Weekend wrap up

I'm exhausted! I've been going nonstop this whole weekend. I had volunteered to bake cookies for the soldiers of Jon's battalion that are finally coming home. In fact, as I type many families are enjoying the company of their loved ones after a long 15 month separation. I'm going to be watching the coverage that the local news station is putting on at 10 tonight and I know I'll have tears (of happiness)! I wanted to go to the ceremony, but didn't want to take time off work I didn't have and post is 75 miles away....plus, like I said, I'm exhausted.

There were a lot of soldiers to be accounted for (600+), but as much as I would have liked to, I wasn't able to have enough cookies for all of them. I ended up with 97 baggies when all was done.

I started making the cookie dough last Wednesday night because I was going to try to bake them all for Friday so Jon could take them in to work with him. With homecoming information constantly changing, though, I found that I would be able to have them done in time and as fresh as possible by Monday (today). They were all simple recipes. I didn't want anything too complicated if I had to bake a large volume; no rolling out of dough, no cookie cutters, no rolling in sugar/cinnamon/etc......nothing like that. I baked Almond White Chocolate Chunk Cookies, a tried and true recipe I've made several times. I also made my Lime Meltaways for a different flavor, and Alton Brown's wonderful Puffy Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Almond White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Lime Meltaways

Puffy Chocolate Chip Cookies

I hadn't made the chocolate chip cookies before, but I had made Alton Brown's chewy cookie version and that one turned out soooo good! I ate 7 in one day! The reason I made the puffy one this time was because I didn't have enough butter! I had gone to the commissary that day and bought one pack of butter, thinking that would be enough since I already had 5 sticks in the fridge at home. Wrong! I remembered the puffy cookie recipe used shortening, but since shortening grosses me out to no end, I decided to use half shortening half butter. They turned out awesome! Even my official taste tester (and his wannabe) thought so! Jon ecstatically exclaimed "They taste just like Mrs. Field's!"

After all that baking I had to package the cookies. I ended up putting one of each of the chocolate chip and almond white chocolate chunk cookies and three meltaways per baggie. I got done late because I started late as a result of weekend traveling.

Don't worry, Jon wasn't left out. I made some Cream Cheese-Lemon Bows for him (and Sammy). These cookies are staying put here!

I was discouraged when Jon later told me that lemon wasn't his favorite, but he actually liked these! I hadn't planned on the dusting of powdered sugar since I pretty much considered it decorative, and come on.....guys don't care about presentation! But Jon wanted it, so he got it!

And I couldn't deprive him of his obvious favorites, the chocolate chip cookies, so he got a few surprise ones this morning. He took the cookies in to work for me.

Those Target bags were heavy! I didn't know what else to put them in. I hope they got to the soldiers in decent shape!

OK...gonna finish watching The Bachelor now. I ruined it by reading about the whole controversial ending so I know what's supposedly going to happen. Stupid reality TV! What I heard better not be true! I liked Jason so much.....

ETA: Ugh! Yeah it happened. Jason dumped Melissa after proposing to her and wants to try things out with Molly. I don't care if Molly didn't know about this but if I were her, I would drop his ass! Who does that? Probably scripted like people have been speculating. I think I'll watch the next Bachelorette since Jillian will be the one.....then I'm done.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

And it's also a baker's dream! Why? Because it's a great excuse to bake mass quantities of your favorite cookies!

In my case, I have ONE tried and true recipe and a lot of those that I want to try. After reading Sara's praises about Martha Stewart's Cookies book, seeing it in the DM BX for 25% off cover, and falling in love with most of the recipes in the book, I decided to buy it! I now have a queue of cookie recipes to try. Maybe I'm a little overconfident in making these recipes for the first time and sending them out to people, but everything I've made and taken to work was promptly devoured. I'm hoping the same will be true with these cookies! And if they turn out bad, I'm not required to send them out. Here's the list of the cookies I want to make:

1. Chocolate-Peppermint Cookies--I must make these after seeing Sara's results!
2. Cigarettes Russes
3. Candy-Stripe Cookie Sticks
4. Lime Meltaways--my tried and true recipe. I have a whole bottle of key lime juice to use up, so I guess these will be Key Lime Meltaways! Easy to make and the recipe yields a lot!
5. Lime Flowers--use up more key lime juice!
6. Chocolate Macarons with Peppermint Ganache --found this recipe on Dessert First (I love that blog!). These won't keep long so they'll be for friends in town.
7. Alfajores de Dulce de Leche (link is to similar recipe)--my aunt makes alfajores, a South American treat, from time to time so this recipe is a must-try for me! 
8. Cream Cheese-Lemon Bows

Now let's see if I can actually get to all these recipes! I just want to make sure there's good variety in the cookie tins people will be receiving from me!

You should have seen my grocery basket: milk, 2 lbs of butter, 2 dozen eggs, 10 lbs of flour, 3 lbs brown sugar, limes, ground ginger, and a huge box of Lucky Charms. Can you guess what I was eating for breakfast and dinner? That's right. I went through that whole box of Lucky Charms in 2 days. Pretty disgusting, huh? I haven't been doing much cooking since Jon left. The only mouth I have to worry about feeding now is my own (well, Sammy's too but that's just dry dog food). That's why I can get away with a grocery list like that!

One aside: anyone watch Secret Millionaire? I'm watching it now and I love it! Such a refresher from all those other reality shows on TV, where the purpose is to receive money. It's a real tear-jerker. Check it out!

Rainy morning muffins

Today will be my first day back at work. I wasn't able to fall asleep until about 1 a.m. but the sound of pouring rain woke me up at 5:30 this morning. Now, considering that I come from Seattle and it rarely rains here, not to mention I sometimes miss the rain, that woke me right up.....couldn't go back to sleep. So I decided to wake up and bake these muffins I wanted to make for Jon the night before he left. Well, good thing I didn't make them for him because I don't think he would like them--they would be too healthy for him.

They still taste good though! But this is definitely more of a breakfast muffin. They're called Morning-After Cranberry Sauce Muffins, courtesy of Serious Eats. Technically, mine are week-after cranberry sauce muffins. Oh well! The cranberry sauce was still good! Such a good way to use up that excess cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving! 

Morning-After Cranberry Sauce Muffins

Makes about a dozen

1 cup flour

1/2 cup whole-grain flour

1 cup oats

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 cups leftover cranberry sauce

1/2 cup skim milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Line muffin tins with baking cups.
2. In a large bowl, combine regular flour, whole-grain flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. In a medium bowl combine milk, oil, cranberry sauce, and egg. Blend well. Fold into dry ingredients all at once; stir until dry ingredients are moistened.
3. Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full.
4. Bake 20-22 minutes or until golden brown. 

The recipe is easy enough. The recipe didn't actually say how much cinnamon to add (forgot that detail?), but 1 teaspoon seems to be enough for me, especially since my homemade cranberry sauce had plenty of spices in it already! That's another thing....I wouldn't suggest cranberry sauce from a can for this recipe. It is a nice wholesome muffin that tastes good too! But then I did add a sugar-cinnamon-flour-butter crumb topping!

Short on words, but plenty of pictures

I haven't been very motivated lately to write. I think there is a permanent butt print on my couch due to obsessive knitting of my Alexander McQueen Knockoff sweater. I want to finish it in time to wear it at least once before it gets too warm! Granted, it's still hitting 90 during the day, but that hopefully means I have more time!

On to the baking/cake decorating projects I've been up to.

I got this out of Jon's "recipe box" on Willams-Sonoma (he loves that store). It is challah, my first attempt at baking bread. It turned out pretty well! There are supposed to be four strands braided, but I gave up after numerous attempts. Maybe next time!


Next up, Marth Stewart's Dark Chocolate Cookies with Espresso. As desserts go, I have to say that my favorite flavor combination by far is coffee with chocolate. The coffee just intesifies the chocolate and these two compliment each other very well. It is a flavor that I will have to enjoy on my own because Jon doesn't like coffee.

This is my final cake from my Wilton cake decorating class, course 2. We learned how to work with royal icing and had to make these flowers ahead of time. I love royal icing because it keeps for so long!

And for the grand finale, my very first fondant and gum past cake! I just finished this tonight, in fact. We covered the cake board and cake in class, but didn't have time for much else. I added all the parts in white that you see here. It was very half-assed because I really want to get back to my knitting project! I figured I had to make somewhat of an effort before my co-workers cut into this, but wasn't willing to invest anymore time on it. I hope it tastes good!

Ok, off to knit. Goodnight!

Catching up on some baking

Well, at least posting about it! I bake so much, yet am super lazy to grab the card out of the camera, upload the pictures onto the computer, and make collages so the post isn't to bulky. So this is catch up time.

Last week, I "graduated" from my first Wilton cake decorating class. In true nerd fashion, I modeled with my "diploma." I am now moving on to course 2, where we will be learning how to make various flowers from royal icing. The nice thing about these flowers is that you can actually store them for a while so you can make them ahead of time and just throw them onto your cake when you're ready! I think we'll also be learning how to do a basketweave. Call me dumb, but I've always stared at it and been puzzled by how to do this. I'll finally know how! We're also learning how to work with color flow icing, which I might use for Jon's welcome home cake. I want to put the brigade insignia on the cake and this might be the way to do it. Otherwise I might have to order an edible image. By the way, I just got my yellow ribbon cake pan in the mail today! I just need to test out a cake in it to see how it goes.

So on with my somewhat recent baking projects. I'm going to start with a failure, just to get it out of the way. It's a puff pastry with fruit topping. Now, this is the first time I've worked with puff pastry so I was totally clueless as to what to do. After some researching on the Net I decided to go forward with it. You are supposed to score the pastry and I wanted it to puff up around the fruit. In the instructions it says to score a 1 1/2 inch thick border so, much against my common sense, I actually scored the border with knife slits all the way around and the middle by poking holes with a fork. What I should have done was just used the fork and scored everything but the part you wanted to rise (duh! The holes will flatten the pastry!) The result was a flat, soggy mess and had to be disposed of the next morning (it did taste good straight out of the oven though!)

Next up is my fig and plum cake. I've never before seen a fresh fig and when I saw them at the commissary, I was really excited, especially since I'm such a fan of Bath and Body Works brown sugar and fig body cream. If it smells good the fruit must tase good, right? Well, they are pretty tasty all on their own, but the ones I got were a little too mushy in texture for me so I decided to throw them into a cake. It went fairly quickly when I shared at work, but the effort to me was not really worth it, so I will not be making this one again.

The next project is my lime meltaways, courtesy of Ms. Stewart. These were an instantfavorite for me. They are pretty simple to make and the recipe yields a lot of cookies. I can see myself making these in the dead of winter when I'm longing for summer. The lime flavor is so refreshing and they really do seem to melt in your mouth! Yuuuummm!!!!

I'm seriously craving some chocolate just thinking about the next baking project. Ever since I've Trader Joe's reformulated their dark chocolate madeleines, I've been wanting to learn how to make them. I really don't like the new ones! I found the recipe online and went to town. On the first attempt, they turned out heavenly. A little powdered sugar goes a long way and the chocolate flavor is so intense, just the way I like it! I was seriously channeling Deb from Smitten Kitchen when I took these pictures!
OK...almost done. I did some baking last night after a week-long hiatus (that's a long time for me!) I was craving chocolate again last night and brought out the homemade Oreo recipe that I got off of Smitten Kitchen. I made this once already, sans Crisco. The thought of eating that crap made my stomach turn so I just stuck to good old fashioned butter for the cream center. Well, they were a little soft due to the lack of shortening, which is solid at room temp. So I decided that this time I would add the Crisco, of which I have plenty of now because that is one of the main ingredients in our class buttercream icing. I've been desensitized!
So there you have it! Sorry for the long post and that it was strictly on my new obsession. I'm hanging up my apron now and off to eat some homemade chicken soup!

Anything for you, hun

I'm in the process of testing out red velvet cake recipes after finally getting it out of hubs that this is his favorite type of cake. I want to bake him a welcome home red velvet cake when he comes home for R&R in November.

Let me just say, I think I've met my match. I hate red velvet cake! I baked two different recipes last weekend, just because I want to get over this trial period and settle on a recipe I can optimize. I've found it, thank the Lord, after only two cakes. 

First, I tried this recipe provided by Smitten Kitchen, but that was a complete failure. The recipe called for 2 whole cups of oil on top of the 1 cup of buttermilk, resulting in an overly moist cake, prone to falling apart. And fall apart it did. I let it cool for 15 minutes, but when it came time to invert the pans the cakes did not plop easily out. Rather, the top half of the cake came out with the bottom staying in the cake pan. Grrr!! I also wanted to stay away from the now traditional cream cheese frosting and turned to a 7 minute frosting. This was the first time I made it and it was a lot of fun to make! But the resulting product was overly sweet and sticky. I really didn't know that I would end up with a marshmallow cream frosting, which is really what it tastes like! Not my first choice. Scratch that off the list. So here are the pictures. It was such an ugly cake I tried to cover it up as much as I could. My lovely neighbors got this cake! (too sweet and rich for me!)

It really tasted more like a chiffon cake with all that oil in there and the light fluffy frosting. It really just melted in my mouth, but way too sweet!

The winning recipe is made with butter, less food coloring (my insides will thank me), and only 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder (as opposed to 1/2 cup!) I liked this resulting cake a lot better, but it still fell apart on me, making it hard to layer it (I couldn't even layer the first cake!) I came to my own conclusion that this cake was such a problem for me because of the buttermilk. I've never had any problems with cakes falling apart on me and buttermilk is the only discriminating factor here. To save myself some trouble, I caved and made a cream cheese frosting for this cake. It was better, but there's no use in making a crumb coat with this frosting. I'd suggest going with the traditional buttercream for the crumb coat and letting that crust over before frosting the cake. I had so many crumbs that came through even though I frosted in 2 layers. I forgot to take pictures, but this cake didn't last long at work!

And so go my cake making adventures. Oh well, I'll get it soon enough! But if anyone has any tips on making red velvet cake, I'd much appreciate it!

I'm in the blogging mood right now

Lucky readers! I've been neglecting my blog for so long, I have a lot to catch up on! I'll try to keep it organized here, hence the second post tonight. 

I didn't have the chance to mention that I've been taking a cake decorating class at Michaels for three weeks now. I'm enrolled in the first course of the series and will "graduate" next weekend! I've learned how to work with basic buttercream, making those cutesy shapes you see on any grocery store cake. A couple things I learned are that there are proper angles to make these shapes and you have to watch the pressure with which you push the icing out of the pastry bag. I'm proud to say that I now know how to make the famous Wilton rose! I'll be practicing that this week with a batch of cupcakes and my leftover icing from my last class (co-workers are going to get a treat!) We voted on not making a cake for the last class just so we could focus more on the rose, but the week before I made a cake, which conveniently went to my neighbors' daughter who was celebrating her 5th birthday!

This cake is just decorated with a lot of stars and dots...that's it! It looks really complicated, but it was super easy. I can't wait to get to the more challenging shapes! I've already signed up for the second course, where we learn more flowers and fun borders. With the 50% off promotion they have going on right now plus the $5.00 off coupon my cake decorating instructor gave me, the class only totaled $12.50! September is a good time to sign up for any of Michaels cake decorating classes, because no matter where you are, it is 50% off! I promise you, I will make it up to wedding cakes. In fact, I was looking at the cake at the wedding I attended the past weekend and I totally could have decorated it! Just a series of dots and shells.....so simple!

As an aside, I really really want to attend pastry school. Baking is a very new hobby to me, and had it not been for this deployment, I might not have discovered this new passion of mine. It sometimes trumps knitting--especially at these times when my poor wrists and forearms can't take any more (ouch!) It all started out with me wanting to take better care of my husband when he got home. We spend little time together, and the times we do share together, I just want to spoil him. And all us women know that the quickest way to a man's heart is his stomach! Good thing mine loves sweet, decadent desserts! I've been pretty obsessed with baking lately (look at my frequently read blogs!), sometimes baking goodies for my lab mates twice in one week. We have weekly lab meetings and last Friday was my turn. Usually the person presenting brings in something small for the others to munch on whilst listening to them drone on and on about dry science. Usually I just stop by the store and pick up something on the way, but this time I baked some blueberry muffins and coffee banana muffins--they were much appreciated (sorry, no pics!) I love trying out new recipes, although I still don't have to confidence to experiment that much yet. But the more challenging the recipe the better! It all makes the end product that much more worth it! 

Well, as impractical as it may seem, I hope to eventually make it to pastry school. I've done a little research and it looks like it's going to be really expensive (the Art Institute of Seattle charges about $50,000 for an AA or $16,000 for a diploma!) I know I need to lean on a more practical, solid job, like nursing, but I'm halfway tempted to ditch those previous aspirations and go for these new ones. 

Update on recent knitting projects

Summer is definitely on its way here in Tucson. Yesterday it hit 91 degrees and it doesn't look like it's turning around anytime soon. Here's our 7-day courtesy of KGUN 9 here.

So it may not make much sense that despite the heat, those knitting needles continue to click away. But I finished a cardigan a few weeks ago that I didn't get around to posting about because I'm so lazy to take pictures. It's just so hard to take pictures of yourself! But here she is

I got the pretty buttons at Leandro Fabrics here in Tucson. I'm really happy with it! I used the Silky Tweed yarn that I got from Kiwi back last winter. The pattern, for anybody who's interested, is Eunny Jang's Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I modified the pattern a lot because following it, I was swimming in that thing! I like my clothes to hug my curves. Too bad it's too warm here to wear it now!

And since I've been really mopey lately, I've forced myself to start another project: the Leaf T-shirt by Melissa Lynn (Knitting School Dropout). I'm knitting this one up in a funky colored cotton yarn--more tolerable for these warm spring days we've been having lately. Here's my progress thus far

I hope I get her done before we hit the triple digits here, because from then on it's nothing but little tank-tops for this girl!

I have been feeling a lot better lately (finally!) I've been hanging out with my neighbor lately--she has two adorable daughters that make me yearn for kids even more now! We spent all of Saturday together and had lots of fun. We even made it to the Tucson International Mariachi Conference! Very beautiful music I must say. So getting out has been good for me. I've also been coping by getting back to my baking and cooking....my co-workers are indulging along with me! The deliciousness from just last week alone:

One-a-day Banana Bars

Greek Tomato Patties

And my Almond White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Those 3 pounds I lost over last month? I see them finding a way back onto this body pretty quickly if this keeps up!