Marshmallow Swirled No-Bakes

Well, it's been a month. I suck. I gotta say while I have been baking (ello- baby- in- belly) I haven't been photographing much. I pretty much get tuckered out from baking- eat one or three of said treats and take a nap. No wonder I've put on some poundage. (but that's for another day) I was looking through photos I had saved on the laptop and came across these- realized I hadn't posted them yet! I'm gonna rectify that situation.

I do love easy treats. Seriously- I like those treats that you can make on a whim with stuff that you always seem to have on hand and they end up looking purdy to boot. First found these @ Sweet Treats and More, they looked most awesome. Enough that when I found them I remember printing off the recipe immediately. Then setting it aside for a while- as the photo is dated a bit later than when I bookmarked the recipe. Another one of those I'm not sure why it took me so long, but in the end I'm glad I made them kind of recipes. I do that often with dinner ones too- looks so awesome, but I'm waiting until the meat goes on sale, or I can't find that specific pepper so I'll wait until I make a trip to a big ole fancy store to look there...I'm wandering here.

Marshmallow Swirled No Bake Cookies printable
-via Sweet Treats and More

1/2 stick of butter (4T)
1/2 c. milk
2 c. sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbs cocoa (heaping)
1/2 c. peanut butter (creamy is my fav here)
2 1/2-3 c. quick oats
1 c. mini marshmallows


Directions:
In a medium saucepan, melt butter, milk, sugar, vanilla, salt and cocoa.
Bring to a boil and let boil for about 90 seconds (boiling longer will make cookies dry).
Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter, then oats. *stir in oats 1 cup at a time to check the consistency- too many = dry crumbly cookies.
Lastly, stir in marshmallows and mix until just combined. If you over-stir you will lose the marshmallow-swirly effect , not cool.
Immediately drop heaping spoonful onto wax paper and let cool.

Faux Hostess Cupcakes

Oh dear. These were so very good! So very much worth the effort!! I've seen several 'tutorials' available all over food blogs but I used The Apron Archives. I've seen them @ Annie's Eats and Culinary in the Desert as well and I'm sure a slew of other's I haven't come across yet!

I used my own chocolate cake recipe- a doctored box mix that has never failed me. I've come to realize though that I may be over filling my cupcake tins though. I dunno, something. I always dream of the cupcakes giving me a beautiful dome with nothing spilling over and cooking on the lip of the cup. I can continue to dream. I've done the let the whole let them set @ room temp for 15ish minutes before putting them in a 400 oven, closing the door and lowering temp to 350 as per normal instructions. It works about 25% of the time. I'm going with I want a straighter cup pan. And a smaller (but just slightly) scoop to portion out my cupcakes. Whine, whine.

On to the awesome cupcakes.

I'd use your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe. Let's be honest, they're really only a vessel for the filling and the chocolate ganache on top.
The Filling:
12 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 cup Marshmallow Fluff (or if you're like me- a jar of the stuff, I love marshmallow)
3-5 Tbsp. heavy cream- start with 3)

Directions:
In a mixer or a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, Fluff, and heavy cream until light and fluffy. Remove 1/2 cup of the filling and place into a pastry bag fitted with a #3 or #4 tip (wilton round). To the remaining goodness and add another teaspoon or two of heavy cream. Mix well to combine. Take a larger pastry bag fitted with a large round tip ( I wanna say it's a #12 or a 1a- whatever large round tip you've got that floats your boat) and fill with the slightly runnier stuff.

Insert the large tip into the cupcake roughly 3/4 way in and squeeze, moving up slowly until you see the icing squish up around the tip. Do this with all 24 of your cupcakes. You want a good amount of this stuff- its good.
The Ganache
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened

Directions:
Heat the cream in a saucepan just until it begins to steam. Do not let it boil. Remove from heat and add the chocolate. Allow the mixture to sit for a bit, then add the butter and stir until smooth. Transfer the ganache to a small bowl and dip the top of each cupcake into the chocolate, smoothing with a knife if necessary. Place in fridge for chocolate to set- 10-15 minutes.

Take your remaining the remaining filling (the first bag- of the thicker stuff) and pipe on your lil swirly Qs. Standard is 7- but you can do whatever floats your boat.

If you have any of the cream left, it's awesome as a dip for fruit (thinned out a little more), as a 'sauce' for fruit pizza (add a bit of cool whip to lighten it up) or sandwiched between some cookies. It's all fantastic.

Wow everyone with these awesome cupcakes.

Review: NordicWare Mini-Scone Pan

So several weeks ago (slacker here), CSN offered me the opportunity to purchase an item from their vast amount of stores and give it a go. After some polls and much deep debating, I went with a mini scone pan by Nordicware- from CSN.

These babies were adorable! It's a great cast/aluminum pan with a super non-stick surface. It just has a 'good' weight to it!

I used a modified recipe from Creations By Kara, pretty much subbed out strawberries (on sale here for $1 a lb!) for the blueberries. They got RAVE reviews at my husband's job and I almost didn't want to send them I was munching on them so much! This recipe made 12 mini scones for me, probably because I'm not terribly good at proportioning out the dough.

Lemon Strawberry Scones with a Lemon Glaze printable
modified from creationsbykara.com

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 Tbsp cold butter
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp lemon zest (+ ½t zest for glaze)
1 cup chopped strawberries (about the size of a blueberry chop)

Glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2t of lemon zest

Directions:

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut butter into dry ingredients till crumbly.
Stir in milk, lemon juice, and zest till just moistened. It will seem dry and crumbly- like it won’t hold together. Fold in strawberries.
Pat into a ‘shape’ about 1″ thick on lightly floured counter. You may have to work with it to get it to come together. Don’t over do it, just until it’s combined you don’t wanna mush up the berries!

Cut into wedges the approx size of shape of your pan. If you’re not using a scone pan, pat into a circle. Then cut wedges as close to uniform as you can get. Place on lightly greased scone pan - work it into the corners. Or place on a lightly greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 400° for about 12-17 minutes or till light golden brown. Watch your times here, you don’t wanna over do them! Time depends on size as well. Cool slightly, remove from pan and drizzle with glaze.


For glaze: Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. You may need more or less lemon juice to get the consistency you need.

Reeses Peanut Butter Bars

So I was rolling through photos on the computer, found this one on the desktop. Apparently, I had made these, went through the effort of photoing them, and then did nothing else with them. It took me an entire day to remember what I did to make them. I do remember that they were one of those recipes where I wanted to make something, but didn't have much oomph to go from scratch. I do always seem to have an abundance of candy. Sad thing, this might have been before I was pregnant and had no valid 'excuse' to have so much of one thing in the house. Maybe it was on sale.

Really no 'recipe' needed. Happened to be what I had on hand and sounded good together.

Reeses Peanut Butter Bars

Ingredients:
Box of peanut butter cookie mix. ( I have slew of Krusteaz brand from a sale )
-ingredients required on the box to make said cookies
8 or so reeses peanut butter cups- coarsely chopped
1 cup or so of chocolate chips
caramel ice cream topping or homemade caramel drizzle if you feel you MUST make something from scratch

Directions:
Make cookie dough as instructed.
Press firmly in bottom of 8x8.
Press in coarsely chopped reeses and chocolate chips.
Bake at instructed temp (350) for 20-25 minutes or until center is set. This might be longer than 20-25minutes, I'm stabbing at how long I had these in the oven.
When done, drizzle caramel topping.
Cool.
Cut, eat. Remember that it's okay, not everything has to be made from scratch.



I realize that this isn't quite like my usual posts. That being said, the photo wasn't 1/2 bad, so I had to use it somewhere!

Happy Weekend!

Baked Red Velvet Doughnuts and...CSN!

So I'm working on getting out of the baking rut. I've been tired. I know, whine, whine. But it's true. For some reason my youngest (for now) has been waking up around 2 am and SCREAMING! I go in to find out what the deal is, he just tells me "It's not bed time, I don't wanna go night, night!" He won't stay in his room to sleep. So he ends up on a make shift bed on the floor in our bedroom. Judge me all you like, but being pregnant I toss and turn a lot, and he sleeps sideways and likes to hug my head, so the floor or screaming is his option. NONE of that has anything to do with these doughnuts.

I didn't like them though. I love me some red velvet, but these didn't work for me. They were dry, maybe I over baked them or something, but outside of looking kinda pretty (my dip and drizzle sucked) I actually didn't even let my husband take them to work. I chucked them in the trash. But I give you the recipe anyway, so you can try and see if I was just particularly challenged that day (very, very possible) or if it just needs tweeking. I mean, I got the recipe from Taste and Tell and she got it elsewhere, so that's at least 2 rounds of what I'd assume was success.

AND I need your help. The rocking people @ CSN is giving me the opportunity to review a product from their website. You know CSN right? The people who carry this FANTASTIC sleep in all day Eames Lounge Chair all the way to Paula Deen Bakeware? Yeah, those guys! Well, as usual I need help deciding on what to try out. Options are:

1:
NordicWare Mini Scone Pan-











2:
Calphalon Bar Pan-











3:
Nordicware Mini Bundt Pan-

Product to Review via CSN

• Nordicware Mini Scone Pan
• Calphalon Bar Pan
• Nordicware Mini Bundt Pan

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Now: The recipe!
Baked Red Velvet Donuts printable
via Bittersweet and Taste and Tell

makes about 1 dozen donuts

2 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 big ole drops of Super Red red food coloring (americolor)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Spray a donut pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In another bowl, mix together the sugar and egg. Add the melted butter and melted chocolate to the egg/sugar mixture. Add in the vanilla and buttermilk and red food coloring.

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing just until combined. Fill the donut pan with the batter, filling each about 2/3rds full. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes.

Vanilla Glaze
from Velveteen Baker and Taste and Tell

2 tablespoons hot water
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In small bowl, stir together all ingredients until sugar is completely dissolved. Use immediately to glaze donuts. You can either toss them in or dip just the tops. If the glaze starts to harden you can add more hot water.

Butter and Cold Weather

I need butter to make red velvet doughnuts. And -gasp!- I'm out. Now the decision comes to get the kids dressed and make a trip or make something else for husband to take to work tomorrow. That being said- most everything sweet I make requires butter. I can't do cupcakes, the icing requires butter. I could do a banana bread, but I just sent banana bars to work with him today. I can't do my brownies, those alone require a cup of butter. And the kicker is I was just at Costco yesterday, looked RIGHT at the butter, and bought chicken nuggets for the kids instead. (they were a good deal!)

So, now that I've established that my brain is fried. I need to figure out if I'm going to get the kids dressed and go to the grocery store for butter. As of right now, we're all in PJs. We're one of those families that decided long ago, if we're in PJs all day, it's okay. Normally I wouldn't have a problem getting them both dressed and fighting to get into the van and maybe stopping for the fountain (yes, has to be from a fountain!) diet coke I woke up craving this morning. OR, if I wait until my husband comes home and run to the grocery store to get a measly pound of butter.

The only down side to waiting until my husband comes home is the photo. I will no longer have any natural light and I'll have to use my homemade lowel lights. Which is ok, except my crappy point and shoot camera is well, crappy. You see, I have this vision of what I want my photo to look like, the camera however with it's only auto setting will usually not cooperate. Or, I just can't set things up the way I like, and the lights are homemade, so they're not 100% awesome. And I'm a super amateur. Repeat super amateur.

I'd like to make these doughnuts, cause well, they look fantastic, and it would be good for my husband to take to work tomorrow. And I wanna eat one or three. AND it would be a good platform to ask for some opinions on a pan that I'd like to order. Ya know, draw you in with a tried out new recipe, hopefully a delicious looking photo, and my usual indecisiveness. I might have ruined all that with this 5 page post on butter and it being cold outside. Which I just realized I haven't touched on. It's cold. Apparently when I mustered up some oomph to wrestle with the kids yesterday, we went out and found out we were in a wind chill advisory of like -15. What?! This crap is cold, and the wind in Ohio, I have no clue where it comes from, but it'll take your breath away.

I think I'll risk it, wait until my husband gets home and make him turn around and get me some butter. I won't have to go out, my kids will stay warm in their pjs and I'll have butter. And maybe that fountain diet coke.

I appreciate you listening to this crazy long, long internal discussion that I decided to blog about. Keep an eye out for those doughnuts.

ABC: Caramel Chocolate Pie= Epic Fail

I have these more often than not lately. I don't mind blogging about them- but lately I've had so many epic failures that I haven't even photographed them. I'm blaming the pregnancy. Seriously. I for some reason can't manage to get it together. I'm in my 2nd trimester now, so I'm not as grumpy when I get up and it's still dark out. (I know MANY people do this, I however, think it's rather unnatural) That being said- I must still be in the brain drain that comes along with it all. It's not necessarily that I'm doing a whole lot wrong- it's just a bit of- I dunno, maybe I just can't multitask like I feel I should. I mean, if I can't get the caramel for this pie going AND get the crust rolled into the pan, maybe I shouldn't be doing it at all.

I mean to get the sugar to start to pool on low took, I swear 15 minutes, so I was all - oh I'll roll out my crust and get it in the pan- as I'm crimping the sides of my store bought crust (pretend you didn't just read the 'store bought' part) I smell something- bam! Sugar is already shot to crap. I added the butter and the heavy cream and pulled out the large turd lump of sugar. My husband put the little bit of remaining caramel on his ice cream that night. (I mean we didn't have a pie, so we needed SOMETHING). I went ahead and baked the crust- only to for some odd reason burn it. (because at this time I was just going to use store bought caramel for the pie). When the crust came out over done- I shed a little tear of frustration. Then ate my ice cream.

Today I have banana bread in the oven. I PLAN to make rolls for dinner as well. We'll see.

To my fellow ABC bakers, I can't wait to see the awesomeness your produced! I'll have to try this again in 6 months!