Saturday, December 3, 2011

hello again

I've still been baking brownies - okay not so much during the hot summer months but I'm still baking. I doubt the kids ever notice the difference but sometimes they surprise me. I have added peanut butter (1/2 cup) but it seems to get overpowered by the chocolate. I've added Nutiva's coconut oil (emulsion?) and while it gave the brownies a richer taste, no taste of coconut.
And believe it or else, I managed to make a cheesecake that didn't crack. I know, it amazes me, too. I told my older  son no one could touch it until we had a photo of it. He whipped out his cell phone that's equipped with a camera and he took the shot. Then he  put the phone away and went to work on the cheesescake;)
In my quest to find different recipes to try, I have come across a few British recipes that I would like to try. British measurements are almost totally unlike  American cooking measurements. So in case you have a Brit recipe you would like to try, here's a link to do the conversion to US cooking measurements, too. (They also have other languages.) 
So now I got to clean up the mess I made already today. I baked my first fruitcake of the season last weekend, it went over pretty well. I don't give them to anyone unless I know they like fruitcake. There's no use spending the time and money to make a homemade fruitcake and it not be appreciated.
later - dishes don't wash themselves (and why is it?)

Sunday, July 10, 2011

hey, I'm still here (I think)

I got no excuse for not writing in so long. I could say I was busy (and I was) but still it's a long of water under the bridge, so to speak.
I still am making brownies, I didn't make any this week, it's just way too hot. Plus I plan to put the energy into baking my "baby's" birthday cake, the famous Cheeto cake.
I did make blondies from the King Arthur cookbook. I used just chocolate chips. That worked out pretty well. My sons suggested I add peanut butter chips. I used those mini peanut butter chips as well as chocolate chips. The peanut butter chips did not stand up to the chocolate and you couldn't tell they were in the blondie.
So far, the faves of my sons are the brownies with peanut butter chips (and no additional chips), brownies with orange extract flavoring and the frozen mini marshmallow brownies.


I keep a bag of the mini marshmallows  in the freezer. Sometimes I take the  frozen mini marshmallows and mix them in with the brownie batter. It creates a little pocket of marshmallow goodness in the brownie. Sometimes I put them on top and they dot the brownies. It's pretty cool, even if I say so myself.

I did make some brownies with cream cheese in them. I loved it, but I like cream cheese. My sons didn't seem to notice any difference. But generally they don't notice anything different. Which, I guess, is good because I could sneak ground up pickled beets in the brownies - but I'm not going to because I also eat the brownies.

For Father's Day, I baked my beloved a chiffon case. For some reason, it was easier than I thought it would be. But I can't say I remember making a chiffon cake before. It might be possible I'm thinking of angel food cake. And what gives? "Back in the day" you hung the tube upside down on a glass bottle while it was cooling, something like a soda bottle. But mostly everything comes in plastic now, so there's no way you can do that. I might have to find an old soda bottle just for that purpose. Probably there's a gadget that I could buy and use for that purpose. I'll have to look into that.

_enjoy_