Cook Book for Boys and Girls . . . and anyone else with a limited attention span

I hate it when you find an “easy” recipe but you read through the instructions to discover there’s quite a bit of chopping, mincing, sifting and mashing to be considered “easy” to anyone except a Julia Childs reincarnate. With Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Girls and Boys however, everything really is easy and it just so happens to be online for your viewing pleasure http://www.archive.org/stream/bettycrockerscoo00croc#page/46/mode/2up. It’s a neat book to flip through if nothing else.

I was planning on making apple crisp for a Halloween movie night I am going to this Saturday and was looking for a recipe since I’ve only made apple crisp with the box mix you find at grocery stores. I was expecting that making apple crisp from scratch was going to be a project but then my office mate, Heather, said her Betty Crocker recipe is excellent and very simple. That’s when she found this cook book online.

Red Velvet Mini Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

So what's so special about red velvet cakes? The food coloring. That's it. I found a recipe from the Food Network and altered it a little. I used substituted some healthier ingredients but you can just use the basics. The cake is very light and fluffy and the frosting is sweet and creamy. They're are very tasty. They didn't turn out very red but that may be because I didn't add the vinegar. WARNING: This makes a ton of frosting that isn't necessary. You can half the frosting ingredients listed below.

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

• 15 1/2 ounces all-purpose whole wheat flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 13 ounces granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
• 3 eggs

Directions

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons red food coloring

• 1 1/4 teaspoons vinegar (I forgot this. Maybe they would have turned out more red if I did.)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/8 cup water

For the cream cheese frosting:

• 1 1/2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 pound (2 Cups) Smart Butter, room temperature
• 2 pounds powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

For the cupcakes:

Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder into a bowl and set aside.

In a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix oil, sugar, and buttermilk until combined. Add eggs, food coloring, vinegar, vanilla and water and mix well. Add the dry ingredients a little bit at a time and mix on low, scraping down sides occasionally, and mix until just combined. Be sure not to over mix, or the batter will come out tough. I hand mixed the batter towards the end.

Line cupcake pan with paper liners, scoop the batter into the liners and bake at 350 degrees F for 12 to 15 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean. Let cool.

For the cream cheese frosting:

Whip the butter and cream cheese together in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until creamed. Gradually add powdered sugar to the mixture and scrape down the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and mix until combined.

The frosting can be used right away, or stored in the refrigerator up to a week.

Frost cooled cupcakes with the cream cheese frosting. You can just smear it on but I used a tip_ with a frosting bag which I think was easier. It might be messy though because the frosting is runny.

Fruity Rum Popsicles

Fruity and refreshing! This was purely an experiment but my rum popsicles turned out to be somewhat of a hit. I was searching for fruity popsicles that contained alcohol for a BBQ but they all involved making sweet syrup and putting fresh fruit in a food processor, neither of which I felt like dealing with. So this is the recipe I made up:

- one part Malibu coconut rum
- three parts pineapple orange banana juice
- mix and pour into mold (and insert sticks if necessary)
- let sit in freezer for 6-8 hours depending on freezer temp

I'm sure actual popsicle molds work best but it is late summer so I had to make due with ice cube molds from Home Goods and candy sticks from Michael's Arts & Crafts.

Cake Course 4: Fondant & Gum Paste

The final cake class! Intense but fun. I'll miss it but it's time to find something else to do with myself.

Pomegranate Cosmo: Great Cool Summer Drink

Pomegranate Cosmos

by Ina Garten, Foodnetwork.com

Ingredients

• 2 cups (16 ounces) good vodka (recommended: Stolichnaya or Finlandia)

• 1 cup (8 ounces) orange liqueur (recommended: Cointreau)

• 1 cup (8 ounces) pomegranate juice (recommended: Pom Wonderful)

• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (3 limes)

• Lime peel strips, to garnish

Directions

Combine the vodka, orange liqueur, pomegranate juice, and lime juice in a pitcher and refrigerate until ready to use. Pour the

mixture into frozen martini glasses with a twist of lime peel and serve immediately.

Hired for a Cake

This is a cake I was "hired" by a co-worker to make for another co-worker who also happened to interview me while I was applying for my job. This was a fun cake to make although I was nervous since it was the first time I was making a cake for money. I was mostly concerned about writing in frosting and I think it would have actually come out better if I wasn't so hesitant about it. I use to write on cakes when I worked at a bakery in high school but that was forever ago. I need to practice.

Cake Course 3

These are cakes I made from my Wilton Cake Course 3. The first cake was suppose to look like the top of a funky 70's wedding cake. This is probably my least favorite cake I've made but we learned several different techniques during this class.

The gift box cake was very cool and my first time using fondant. It was not too difficult but the down side of fondant is that it does not taste very good. It's rather bland, in fact. I told my guinea-pigs at work to just peal it off before they ate the cake.


The final cake I designed myself. I did not use fondant but I added some royal icing lillies that I painted with white pearl dust. I loved how it came out but if I did it again I would definitely add some piping gel to my frosting so my cornelli lace would come out smoother.