I'm Back!

Well that was a bit of hiatus wasn't it? I have no excuses besides laziness. But I've been approached to do cupcakes again for my favorite little coffee shop so I'm excited about baking again and getting back into it full force! To start I ran right out and bought a 5 lb bag of flour and a 10 lb bag of sugar! Ooh baby, that's a good start! I wasn't planning on starting until Thursday to get some good weekend sales in on the cupcakes but Chuck had a long, pretty ugly day at work. He determined that the only thing to cheer him up would be some molten lava cakes. I'm not one to argue against the healing powers of chocolate so I was up for the task!

I found a very simple recipe at Tasty Kitchen. Seriously, it's 5 ingredients and one bowl! You can get much easier than that folks. So thanks to the lovely Brandielle, I had my task set!

I did not have any baker's chocolate but I did have:

When I bought this, my incredibly intelligent 6 year old who reads EVERYTHING asked "why is it called 'Special'" and my only answer was, "because it is!"

So I took my "Special" chocolate, melted it with some butter, added some sugar, eggs, and flour, and viola!

The recipe calls for this being baked in 4 custard cups but since my husband bought me this pan, he insisted I use it! And again, I don't argue when it comes to chocolate so I did! So it only made 2 cakes. Since the girls were already in bed, that was ok with us. We don't share chocolate in our house.

Now, since I was making much larger cakes, I probably should have increased the time by more than the 2 minutes that I did. So I would recommend 18-20 minutes of baking. But Chuck prefers raw batter so it worked out for the best. I did not have any cream in the house so we omitted the fresh whipped cream but I am sure that it would have been fabulous! And as a tip - I always add a splash of vanilla when I make homemade whipped cream. Try it once, you'll thank me!

This is how I wanted it to look:This is how it really looked:But it tasted fabulous!! Warm and melty chocolate will fix the worst of days! I promise!

Molten Lava Cakes:
4 pieces (squares) Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate (or 1/2 cup Special Dark chips)
½ cups Butter
1 cup Powdered Sugar
2 whole Eggs
2 whole Egg Yolks
6 Tablespoons Flour
2 cups Real Whipping Cream
2 Tablespoons Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla (trust me!)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Spray 4 custard cups (or 2 ginormous muffin cups) with Pam and place on cookie sheet.
Microwave chocolate and butter in large bowl on high for about 1 minute, until butter is melted. whisk until chocolate is also melted.
Stir in sugar until well blended. Whisk in eggs and egg yolks. Stir in flour.
Divide between cups.
Bake 13-14 minutes until sides are firm and center is soft. (or 18-20 if you're making the big daddies) Let stand 1 minute.
Combine sugar, heavy cream and vanilla and whip until stiff.
Invert cakes on dishes and top with whipped cream. It's best to serve these immediately. Cold lava becomes pretty darn hard, doesn't it? I'm just sayin'.

Because I've been away for so long, I'm going to leave you with a bonus recipe. You see, this cake calls for 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks. That leaves 2 egg whites all by their lonesome and I just can't have that! So I saved them for the morning.

Have you heard of Hungry Girl? She is the guru of eating the good stuff but in lighter forms. I took my little lonely egg whites and transformed them into one fabulous Egg Mug!

Here's how:

2 egg whites + one whole egg (I had just one left in the fridge and I am very opposed to lonely eggs)

1 wedge Laughing Cow swiss cheese

1 slice deli ham

I scrambled those eggs in my favorite mug that I got in Berlin, added the cheese, ham, and some salt & pepper, microwaved it for 1 min, stirred and then nuked it for 30 more seconds and got this:

Are you hungry yet?? Look at that yummy, creamy mug of deliciousness!

Happy Baking!

Because Loretta Lynn's daughter said so

Oh my poor baking blog, how I have neglected thee. It's not for lack of baking, just lack of posting motivation. I have no excuses so I won't offer any, I'll just say sorry and jump back on the bandwagon.
Over the holidays I was commissioned to bake three cakes for my husband's boss. Since I'm really more of a cupcake kind of gal, this task was pretty daunting. The first cake was a red velvet and it came out tasty but short and my icing skills were less than novice so it looked very sad. I was embarrassed but due to time constraints, was unable to start over. To my surprise, we got a text message the next day - "Loretta Lynn's daughter thinks you should open a bakery". OMG - Loretta Lynn's daughter was at the party where the saddest looking cake ever was served?! And she liked it?! I replied that if she would like to donate the start up, I would happily name it the Loretta Lynn Bakery. Alas, they did not agree. The next cake I made was a coconut version of a Tres Leche which again, delish! But it's a basic sheet cake and not much to look at. By my third cake, I had better tools and more practice. I made a German Chocolate cake that I have been craving ever since. I decorated it, not perfectly, but pretty darn good for a beginner. I was so proud, I even did a littl "Ta Da!" move to my hubby when completed.

I then began to delve into the world of fondant. I was a bit intimidated but after reading other sites and instructions, it didn't look that bad so I made a cake for a friend's baby shower:
and some fetus cookies (blame Cakewrecks)

This past weekend, while nursing a post-surgical kidney (yes, I am a glutton for punishment) I baked a cake for the Super Bowl:
It's not perfect but it was fun to make! And totally worth the $11.99 football shaped pan.



So I have been baking, just being lazy about sharing. I promise it won't happen again soon. Tomorrow is my brother's birthday and I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve. ;)

TWD: Lenox Almond Biscotti - I mean brownies :(

Um, I'm an idiot and forgot this week. Totally forgot! I was planning on spending Sunday afternoon making these but then got invited to my father-in-law's for dinner and completely forgot about the biscotti until....oh, about 9pm last night! Oops. For what the other bakers did, please click here.

Otherwise, enjoy this photo of the amazing Lady's Brownies I made. Recipe from Paula Deen's Lady & Sons cookbook. It is so simple, no mixers and just one bowl! I added about a cup of toffee chips just for fun!

2cup sugar

1 cup veg. oil.

4 eggs

6 tbs cocoa

1tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cup self rising flour

1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans ( I omitted, nuts take up valuable chocolate space in our mouths) ;)

Preheat oven to 325, blend together sugar, oil, eggs, cocoa, and vanilla. Add flour; mix. add nuts (or in my case, toffee chips); spread into greased 13x9 baking dish, bake 25-30. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Chuck said they were the best brownies he has ever had! I must say, I baked them for the full 30 minutes and they were incredibly soft and gooey: a perfect brownie texture, if you're of the people who prefer gooey over cakey brownies, which we are.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel (half)Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

You know how some recipe are dubbed "One Bowl whatever"? This cake is "Four Bowl Cake". Four. Bowls. And one pan. As someone who loathes doing dishes, this was not ideal. Although I was happy that I didn't have to lug my big heavy KitchenAid from under the counter. This cake was very simple to put together. See the recipe on Tammy's site since she is the master mind behind choosing this fantastic recipe!

The caramel topping was time consuming but again, not difficult at all. I think I overcooked it a bit but it still tasted amazing. I have the world's pickiest husband who did not want peanuts on his so I did just half with peanuts. That was tricky since the cake fell so much in the middle. I think I may have undercooked it but when my timer beeped, the oven turned itself off so I couldn't add more time because the temperature had gotten too low. It certainly didn't affect the taste though. The cake was moist and delicious and the caramel was rich and creamy and the peanuts gave it a little saltyness and crunch. A perfect combination. Tastes best with a glass of cold milk!

Chocolate Cupcakes 2 Ways

A few weeks ago I made some toffee topped chocolate cupcakes for Get Coffee. Apparenlty they did pretty well so they requested more. I decided to do half the batch of chocolate cakes with the toffee chips and half with a little minty surprise inside. I put a Three Musketeers Mint Mini in each one. Wow! Baking the candy made them kind of chewy which made for a delicious little treat. I topped the toffee cakes with "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting recipe from the back of the Hershey's Cocoa Powder box. The minty cakes I topped with some Mint Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I can't wait to see how these sell because I loved them both.

For the cupcakes I used the Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcake recipe from Dorie Greenspan's

Baking: From My Home to Yours: (this is the original recipe, I doubled it to be able to make a pan of mini cupcakes also)

1 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa pwdr

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 stick butter, room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted & cooled

Preheat oven to 350F.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking pwdr, baking soda, and salt.

Use the paddle attachment on your mixer and beat the butter at med. speed until soft & creamy. Add the sugar and beat for about 2 minutes, until is is bledned into the butter. Add the egg, then the yolk, beating for 1 min after each addition. Beat in vanilla, then reduce mixer speed to low and add half of the dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear. Add the buttermilk, mixing until incorporated, then mix in the remaining dry ingredients. Add the melted chocolate and mix it in with a rubber spatula. Bake cupcakes for 22-25 minutes.

"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting:

1 stick butter

2/3 cup Hershey's cocoa pwdr

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating on medium speed to spreading consistency. Add more milk if needed. Stir in vanilla.

Mint Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

3 egg whites

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temp

1/2 tsp vanilla flavor

1/4 tsp pepermint flavor (more if you like it strong, do 1/4 tsp. at a time b/c peppermint is sta-rong!)

Put egg whites and sugar in a double boiler over simmering water. Whisking constantly, cook until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm (easiest way is to get some on your finger and see if you can still feel the sugar granules. Pour heated egg mixture into a clean bowl of a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat egg white mixture on high speed until it forms stiff (but not dry) peaks. Continue beating until fluffy and cooled, about 6 minutes (It's very important to beat it for the whole 6 minutes). Switch to the paddle attachment. With mixer on medium-low, add butter several tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition. (If frosting appears soupy or separated after all butter has been added, beat on medium-high speed until smooth again, 3 to 5 minutes more.) Beat in extracts. Reduce speed to low; beat 2 minutes to eliminate air bubbles. Stir with a rubber spatula until smooth.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Chocolate Chunkers

There is no better title for these babies. With only 1/3 cup of flour, they are almost entirely chocolate. The batter is melted chocolate and cocoa powder and there two different types of chocolate chunks throughout the cookie. The recipe called for raisins but when I discussed this with my husband he said "why don't you just put some a** in it too." With all the comments from other bakers of the turd-like appearance of the cookies, he wasn't very far off. We also left out the nuts, mostly because we just weren't in the mood for nuts. So we have chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate cookies and they are good! It doesn't hurt that I'm a total chocoholic! They are better the 2nd day, after refrigeration. Very rich and chewy. Delish!

This week's recipe was chosen by Claudia. As much as I enjoyed these cookies and the Whopper ones, and the granola ones from several weeks ago (which I did make but did not post for some reason), I am ready to move on to a different type of baked good. I'm looking forward to next week's Dimply Plum Cake.

Everyone loves S'mores!

As I showed below, I am now getting special requests for my cupcakes and that is the biggest boost to my ego! I won't lie.
Luckily I had a half day at the office yesterday so I had time to whip up the two different types of cake requested. Even so, I was still up until 10pm baking but I did take a break to fix some bad ass hamburgers for dinner. I even skipped Project Runway to get this stuff done so I hope they're appreciative! (don't tell them I have a DVR and can watch it today)

Look at that lovely. It tastes as good as it looks too. One day I will find a light and fluffy marshmallow icing recipe but this is the 2nd one I've tried and it turned out the same as the first - a bit runny and VERY sticky.

For the Cupcake:
I had some sweet German Chocolate in the pantry and just used the recipe for Sweet Chocolate Cake inside the box. You want to talk about light and fluffy, this cake batter is it! I could eat it out of a bowl it is so delicious!

1 pkg Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate
1/2 cup water
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine (I always use real butter)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs separated
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, put 1 Tbl. white vinegar in the milk and let sit for about 5 min. I had to do that and it turned out just fine!)

Preheat oven to 350F. Microwave chocolate and water in microwavable bowl on High for 1-2 min. or until chocolate is almost melted, stirring after each minute. Stir until chocolate is completely melted.

Mix flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. (I sifted mine b/c I get great satisfaction from sifting ingredients into a nice, neat pile.) Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electri cmixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in chocolate mixtures and vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating until well belnded after each addition.

Beat egg whites in a separate bowl with electrix mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently sir into batter.

Pour into cucpakes pans (an ice cream scoop works perfectly) and bake for 20 min. (Note: b/c these were S'more cupcakes, I put a bit of crushed graham cracker crumbs in the bottom of each cupacke liner)

For the icing, I used Paula Deen's Marshmallow Icing recipe:

2 egg whites
1 1/2 cup sugar
5 Tbl. cold water
2 Tbl. light corn syrup
1 cup mini marshmallows

Cook egg whites, sugar, water, and corn syrup over a double boiler and beat for 5 minutes. (this too me WAY longer than 5 min - close to 10). Stir in marshmallows until melted.

I then beat the crap out of that icing with my hand mixer for another 10 minutes to cool it down and try to stiffen it up. Of course with only 2 egg whites in it, there wasn't much stiffening to be done.

I will never work with marshmallow icing in a piping bag again. It is a sticky mess and no matter how tightly I held that bag, it was more than determined to sneak up and out and all over my hand. I used the filling tip and filled the cup cakes with the marshmallow mixture and then filled in the top of the cupcake. It helped that mine were a litte undercooked and therefore sunka bit in the middle creating the perfect marshmallow bowl! I then sprinkled some graham cracker crumbs on top and added a square of Hershey's chocolate and Viola! S'more cupcakes!

Happy Birthday Couture Girl!

Brownie Buttons, getting ready for Dorie

Yesterday I signed up for Tuesdays With Dorie, a blog roll of bakers working their way through Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. All the recipes in this book look amazing and since I didn't really know where to start, I decided to let my fellow bloggers guide me and see what I could come up with. But since I joined on a Tuesday I have to wait until next week to do the first challenge. So for practice I chose my own goody to start with. It seemed only natural to crave brownies while watching completely svelt swimmers and divers performing for the world so that's what I decided to make. After perusing several of Dorie's brownie recipes I found one that I had all the ingredients for and only took 15 minutes to bake.

Brownie Buttons:

Grated zest of 1/2 orange (optional, I opted out)

1 tsp sugar (optional, again, not me)

1/4 cup plus 2 tbl all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

1/2 stick (4 tbl) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces

2 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used semi-sweet, same difference, right?)

1/3 cup light brown sugar (I used brown sugar Splenda)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg

For the glaze:

2 oz. white chocolate

Preheat oven to 350. If you're using orange zest, combine the zest and sugar in a small bowl, rubbing them between your fingertips to blend; set aside. Whisk together the flour & salt.

Melt butter, chocolate, and brown sugar in a meduim heavy-bottomed saucepan over very low hear, stirring frequently with a heatproof spatula and keeping an eye on the pan so nothing overheats or burns. When the mixture is smooth, remove from heat and cool for a minute or two.

Sir the vanilla, egg, and the zest, if you're using it, into the chocolate mixture. When the mixture is well blended, add the flour and stir only until it is incorporated. You should have asmooth, glossy batter.

Spoon the batter into 16 buttered mini muffin cups, using about a teaspoon of batter to fill each cup three-quarters full. Put 1 tsp of water in each empty cup.

Bake for 14-16 minutes or until the tops fo th button spring back when touched. Cool for 3 minutes and then transfer out of the pan to a wire rack to cool fully.

OptionalGlaze (these were awesome w/out it by the way, I have no patience for glaze)

Melt chocolate in a small heatproof bowl over a saucepan of water. Stir constantly adn don't leave chocolate unatended as white chocolate scorches very easily.

One by one, dip the tops of the buttons into the chocolate, twirling the buttons so that you get a little swirl at the centrer of each one and excess choc. drips backintot eh bowl. Refridgerate for 15 minutes to set teh glaze (ha!) I must note that it is important to let the brownies cool completely before dipping in the glaze. My impatience led to big pieces of brownie tops getting stuck in the glaze but that just meant that I needed to take a big spoonful out and eat it so I was ok with that.

Since my hubby is not so much a white chocolate fan as a peanut butter & chocolate fan, I melted 1/4 cup peanut butter chips and 1/8 cup chocolate chips together in the microwave and glazed them with that. They were awesome, perfect little brownie bites. Very moist with a rich chocolate flavor. Chuck loved them too. I made 18 last night and there are only 4 left this morning.

Brewed Chocolate - Review Part 2

Ok, tried it this time with some milk. About 1/4 cup added to a full cup of hot water and 2 tsp. of the Brewed Chocolate. Much better! It definitely gave the chocolate a more defined flavor which I'm still trying to decide how exactly to define. It's a whole new way to experience chocolate. It's very mellow. I can't tell if it's the time (10:30pm) or the drink but I am feeling nice and relaxed and sleepy. It goes very well with Caribou Coffee Chocolate Mocha Granola Bars.

Next up - baking with Brewed Chocolate. Stay tuned.......

The way to a man's heart (finally a new post!)

It's been over a month. I've been baking. Lord knows, I've been baking. Just so tired from the baking, parenting, working, beaching, and blogging that I've neglected my poor baking site. So to the 2 people who actualy read this, I apologize.



So a couple of weeks ago I made chocolate cupcakes with Reese's peanut butter cream cheese icing. It was very nostalgic to make something with Reese's because I contribute my husband's proposal to said brand. Well, it played a big part anyway. He was in school in Texas and I sent him a package for Halloween including a big bag of miniture Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. We were actually broken up at the time but "still friends" whatever that meant. He told me when he opened that package, he knew he was loved. One month later, he came home for Thanksgiving, told me he loved me, and the very next day, asked me to marry him. Talk about getting back together! So these cupcakes are dedicated to Chuck, the best thing that's ever happened to me.

I got the recipe for the cupcakes from Couture Cupcakes. She totes it as the "Best Chocolate Cupcake Recipe" I beg to differ. It was a little dry for my taste. The chocolate taste was divine but I'm a big fan of the moist cake. The first step is to melt unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder in a bowl with some boiling water. This makes the most tempting bowl of chocolate which I kept forgetting was unsweetened so everytime I went to lick some off my fingers, I had to run for my Diet Coke.

For the icing, I just melted one cup of Reese's Peanut Butter Chips and added it to a basic cream cheese recipe which is as follows:
8oz. cream cheese (room temp)
4oz. unsalted butter (room temp)
Beat these two together until smooth. Then add powdered sugar, one cup at a time until you reach the desired sweetness, beating after each cup. Then I mixed in the peanut butter chips and got a beautiful, creamy peanut butter icing. I topped it all off with some mini chocolate chips just for fun! The leftovers went to work with Chuck and I heard they did not last very long.