Shortbread Tarts with Cream

This is one of the best tasting desserts I've ever had. And I've eaten a lot of desserts. I used the recipe found here.

Having said that, they were tricky to make. The shortbread tastes incredible but was incredibly crumbly and hard to get out of the muffin tins. As I baked batch by batch, decreasing the amount of batter in each tin and the baking time seemed to help. Still, they were difficult to get out and many of them didn't make it out.

Don't let it scare you. Shortbread is an amazing recipe worth mastering; it just takes some practice. Here are some tips:

Let's be real; creaming butter and sugar together is always an excellent way to start a recipe.

 When you cream, the shortest amount of time I would recommend is 2 minutes; the longest I've seen a recipe call for is 20 minutes. Don't skip this part, it gives shortbread and similar cookies their texture (putting air into the batter, making it "light and fluffy").

Because shortbread dough is light and fluffy, do not handle it too much. Handle it as little as possible to keep the effect you got when you creamed it. Also, I think one of the problems with my shortbread cups was that I made the bottoms too thick; don't push down very far, just make an indentation. 

 This recipe calls for fresh lemon zest and juice. A different recipe Jessica and I made last night called for fresh lemon juice as well, and we talked about how to juice a lemon (sans juicer, not really necessary). Here's how:

1. Obviously, if the recipe calls for zest, you'll want to grate it first.
2. Roll the lemon on a hard surface with the palm of your hand. Don't push too hard, you don't want to squish it, but you should feel it loosening up.
3. Slice the lemon in half.
4. Squeeze the lemon with one hand into your other hand (to catch the seeds and unwanted pulp) over a bowl underneath. This will guarantee you don't have seeds in your juice because they can be hard to pick out, and no one wants to munch on one.
5. Viola! This recipe calls for 1/3 cup lemon juice; I just juiced two lemons, which was about right. 

 Ready to assemble.

 Finished!

Very Muddy Buddies

As Annette requested (I even listened to this while I wrote the post, so perhaps you can enjoy it while you read), here's the fabulous muddy buddy adventure I had tonight.

So. They turned out kind of "dark chocolate" muddy buddies. The reason why is this: I didn't actually have chocolate chips. Instead, I found a cocoa substitute online. Instead of the 1 cup chocolate chips for the recipe I found and used, I substituted 6T cocoa powder + 7T sugar + 1/4 c. butter (can't remember where I found this combo, sorry; there are many online and you can find one that matches the ingredients you have).

I combined that mixture with the other ingredients in my saucepan and melted them together, mixing until the butter and peanut butter were melted and the powders were wet. If I do this again, I will probably bring the mixture to a boil rather than just wetting everything, because it would've melted the sugar better; without this, it was a little grainy. 

Another thing I did was double the chocolate mixture portion. Since I used dry ingredients, it wasn't as fluid as it should have been (though I did add a teaspoon or two of vegetable oil to help).

Also. I didn't have very much powdered sugar, which would have helped the chocolate seem not as dark; you can definitely tell in the pictures.

STILL. They were pretty good. Let this be a lesson in improvisation and what-to-do/what-not-to-do's.

Add a side of your favorite Hollywood hunk and you've got something worth munching. 

A last word to the wise: it wasn't the smartest dinner choice, no matter what time of the month it is. I'm glad I wasn't planning on moving around a lot tonight. 

Cookie Surprise Cupcakes

How we know this recipe was a success:
As Annette Harris was eating this she got so into it that she said “Sorry, that was really not lady like.” Afterward she remarked that “This cupcake tasted better than my boyfriend.” And for those of you who know Evan Moss, you know that this is a HUGE compliment!

Cupcake: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcake
Frosting: Creamy Chocolate Frosting Recipe

These were literally the best cupcakes I have ever eaten. It's seriously a cookie surprise when you bite in and only expect cake. Mmmm... Try this one out when you get a chance. You will not regret it (and neither will the member of the opposite sex that you are trying to woo).

Freeze cookie dough in freezer for about 2 hours, or until firm in tablespoon sized balls (I used an ice cream scoop!):

Place balls on top of cupcake batter:

Bake, cool and frost:

And voila!:

All gone!

Caramel Apple Crepes

Sundays are the days I experiment bake. Today, something beautiful was born.

I have some frozen left-over crepes from a while back and I slowly use them as I have extra ingredients (great for college kids and their random grocery lists). Today I decided I wanted to make some sort of Caramel Apple Crepe. I had two apples, and the crepes obviously. The crepe recipe is top secret, as per boyf's instructions, but you can find many good recipes online. I found this caramel sauce recipe and loosely followed it.

First I diced the apples and put them on medium heat. You can cook them down to the tenderness of your liking. I added a pinch of ground cinnamon, ground allspice, and ground cloves to them, and added a little water (as needed) to keep them from sticking to the pan.

While they cooked I made the caramel sauce. It's pictured below in the process of being made; I didn't get a picture of the final thing, but this sauce was AMAZING. It had great flavor and wasn't too runny.

When the sauce was done, I added maybe half a cup or so to the apples (while they were still on the pan). This helped flavor the apples and the caramel also cooked crispy on the pan. I scraped it all into the reheated crepes, crusties, apples and all, and topped it with sauce.

Seriously... the final product was amazing. It was warm and yummy and perfect for a fall day. Highly recommend the sauce and the combo. Turned out great.

No Bake Cookies

No bake cookies. A staple food, in my opinion. What I love about no bake cookies is that I can trick myself into thinking that they're good for you. Also, because they have oatmeal in them I feel like they are appropriate to eat for breakfast (don't judge me).

We used this No Bake Cookie recipe, and the only thing we did differently ingredient wise was to use creamy peanut butter instead of crunchy.

Megan and I do have a few tips regarding these little drops of Heaven:
1. You're supposed to let them harden on wax paper, but for some reason aluminum foil works really well.
2. You need to start timing the 1.5 minutes from a full, rolling boil. And this is pretty much an exact instruction. These cookies are simple, but can be easy to mess up. Remove from the burner right away and start adding the ingredients.
3. Have the peanut butter measured out before hand, because it takes forever to measure.

Funfetti Cupcakes

So there's nothing special about the recipe here. We used these:

I usually give a huge NO to store-bought frosting, but this wasn't too bad (we used food coloring to make it blue); plus, the mix and the frosting make it so easy when you don't have a lot of time or energy. Or when it's a Tuesday night and you just need some cupcakes now.

Tip: don't overmix cake batters; the more you beat them after they're homogeneous, the tougher they will become. Maybe this is a part of my dense cake problem?

And we also had a cake vs. cupcake debate while we made them.

Pros of cake: Level of difficulty is higher and can therefore be more gratifying to make and have the end product.
Cons of cake: Cake can be temperamental, hard to get out of the pan, and if you mess it up you've ruined an entire batch. Even the satisfaction of displaying it is gone unless you make a round cake that can be displayed.
Pros of cupcakes: Individual sized, more fun, hard to mess up.
Cons of cupcakes: Hard to store and transport.

Overall, we agreed that, in this debate, cupcakes won. What do you think?

Nutella Cupcakes

These are a huge hit, made from the recipe here.

I put the nutella on the top, but didn't swirl it around as recommended. It kind of fell into the middle of the cupcake, and no one was complaining. I also shaved some dark, dark chocolate and let it melt onto the top, which added some good looks and some good taste.

The cake batter is one of the best tasting I've ever had. The recipe only made 12 cupcakes, which is half what a normal cake recipe makes, and I could see where doubling the recipe could get expensive. I also found that they were ten times better fresh or reheated. Still, they are rockstar and I highly recommend them.

Autumn Sugar Cookies

Megan and I had a weekend baking project: Autumn Sugar Cookies.

It started with a shopping trip at Walmart and an adorable harvest cookie cutter find. We used this cookie recipe, and it was especially nice as it didn't need to be refrigerated. We also used Megan's mom's vanilla frosting recipe, with a lot of food coloring.

Here's a tip:

When rolling out cookie dough, put on a generously floured surface and place plastic wrap on top of the dough before you start rolling. This keeps the dough from sticking to the rolling pin.


Here's the final product!

And as an added bonus, here's what a typical man looks like in the baking world:

Shortbread Cookies

I have always loved shortbread and I found this great recipe and gave it a try.

The first time I tried them, I flattened the dough into a square tin, cut them into strips, took them out of the pan and baked them just like that. The second time (pictured above), I rolled the dough out and cut them into circles. I think I prefer the first way better, because you don't have to add more flour to an already crumblier-than-usual dough; still, both attempts were wonderful. In both cases, I simply dipped the cookies in melted chocolate chips and added walnuts.

Highly recommend this recipe if you have the time and patience to do it right!

Chocolate Creme Cake

Cake recipe: Paula's 1-2-3-4 Cake 
Frosting recipe: "Best Ever Butter Cream Frosting"
Chocolate filling: This was actually an experiment that turned out pretty well. I asked Jessica what she thought would happen if I mixed melted chocolate with powdered sugar and a little bit of Crisco. Her answer: "Perfection." It turned out to be almost like molding chocolate; I plopped it in there, and it worked.

The cake was rich and delicious, though I think I have a problem with cakes from scratch. Whenever I make them, they turn out very dense. I know the mixing techniques affect cake batters, and that you want to reduce the amount of air you put into them; does anyone know what the best way to ensure light and fluffy cake is?

Great mixture of recipes; the frosting was definitely the best.

What the Eff is This About?

This blog is about two women (Jessica and Megan) that have too much estrogen and tend to take it out on their mixers.

In a well known movie about cooking and blogging Julie Powell said:

"Chocolate cream pie! You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That's such a comfort."

Now, I'm not saying here that every time Megan and I enter the kitchen and add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk it will turn into chocolate cream pie. In fact, I'm pretty sure that a good chunk of the time we'll add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk and it will turn into chocolate cream soup. But it'll be fun, and tasty, and estrogen/stress relieving. And you can enjoy the blunders along the way. And maybe if you're lucky, you can stop by for a taste yourself.