Maple Brown Sugar Cupcakes

So I've decided that if I am going to bother typing up recipes again, I might as well put it all in one spot! This morning I made maple brown sugar cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting for a brunch party.
 The cupcakes:
 2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar
3 tsp baking powder
A dash of salt
1 stick of butter
 1/2 cup milk (Silk PureCoconut milk for me!)
2 eggs A splash of vanilla
Pure maple syrup to taste (about 4 tablespoons)

 I loaded the batter into cupcake cups and baked at 350 for 16 minutes!

 Since I was a bit behind schedule I cheated with the frosting. I just used a can of Duncan Hines cream cheese frosting and added about 2 table spoons of maple syrup to it.

  Pictures

Habanero Herb Bread

So my boyfriend and I are sitting at the bar on a Sunday morning, contemplating what to do with our day. We started down the road of making Indian food, which lead to the idea of making naan. After looking up some naan recipes and deciding it was too involved, we kind of dropped that idea. We kept going down the cooking route, and bread came up. And then I had the brilliant idea to make spicy pepper bread. This lead to the googling of several recipes, and a trip to the store.

After arriving at his place, I ended up googling even more recipes. Neither of us had ever made bread before, so there was much research to be done. The tasty, tasty bread we made ended up being an amalgamation of several different recipes.

So here it goes:

2 1/4 cups warm water
1 package dry yeast
2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
Honey
3 cups flour

And freshly chopped:
Habaneros... lots and lots of habaneros
Rosemary
Sage
Thyme
Oregano

So first we combined the warm water, yeast, sugar, salt, and some of the honey. That sat for 15 minutes until it was good and foamy. Then we added everything else. It ended up taking substantially more than the 3 cups of flour that was called for to make the batter nice and stiff. At some point I kicked the boy out for some secret ingredienting (Yes, I just made ingredient a verb. Deal with it).

Then came the fun (messy) part. We floured the counted, and the boy got down to kneading, while I buttered the bowl (why? I don't really know, but a couple of the recipes called for it so why not?) Once the dough had been sufficiently kneaded we tossed it into the buttered bowl, covered it with a damp towel, and let it rise for an hour.

When it had risen, we kneaded it for another 5 minutes. Then we tossed our dough into a loaf pan, tossed our pan into a toasty 350 degree oven, and let it bake for an hour. The house smelled delicious by the time we pulled it out. And it was fantastic bread that was spectacularly devoured by all who came near it. It had a good kick to it, but wasn't too spicy. Really, it was awesome!

And the boy even took a picture of it for me:

7-Up Cake and MOAR BAKLAVA!

I promised the boy I'd surprise him with 7-Up cake one day, because it's his favorite (though I had never heard of it until him). So I made it!

I followed this recipe that I found. I even went out and bought 7-Up (cause I don't usually buy soda). I followed the recipe pretty much to the t. Though, honestly, I didn't cream the butter and sugar for 20 minutes. That seemed a bit much and I am not very patient. I did let my Kitchenaid go at it for a good bit though.

While that was baking, I wanted to use up the leftover dough from the previous attempt at baklava. I followed the rough draft of the recipe, but mixed things up a little more this time. Instead of pistachios I went with chopped walnuts. I also used cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom in the nut mixture instead of cinnamon and cloves. I used the same spices again for the honey syrup. What can I say? I'm like my adventurous baking.

The 7-Up cake was super rich and buttery.

The boy definitely enjoyed it!

The baklava was again awesome.

I think it was even better than the first batch, but I also think I personally prefer the spices I used this time around, so that's just me. The container of them I brought into work disappeared before lunch, so I think my coworkers agreed that it was pretty tasty too!

Baklava and Boys!

So that cute boy I was baking for (now the boyfriend) and I decided to make baklava! I've never made baklava before, and I've never baked with my boyfriend before so this is a whole new adventure!

So we followed this recipe with only a few minor modifications.

I melted the butter for the layering of the dough, which the boy did while I made the nut mix. I added some extra cinnamon to the mix, because who doesn't love cinnamon. Had I been baking alone, or done this before, I probably would have gone a bit crazy with more spices, but I contained myself.

Once it was all together, we tossed it in the oven and made the syrup. The boy added extra honey, and we used powdered cinnamon instead of cinnamon sticks in the syrup as well. When it came out we drenched it with syrup and began the agonizing wait for it to cool.

Yay Baklava!

Yay Boyfriend!

And, of course upon hearing the ruckus in the kitchen, and having sampled much of my legendary baking, my room mate, the mad scientist, came to see what was cooking.

As is his horrible fate, he had to sample some. He agrees... it's awesome! Also, my office agrees on the deliciousness. And, of course I win. I've got baklava and boys!

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 ^_^