out of the oven!

The dimply area on top is from where I used a fork to check for doneness. I didn't have any toothpicks. I'll just cover it with frosting later.

The cake looks kind of weird on top because it is brown from the oven, but a quick peek at the bits left in the bottom of the pan shows...

Colorful cake bits! Pretty!!!

Crumb coat of frosting:

Now the best part... decorating! WITH CANDY!!

Gummi Lifesavers and Twizzlers? Okay!

And KitKat bars and mini Hershey Kisses? Okay!

I just love candy.

I didn't have room to write all three kids' names on the cake, so I made little flags out of DumDums...
Coordinating cupcakes for their classmates:

In conclusion? I think the rainbow cake is really cool - I can't wait for them to slice into the cake and find the 'surprise' inside! BUT, I think I'll wait to make it again until I have an apartment with a dishwasher. Doing all the dishes was a huge drag.

Hello, world!

2009-01-25T22:43:00.001-06:00

'Sup?