It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s just that I haven’t been posting. In the past few weeks I have made a few things, I tried a new pancake recipe, made some Ginger-Carrot-Pecan Cupcakes, made some Chai, bought some dilled green beans, a purple bell pepper (yes purple!), and just this morning made some whole wheat cinnamon pecan pancakes.
I’ll start with the most perfect looking pancake I have ever made:
I know its not “model perfection” but it does look pretty tasty. I’ve deemed it the best looking pancake because, well it is. Its almost perfectly round, with uniform solid color throughout. There aren’t any wierd little bubble holes, or pouring mistake lines in it. It looks just right.
I’m weird about food like that sometimes, leave me alone.
One weekend while a southern friend was visiting we went to the flea market which also includes food vendors. One of them was selling purple bell peppers. Yes PURPLE.
They were pretty weird. The taste was a mild pepper taste, kind of bland, but they sure did look nice!
If you’re wondering if the color is carried inside of the pepper, it is not :(, its white inside:
The purple color fades as you cook it as well. Rather disappointing.
Then there was my chai disaster:
Lets just say trying to use a coffee filter to filter out the spices didn’t work so well. I’ll let you know when I figure the recipe out, I’m trying to make chocolate chai. For now I’m going to stick with my tazo.
As for the green beans, the cupcakes and the new pancake recipe, you’ll just have to wait.
No really, these cupcakes are really bad. They started out as a good idea. Dark chocolate cupcakes filled with tasty peanut butter goodness, like a reese’s cup, but cake like. I couldn’t even finish taking pictures of this horrible horrible cupcakes.
I’ll share some pictures with you but I don’t have the heart to post the recipe.
It started all good. A basic chocolate cake recipe.
Mix the ingredients by the muffin method, and stir.
Mmmm tasty chocolate batter.
Pop them in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes.
This is where it began to all go wrong. So wrong!
I did a checkup about half way through baking (just turning on the light not opening the door). They looked fine. Rising, beginning to get that little dome.
Alas, when I took them out, they had sunk in the middle –
I said oh well! I wasn’t about to waste a whole batch of cupcakes because they sunk. I was gonna poke a hole in them and fill them anyways. This way, I figure the little dip is just there to fill!
And I made the tasty peanut butter frosting. The frosting consisted of butter, peanut butter, confectioners sugar, and milk. Oh yeah, tasty. (This still tasted good. Recipe at the end.)
It should have been a sign when my first makeshift piping bag blew up in my hand. But I kept truckin.
Then I filled the cupcakes with tastiness.
But then I tried them. The frosting was good. The cupcakes though….the cupcakes….
They were heavy, thick, too moist, too sticky, too gross.
I ended throwing them all out.
It made me sad :(.
But then I ate some more frosting (which still tasted good), and took a picture of the puppy chewing on the steelers.
I am enamored with Alton Brown. I love his show, I’ve got a dorky childish crush on his tasty cooking abilities.
Along with Alton, I’m enamored with anything sugary and buttery and calorie laden. Which means when I saw Alton’s episode on buttercream icing I had to try it.
His buttercream consists of eggs, a sugar syrup, and a whole lotta butter. It didn’t sound too difficult, so I gave it a whirl.
It whirled all right but it didn’t fluff thats for sure. The butter kept breaking and separating even at the lowest setting, so all I had was at the end was a thick buttery sugary syrup. It tasted great, it just not quite right for frosting a cake with.
I’d go into more detail about what happened what went wrong and what happened in the kitchen during and afterwards, but those are painful memories of failed sugar. Please don’t make me bring them up.
Never fear! I will try this concoction again, after I burn off the calories from this cake I made to use the frosting on.
I ended up making a buttercream-esque frosting instead for the cake consisting of shortening, butter, and powdered sugar. It still tasted delightfully light, fluffy, sweet and buttery.
By the way, I cheat. I used a boxed white cake. Not only was it boxed, but funfetti as well. I did spiff it up a little with whipped egg whites to make it extra fluffy. (Alton said its okay to used boxed cake as long as you make your own frosting!!!!)
You will need:
1 boxed white cake mix (get one where you have the option of using whole eggs, or just the whites)
oil
water
eggs (follow the box for the amount needed)
seed free fruit spread (I used Raspberry Polaner’s Fruit Spread)
shortening
butter (softened)
powdered sugar
Start by greasing two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans.
Following the directions for making a cake using only egg whites, separate as many eggs as needed and place the egg whites into a chilled metal bowl.
Beat the egg whites with a cleaner than clean beater until stiff peaks form. If your beaters are dirty, the egg whites will not be able to fluff properly.
In a separate bowl mix together the cake mix, water, and oil (or whatever the box says to mix together). DO NOTADDTHEEGGSYET!
Beat the cake mix for a couple minutes until mixed.
When the batter is mixed, slowly fold in the whipped egg whites. Mix in about 1/3 of the egg whites at a time until they are all mixed in.
Pour half of the mixture into each of the cake pans.
Bake the cake as directed on the box (mine said 27-31 minutes at 350 degrees F).
The cakes are done when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, and the edges of the cake pull away from the pan.
Allow the cakes to cool completely (I’m serious here, LETTHEMCOOL).
If you really need to eat some slice a very thin slice off the top of the cake, no chunks!!!
(Here is where I began to get very upset at my failing buttercream, so there aren’t pictures for all the steps, nor did I actually measure anything out, sorry!)
Start making your fake buttercream icing.
I used about a 1 to 1 ratio of shortening to butter in this icing. I wanted the butter for flavor, but the shortening to help keep things smooooooooth. Use as much as you want, I used about a cup of each (I wasn’t measuring, just adding things randomly).
Mix these with a blender on medium to high speed. Until nice smooth and silky. I beat for 2-3 minutes, you may need to do it longer depending on the temperature and softness of your ingredients.
Now comes the powdered sugar. (No pictures sorry!)
Sift about 1 cup of powdered sugar to start with.
Stop the beaters for a second and add about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of sifted powdered sugar. Stir a little bit with a spatula to incoporate just slightly so the sugar doesn’t go everywhere when you turn the beaters back on.
Mix with beaters until the sugar is incorporated.
Do some quality control and taste your icing. Unless it still looks shiny and greasy, you don’t have enough sugar yet, it’ll taste gross and greasy.
Keep adding sifted powdered sugar, mixing and tasting until the frosting is the consistency and sweetness that you desire.
I’m not sure what happens if you add too much sugar. I never tried that….if you do, let me know what happens.
Now back to the cakes….
Slice the cakes in half carefully with a long serrated knife.
Spread the insides of each cake with the fruit spread and put them back together as level and centered as possible (so they’re like large sandwich cookie made of two layers of cake, and some fruit spread).
Set one jelly filled cake on your cake plate (or a really big upside down plate in my case).
Plop about 1 cup of frosting ontop of that and spread it out.
Set the second fruit spread filled cake ontop of that as centered as possible (a.k.a. not like mine).
Then plop down what is left of the frosting (minus that spoonful to eat later). I mean all of it here people! It really actually will make it easier to frost. I don’t know why but its easier to take frosting off than put more on (especially when your frostings got those cake crumb nasties mixed into it because you didn’t put enough on to start!).
Spread around until the whole thing is covered.
DELICIOUS.
Ok if you really wanted to you could get all fancy and smooth out the frosting, and maybe even make some more color it and add some flowers.
At this point though with all the issues I had with the original buttercream, I just wanted to eat the damn cake.
Oh, and here is the episode that inspired this madness:
Second half mostly on how to ice your cake once the frosting is made:
Stumble It! | Comment
It whirled all right but it didn’t fluff thats for sure. The butter kept breaking and separating even at the lowest setting, so all I had was at the end was a thick buttery sugary syrup. It tasted great, it just not quite right for frosting a cake with.
