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.

Spice Cake

I'm heading to a pillow-fort building/Nerf gun war/fire-spinning party tonight, and I felt like I should bake a cake! So I started with this recipe for a spice cake:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup butter, soft
1 1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I gave the batter a taste and it wasn't quite what I wanted, so I add a bunch more cinnamon and nutmeg. And I decided to throw in some vanilla pudding mix for a fudgier cake.

Then I remembered that I had some cardamon from my crazy herbalist friend Berry, that would be delicious. So I ran around looking for it all over the house (until I found it in wit my baking stuff). Then I went on a similar, but less successful hunt for my mortar and pestle (which must still be in Connecticut). So I ground it up with a bowl and the handle of a spoon. Not quite what I was going form, but it did the trick, and added it in. Also I totally didn't measure... just poured out some seeds and ground them.

Batter into budnt pan into oven. Baked til done, and then thrown into the freezer for quicker cooling (must get to parties on time)! After about five minutes in the freezer, I pulled it out, and flipped it out of the baking pan into the container it was leaving in, and threw it back in the freezer.

While it was cooling, I decided to make some sort of honey glaze for the cake. So I put some thistle honey in a pan with powdered sugar and melted it together. I added some nutmeg, cardamon, about a teaspoon of vanilla, and a splash of milk to the mix. The taste was fabulous... one of the best things I've come up with in a while.

I pulled out the cake, glazed it, and now I'm ready to party :)

Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Brownies

It's been a while since I've baked much, but I felt like baking today. Besides, I haven't fed my new coworkers any of my crack yet ^_-

You want to mix together a cup of sugar, an egg, a splash of vanilla, a cup of flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp baking powder. In a microwave safe container, melt down a nice chunk of butter (1/4 a stickish) and 3-5 squares of baking chocolate (depending how chocolatey you like). And cause these are dark chocolate, go ahead and throw in an extra square. You know you want to. Mix that in with the rest of your batter. This time around I also threw in a dash of cinnamon and a slightly larger dash of nutmeg. Just trust me on that. And some secret ingredient... because secrets make everything taste better.

I might as well be endorsed by Reese's, because I love baking with Reese's Peanut Butter Chips. They are super tasty and make pretty much any recipe better. So to mix in that peanut butter flavor, I melted down a full bag, and added them to the mix. Usually I'd do half peanut butter chips, and half actual peanut butter, but I don't have any at the moment. I swear this works just as well; using the real peanut butter is just a cheaper option. If you're going to go straight peanut butter and ignore the deliciousness of the peanut butter chips... add some extra sugar.

Anyway batter -> pan -> oven -> delicious.

After work edit:

My coworkers devoured these before lunch. And baking is totally the way to make friends at work. They all had to come tell me how much they loved them!

Apple Pie Muffins

So it all started with two boxes of Jiffy Apple Cinnamon muffin mix (on sale for $.60!). Added the necessary ingredients, and then a dumped in a ton of cinnamon and nutmeg. I took an apple and cut it into very small pieces. Then I added some secret ingredient. It looked pretty runny so I also mixed in a few tablespoons of some whole wheat flour. Mix, mix, mix and toss it in the over.

12-15 minutes later, out pop some delicioso apple pie muffins! Be at Beltane to sample!