another cake!?

yes, this soon. My younger son asked me to bake a "birthday cake" for one of his co-workers. He decided it should be chocolate (it's the tradition cake here for birthdays) and so I baked it, using the Hershey's cake recipe.
And what to frost it with? Well, none other than the chocolate frosting I have tweaked to make it more powerful than normal chocolate icing;) One problem - I could not find the corn syrup, an important part of this recipe. So okay, I thought, I'm make buttercream frosting. Well, I didn't have the ingredients on hand to make a chocolate buttercream. I thought, oh heck, won't need it until Wednesday, so I'll just let it go until tomorrow.
Than it occurred to me I will probably be working late tomorrow and won't be in the mood to fool around with frosting when I got home. So it's marshmellow frosting to the rescue.
Yup, you may know it as "7 Minute Frosting" or "Boiled Frosting", I just call it marshmellow because that's what it tastes like. And I've been making it for a very long time, so I think I can call it what I like;)
With a cup of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar, some vanilla, hot water and the powdered whites of eggs, it's pretty simple to put together. (You could use an egg white, but I don't think that's recommended anymore). This is a recipe your really need an electric mixer - unless your hands are much better than mine, which is possible. It takes 7 minutes of intense beating to make these ingredients into this fluffy frosting.
But now I got to wait until Wednesday to see how it's received.......

April 25, 2010 in baking

This is my new toy, a "Cakewich" cake pan  by Fred and Friends.


This is the first time I used it and  you can see I had a little trouble cutting the cake in half.  The box the "Cakewich" pan comes in has a white pound cake recipe, which is what I used in the pan. The pan releases well, but I think I was in too much of a hurry. I should have waited for the cake to cool a little longer. The inside frosting is damson jelly and a peanut butter icing.  It tastes pretty good, even if I do say so myself.

In other baking action, the cake of the week is another pound cake - my Aunt Roe's pound cake recipe. It's strange because you start it in a cold oven and it bakes for about an hour and a half up to 2 hours.  My sturdy tube pan was, as always, up to the task It looks pretty good, too.
The third and final thing I baked was (what else?) brownies. I followed my normal procedure of "blooming" the cocoa in the melted butter, substituting 1/2cup of applesauce for 1/2 cup of butter and using whole wheat flour. Now you're thinking "yuck", but it comes out fine. That's the way I usually make it. That way I can fool myself into believing it's a little healthy for me;)
That's all I got so far this week - _enjoy_

ta da

This is the key lime cake I made from the recipe in the April 2010 "Redbook" magazine, it's the one that has Trisha Yearwood on the cover. It's her recipe, I tweaked a few things (flavored the icing with lime, for example). My husband said it is _great_.
I also baked brownies, using 1 cup of butter and 1/2 cup cooking oil and the whole wheat flour. This gave the brownies a fudgy texture.

I made spaghetti and I made Italian bread to go with it - well, actually I made "Mr Food"'s recipe for thick crust pizza and baked it as a loaf. It had a wonderfully crisp crust.
I also tried the baked jelly doughnuts from "Bread in Half the Time". I don't think Dunkin' Donuts has anything to worry about anytime soon. They just taste like sweet rolls with raspberry jelly in them. Yeah, it's good, but not that big a deal.
I had a poor history with doughnuts. I tried frying some many years ago. They came out _horrible,_ all greasy and as black as the soles of my shoes. I used an electric deep fat fryer, but apparently it was a bad recipe or I didn't do it right. I was going to toss them but saved them for my younger son to come home. He knew I was making them and I figured if I tossed them, he would think we'd eaten all of them. He looked at the doughnut and said "Is this supposed to be chocolate" and I said "nope".....
_enjoy_
I also

baking action for Easter week

well, let's see. I baked a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting to take to my oldest sister's house. I usually take a cake and it would have been my father's 83rd birthday. He loved my mother's chocolate cake. Mine isn't as good as my mom's but it's good - at least that's what my sons say. They manage to "choke it down";).
I also baked brownies for the week, but nothing too special about them, just the "usual" tinkered with Hershey's brownie recipe. I didn't put icing on them this week. I found out that putting icing on brownies you are going to cut and take to work in a plastic sandwich bag makes more of a mess that I want. Plus, really, the icing is overkill to me.
I also made potato bread from the Bernard Clayton book. My poor book is falling apart - the spine is split and you can definitely tell what recipes I use the most. I probably should transcribe the recipe to my computer cookbook. I got a ton of them to do, though, and I get lazy. Anyway, they turned out great. I love potato bread - well, truthfully, I just love bread.
This week's baking? I'm not sure. I got a new recipe for brownies that uses cooking oil instead of butter. It's from a small cookbook I got at the thrift shop. I thought I would try something different. It still calls for cocoa, so I'm ready for that. I don't know if they will be drier or wetter - though it calls for oil instead of butter, it still calls for 5 eggs. The usual recipe I use calls for 6 eggs.
I don't know if I am going to make a cake or not. I want to, but time might slip away from me. I don't know what kind of cake I want to make, but I want to make one. And probably no bread baking tomorrow - we are going to a baby shower type of thing and I doubt I will cook a "big" dinner tomorrow. We'll see
_enjoy_

if your man can't cook

blame his mom, she probably spoiled him or something - or so this writer says...
http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/04/05/the-lost-boys-men-who-can-t-cook?icid=main|main|dl3|link7|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemondrop.com%2F2010%2F04%2F05%2Fthe-lost-boys-men-who-can-t-cook .

Washington Post "Peeps Show"

Check out the Peeps dioramas made for the 2010 Washington Post contest - they are great
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/03/29/GA2010032903934.html?sid=ST2010032904380

Peeps & Rice Krispie treats

makes peepshi-sushi?


http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/03/peeps-recipes-how-to-make-peepshi-sushi-rice-krispies-treats-easter.html

check it out...

quick note - chocolate covered Peeps

There was no baking action last week as I got hit with a particularly vile stomach bug. I didn't even think of making toast, let alone baking something. But I do have a quick Easter treat for you...Here's a word of warning ***the melted chocolate will be hot, be careful not to burn your fingers***

Chocolate Covered Peeps

1 package Peeps (10)
1 container of Baker's dipping chocolate (microwavable)
Toothpicks / tongs
Wax paper

Arrange way paper of cookie sheets. Nuke the Baker's chocolate according to the package directions. Take 1 Peep (using toothpicks,tongs or a fork - it will be _hot_ and messy) and dip in the dipping chocolate up to the Peep's head. Remove and allow to cool on wax paper.
Each container of Bakers dipping chocolate makes approximately 15 Peeps.
_enjoy_