Must...have...the grossness!

This is my first, and I hope only, non-baking related post.  I recently moved and in doing so, encountered the hell that is AT&T.  Suffice it to say, they are bastards and will get theirs.  Them being bastards is why I have not updated in so long.  I've been baking and baking good, but without internet at home I cannot update this.  I am updating this right now from work.  I hope they don't mind much.  I'm just trying to explain my absence.
So please know that I exist and am still pumping out baked goods.  There will be many posts to enjoy once I have access to the world wide web again.  Thanks y'all!

p.s. Vote on what I should make "next!"

When In Doubt, Add Cheese

 
Apple pie is a beautiful thing.  It's simple, delicious, and comforting.  I had thought nothing could improve upon it until a few months ago when a friend asked me if I'd ever put a, get this, slice of cheddar cheese on a piece of warm apple pie.

Suddenly my whole life was thrown into question. Why had I not thought of this?  Had my then 26 years of life without cheese on my pie meant that those years had no meaning?  The answer was yes and I intended to change that.  To do this, I took a few simple, important steps;

1. Buy a shitload of apples
2. Buy a brick of cheese
3. Invite that creepy friend over to eat the scraps
4. Make
5. Nosh

Steps one and two were easy enough.  Who doesn't love to buy copious amounts of fruit and cheese?  No really, who?

My boyfriend and I then took on step three, which was harder than you'd think.  The poor guy was in the middle of writing his dissertation and it took substantial effort to tear him away from it.  Baked goods are usually what persuades him in the end.  

Look at how happy he is by all those apple peels.  I find his love of them to be amusing and very peculiar.  At least it means I don't have to waste them!

Step four sucked.  It really did and here's why.  I followed a recipe that involved me grating the cheese and working it into the dough.  This seemed logically sound at first, but when it came to rolling it out, I broke into a sweat in the middle of March trying to get this stuff flat.  It was rubbery and would pull back after lifting the pin.  In the future, I'll sprinkle cheese on the bottom inside of the crust and on the top of the outside.

 I was really pissed when I took this picture.  The rolling was really difficult, but also the dough was so thick that actually making the cute little apple pies proved to be far too much of a challenge.  With muffin cups being the size that they are and the cheese making this dough very thick, I was left omitting the top crust on a few of them during some flirtations with rage quit.  Here is a picture of what those looked like:

That's also my hand.  Now you know what that looks like.

All in all this was a yummy recipe, but in the future I'll sprinkle the pies with cheese when they're about half way done.  I might just do that with apple pie in general because after all, everything is better with cheese.

Would you like some freaky ass muffins?

In the past few months, everyone and their mother has gotten pregnant.  Two friends in Minnesota and now a third one here in Michigan.  Seeing as I can't really fatten up my MN buddies, I've chosen to add to the body mass of the with-child lady here in MI.  

Despite being a freakishly adorable pregnant woman, something I am sure others resent her for, she's had some very real difficulties keeping food down.  Any food.  All food.  Yet I am to bake for this woman, no I must bake for this woman.  I am a masochist and will take on the challenge with such brazen arrogance that I might begin to bake blindly.  My example of this is my voyage into the realm of Olive Oil Muffins.

When I read the recipe for this, I made two very serious mistakes.  First, I assumed that the delicate flavor of olive oil with the zest of citrus fruits would ease her stomach.  Second, I failed to see that there was balsamic vinegar in the recipe and a lot of it.  Shit.

So I start making it...

Look at all that pretty, cheerful zest and sugar.  It says to you, "I'm going to be sweet and light and yummy and you'll go weeeeeeeeeee."  Little do you know you are a naive fool destined for peculiar disappointment.  

Lost in my delusion, I bake on.

Still looking like normal muffin batter and then...

Balsami-what?!  Ah shit!

I promised baked goods.  She wanted muffins.  She's expecting them.  

There is no turning back.

With some pretty intense trepidation, I put them in the oven.  Now my boyfriend will be the first to tell you that I always doubt my baking.  It never fails.   I will get to a point with a recipe and I will say something to the effect of "I don't know about this."  99% of the time I am wrong and what comes out is a delicious treat that rarely lasts the night.  This time I was right.

 I will go on record as saying that these are better at room temperature than warm, though not by much.  The heat makes the balsamic vinegar really intense and overpowering.  The citrus comes out more at room temperature.  Sadly though, they still taste weird.  I wouldn't say bad, but just strange.  They weren't light, like I'd hoped, and the flavor was too rich.  Basically they turned into the exact opposite of what I'd hoped they would be and I was left with no choice but to wrap them up and send them to my pregnant friend who'd been suffering from extreme morning sickness, my friend who just wanted some god damn muffins.

She still hasn't said whether or not she liked them and I must admit, her silence is deafening.

Whoopie Gluttony! and a post-script question...

In the summer of 2009, I moved to Toronto for graduate school, bringing my relationship with my boyfriend into that hellish realm of long-distance. During my time in Toronto, or TO, I would travel to Michigan to spend time with my wonderful man. During my visits and throughout my time now spent living with him in this fair state, I've come across something peculiar; whoopie pies. In all my travels and lives spent in Canada and Minnesota, I'd never even heard of these. During this same time, I have also not eaten one since the majority of places who offer baked goods only provide crisco, cheap ingredients, and a severe lack of love.

So I made my own. Whoopie! (this whoopie is brought to you in part by...)

Look at it! Just look at it! What a beautiful machine that will help with my carpel tunnel and provide a far-from-endless amount of entertainment! So, crass lady, what did you do with it?

I mixed some shit.

First I did the standard creaming of wet things. I took the shortening (something I hardly ever use), butter, sugars and mixed them right up without breaking a sweat, then adding the eggs and vanilla. I also got to learn the valuable lesson of scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl...

Whoa, look at her go! Whhhoooooopieee!
I'll stop that now.
I then mixed the dry ingredients and made the filling, adding the dry to the buttery business in the electronic mixer.

This is essentially cake batter made thicker so that you can make drops of it onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. You then just pop them in the oven and make what are really just tiny cakes. While they're baking, make the filling and get ready to spread some cheesy, fatty, sugary joy all over your creation.

Mmmmmmm. This mixture is cream cheese, butter, sugar, vanilla, and I added some maple syrup because, well, that should be added to just about everything. Then once the pies had cooled, the smearing began and overly large and delicious whoopie pies came to be.

When making the chocolate halves, I used a standard tablespoon for dolloping the cake batter. I think these would have been perfect if I'd used standard teaspoons instead. They were very yummy, but were a bit too much. As far as taste goes though, I certainly brought everyone to flavor country.

Post-script: I would really like to make this blog popular and while I have been researching how, I would greatly appreciate any feedback you might have to help me improve this. Please comment below with your suggestions and criticisms!

Hey. How you doin? Been a while...

Like the title says, it's been a while. Work has been extremely busy, which has left me too tired to either post or bake. I also went here

Oh Toronto. The place I hate to love and love to hate. I lived there for about a year for grad school (yup, I'm educated...I think) and lived just around the corner from where this picture was taken. This is the ice rink at Christie Pits Park and I just love the view of Canadians ice skating with the CN Tower in the background. It broke my heart that I wasn't able to walk along this stretch of road at night when all the lights are lit up. There's nothing quite like it.

Anyways, what the fuck have I baked? Well this post is somewhat of a deviation from the norm; I made Chex Mix. Not my usual sugary offering, but Chex Mix is delicious and does involve using the oven. It counts. I swear.

This is my boyfriend's mom's recipe and stems from the archaic 1950's era when butter and salt were the staples of the American diet. That's changed, right? Right? There are a lack of photos in this post due to the same friend who comes over all the time. Here is proof of his existence.

Someone like that in your home would most certainly distract you. I'm just sayin. Now back to the Chex Mix.

This is an extremely easy recipe and results in an excessively salty snack. Suffice it to say, I love the shit. There is a LOT of butter, Worcestershire Sauce, Seasoning Salt, salted peanuts, AND pretzels. This stuff is seriously heart clogging and I'm sure it's correlated with the rates of heart disease amongst baby boomers. So let's keep those numbers up and keep winning!

So there you have the mix of Chex or Chex Mix (hahahaha!!!!!! yeah!) alongside its buttery, salty harlot. In a large roasting pan, you get the cereal and pretzels all mixed up (hahaha) and then pour the butter-salt-sauce over it. Use the spatula and do your best to coat as much of the mixture as possible. Then put it in the over and stir thoroughly every 15 minutes for 45 minutes. In the end you'll have this

A delicious, salty, nutty treat that everyone will love. This batch lasted less than one day and I invite you to take note of the paper towels needed to soak up the excess butter fat that oozes itself down to the bottom, leaving the nastiest, tastiest bits to be eaten last. Enjoy!

Tiramisu Cake Duo: aka BAM

WARNING: I am extremely sarcastic and while most who know me are very aware of this, it does not translate well when used in online forums. The greatest compliment I've ever received was that my deadpan is reminiscent of Bill Murray's. Now imagine trying to read his blog about baking. I hope you get the point.

With that out of the way, there is a girl I know who is all right. I am sure I could do better as far as friends go, but I'm lazy and it's purely a matter of convenience. So she comes to me with this recipe and says, and I quote, "Oh baking goddess of the northern United States, please guide me in making a Tiramisu Cake as I feel emotionally and intellectually ill-equipped to perform such a task. If you do this, I will forever be in your debt." So I decide to help her out of pity. Not because she's my friend. No way.

Let the cake adventure begin!

We first began by making the espresso syrup and concentrate, mainly her tasks since I was sure she'd accidentally spit in it or something. She's gross and spits on things. So anyway, here is a picture of her hand doing the things:

Notice how her hands shake with anxiety over the simplest task...

She continued making the concentrate while I made the cake batter, a very simple task so I spent much of the time taking pictures of her as she struggled. Here is more evidence:

 

Still shaking and hiding her face in fear. Fear of what, though? Failure? Of this I am sure. Back to the god damn point, there's the concentrate. We weren't able to find espresso powder, which is what the recipe called for and this lead to what you'll find to be my one gripe with this cake. Before that can happen though, I must continue to degrade whatsherface.

As proof that I did in fact do something for this cake, here you can see the cake itself with the extra added perk of an owl shape baked into one of the two made. There were actually two layers, but only one displayed my awesome abilities of baking assorted avian shapes into things at random.

Sometimes I stare in the mirror for hours looking at my face in awe of my skills and stunning beauty.

Then came the time to ice the cake, something that who-the-hell-is-that did surprisingly well. We made the icing ourselves with everyone taking turns at whipping the cheese and heavy cream. Seeing as I had to yet get a mixer, this was an arduous task and resulted in comments about my "guns" from the girl I keep talking about. Clearly she has yet to learn basic social skills, something at which I fault her greatly.

Before and after being dusted with cocoa powder, the deliciousness was close at hand.

Looks good right? Well we were all so excited about this that we decided to put on some David Bowie and dance.

There she is, looking down at the ground in shame of her inability to dance, interact with animate objects, and sweat. The other two are great though and really outshine her in every way. They are just great company and so I fed them the cake after I convinced her it was time for me to go to bed. Here are the cake's innards.

So here is my gripe: the cake was pretty dry. The espresso, being regular and not powder, I think lead to the syrup not infusing properly into the cake. Even after sitting overnight, it still was delicious frosting with some pretty dry cake that didn't balance out. I would make this again, but only if I had access to the espresso powder and I would definitely make it with Whatsherface. She's a great sport, a good friend, and always a joy to be around. She should really work on the sweating thing though. Her B.O. is out of control.

Pie Hands

Looking through one of my favorite recipe sites, Smitten Kitchen, I found a recipe for something I learned is technically trademarked; Pop-Tarts. While the recipe I used is not copyrighted, the name is and so I chose to go with the alternative of Pie Hands. It really makes sense once you think of it. It's a tart that you can pop in a toaster. Seeing as that makes it just a hand-held pie, I decided to go with the shifty name of Pie Hands. I've made these three times and each time they've been both delicious and better than the pre-made option. How could they not be? They're ridiculously easy. It's like taking all of the challenge out of making pies.

And right in front of a bag of peanuts. As you can see from the list of ingredients, this really is a simple recipe. All you have to do is take your favorite pie dough recipe, cut it into the right proportions, and add some filling along with an eggwash so the layers adhere to each other. It is a bit tedious since it takes a while to make only a few, but it's still extremely simple.

What the hell is a "Hand of Buddha" and why did I pay $4 for it?!

This is what my pie dough looks like before I get all handsy with it. As you can see, I don't use shortening. Substituting with butter, aka the traditional way, results in a flakier and tastier dough. Trust me on this. I know I'm right.

Here is what it looks like after I've had my way with it. At this point, the dough should look like it has little peas of butter and flour mixed together. It won't be perfect, so don't worry about that like I did the first time. Just get your hands in there and do your thing. There isn't a picture of this after I added the egg and milk seeing as my hands were thoroughly covered in dough and I do somewhat value my shitty point and shoot.

After rolling out the dough, you want to cut out a square that is 9x12. You then cut it into 3x4 rectangles that are the tart-no, pie of the Pie Hands.

Rulers are fun again!

So there is something else I do with these that makes them better than what you can get in the store; I use Nutella. If you have to ask why, then you've never had it and should remedy the situation immediately.

MmmmMMMMMmmm. The downside of this recipe is that it only makes about 9 Pie Hands and it's debatable whether or not it's worth it considering the time involved in making them, most of which is spent measuring out the rectangles. Still, they are really good. For this batch I also made a simple syrup and sugar glaze per the request of those who frequent my home. I do not like glazes, so harrumph.

NIBBLE!