Lemon Drop Cheesecake

After a long, busy, sort of stressful week the best thing to do on Friday night is grab a beer, crank up the music, and BAKE!

So lemon drop cheesecake just sort of happened. I used a pre-made graham cracker crust because I was being lazy. I know that I make an awesome home-made crust, (graham crackers, sugar, melted butter, go) but sometimes I just don't feel like it.

So cheesecake filling:

1 package softened cream cheese
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
Secret ingredient of awesomeness
Juice from one lemon.
A pinch of flour.

I mixed together the first 4 ingredients before deciding what sort of cheesecake I was making. Then I spotted lemons in my fridge and ran with it. I cut the end off of the lemon, and thoroughly squeezed the juice into my filling. One caveat... it may be wise to do this over a strainer of some sort. I ended up picking a few seeds out of the mix. Save the rest of the lemon for garnish! After adding the lemon my filling was too runny. I added just a tiny bit of flour to thicken it up. I think some corn starch also would have worked well. I poured that all into my crust, and stuck it in the oven on 350.

While my cheesecake was baking, I made some candied lemon peels:

1 lemon skin
Water
Sugar

I put the water on to boil, then set about cutting strips of lemon peel (scraping off any left over fruit and as much of the white bits as possible). I sat them in a strainer in the boiling water. After the boiled for 5 minutes to get nice and tender, I pulled them out, and pulled the pot off of the burner. I poured out some of the water (I had added more than was necessary to cover the lemon peels while still in the strainer) and then put the pot back on to boil. I added sugar until it was super saturated. Once that was at a good boil, I added the peels back and turned it down to simmer for a bit until removing it from heat and letting it cool down. I strained the lemon peels back out and set them aside.

When my cheesecake came out, I garnished it with the yummy candied lemon peels and stuck it in the fridge for household consumption!

Brownies and Bourbon!

So my mom gave me a brownie cookbook for the holidays last year, and I hardly bothered to crack it (sorry Mom!). I was trying to come up with something to bake this evening, and I decided to take a look. Low and behold I found a brownie recipe that called for BOURBON!

The brownie batter:

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter
4 squares unsweetened chocolate
4 squares semisweet chocolate
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla

So I mixed that all together, and threw in some secret ingredient while I was at it. Popped it in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes, and took it out to cool

The fun part comes next. I'm not patient by any standard, so though I should have waited long for the brownies to cool, I hopped right on to making the topping.

Praline Icing Recipe:

5 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons bourbon
2 cups confectioners sugar.

So I melted together the butter and the brown sugar until it was all melty and bubbly. Then I was supposed to add the three tablespoons of bourbon. But I added six. Cause that's how I roll. And I used my favorite... American Honey. Mmmmmm, yummy. Some of it may have spilled straight into my mouth. What a tragedy!

Now for the confectioners sugar. I realized partly through the recipe I realized my powdered sugar was at work for our epic Mario Kart gingerbread house (trust me there is a post to come on that one!). So I had to substitute. I took two cups of sifted granulated sugar and two teaspoons of cornstarch. I threw that in the blender and blended it all together. Hooray for ghetto powdered sugar!

Anyway, so stirred that all into the praline mixture until it was nice and smooth and poured it all over the brownies. Ok, so I tasted a bit as well, and dear gods is it delicious. The extra bourbon was totally the right choice!

Hooray for bourbon and brownies! Fanfuckingtastic!

Pumpkin Cheesecake (and a little something extra)!

This is the start of a BAKING MARATHON for my fire crew's party tomorrow night. I have my folks to feed, and that damn cute boy from the last post, so it's going to be a party in my kitchen tonight.

So it starts with pumpkin cheesecake. I am being lazy and I misplaced my pie pan somewhere in moving, so I started with a pre-made graham cracker crust.

For the filling:

1 package cream cheese
1 15 oz can of pumpkin
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
Secret ingredient!

It's best to let the cream cheese soften for a bit... or you can rush like me. Either way you mix it all together and put it in the crust. I ended up with more filling than I had room for though. So I put the cheesecake in the 345 degree oven and started on my next project.

Left over cheesecake filling means cheesecake bars!

So I whipped up something for the bottom:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
Splash in some vanilla
Secret Ingredient
1 stick melted butter.

So you mix that all together and press it into a greased 9" x 9" pan. Then I poured the cheesecake filling on top. I sprinkled that with some brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and threw it into the oven with the cheesecake.

2 types of delicious from 1 tasty filling!

Pumpkin Cheesecake:

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars:

Edit after cutting the bars:

Way to much sugar in the bottom part of the bars. They are damn tasty, but a very strange texture. The very bottom almost sort of carmelized and they are super chewy and kind of fudgy. I don't understand really, but they taste good so I'll feed them to my coworkers anyway ^_^

Back to Basics...

Tomorrow will be an awesome Dr. Who (season 6) marathon. So, of course, I have to bake something. Who could pass up a gathering of fine, geeky folks to feed? So I asked the very cute boy who is hosting the gathering what sort of baked goods he liked, and the reply was yellow cake. Simple enough.

And did I mention that it's Friday night? Cause it is. And though I am enjoying my Friday night by staying in and being all domestic (baking, cleaning, adventure!), it is still Friday night. So I'm finishing off a good portion of a bottle of rum while I'm at it!

So yellow cake:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 tsp baking powder
A dash of salt
1 stick of butter (my last stick! oh no!)
1 cup milk (Silk PureCoconut milk for me!)
2 eggs
A splash of vanilla.

Mixed all together by my lovely (I'm still infatuated with the new shiny toy) Kitchenaid stand mixer. Add a dash of secret ingredient, and in the pan. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes and cake! Hooray!

Sadly, as I had to use up my last stick of butter for the cake... it is getting frosting from a can. And my bottle of rum is empty! Why is the rum always gone?

C is for cookie...

Chocolate peanut butter cookie that is!

So I had a mess of extra frosting from my amazing Reeses Cake that I needed to figure out something to do with. And I have practice with my fire spinning crew tonight (who were extraordinarily nice to me yesterday when I was having boy issues), and I thought, "I'll bake cookies!"

So

1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
Some vanilla
1 stick of butter
1 egg.

Then I melted the frosting that was hanging out in my fridge, and mixed that in. My next thought was... "Ooooooh chocolate chips!!!" Which I immediately dumped into the mixer forgetting that the batter was warm from the frosting. So they got kind of melty. Oh well.

I scooped batter onto cookie sheets, stuck them in the oven, and ended up with just about 2 dozen cookies. Hooray. They came out all chocolate and peanut butter swirled, and they taste delicious. Hopefully my crew likes them (it's the first time I'm baking for them)!

Reese's Cake

So I've moved to a new house, with a new kitchen, and a stove that works way better than the one at my last place. And I received a housewarming gift that will benefit the stomachs, if not the waistlines, of all who come in contact with my baking: my very own Kitchenaid stand mixer!

In the moving madness I failed to write about a delicious Devil's Food cake, with a chocolate/almond frosting. However, I'm on another baking adventure tonight, and ready to blog about it. It's a peanut butter chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting!

So I started with the basic cake:

2 1/4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick butter
3/4 cup milk (I'm actually using Silk PureCoconut milk these days. I love it!)
Splash in some vanilla
3 egg

Then I mixed in the secret ingredient. In a separate cup, I melted down 2 squares of unsweetened chocolate, a generous scoop of peanut butter, and the remnants of an opened bag of Reese's baking chips. When that was a gooey, delicious mess, I mixed it into the cake mix, poured it into my pan, and stuck it in the oven.

While the cake was baking, I made one of the best frostings that I have ever made from scratch. This stuff is seriously amazing. I melted one stick of butter, and about 1 cup of peanut butter (in the same container I used to melt the peanut butter chocolate mixture earlier, giving it just a hint of chocolate) and poured that into my bowl. I poured in some powdered sugar (2ish cups) I added a smidge more of the secret ingredient and a splash of the PureCoconut. I let my mixer have at it, and gave it a test once it looked good. It wasn't quite there, so I added a but more powdered sugar, and let the mixer have at it again. It was good to go after that. In fact, damn amazing. Oh man, we're lucky I haven't eaten it all.

But since it is late, and this tyrtle has to get up early for work, there is no time to frost the cake. It'll have to cool over night, and I'll frost it when I take it to dinner tomorrow. Hooray cake! Hooray mixer! Baking is the best, I swear.

It's Raining Figs!

Apparently one of my coworkers is drowning in figs. Her fig tree is having a particularly abundant year. So she is showering our office in figs. If you cook, bake, or express the slightest interest, you will end up with a bag of figs. So while everyone is busy flipping their lids about the hurricane, I'm baking!

Today's adventure is a fig cake. I've never made one before, so basically I'm just making a cake, with some figs in it.

So the basic cake recipe I worked off of:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

And as I am writing this, I have to kick myself, because I am realizing that I forgot to add the milk. There was supposed to be milk in this recipe. Crap. Oh well.

So then:

1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped fresh figs
Some allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg
And, of course, some secret ingredient!

Fancy, right? Anyway, I threw it all in a bundt pan, and threw the bundt pan in the oven until it was done.

AHHHHHH! I'm watching Iron Chef America as I write this, and it is a battle of FIGS!!!!

Sorry for the ADD moment there.

Ok so for the glaze, I just combined some orange blossom honey and powdered sugar over heat, and poured it over the cake after it cooled off a bit.

The cake is delicious, though rather crumbly. I think it would have come out better if I had remembered the milk. Oh well.