Yet Another

With my own birthday coming up, here is a birthday cake: Happy Birthday Jenn! I am really enjoying making cakes for people...it's my little contribution to their birthday, and hey, who doesn't love cake? Plus it's a great way to experiment with techniques. Here I used melted orange chocolate wafers to pipe the words onto wax paper, and transferred it to the cake. It's good to do that in case of mistakes (we don't want any wrecks, do we?).

This particular one is a chocolate chip cake, and sooo delicious. It uses sour cream in the batter, and is very moist. And the hint of cinnamon adds a nice touch. You can grab the recipe here:

Bit of Nutmeg

The only difference of course being that I coated the whole thing in a layer of chocolate instead of frosting. See how it gets all nice and smooth? It's firm but you can still cut through it with a fork. Also I mixed the chips into the batter, not layered like the original recipe.

This picture makes me happy:


Then I took a couple of the sugar on top to see how close I could get:

Answer: very very close.

Pineapple Donuts

I got a fresh pineapple from Costco (they are surprisingly cheap), and wondered what the heck to do with it. One option was sauteing slices with brown sugar. Many people don't like fruit warm; I am not one of them. I love pretty much any fruit cooked somehow, be it in things or on things. So I cooked up some pineapple slices for dessert, and topped them with vanilla yogurt, grape nuts, and cinnamon, and served them with an Oreo (don't judge me). The dish looked just like a donut, and let me tell you...it smelled like one too! Didn't Dunkin' Donuts used to have a pineapple filled one with a crumb topping?

So then today, I made Pineapple donuts again, but photographed the process for the first time ever. I was curious how the photos would turn out with the fancy camera. I was not thrilled with them. Here are the steps for making Pineapple Donuts, with some pictures. Please let me know what you think!


First off, swirl a little butter in the a pan over medium or so heat. You could probably skip the butter if you want. Then drop in a slice of pineapple (mine are pretty thick so I just made one) and sprinkle with brown sugar. Let it cook for a couple minutes, then flip it and sprinkle with brown sugar again. Let it cook a couple more minutes.

Now flip it one more time, to caramelize the sugar on top, and cook until your desired doneness. Remove to a plate. You might have juices in the pan you can pour over the plate, or not. Mine cooked away this time.


Now cover with yogurt (the vanilla flavor contributed to the donut smell); you could use any kind here really, because pineapple goes with a lot of flavors. Then sprinkle with Grape Nuts and Cinnamon. Mmmm, can you smell that? Donutty.

* Snow * Snow * Snow * Snow *

I don't want to be one of those people that does nothing but complain about the snow, acting all surprised when it happens, even though we LIVE IN NEW JERSEY, WHICH TENDS TO HAVE WINTER ALMOST EVERY YEAR. And do not get me started on people that stock up at the grocery store. You mean you didn't have 24 hours worth of food and toilet paper to subsist on in the house? And no shovel? By now?

NJ.com

But seriously. WTF, Winter? Give it a rest already.

On a cheerful note, we had another birthday around here! Happy Birthday Kelly! I made her a Peppermint Poke Cake, a recipe I got from Betty Crocker or somewhere and had forever. It's a chocolate cake mix, which you bake and poke holes in, then pour on chocolate pudding (with peppermint), and top with peppermint/chocolate frosting. It was so moist and delicious, with just the right amount of mintiness!

The words are done by holding a stencil over the cake and sifting confectioner's sugar over it.

Ace of Cakes, and a Birthday!

It is That Guy's birthday!

Happy Birthday Hun!!

To celebrate, we had a few friends over for a surprise party. Good times were had by all!  Our fridge has never seen so much beer.  

I decided to go all out and make a super-cool cake.  This would be my first attempt at a themed cake, so I figured the Question Box from Super Mario Brothers would be easiest...it's just a square, after all.

Now, here is where I am supposed to go "it ended up being the hardest thing I've ever done and nothing went right and f* birthdays."  But actually, it was great! All went exactly as planned, just took a little time, since I was going at it inexperienced.  Oh, and I don't have a pic, but as I layered the cake, I stuck those gold chocolate coins in it randomly (still wrapped). So every piece served had coins in it! Here is the cake after layering and cutting the sides even, with two sides frosted:

From there, it was a matter of frosting the other three sides, and using a piping bag and tip to apply the question mark. All black frosting was from the greatest creation ever created: Frosting in a tube that you put a tip onto and pipe out. You can use any style tip and just screw it on there and the frosting is ready to go. Science!And just look at the perfectly smooth frosting:
And a couple of dramatic "night" shots:

On the whole, I was happy with the way the cake turned out (even if a few spots are lopsided!), and TG was very happy with it as well. Only problem: we have a LOT of leftovers. I'd like to invite everyone over for cake, just show up whenever you'd like (Yup...still no job)!

Oatmeal Bars

The other day I made Oatmeal Bars from Sugar Plum, a food blog I frequent.  She has them as having banana and almonds, but having neither in the house, mine are just oatmeal.  They do taste good, but as if they are missing something.  That's typical for me...I always leave things out of recipes rather than just go to the store and buy them.  

Anyhoo, I recommend her site for lots of yummy dessert ideas.  AFTER reading mine, of course ;).

Real or Not?

Is it really baking if you make something from a mix?  Last night I made awesome Mint Chocolate brownies, from a mix.  No Pudge Fat Free mix, to be exact. Just add yogurt.  They are really awesome. Next time I'm going to make plain ones with peanut butter cups or maybe Oreos in them. They will probably be awesome.  Anyway, does using a mix mean I didn't really bake Someone asked me if I bake every day, and I said no, the last time before this was Sunday. But that got me thinking if mixes count.  

I highly recommend No Pudge if you are looking for brownies that might not fill your arteries with fudginess.

Enlarged to Show Texture

It's time for an explanation of the image at the top of the page. It is a rainbow cake. Thorough (but a little annoying) directions for construction of the cake can be found here.

I made this colorful nugget of fabulous in a bundt pan, and layered the different color batters into it accordingly. It baked up in a sort of horseshoe shape, because the outsides baked first. I didn't think of this or else would have used more blue and less red (I did the opposite). Then I cut off the top to flatten it and turn it out onto the plate. The pic above is pre-turnout. It just looked so pretty! Then it didn't come out of the pan properly and broke in half. Oh well. Frosting the cake was also a bit of a debacle, so there are no pics of that either.

I did get a few rainbow cupcakes out of the leftovers, so heres one pic of those, and a couple good cake ones.  I will try this again someday.