Two Pies

 Key lime pie, with fresh whipped cream

Mud pie with graham crust, chocolate pudding and cool whip

Re: Blog theory

 Let's get a little philosophical here.

Turns out I'm not naturally one of those once-daily bloggers, or even a biweekly blogger. Turns out that I'm more of a unimonthly blogger. This strategy works only moderately well, because I'll have four or five new baking adventures to discuss in every post, which isn't quite the most exciting way to present information. Blogs provide single servings of information, the perfect size for quick consumption (a la Fight Club's single-serving friends.) Blogs aren't cookbooks with discrete chapters of recipes, and I've undertaken the responsibility of contributing to the entropy of the food blog world.

So, instead of recipe conglomerates, we'll move into single-serving posts, with single topics.

In the meantime, here's a single serving of a very cute dog.

Very Berry Birthday Cake

I decided to give this post a very innocent-sounding name, because the festivities surrounding this cake were not exactly innocent.

This is a great "healthy" cake for those people in your life who DON'T want a double-fudge peanut-butter-cookie-dough ice cream cake for their birthdays. Not that I'd be interested in a cake like that.

For this cake, I used a standard yellow cake mix (my favorite is Duncan Hines.) I whipped up my signature cream cheese frosting -- super simple and delicious. Although boxed cake mix can usually pass for homemade, I think homemade frosting tastes SO much better than the can. I'll always take the time to make my own frosting. 

I baked two 9-inch yellow cakes and layered frosting, blueberries, and raspberries between them. I think the cake turned out gorgeously -- and tasted pretty fantastic as well.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

16 oz cream cheese, room temperature

8 oz butter, room temperature

3-4 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Blend together cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add in vanilla, then powdered sugar one cup at a time, until desired consistency is reached.

cakes on cakes

I don't know why I haven't been motivated to blog my most recent baking exploits this spring. It's not that I've stopped baking; I'm loving my studio apartment and its little kitchen. I suppose this blog slump could be attributed to the fact that I've discovered that baking with a glass or two of wine and listening to some catchy tunes (like Justin Bieber -- judge me, go ahead) is an excellent Friday night activity. However, post-baking and wine, I'm not too disposed to blog. I usually text various friends and ask if I can bring over some freshly baked mini pies, or salted caramel cupcakes, and the answer's usually yes. I'm often repaid in libations of some sort, so it's certainly a fair trade.

Anyway, here are some treats that I've concocted over the past few months.

Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcakes -- the classic combo. I made these for a Cupcakes and Cocktails party at my apartment.

Samoas cupcake. It's absolutely as good as you'd imagine. Chocolate cake, caramel buttercream, caramel drizzle, toasted coconut and chopped Samoas to top it off. Decadent, baby.

I'm SO PROUD of THIS CAKE! My very first layer cake, frosted and everything. I wanted to tackle the layer cake thing, and only afterwards found out that my friend Emily's roommate's boyfriend was having a birthday party that night. I showed up with a cake in hand and presented the birthday boy with his cake. Although we'd never met before, I would argue that starting a friendship by giving someone a cake is a great strategy. He says hi to me in the library like all the time.

Blurry times in a moving car. So sue me. These are St. Patty's Day cookies with royal frosting... suuuper time-consuming, but they're yummy and visually pretty impressive. And I'm always looking to impress people.

SO professional. These are PB and Chocolate cupcakes, and Cookies & Cream cupcakes, that I made for a bake sale at my school. They went pretty fast, and I was very flattered. I know this because I was creepily skulking at the side of the bake sale table staring down the treat-seekers. Whatever. It's not a big deal.

These messy lil things are mini pies! I bought a frozen pie crust, mushed it up, and pressed it into a cupcake pan. I tossed some chopped apples with cinnamon and sugar and poured them into the mini crusts and BAKED THEM. They were hella yummy. I do need to work on my presentation, though. 

I made these little guys last night! Chocolate cake with salted caramel frosting and caramel drizzle. Again, I brought these over to a friend's apartment and got first dibs at the pong table. WATER PONG, okay? What kind of girl do you think I am?

Making a 21st birthday cake this weekend. I'm really looking forward to it, because I'll make sure the festivities are WELL underway before anyone tries the cake. Because then everyone loves it. When you pregame a cake, it always tastes delicious.

So now you know.

Cheeseburger Pie

Continuing the "dips on dips" theme of this football season (chips&salsa -----> buffalo chicken dip ----> reuben dip ----> sausage and cream cheese dip), I made my darling father some yummy noms for the Broncos game today. Cheeseburger pie. Yes. Cheese, and burger. And also the pie part too.


http://family.go.com/food/pkg-family-approved-recipes/recipe-633078-cheeseburger-pie-t/

(sans pickles)

MM MM DEE LICIOUS

The most magical cookies of all

This little compliation has got to be the greatest Hannukah present I've ever received:

This perfectly combines my literophilia with my sugarophilia. LOVE THIS BOOK. My father knows me too well. When we first started flipping through this book, the first thing that caught my eye was the black sausage. Then I realized that the recipe called for two cups of blood.

Moving on.

My dad immediately was drawn to the Chewy Ginger Biscuits recipe, which is completely unsurprising. And when my dad wants a specific food, he becomes fixated to the point of obsession. It runs in the family. (Frozen yogurt? Reuben dip? Pigs in a blanket? The great ongoing cheesesteak pilgrimage of 2012? You get the point.) 

So my dear friend Kyle Krueger and I decided to make these ginger biscuits. According to the cookbook, these biscuits make an appearance in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Harry pisses off Dolores Umbridge, the great pink-clad villain of our time. She sends him to Professor McGonagall, the great old-lady bad-ass of our time. Instead of scolding Harry for his transgressions, McGonagall offers him a cuppa (I'M SO AUTHENTIC) and a newt-shaped ginger biscuit. The cookbook doesn't call for the biscuits to resemble the aforementioned lizard; however, everything tastes better as an amphibian. Kyle and I decided to make our own newt-shaped cookie cutter, and although I am an AWFUL handiperson, Kyle has a knack for construction of any physical object:

I wonder if he learned that in Construction Management school. Maybe there's a Working with Wire Cookie Cutters adjunct or something.

Anyway.

So we proceeded to make cutout cookies out of dough that was not even remotely designed to be shaped. Surprisingly, this worked pretty well! I would advise chilling the dough and using a sharp cold knife to make shapes sans cookie cutters.

The newt

Nearly headless Nick

Aragog, the fluffy spiderfriend

THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

What an excellent batch of cookies. With a little sugar and magic, anything is possible.

Except maybe a hippogriff. 

Garlic Rolls

Since my experiment with pizza dough went mostly well, I've decided to foray a little further into yeasted breads, rolls, etc. (Okay, this recipe is basically a pizza dough recipe, in a cupcake pan, but still. I feel adventurous.)

Adapted from http://www.mamajanskitchen.com/2010/04/easy-peasy-garlic-rolls.html

1 batch of pizza dough (see previous post)
8 cloves garlic, chopped
1/8 cup + 2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp butter, melted
1 teaspoon dried parsley
kosher salt, to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly grease the cups of a 12-cup muffin tin.
2. Tear pizza dough into 12 pieces and place in the muffin tin.
3. Divide all but 3-4 cloves of garlic among the pieces of dough, pressing them into the centers. Drizzle with 1/8 cup olive oil and bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes.
4. While dough bakes, heat remaining oil, garlic and parsley over low heat. Do not simmer.
5. Toss in a bowl with garlic oil and melted butter; season with salt.