Happy Halloween!

Make yourself some delicious sugar cookies today…or just pig out on all that candy! But, I would certainly go for the sugar cookies!

 

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween!

Sometimes you feel like a nut…

I decided I wanted make something special for my mom. She is a great gal and always deserves something sweet. Its odd that the title for this post is “sometimes you feel like a nut”, and I am making something for my mom. She is a little nutty, and I always laugh the hardest when I am with her. For a while now I have thought about making some Almond Joy cupcakes for her, as one of her favorite candy bars is the Almond Joy.

We made a plan to meet last Wednesday, and I was going to present her with her treat.  I baked the cupcakes, and shortly after got the sad call that she was sick. No more meeting, and still all of those cupcakes. I decided to finish them off, as a practice run. The Momma deserves the best anyway!

I used Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes recipe for coconut cupcakes, exchanging almond extract for the vanilla. I wanted to give a nice almond flavor. I also used a cream of coconut, since I had it on hand, and lessened the sugar.

For the frosting, I used Martha’s dark chocolate frosting, but added cream of coconut, and some extra powdered sugar to thicken it up a bit. I have to say, it was delicious. I love frosting.

I toasted some coconut and topped the cupcakes with some sliced almonds. They were really cute, and tasted pretty good too. I think next time I will do half coconut extract and half almond extract in the cupcakes, just because I LOVE coconut.

 

  

Next post, I will try to remember to include pictures along the way. I always forget that part!

I made a cake!

For some reason, its 3:00 in the morning, and I am up. Don’t ask why. I don’t know. Crazy dreams. Stuffy head. Thinking of a million things all at once. Alas, I thought I might make my visit with insomnia a bit productive and share my exciting news…

I made a cake! A big cake! For my boss! For their business’s 20th Anniversary!

I got a call on Thursday around 5:00, to make the cake for Saturday, which was a bit of a challenge. But I am always up for a challenge. We chatted briefly about size, flavor, design, and came up with the idea to make what I thought would be best! Ha!

I scrambled to the bank at 5:15 to get cash for the cake supply store that closes at 5:30, making it with oh, 5 minutes to spare. I grabbed a cake pan (hooray), some fondant, and ran to the grocery store to pick up caking ingredients. And then I ran to another store, and another store! Dang it for everything not being accessible at one store. I even when back to the store after one round of baking, because I ran out of ingredients. I should have planned better, but who needs to plan? I was baking a cake! For my boss!

On Friday, I frosted the cake and covered it in homemade marshmallow fondant (see CakeJournal for an awesome tutorial). I brushed the cake with a silver glitter (it looks a little dirty in the pics), and then began the painstaking labor of cutting individual letters for the studio logo. Oh, but it was so fun!

With the help of my husband, we assembled the letters for the logo. Then, I piped the letters with fondant icing writer that I HATE and will NEVER use again! It clumped up (the official term) about every five seconds!  But alas, I managed to make it look semi-acceptable.

And the final product:

 

Congratulations Studio 10! I hope there are 20 more years ahead!

Banana Split, Goddess Style

Over the weekend, Matthew and I had some friends over for dinner. I love to bake, but I also love to cook. When I cook, I always accidentally make a ton of food, so dinner guests are especially appreciated in this house.

For dessert, I wanted to do something on the lighter side, as the cuisine of the evening was Mexican. But, chocolate was requested. Traditional chocolate, aka brownies, cake, aren’t so light. So I thought outside of the box, just a bit. Mexican Hot Chocolate…chocolate and cinnamon… bananas and chocolate… bananas and cinnamon. Ooo, cinnamon bruleed bananas with little ice cream quenelles and a chocolate drizzle!

Yes, that was my actual thought process.

So, I made them. And it was so easy, and so fast. I made a homemade chocolate sauce with 60% Cacao Ghirardelli chocolate, a little cream, a little butter, and a little water to thin it out. Usually, the chocolate would clump up once the water was added, but fate wasn’t that cruel to me on Saturday (I had already destroyed three martini glasses that I was planning on using for serving…don’t ask).

Then, I made the bananas. Oh, yummy bananas. I cut them into spears (or eighths if you prefer) and covered them in cinnamon and sugar. Then, I torched ‘em!

 

Just a side note- I love my culinary torch! Thank you Matthew!

 

Now, a banana split needs ice cream of course. But I didn’t want big clumpy scoops. Because I watch way too much Iron Chef America, I had seen quenelles being made a few times and I thought I might try my hand at them. Basically, you take two spoons and shift the ice cream (or sorbet, cream, mousse, etc.) between the two until it creates a football shape. You can apparently do it with one spoon too, but I am a visual learner (dancer by day). So, I went with two spoons.

The dessert turned out to be pretty much delicious, or at least my guests were kind enough to lie about it if they were bad. But I liked them, and had more as a late night snack. 

 

Tasty Traditions

This past weekend, we were able to listen to our Church’s Semi-Annual General Conference. For two days, we get to be spiritually fed and uplifted as we hear from our wonderful leaders.

These weekends were some of my favorite while I was in college. I was usually invited to watch the meetings with friends and their families. I was able to share some of their “Conference Traditions” and be a part of a family when I was far away from my own. Aside from sporadic note taking, accidental naps, and conference bingo, the top tradition was always partaking in a delicious breakfast of some sort!

Now that I have my own little family, consisting of me and Matthew for now, I wanted to start a little tradition myself. I have fond memories of making cinnamon rolls with my grandma, and not so fond memories of the disasters as I tried to replicate them (usually flat, hard, salty, nasty bread!) But they are a special, yummy treat that I have determined to be our own Conference breakfast.

I have always attempted to replicate Grandma’s bread recipe, but its never quite as good. So I decided to look up a few refrigerator roll recipes (so that I could let the dough rest overnight, and sleep in a bit) and combined a few to make my own.  After letting the dough rest overnight, I rolled it out to about 1/4 inch thick, and generously buttered the top, all the way to the edges. I wanted to make these rolls a bit more rich with cinnamon than normal, so I used 5 tablespoons of sugar  and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon to cover the buttered dough.  After rolling the dough, I used waxed dental floss (unused, of course!) to cut the dough to about 1 1/2 inch rolls. The dental floss doesn’t press as firmly as a knife and makes a cleaner cut. 

I let the rolls rest for about an hour, and baked them for 20 minutes or so.  I let them cool a bit and then topped them with a buttery powdered sugar glaze. They were soooo good! I just wish everyone could have come and had some! But instead, I stuffed my face, and added a few extra rolls to my sides!

Here is some cinnamony delight that won’t add any extra rolls to your tummies…lucky!

Gimme S’More!

Last month Matthew had to work in Austin and I decided to go out and visit him for a few days. While Matt worked, I toured the Capitol Building, checked out museums, and found a great independent bookstore. We had some awesome BBQ, and some fairly edible Tex-Mex. But the best thing we found was Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop. It is a tiny, cute little bakery with some quite delectable treats. They have a great assortment of cupcakes, dessert bars, pies, and made to order specialty cakes.

To satisfy our sugar craving, we grabbed a few cupcakes and my husband decided he needed to try a S’mores bar too. And OH MY GOODNESS, it was divine. In fact, I had to replicate the masterpiece this week. We were invited to a BBQ over the weekend, and I thought they would be the perfect treat!

I started with a graham cracker crust: finely crushed grahams, butter, dark brown sugar, and baked it for about 10 minutes. Then I made a thicker ganache, with a bag of semisweet chocolate chips, and a cup of heavy cream. I think next time i will use even less cream, to thicken the chocolate even more. It was really melty though, giving even more of an allusion of the real deal s’more.

I topped the whole thing with homemade marshmallow. It was surprisingly easy to make, and ridiculously addicting. I used a recipe from Alton Brown. He is a genius, and his recipes always seem to work for me. His lemon curd is excellent!

After letting the marshmallows dry out for a few hours, I browned the tops with my brand new culinary torch (thanks love)!

The trick to cutting these was dusting the knife with powdered sugar before each cut so that the marshmallow didn’t stick and result in the bar falling apart.

The bars were a big success.  At least, Matt and I liked them! And we got rid of most of them at the BBQ. I love being able to try new recipes and replicate good things that I have tasted before. Now I just have to figure out what to make this week, since we don’t have any birthdays or BBQs to go to!

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate

My baby sister turned 18 last Saturday! I can hardly believe it. She’s legally an adult! What happened to that cute little cherub of a baby?

(Whine, whine, whine…I should move on.)

So, for her birthday I asked what kind of cake she wanted. Her reply was, “Chocolate cake, chocolate mousse filling and chocolate ganache. Oh, and some raspberries in the mousse.” I was so proud (She takes after me, the chocoholic!). But she gave no specifics on decor. I asked, and asked what she wanted it to look like, but I got nothin’. Oddly enough, she did request a certain cake plate. So I decided to let that inspire the decor for the cake. 

For the cake, I used a basic chocolate cake recipe, but ended up cutting out some sugar when I added it to the egg whites, because the batter was SOOOO sweet already. The cake was really tasty, so don’t be afraid to tweak things a bit. The chocolate mousse filling is the best part. Its not really mousse, but whipped cream with melted chocolate added to it. I found the recipe once from Tyler Florence (I think), and it was so simple in comparison to all the others, I went with it instead. In my adapted version, I used:

1 pint whipped cream

1/2 bag semisweet chocolate chips

1 tsp vanilla

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over boiling water, not letting the water touch the bowl.  Add vanilla, and let cool. Meanwhile, whip cream until it is rather stiff, but not butter!  Add 1/4 of cream to chocolate, and mix to lighten up. Then fold it into the rest of cream. When I filled each of the layers, I topped the mousse with some fresh raspberries. That’s it! So delicious! 

I decided to whip the ganache, so that i could coat the cake well when frosting it. It worked great, and I loved the finish.

For decor, I used small edible beads in pink, yellow and blue to match the cake plate. I also made a fondant bow, which took a ridiculously long time for some odd reason. I added the bow, as it is the best feature on the cake plate. I mean, really, look how cute it is! 

The cake was a success, and I am still with the whole baby sister all grown up thing. Clearly, I have issues with birthdays, and numbers, and all that change stuff!

 

Happy Birthday Sister! Love you so very much! 

 

Happy Birthday Matthew

September is birthday month. My husband also had a birthday, and my sister’s is tomorrow. Sorry, the first few posts with be surrounded by the “B” word.

For Matthew’s birthday, he wanted pie instead of cake. Pie, really? He says not much of a cake man, although whenever I make cake, or cupcakes, they quickly vanish.  But, being his “B” day, he gets whatever he wants. Unfortunately, he was pretty vague about what type of pie he wanted. I did, however, get him to narrow down his pie choices to three: chocolate cream, apple, and blackberry. So being the good wife that I am, I made all three. Now, I didn’t make three huge pies. That would be ridiculous. Instead I made mini pies.  I found some small cute tins that were the perfect serving size! 

I started with the crust my mom taught me how to make. She makes the best crust. Ask around. People will most likely use butter or shortening, or a mixture of the two. She uses butter flavored Crisco. The recipe for one crust is:

1/3 cup plus 1 tbs. butter flavored Crisco

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2-3 tbs. cold water

Like any other recipe, you combine the dry ingredients, cut in the shortening and then add water, one tablespoon at a time, ensuring that the crust doesn’t become too wet.

For the fillings, I winged it.  Apples, cinnamon, sugar. Blackberries, sugar, a bit of vanilla (cause I like it), and a touch of cinnamon. I always use cornstarch as a thickener. For me, it works better than flour. 

For the chocolate cream, I googled. I have only ever had a chocolate cream pie where the cook used a packaged pudding mix. GROSS! I don’t believe in packaged products, ever!  I found a couple of recipes that I thought might work well, and then mixed them together. Basically, it was your standard pudding recipe, but decadent and delicious.

I prebaked the crusts for the chocolate cream, while filling and covered the apple and blackberry.  I, of course, topped the chocolate with fresh whipped cream and a sprinkle of cocoa powder. Yum!

We decided that the chocolate cream was our favorite! Who can resist whipped cream? I sure cant!

Birthdays

I am now officially a quarter of a century. And for some reason, this sounds really old. I know its not, but it sounds like it. The word CENTURY… its just daunting. And quarter, that’s the BIG coin.  Its just a bad combination.  The importance of this random feeling old, money, long times tangent is that it resulted in this very blog.

I was hours into turning the ripe old age of 25 when I started contemplating the things that I had, or had not done. I thought about what made me happy, and what I could do to make this year better than the last. So I made a list. On the list was baking. I LOVE to bake. Its therapeutic for me. Bad days become baking days. Baking days are the best days. So, once a week, I will bake, ensuring at least 52 fabulous days a year (plus more for the days following in which the goodies are devoured). But I also decided that I should share my baking excursion. Thus, the Goody Goddess blog was created.

Now, the title was chosen that I might one day be a true Goody Goddess. I am a decent baker, and I love all sweet treats. But I don’t feel that I have quite reached the status of goddess. Hopefully, for the first birthday of the Goody Goddess there will be plenty of divine treats to share!