Sans Rival

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

I decided to focus on just the Sans Rival for now. The more specialized ingredients for the Bibingka were too much for me at this point.

While not quite as intimidating as my first Daring Bakers challenge, I was still a bit nervous. I've made meringue numerous times before, but in my current place they never turn out quite as I'd like them to. It could be that it's just far too humid down here in the summer to attempt meringue. So I was excited that this challenge was for a month where it's not humid here. 

The traditional recipe calls for cashews, and I tried, really I did. But I just couldn't like them enough to devote an entire cake to them. So I went with almonds instead. We were also given multiple options for flavoring the icing, I went with chocolate. Because, well, we all know how I feel about chocolate don't we?

The end result was pretty good, though it took me a few tastes to decide that I did indeed like the cake. I think I would also make the nuts that go into the meringue even more finely processed next time, as for me, it was a little disconcerting to have chunks of something in a meringue.

I also hear back that I could have used an even darker chocolate for the buttercream to cut the sweetness a little. Seeing as I used unsweetened, I'm not really sure where I'd go from there. Perhaps add a different flavoring to it?

Sans Rival Cake

makes 1 four layer, 9-inch cake

Meringue

10 egg whites, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

2 cups chopped almonds - I just dumped mine into a food processor for a bit

Preheat the oven to 325°.

Line cake pans with parchment paper, as well as buttering and flouring the sides. I didn't have four cake pans so I traced two nine inch circles onto parchment paper to use as guides in order to bake the meringue on cookie sheets.

Beat the egg whites at a medium speed until foamy, should take a few minutes. Add the cream of tartar and slowly add the sugar, a little at a time. Once all the sugar has been added, continue to beat the mixture, at high speed, for 10 minutes - or until stiff, shiny peaks form.

Fold in most of the almond, keeping some out for decorating the cake at the end.

Divide the meringue evenly between the four layers, and bake for 30 minutes - or until golden brown. Don't be afraid to let this get nice and golden. I probably ended up turning the oven off a little too soon. 

Once the meringues are nice and golden, turn off the oven and let sit for fifteen minutes or so. Then remove from the oven. Remove the meringues from the parchment - be careful with this, meringue is fragile!

Then return the meringues back to the oven and let them sit in there for a good hour or so. This is supposed to help them crisp up. 

Buttercream

5 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, room temperature

2 oz unsweetened chocolate - melted

Beat the egg yolks on high until they have doubled in volume and turn a lemon yellow. I usually just go by the color, judging when something has 'doubled' has always troubled me. 

Place the sugar and water in a pot and cook over medium heat, dissolving the sugar. Keep cooking until the mixture reaches 235°.

While mixing on high, slowly add the sugar mixture to the egg yolks. Hot sugar can be bad news so be very very careful with this step!

Continue on high speed until the mixture reaches room temperature, about 15 minutes. And this is why I love stand mixers... set it and forget it (sort of).

Once it has reached room temperature, add in the butter and flavoring. Refrigerate this for at least an hour, whipping it again right before use.

Assembly

Put a dab of buttercream in the center of whatever you'll be using to plate your cake. Place the first layer of meringue down. Add a thin layer of buttercream on top of that. 

Repeat with the remaining layers of meringue. I trimmed the meringue layers during this process. Taking away bits of edges and adding in little bits of extra meringue as needed. 

Ice the entire cake once you are done layering. Use the remaining nuts as decoration, pressing them to the sides of the cake.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Yesterday I mentioned to my roommate and her sister a recipe I ran across for Pumpkin Cinnamon pancakes. They voted that we make them this morning for breakfast. I wasn't prepared to say no to that so, here we are. Gooey, cinnamony pancakes. 

The recipe can be found here.

The only change we made was to use 2% instead of whole milk, and it all turned out just fine. They were still more than rich enough, I had to stop after only two pancakes... which was sad since they were so delicious.

We did have some problems with the cinnamon filling kind of oozing/cooking out when the pancakes were flipped. Any suggestions on that front are more than welcome!

Daring Baker's: Povitica

The Daring Baker's October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

This past month, I decided to be daring and brave and bold and... ok, ok. All I really did was join Daring Bakers. I'd heard about Daring Bakers at the beginning of 2011 from a friend, who at one time was an active member of the group. I kind of hemmed and hawed and put off any serious thought of joining until just recently, when I thought, hey, why not? I can always join, see if I like it, and stick around if I do. And I most definitely do.

The challenge this month totally threw me when I first saw it. Povitica? How do you say that? What is that?

I had some huge reservations at first. Mostly because of the walnut filling. You may have noticed, but I am not an overly huge fan of nuts. So I was a little downcast that my first challenge kind of centered around them. In addition, most of my interaction so far with yeast has involved a bread machine. Luckily, fond memories of a walnut dumpling from a trip to China this past summer popped into my head. Ok, I can handle this walnut business. Hopefully.

The recipe turned out to be fairly straightforward. The part I was most concerned about, making the dough, turned out to be a cinch. How did I not know it was this easy to make dough? Activating yeast? Combine, stir, and let sit. I can so do that. From there, mixing in the rest of the ingredients, kneading, and letting the dough rise flowed on by. I think the hardest part for me ended up being the transfer of the final log of dough/filling from counter to loaf pan. Though, with practice that would probably get easier as well.

The end result was decent, there were some nice swirls of walnut. I'll probably revisit this at some point. For me, there was too much walnut, or perhaps the swirls were just to thick. Admittedly, I did throw in the extra half cup or so of ground walnut I had into the filling. I mean, what was I going to do with leftover ground walnut? So next time I'll probably grind smaller batches of walnuts until I have an amount closer to what the recipe called for.

I'd also like to try other fillings, something more akin to cinnamon rolls. Or something involving cheese, because well, who doesn't love a nice cheesy piece of bread?

Povitica
makes one loaf

To activate the Yeast:
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp flour
2 tbsp warm water
1 1/2 tsp yeast

Stir sugar, flour and yeast into 1/2 cup warm water and cover with plastic wrap, let it stand for 5 minutes. I used a 1 cup liquid measuring cup for this and it was plenty big enough.

Dough:
1/2 cup whole milk
3 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 tbsp unsalted butter - melted
2 cups flour

Heat the milk, stirring constantly. Let it go until just before it'll start to boil and then remove from the heat and let sit for just a bit.

Mix the milk, sugar, and salt. Add in the eggs, activated yeast, melted butter, and about half of the flour. Mix well, adding in flour just until the dough starts to form a ball.
Flour whatever surface you'll be kneading the dough on, and knead the dough. Slowly add in remaining flour until the dough is no longer sticking at all. I used all 2 cups, and maybe slightly more.

Oil a bowl and place the dough inside, covering with plastic wrap and a towel. Leave it in a warm place and let rise for an hour and a half.

This gets more appetizing, promise

Filling:

1 3/4 cups ground walnut

1/4 cup whole milk

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp cocoa powder

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Mix the ground walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and cocoa. Heat the milk and butter. Once it's boiling, pour over the walnut mixture. Add in the eggs and vanilla, and mix. If the filling thickens up too much stir in a bit of warm milk.

Assembling:

See-through dough!

Cover a table with an old (but clean!) sheet. Flour a good sized portion where you will be rolling out the dough. Don't skimp too much on this, my dough ended up sticking slightly at the beginning, so I had to scrape it away a bit and add more flour.

Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough. You'll want this to be super thin, don't be afraid to put a little muscle into it. When you get the dough about a foot in diameter brush a bit of melted butter over it and continue rolling it out. You will want to see the design on your sheet through the dough!

Once the dough is appropriately thin, carefully spread the filling out over the surface. Leave about half an inch clear around the edges too leave room for oozing when you roll the dough up into a log.

Pick up one edge and gently roll the dough, forming a log. Carefully lift and place the dough into a loaf pan. I would suggest folding the dough in half and placing this in the pan, leaving the ends hanging out. Then fold the ends over top.

Cover and let rest for about 15 minutes. During this time you can set your oven to 350. Uncover the loaf pan and let bake for 15 minutes. After that, turn the temperature down to 300 and let bake for another 45 minutes. Be careful to watch. If it looks like it'll get too dark before it's done baking you can cover with a bit of aluminum foil. I peaked in about every 15 minutes, mostly out of paranoia. 

Once it's done, let it cool in the loaf pan for a good 20 minutes or so before removing and letting cool the rest of the way.

I recommend toasting a slice and slathering with some butter, yum!

Fluffy Pancakes

I hardly ever have time in the mornings to make actual breakfast food before work. Ok, well, if I woke up half an hour earlier I would... but who wants to do that? So when my day off rolled around today, I jumped at the chance to make something breakfasty. 

I found this recipe a while back on the Kitchn. Having grown up with pancakes more akin to crepes, yet still delicious of course, I was intrigued by these supposedly cloud like pancakes. And given that thes pancakes contain a whopping tablespoons of baking powder, they would be defying chemistry to not be fabulously fluffy, right? 

Pancakes

makes about 12 pancakes

2 cups flour

4 tbsp sugar

4 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

2 cups milk

4 tbsp vegetable oil

Pancakes are super easy. Mix the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients. Stir. This batter turns out kinda lumpy, and that's just fine. You don't want to over stir and deflate all that wonderful fluffiness from the baking powder. 

I like to turn the burner on while I'm finishing mixing up the batter, so the pan is hot for the first round of pancakes. I'd say medium or medium-low heat, but it's hard to tell with a gas stove. I used a nice sized serving spoon to portion out the batter, maybe a third of a cup or so. Let the edges of the pancakes start to turn up before flipping, you'll also start to see little air bubbles coming up.

Do be careful, when I first made these it took a pancake or two to get the timing right. These seem to be so fluffy that if you aren't careful the middle will still be bit gooey. 

Taste of DC 2011

So I was completely oblivious to the fact that Taste of DC was occurring over Columbus Day weekend until that Saturday, when someone off-handedly mentioned it. And I was like, say what?! At that moment, I knew what my weekend goal was; make it into DC for some delicious food.

I held off until Monday, in hopes that tourists and all those folks who had to work would be otherwise occupied. And, it actually wasn't so bad. The lines were good, we didn't have to wait more than a few minutes at any of the booths we stopped at. Granted, the one booth I really wanted to stop at (Wicked Waffle) had a line significantly longer than the others... so we skipped it.

Our first stop was at Ben's Chili Bowl. Where I got this

A chili half-smoke. Yum, the chili was perfectly spicy. My first Ben's experience was delicious, maybe I'll attempt the trek out to the actual shop sometime...

Next up was some Indian food, from Nirvana Express. I chose the samosa, which was delicious. Mostly filled with potato, the occasional other veggie mixed in as well. What really sold me on the samosa though was the sauce that they drizzled over top before handing it over. I have no idea what it was, but I do know that it was mighty tasty. 

From there we moved on to Irish. Sort-of. James Hoban's had a booth, and given the amount of food I'd already consumed, I thought well, I can probably handle a baby quiche. Is quiche Irish? Have I just missed this fact all these years? Oh well. It turned out to be more than I was expecting in a serving, but it was very tasty. Nice and eggy with little bits of ham and cheese. And on a side-note, next time someone tells you that the 'baby quiche' is made with babies... ask them if the babies are real or fake, as you only eat real babies... trust me, the reaction is awesome* 

To end the deliciousness I chose a simple bag of cinnamon almonds. These are a new favorite of mine after years of shunning any sort of nut. I wish they had been warm though, freshly made cinnamon almonds are hard to beat.

* not intended to offend anyone, sorry if it did. You're just getting a better picture of my bizarre sense of humor...

Cinnamon Chip Muffins

This is probably one of those muffins that is more dessert than actual muffin. Though it includes applesauce, so I like to think of it as healthy... ish. Soft and moist with delicious cinnamon throughout, these are so good fresh from the oven and slightly warm. To push it decidedly over into the dessert category I'll sometimes add a small scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Otherwise the muffins will get a drizzle of powdered sugar glaze.

The recipe comes from Hershey, originally a coffee cake recipe. 


Cinnamon Chip Muffins


1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup applesauce
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
10 oz cinnamon chips
powdered sugar glaze - optional

Preheat the oven to 350°
Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla and eggs.
Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in the cinnamon chips.

Fill muffin tins about 3/4 of the way, bake for 18 minutes. Let cool and, if desired, drizzle powdered sugar glaze across the top.

Alexandria Cupcakes

Here it is, the promised review of Alexandria Cupcakes.


My sisters and I all went one weekend, each getting a different flavor. Between us we tried the Blackberry, Lemon, and Raspberry cupcakes. We did share little nibbles of the icings so we could all get at least an idea of each.

I got the blackberry cupcake. First bite was just so-so. But it grew on me. By the end I was really enjoying the flavor in the icing. I assume the icing was a buttercream, just because that's what the general cupcake is iced with. If it was, it was a good one. I tend not to like buttercreams as they can well, get a little too buttery. There was enough Blackberry flavor to it though that I didn't notice. Again, if it was a buttercream. The cake part wasn't too flavorful, or the icing just overpowered. It was also kind of a not so fabulous color, a greyish purple-y color. Ignoring that, it was a decent cupcake, maybe slightly on the dry side.

I didn't hear any complaints from my sisters, so I assume their cucpakes were good. As far as the icing flavors go I ranked them: Lemon, Raspberry, and then Blackberry.

Overall, a decent cupcakery. I have no idea if they're connected at all, but, the cupcakes have always reminded me a little bit of Georgetown Cupcakes. To which I have been but will likely never go back to, for many reasons... I won't go into it.

In the end though, if you are in Old Town and looking for a cupcake, I would recommend Lavender Moon over Alexandria Cupcakes.

Just to note: there isn't much seating; one table. So don't expect to be able to sit down and eat in. This isn't a big deal, unless you like to stage and photograph your food... but uhm, who does that... 

Weekend Visitors

I kept telling folks that I would bake over this past weekend. It never happened. Instead I hung out with my sisters and ate way too much. I wasn't too upset.

The weekend started off with a trip up to Columbia, MD for the Fleet Foxes concert at the Merriweather Post Pavilion.

I'd never been before and wasn't quite sure what to expect. I knew there was a pavilion and a lawn. Unfortunately it was raining and my camera is not waterproof, so all I got were some blurry Ipod photos. So let me try to describe it... the main concert grounds are shaped like a slice of pie. With the pavilion at the tip and a nicely sloped hill radiating out from there. There were numerous food stalls going up the sides, all mostly selling the same thing. I'd recommend packing a picnic dinner though, as the prices seemed quite steep. We had a nice meal of cheese (Gouda and triple X sharp cheddar), bread (sourdough, my favorite!), and fruit before heading in.

Due to the rain, all of the lawn ticket holders were invited inside the pavilion, yay! The concert was fabulous, only starting... half an hour late. What is it with this practice of concerts not starting on time? And how can it be stopped? The concert was good though. I'd pretend to be able to review music, but I'm not one of those people that can pick things out. Like, oh they were pitchy or weren't keeping the tempo or whatever. But in any case the opening band, The Walkmen, were good but I'm not running out to buy a CD. I think they got a bit farther from the folk feel that I was expecting. Fleet Foxes was fabulous, but, when you like a band enough to buy tickets to a concert, what else would you say? They have a nice folk-rock sound. Yep, that's right. Folk rock.

The rest of the weekend involved some very delicious cupcakes from Lavender Moon and Alexandria Cupcakes. I've already got a post on Lavender Moon, though I think I could probably write odes to their S'mores cupcake. And Alexandria Cupcakes will have a forthcoming review.

After Lavender Moon and Alexandria Cupcakes, we attempted a third cupcake in one afternoon... and failed. We got all the way out to Stickyfingers, looked at the display, looked at each other, and decided we just couldn't do it. We did however get some of the tomato soup, in hopes that this would temper the feeling of sweets overload. The soup was actually pretty good. A nice tomato-y flavor, not chunky but it wasn't thin like Campbell's; it had a little texture to it. We all agreed that it would have been fabulous with a nice hunk of crusty bread on the side.

Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies

Growing up, my family got a box of fancy schmancy toffee from my Aunt every year. I wrinkled my nose and shook my head, no thank you. Toffee? What's that? Nuts? Eww. Luckily my taste buds have gotten much less picky as I've gotten older. I eventually tried that toffee, and actually kind of enjoyed it. Then one day I found a chocolate toffee cookie at Whole Foods, and wow. Was it ever tasty. Not wanting to make a habit out of spending three dollars on a cookie, I decided to make up my own.

I've had this recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies for ages. It's a decent chocolate chip cookie recipe, for when I want something other than the classic Toll House cookies of course =) and i thought it would hold the extra toffee pieces well.

I made mine a little smaller than the original recipe called for, I was taking these to a function and wanted the most bang for my buck. Still good, but if you want that 'big, fat, chewy', don't skimp on the amount of dough per cookie.

Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies

3 dozen or so

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter - melted

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp vanilla

1 egg yolk

1 egg

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup toffee pieces

First thing you'll want to do is set the oven to 325°.

Cream the butter, white and brown sugars. Add in the vanilla and the egg and egg yolks.

Add in the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. 

Spoon the dough onto cookie sheets and bake 15 minutes or until they get slightly golden.

Then, remember to nibble on the broken cookies; it's your duty as the baker to taste test =)

Fried Tofu and Roasted Veggies

Cooking is pretty much limited to the weekends for me. At least anything particularly involved. During the week I go from work to work outs with only an hour or so in between. So most of the time I'll make a large batch of something on Sunday and eat the same thing all week. Luckily I haven't gotten bored of the weekly monotony yet.

I have a rotation of meals that I go through, and wanted to add something in that didn't include meat. I found a recipe for Crispy Tofu Triangles and thought, I could give that a try. Sure, I've never liked tofu in anything else before... but, fried? That could work. 

To go with, I decided upon roasted veggies. Possibly my most favorite side ever. I also added in some Thai sweet chili sauce to dip the tofu in. If you haven't tried it, please, go out right now and buy some for yourself. So. Good.

For the tofu, follow the link above to the recipe. It's super easy, even for a tofu newbie!

As for the veggies, I'm sure everyone has a favorite way to roast veggies. It's so simple and you can easily change it up with different herbs or liquids. Generally I'll do a few crowns of broccoli and a head of cauliflower spritzed with some olive oil with some fresh cracked pepper and salt over top. 

Or, I love love love Penzeys spice mixes. Pick any of them, they'll always turn out good! Some of my favorites include the Northwoods and Cajun mixes. 

Halfway Bar Cookies

These were among the many recipes sitting in a long line of recipes; so why did I choose them? Well, first off, I had all the ingredients on hand. It was like fate! And fate was all too kind in this case. And besides who can resist the blondie-esque base covered in chocolate covered in a brown sugar meringue? Not me, that's for sure.

They were super simple, and earned rave reviews from the folks that I routinely foist baked goods upon. I mean, a girl can't eat a whole pan of bar cookies by herself... can she? Ok, she can, but only if she's willing to go running for the next week straight. And eat a bunch of lettuce. Given the choices, I opt to share the wealth.

Let's jump on in to the recipe, which I found here. I followed the recipe to a T. Well, as much as I ever do. I'm from the school of thought that doesn't stress the finicky, just so measurements. And I have to tell you, no one's complained yet.

Halfway Bars
fills a 9x13 pan


2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter - softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar - divided into 1 cup and a 1/2 cup
2 eggs
1 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla
12 oz semisweet chocolate chips

First thing, set the oven to preheat to 350°.
It was recommended to foil line your 9x13 pan, and spray coat the foil. While the bars ended up being super easy to get out of the pan, I'm not totally sure it was all necessary. Spray some pam on there sure, but the foil? Meh. Unless you're super worried about presentation, I probably wouldn't bother.

Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and soda and set to the side for a bit.
Next, cream the butter, sugar, and the 1/2 cup of brown sugar.

Separate the eggs, keeping both the whites and yolks.

Mix the yolks into the creamed butter mixture, followed by the water and vanilla.

Then mix in the flour, until just combined. The dough will be crumbly, kind of like a slightly damp shortbread dough. Once it's ready, dump the dough crumbs into the pan and press to make a relatively even layer of cookie dough.

Now, add the chocolate. Make a nice layer over top of the cookie crust, press the chips in a bit to help them stay in place.

Onto the meringue.

I would use either a stand mixer or hand mixer for this one.
Beat the egg whites until they are nice and frothy. The first time I made these I didn't beat the egg whites quite enough, and while still tasty, wasn't quite as fluffed as it needed to be, so definitely make sure to get these well frothed. Slowly add in the cup of brown sugar, keep mixing. And then keep mixing some more, until the meringue is in the soft peak stage - not liquidy anymore, but it tends to run back on itself, not holding a good shape for very long.

Once the meringue is ready, pour it out over the cookie and chocolate base. Spread it out gently to cover the chocolate. Doesn't have to be perfect, because you're going to be pressing some parchment over top anyways.

Bake for 20 minutes, remove the parchment, and bake for another 5-10 minutes. You'll want it to start looking toasty, like a perfectly done marshmallow... unless you like your marshmallows burnt, then, nevermind.


*disclaimer - the original recipe called these 'halfway cookies', my calling them 'bar cookies' isn't an attempt to make them my own in some way. This recipe is that same recipe,  I just have a hard time calling anything cut from a 9x13 pan a cookie...

Labor Day weekend

Welcome back everyone, hope you had a fabulous holiday weekend. This weekend was full of relaxing, food, and family. We had a birthday as well, which meant the traditional family birthday cake that we've had since before I can remember for pretty much every birthday. My sister and I were allowed to tackle the cake this year, and we think it turned out pretty well. At some point I'll attempt it on my own, and will create a post devoted to it at that time. Don't worry, it's definitely worth the wait.

For now, I'll leave you with a few snapshots of the weekend. Now, excuse me while I go find some lemonade and enjoy the rest of my mini-vacation from work =)

chipotle rubbed ribs

birthday cake in progress

After all that good food, I had to work it off somehow. Running with this energetic girl seemed appropriate

puppy?

want: Solar Powered Illuminating Waterbottle

So I was meandering through one of my favorite sites, uncommongoods, and saw these:

photo from uncommongoods

 Yep, these are water bottles, that also act as lanterns. I'm pretty much in love with this idea. So the lid has these LED lights that run on solar power. So you can take them pretty much anywhere. Living in a city, sans car, I don't get out hiking and camping as much as I'd like, but these are so tempting!

Yogurt Cupcakes with Strawberry filling topped with a Whipped Almond-Chocolate Ganache

See, look, I do bake every now and again. When you work all week and work out in the evenings, sometimes it's hard to find spare time to bake, but the occasional Friday off just begs for a new baking project. This yogurt cake with strawberries has been sitting on my 'list of things to bake' for months now and so, here I am, up to my elbows in batter, filling, and ganache. What could be better?

Usually I start off with the cake part of a cupcake, but this time around, the Ganache gets top billing. Mostly because it needs to cool and then be refrigerated for a good bit of time. What use is a cupcake if you have no icing? That's right, none. Ok, that's not true, who doesn't love a good naked icing-less cupcake every now and again? Right, now, back to the Ganache.

I used a very basic recipe from theKitchn.

Chocolate Almond Ganache
makes a lot - enough to frost 24 cupcakes plus at least 2 cups more (leftovers are very good on vanilla ice cream)
 
- 3 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 1 lb semi-sweet chocolate (I used Newman's Own Organic 54% Dark Chocolate)
- pinch salt
- 2-3 tsps almond extract

First things first, break up the chocolate into smaller pieces. And when you have half a square over that 1 pound... well, you know what to do. Eat it! The chocolate can be placed in a heat proof bowl, I just used the bowl of my KitchenAid, and set aside.

Next, set up a pot with the heavy cream and set that to boil over medium heat. I have a gas stove so it's hard to really say what 'medium heat' is, but if you picture the flames at their largest, go about half way down and then just a tad bit more. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the pot regularly so the cream doesn't do anything funky. Once the cream gets up to a boil, remove immediately and pour over the chocolate. Then, sit. Yep, that's right, stare at that creamy chocolatey goodness for a good ten minutes.

After ten minutes, add in the salt and flavoring and stir it up with a spoon, spatula, hand mixer, stand mixer, whatever. Just get it nice and mixed together. Once it's all mixed together, let it sit. Yes, again. Let it cool down to about room temperature and then place in the fridge to chill all the way. I pressed a sheet of saran wrap over the top once it's cooled down a bit to prevent people from dipping their fingers in to taste any sort of weird skin or something from forming.

One comment on the amount of almond extract... it might have been too much. It was hard to tell at first when the chocolate was still warm, as it cooled, I started to get nervous... the almond flavor came out more and more. Unless you really really like the flavor of almonds, I would potentially decrease it down to 1 teaspoon or so.

After sharing the cupcakes with some folks, everyone said that the amount of almond was just fine... so, suit yourself. 

Once the ganache is thoroughly chilled (I left it to chill for a good 6 hours or so) take it out of the fridge and whip it up until it's nice and fluffy. I would do this just before you're ready to assemble the cupcakes. 

I read a few different recommendations on how long to chill the ganache. Some said it should be chilled and solid all the way through. Others that just getting to room temp is enough. Some even recommended freezing for a few hours. I decided on a combination. I let it set in the fridge for a good four or five hours, then shoved it in the freezer about an hour before I was to assemble the cakes.

Now, on to the cake!

Yogurt Cake
makes 24 cupcakes

- 1 1/2 cups full-fat yogurt
- 2/3 cup olive oil
- 1 1/4 cup sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 2 1/2 tsps baking powder
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- pinch nutmeg (the original recipe calls for fresh, but I don't have that sitting around... please tell me I'm not the only one)

So this may very well be the easiest cake batter I have ever made. Literally, it's just whisk all the wet ingredients, plus the sugar, until nice and mixed. Then, add in all the dry ingredients and whisk again.

 Really. It's that easy. It took me five minutes, maybe. This could turn into my go to vanilla cake. I would recommend though, a light olive oil. 2/3 cup is a fair amount, and while olive oil is delicious, it's not the flavor I want to be most prominent in a cupcake.

You'll want to preheat the oven to 350°. Fill up those cupcake tins about 2/3 of the way and shove lovingly place the tray in the oven. Depending on your oven, cupcakes are generally 18-20 minutes cooking time. My oven can be temperamental, I blame the fact that it's a gas oven, so I start checking around 15 minutes or so. Once a tester comes out clean, remove and let cool on a rack. And voila, cupcakes (naked though they may be).

Strawberry Filling

made about a third of a cup over what I needed for 24 cupcakes

And now for the last step. I've been on this kick of filling cupcakes for the past... oh say, year or so. Not sure why, as regular cupcakes are just as tasty, plus they're one less step. Maybe I like the challenge? Anyways. For this cupcake I chose to  do a marshmallow-y strawberry filling. I kind of butchered a recipe for a peppermint marshmallow cream (those cupcakes by the way, were wonderful) to fit my strawberry needs.

For this we'll need

- 1 1/2 cups marshmallow fluff
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temp and cut to pieces
- 2 tsp strawberry flavor (I used a strawberry soda)
- 4 large strawberries

 Ok, so this filling is pretty darn easy.

The first thing you'll want to do is prep the strawberries.

Basically, you're going to mince them. You could probably get away with puree-ing them as well. What I did was very similar to how I was recently taught how to mince garlic or onions. Place the strawberry stem side down on the cutting board, make vertical slices, not cutting all the way through. Than make horizontal slices, also not cutting all the way through to the stem. Then flip the whole thing on its side, and starting from the non stem end, cut slices going towards the stem. Hopefully that made sense... do not cut yourself.

Once you have that done, go ahead and blend the butter and marshmallow together until it's all nice and fluffy. Add in the flavoring and minced strawberries and mix in. That's it! Well, then you need to cover and let it chill for 20 minutes or so, but, that doesn't really count.

                                                              mmm, strawberries and cream

For the strawberry flavoring, I couldn't find a real strawberry soda. I ended up settling for a strawberry seltzer, which in the end, wasn't as much flavor as I was hoping for. Next time I might try making it a 'mixed berry' filling, using a more prevalent, and flavorful, berry soda. 

Assembling

Ok, so now you have cupcakes, filling, and ganache.

Sit down with all your cupcakes, and dig out their guts. Yep, that's right. I like using a little cappuccino spoon for this. Make a small hole slightly larger than like, a nickel in the top. Remove the circle of cake, you'll be needing this so don't eat it. Then go ahead and scoop out some of the middle, more or less depending on the cake/filling ratio you want.

Pipe, or spoon, the filling in and replace the little circle of cupcake that you saved from above. Then frost the cupcakes. And voila, beautiful little cupcakes.  


The completed product, a day later. Here is where I learned my lesson. Whipped ganache does not love a hot and humid atmosphere. It tends to melt. So while still quite tasty, the appearance wasn't quite what I had hoped for. Good thing most of my friends don't really care what cupcakes look like =)

Earthquake?

Who knew DC could get earthquakes? Not me, that's for sure. And believe you me, my childhood 'earthquake drills' did me no good. When it first started, I honestly thought there was just an unusually heavy cart rolling by my desk this afternoon. Things tend to shake a bit in our building when things go by. Whether it's the flimsy cubicle walls or what, even people walking by can sometimes cause little rattles. I was so not prepared for the larger tremors that caused floors to shake, things to fall over, and cars out in the garage to jump.

Now, I realize that in the grand scheme of things, this was probably a pretty tame earthquake. Folks out in earthquake zones are probably shaking their heads; much akin to when I giggle at the overreactions to snow in southern states.

After evacuating and standing around for a good half hour we were finally let back in, only to be told to get our things and leave. Afternoon off? Ok!

My roomie and I celebrated our afternoon off with a trip to the farmers market that is usually winding down by the time we can get there after work. It was unusually sparse... could it be the earthquake kept some of the vendors away? I did manage to buy myself some Bison jerky, which I've never had before. Don't worry, I'll report back once I've had a chance to try it.

After reports of pictures falling off walls and knick-knacks off bookcases, I was a little afraid to survey the damage to the apartment. When I walked in... wasn't sure there had even been an earthquake. We must have been very lucky, the only evidence I found was this

Poor little German doll fell over, her arm twisted out of socket. 

All things considered, a little doll surgery is nothing compared to what others have experienced in the aftermath of an earthquake. Let us all thank our lucky stars that we got out of this mainly unscathed.

Lavender Moon Cupcakery

The DC area has an over-abundance of cupcake shops, much to my delight. Someone has to go and try each and every one, and I am more than willing to take one for the team in this case.

My sister is coming into town this weekend, and to celebrate I popped out to Old Town and walked down to what is, so far, my favorite of the many cupcake shops around; Lavender Moon. I decided between the two of us, four cupcakes would be plenty... at least for the first night.

Now, I tend to be a traditionalist when it comes to cupcakes. Rosewater? Lilac? No thank you, I'll take my chocolate with chocolate, and a little more chocolate if you've got it. Thank you very much. And Lavender Moon does not disappoint, with plenty of delicious flavors that they rotate through. For this trip I decided on four different flavors

• Flourless Chocolate with Almonds and Sea Salt
• Chocolate with Peanut Butter
• S'mores
• Blood Orange Dreamsicle

I'm kind of sucker for flourless chocolate anything. So rich, so dense, so delicious. Lavender Moon has a good variation here. Though we were both expecting a little more from the 'almonds and sea salt' part of that cupcake. While it was a perfectly good chocolate cupcake, these two flavors could have used a bit more representation.

Now, I don't do peanut butter (yes, I know, it's weird. I'm sorry). So this one was all for my sister. Her first words after taking a bite, "Wow. Peanut butter." I assume that's a good thing when one buys a chocolate peanut butter cupcake.

The s'mores cupcake is by far one of my favorites from Lavender Moon. That meringue-y marshmallow-y frosting? Oh. My. Goodness. Light and fluffy and the thin layer of brulee'd frosting is just perfect. Possibly my second favorite cupcake topping ever (The first is a certain boiled frosting, more on that at some point I'm sure). The cupcakes here have always been soft and moist, unlike certain other cupcake shops I've been too *cough cough* Georgetown Cupcakes *cough cough*.

And finally, the last cupcake. Yes, yes, I know. Blood Orange Dreamsicle? No chocolate at all. This was my 'reach' cupcake of the purchase. After all, I could be proven wrong. Fancy new cupcake flavors could in fact be just as good, in their own right, as the chocolatey goodness that I tend to prefer. The cake part of this cupcake was, actually, very good. Light and airy, a nice citrus-y flavor. While the frosting was good, both my sister and I thought it over powered the lightness of the cupcake just a tad. 

In the end I would give Lavender Moon an A for the cake part of the cupcakes. As for the frostings, the marshmallow on the s'mores was by far my favorite. If you enjoy a good buttercream, the others were good too. Personally I prefer a lighter icing, possibly due to too much buttercream as a child...

Oh Oreo, what have they done to you?

So I get online this afternoon, all innocent and carefree. And what do I see but this...

What is that? It's... an Oreo? I don't believe you... this must be one of those things from the onion. But no. That's an actual cookie. I hardly ever buy cookies anymore, what with all the deliciousness that comes from making your own, but... I hate to admit it... I'm a little curious about this little guy.

Anyone tried one yet? Is it a must for all of us Oreo lovers, or will it ruin all of my childhood memories?

I need to distract myself from this newfound Oreo conundrum. Good thing Borders is going out of business and I was able to snag this book on Whoopie Pies. Another childhood favorite. I don't know about you, but when my mom drove all us kids out to the Amish market, a whoopie pie was the one thing I always begged for. And now I have a whole book full of them!

I think I'll tackle the oatmeal ones first...