Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Opera Cake!

I'm on vacation right now and I realized today is the posting date!

This months challenge was an Opera cake. Something I've wanted to make for a long time now. I really didn't think I'd get to make this challenge, seeing as how there were so many ingredients, and most of them were expensive.

Looking though my pantry one day, I realized I had enough ingredients to make 1/4 of the recipe! So, I used what I had, and made one, cute little cake!

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I used pecans for the cake, and my favorite ceamcheese butter cream.

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I didn't have anything for a glaze or mousse so I ended up making some strange orange/cream cheese curd-jello-thing, then whipped it up after setting it in the fridge.

I want to try making this cake again when I can do the flavors I want!

I apologize for the sloppy post! Blogging is not easy to do on vacation! ;-)

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Greeting from the OC!

Greetings from Ocean City! I'm on vacation right now and I'm having a blast! Every where you go there's the smell of funnel cake and salt water. They have some great food down here and I plan to try them all! (or at least a lot of them)

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I woke up this morning at 5:30 and after getting dressed, me and mom went for a walk with the dog. After mass, we went for donuts at my favorite donut shop, Dot's Pastry Shop. As we pulled up to the window I nearly died--they're hiring bakers for the summer! Oh, how I wish I lived here, and was skilled enough! I would just love to go into the back were they bake!
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So we got 2 dozen donuts and a bear claw.

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Jelly and creme filled powder donuts. Okay, the creme filled were amazing. SO much better then the ones you buy a Dunkin' Donuts, and I have nothing against DD!

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The donuts here a really soft and almost melt in your mouth. The glazes and fillings are so sweet and delicious. It's no wonder they're packed on Sunday mornings!!

Last night me, my brothers and my sister went on to the board walk and got some pizza. There ae so many shops to choose from: The famous Mack & Manco, Luigi's, and various others. We went for The 3 brothers Italy, they claim they make the world largest pizza! And boy, was it big!! One slice is really like 2! hat i love though is that it's not just big, it GOOD. I wasn't able to get a picture yesterday, but I'm sure we'll go back later in the week, so hang around for a picture!!

Oh yeah, turned 16 on Thursday! I have change my profile now.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Sweet Sixteen!

Remember my friend Heather, the one me and Sarah made the Kit Kat cake for? Well, her late sweet sixteen party was tonight, and me and Sarah spent all night yesterday ( 5 1/2 hours! while all Heather did was lick the bowls out...) baking her 2 kit kat cakes and a zillion cupcakes to serve her guests. It was a blast! I wasn't able to get pics of the full cakes, but I have a few leftovers I got to bring home to my family!
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The cookies are white cake with Oreo crumbs baked into the batter, whipped cream frosting with Oreo in it. YUM!
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This time we made the cake rectangular so we could feed more people, more efficiently. Worked out nice!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Fudgy yummy brownies!

I love Martha Stewart recipes. I often go to her site when looking for a recipe for a specific food. Usually I have a hard time finding one because her searching system stinks, but I found a excellent brownie recipe on there. They're called Super-Fudgy Brownies how could I not make them with a name like that??

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They're exactly as she says: moist, fudgy, delicious and chocolatey. Way better than the iced brownies I tried.

The only alteration to recipe were I used milk chocolate, because I didn't have semi-sweet, and I baked them for ony about 30 minutes, rather than 50-60! They probably would have been chocolate bricks if I'd waited any longer.

So, go make them!! Recipe can be found HERE.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Buttermilk Biscuits

Today I made the Old-fashioned Buttermilk Biscuits from Carole Walters book. They're incredibly delicious! I spread mine with grape jelly and it tasted great, but would've been better with strawberry jam.

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Sicne you're only supposed to role the dough once, I rolled the scraps in melted butter then in a mixture of cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar and cocoa powder. But 'em in a pan and baked. I've seen stuff like this done before and have always wanted to make it. ^^

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

Cinnamon Rolls...again!?

Cinnamon rolls, again? Wait--this time it's a new recipe! And they came out wonderful! The dough is sweet and soft, very light and fluffy! Because they don't feel quite so much like a lump in your stomach it's the perfect excuse to eat more than one!
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The new recipe I tried was from Allrecipes.com The directions call for a bread machine, but I did it by hand since I don't have one.
Cinnamon Rolls II
(taken from allrecipes.com--recipe HERE)
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 6 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast (I used 1 Tbl. and 1 tsp. of instant yeast.)
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
In a medium bowl, mix whisk together flour and salt, set aside. Place milk, water and butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Bring the liquids to a warm (about 110-115 F) temperature, and swish the butter around to help it melt. Poor the mixture into a large bowl. Add the eggs, and whisk together. Add yeast and sugar, stir. If using active dry, the yeast should bubble. Then add the flour/salt. Using the dough hooks on a hand mixer (or other mixer) mix the dough together, and use the dough hooks to knead for about 5 minutes. Knead the dough on a floured counter for 2 minutes. You made need a bit extra flour.
Let the dough rise until doubled. Took me about 2 hours.
Precede as you would any other cinnamon roll.

Cream cheese frosting
innabon-ish Frosting Recipe

1 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
1 1/2 stick butter, room temperature
16 ounces cream cheese
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Bring a pot of water to a simmer on the stove. Add egg whites and sugar to a large heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over the pot of water and whisk constantly until sugar dissolves, and mixture feel hot , about 3 minutes. Remove from heat beat til cool for 4 minutes, or until mixture turns white like thick marshmallow cream and it's slightly bigger. Add butter and beat till smooth, then add cream cheese, 4 ounces at a time, and beat until smooth, adding the vanilla with the last 4 ounces of cream cheese.