Wish Me Luck!

I know I've mentioned before how much I love Bakerella's blog because you've seen my attempts at her adorable cake pops. Well, not that long ago I saw her post about a cupcake contest hosted by Scharffen Berger chocolates where they give you a list of adventure ingredients to choose from and you must create your own recipe. Since I enjoy baking so much I figured 'why not?' and proceeded to do a trial and error experiment to see if I could come up with something worthy to submit.

The list of adventure ingredients are stout beer, ricotta, buttermilk, coconut butter milk or cream, saffron, molasses, adzuki bean, fresh beet, sweetened condensed milk, fresh or dried chili pepper, bee pollen, meyer lemon, almond flour, and sumatra coffee bean. I choose to use ricotta cheese and coconut cream in my recipe and I think it could actually be a contender, but even if it's not, I had fun playing in the kitchen.

The end result, and they were just as good as they look! If I do say so myself. So wish me luck, the prizes are pretty sweet!

Here's the recipe if anyone is interested in trying them out. And the site for the contest in case you're interested in doing some baking yourself.

Chocolate Ricotta Cupcakes with Coconut Ganache

Cake
3oz. Scharffen Berger 62% dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup unbleached flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup butter room temp.
1 ¼ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup ricotta cheese
1/3 cup milk

Ganache
½ cup coconut cream
3oz. Scharffen Berger 62% dark chocolate, chopped
toasted coconut

Preheat oven to 350.

Put chocolate in heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Stir till the chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove from water and set aside to cool slightly.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside

Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer on medium speed until smoothly blended and creamy. Scrape sides of the bowl during mixing as needed.

On low speed add the melted chocolate till just blended.

On medium speed add the eggs one at a time, mixing till each is blended into the batter.

Add vanilla and beat until the mixture looks creamy and the color has lightened slightly.

Mix in the ricotta cheese until there is no white remaining.

On low speed add half the four mixture until it’s just incorporated. Mix in the milk. Add the remaining flour and mix until the batter looks smooth.

Let the batter rest on the counter for 10 minutes, then spoon into paper liners in a cupcake pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, put the remaining chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set aside. In a saucepan, simmer cream of coconut until it lightens in color and bubbles in the center of the pan. Pour over chocolate and whisk together until the chocolate has melted and is smooth. Spoon over cupcakes a few at a time and sprinkle with toasted coconut before ganache hardens.

Enjoy!!

Learning Something New

As many of you know, Mom and I recently undertook an experiment in re-upholstery. She had two wingback chairs, I had two more, so we decided we had nothing to lose in taking them apart and trying to put them back together again, only prettier. I think both sets of chairs were very successful, take a look at the process.

There you have it! Hopefully it's inspired you to some creative thinking of your own!

I Need More Stars!

No, not cake pop stars, although they were very good, I'm referring to those stars you get to rate things like movies and books on sites such as Netflix, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble. We have an account with Netflix that we love, especially since they've added the watch it now feature which, among other things, helps us cut down on our mailed movies (currently just under 200 which will take us over 3 years to get through).

My complaint, as you may have guessed, is only having five stars with which to rate these movies once we've returned them. Once Netflix receives the viewed movie, they send me an e-mail asking what I'd rate it. Good system in theory, then they can recommend movies for me, plus I can remember which ones we've already seen if I can't recall. But I only get 5 stars (and not even half stars) to use when I rate my movies:

1 = hated it

2 = didn't like it

3 = liked it

4 = really liked it

5 = loved it

I'm sorry, that doesn't even come close to covering it for me! I've always loved watching movies, and I also love being a critic, discussing with whoever else has seen the movie what was good, bad, could have been changed, and if it was a keeper or a stinker. I'm a talker and so probably more then most people I can spin ideas and theories on what could have made it better, why the decision was made to use part of the story in such a way. I especially love when books I've read are made into movies and make Chris crazy by giving him a verbal lashing comparing the print to the visual.

So, I propose a new rating system! 10 choices which split my original 5 stars into halves so as not to totally reorganize the system (I could use monkeys if I wanted to, this is, after all, my blog). So here goes.

0.5 = truly heinous, it'd probably be more fun being fed to lions

1 = congratulations, you turned a semi-interesting story into poo

1.5 = horrible but in an odd way kind of likable

2 = good acting, too bad the plot was garbage

2.5 = didn't suck

3 = predictable yet mildly entertaining

3.5 = had good parts I didn't already see in the trailer

4 = worth adding to my personal collection

4.5 = only Leonardo DiCaprio/Rachel McAdams could have made it better

5 = wow...

Stars and Stripes

Following up with star shaped cake pops for the 4th of July. I think they turned out great.

And to make them more portable I made a bunch without sticks.

Cake Pops!

A while ago, okay, over a year ago... I'm such a slacker... I blogged about cake pops. I raved about these little treats on a stick and vowed to make them myself, then promptly neglected to inform my faithful reader(s?) that I did, in fact, make them. And not just once since then, but three times did I try my hand at these and as with anything new, all three had successes as well as things to learn from.

Cake pop trial 1: Crab feast cake pops.

So, I had a theme, and after finding small squeeze bottles, I also had an idea for the decoration of the pops. CRABS, of course!!

I found an image online, printed out a sheet of properly scaled crabs, and used a squeeze bottle to pipe little crabs on the waxed paper taped over my templates.

Then I shaped my mini cupcakes and prepared to dip and decorate.

And voila! (if only it had been that easy) cute little cake pops with crabs on the top!

And the lessons I learned from these cake pops? The sticks were way too long and those, combined with the heavy cake on top, made them bend precariously as they were transported, and resting before consumption...

I also learned that allowing them to harden in the freezer made them sweat when they cooled off and the red and brown bottoms rubbed off on the white tops as they came to room temperature. Which brings us to...

Cake Pop Trial 2: Birthday cake pops

In June we celebrated Chris's Masters from Rutgers, Steph's b-day, my B-day, and Father's Day all in one shot. So I figured it was a good excuse to make more cake pops! This time I simplified the design and instead of shaping mini cupcakes, I just rolled the cake out and used a flower shaped cookie cutter to make these.

They were much easier then the multi-colored (meaning twice dipped) cupcakes from before, and the flower shape with an M&M center was decoration enough for me to be happy with them. This time around I learned that even the fridge is too cold, they still sweat, but the candy hardens fairly quickly at room temperature. They also have to be thoroughly frozen (like overnight) before they're dipped in the melted candy or they fall off the stick. Wrapping them with the cellophane and ribbon made them easy to transport and the shorter, 6" sticks was better at supporting the weight of the cake.

Cake Pop Trial #3: Cheesecake Pops

Not long after the birthday cake pops we had a church BBQ competition and I figured it'd be another good cake pop occasion, but this time I wanted to try cheesecake. Just simple balls shaped with a cookie dough scoop, then dipped in chocolate and rolled in crunchy topping.

They were cute, and yummy, but lasted about 3 seconds in the 90+ degree weather before they became cheesecake shooters in those cellophane bags.

Next to try? Star shaped cake pops for the 4th of July!

Breakfast foods

Besides coffee, which I drink all morning now that I'm home most days (although I have switched to half-caff so Chris doesn't have to pry me off the ceiling when he gets home) I've never been big on breakfast. I love food and generally enjoy eating, but I just don't really care for eggs, and sweet things like syrup, donuts, or danish make me a little ill. Trust me, I try every once in a while, like Friday afternoon when mom and I stopped at an Amish stand on the way home from Lancaster. If you had smelled those fresh cider donuts, you would have done it too.

In high school I used to skip breakfast alltogether. I'm sure part of it was a teenage girl's crazy way of cutting down on calories, but it was also because I just wasn't a fan of the options. I have since learned how unhealthy it is to skip meals and I try not to do that anymore, but there are still mornings when I think I could just be happy with my good ol' cup o' joe.

I know exactly where I get it from. A perfect example of the apple not falling far from the tree; my dad is exactly the same way. Whether it's because there's an actual gene that rejects syrup and scrambled eggs or if it's because I grew up enjoying breakfast with him when there was leftover lasagna or coconut custard pie, who can tell? But to this day I still count those as some of my favorite breakfast foods, although any cake or pie will do and pizza will take the place of mom's lasagna in a pinch.

So the morning after I turned 30 years old I thought, who says I have to act like a grownup? And I cut myself a healthy slice of leftover birthday cake to have with my first cup of coffee. And it was good!