Brian's Ice Cream Cake

For my birthday I got a giant cupcake pan. One side is the bottom of the cupcake and the other the icing.

Brian's favorite cake is ice cream cake so I decided to inaugurate my new pan by making him a giant cupcake ice cream cake. The bottom would be the cake and the top ice cream.

I made the bottom by using the devil's food recipe from the previous cupcakes. I baked the bottom. Unlike a normal cake pan the cupcake pan is very deep. It baked for 70 minutes! After cooling the cake I removed it from the pan. I started making this cake Friday night amidst much video and strategy game playing as Brian had three of his best guy friends in town for his birthday.

I made the ice cream the next morning. Brian had graciously gone to the store to get the supplies for the mint chocolate chip ice cream, Brian's fav, the day before. Due to my unintelligible list he came home with mint and chocolate chips instead of mint chocolate chips and peppermint extract instead of mint extract. We went back to the store Saturday morning and grabbed some food for the guys. The poured all the ingredients in to our ice cream maker and added some green food coloring. The ice cream turned out great. I then lined the cake pan with Saran wrap and poured in the ice cream. I placed it in the freezer. I hoped my experiment would work.



For the big day, Sunday, I removed the ice cream from the pan , well Brian yanked it out. I placed it on top of the cake. Brian loved it and I think we have started a new tradition.

Cupcakes: The Finale

The final tasks, assembly. First I made some whip cream and folded in the cherry mixture. Instead of forming a nice white cream with ribbons of red and bits of cherries, all of the whip cream turned purple color because of all the excess liquid in the cherries. I placed the purple whip cream dollop on each cupcake. The finished cupcake was a devil's food cupcake with a rich chocolate glaze and cherry whip cream. Despite not being perfectly aesthetically correct the cupcakes tasted amazing, just like a black forest cake.

Picture from the cookbook.

Cupcakes Part Deux

The next day I made the Rich Chocolate Glaze and cherry topping. The glaze was simply heavy cream, corn syrup, and salt brought to a simmer. I then mixed in chopped semisweet Ghirardelli chocolate. Once the glaze had cooled to room temp I spread it over the cupcakes. Luckly there was enough glaze left over that Brian and I enjoyed using the remainder for dunking animal crackers in, our own version of fancy Dunkaroos.

Next the cherry topping. Now the bag of frozen cherries said, "can be used like fresh cherries". So I poured them into the sauce pan and thought here is hopin'. I added sugar and cherry flavored brandy or Kirschwasser. However, because the cherries were frozen there was a lot of excess water. I had to simmer the cherries for a while to try to remove the water and form a syrup out of the liquide. A syrup never formed so I eventually gave up and put it in the fridge hopping it would firm up overnight.

Three Day Cupcake

There have been many request for me to post about my recent baking activites. So sorry for the delay.
First of all, I love to bake. I love how exact it is. As a chemistry nerd I love how each ingredent matters as well as small detail. Many hours in the lab and several failed experimnet taught me this lesson.
So it was with great joy on my heart that I looked through my specail cookbook just for cupcakes to find the perfect one to make for small group.
Black forest cupcakes. A devil's food cupcake, rich chocolate glaze, cherry topping, and hand made whip cream. Yum!

I decided to attack these cupcakes in three doses. First I would bake the cupcakes. Second make the glaze and cherry topping and finally the whip cream.

I started on Sunday. We had gone to the H-E-B on Thursday to get the ingredents. The only issue, fresh bing cherries, tis not the session. We decided to try Whole Foods the next day. Sadly Whole Foods was also lacking a cherry shipment. We almost bought can cherries,but Whole Foods does not have that either. Final we found frozen cherries.
The baking began Sunday night. I love baking in Sunday because I am not rushed for time and it is a relaxing actvity. One of our friends bakes a differnt type on cupcake every Sunday and I was inspired by her. I highly recommnend Sunday baking.
I had just mixed the dry ingredients and mixed the butter and brown sugar. Next step add an egg, at room temp and vanilla extrat. I went to the pantry only to discover all of my vanilla had evaporated. So off to the store I went. Sigh. I returned thirty minutes later and the rest of the baking process was very smooth. I stored the cupcakes in an airtight container, borrowed from our baking friend, and called it a night. More to come. . .

Church Potluck

We had our church potluck today and we were assigned to bring a side or salad. We choose salad. Now around 6pm yesterday we remembered that we need to bring a salad to the potluck. I flipped through my recipes I have saved from magazines and found "Mixed greens with Berries and Sweet Spiced Almonds." It looked easy ;) just mix the ingredients together like a normal salad. I made out our grocery list but as I have now gotten into the habit of doing I read the recipe again to make sure I did not miss any thing. It was then that I realized that Sweet Spiced Almonds are not something that you can buy but something to be made. I then added the ingredients for the almonds to our list and we set out.

After dinner we made the almonds. We mixed the almonds with a combo of sweet and savory spices; brown sugar, cumin, coriander and such. Then we mixed in whipped egg whites. This made a sort of an almond paste. We baked it on a foil covered cookie sheet for 25 until crisp and it turned into a kinda of brittle that we then crunched up to put it the salad. The kitchen smelled great as the spices were baking.I think our almonds were closed to the being "over crisp" but they we taken out just in time.

In the morning I mixed together the greens, raspberries, chives and spices almonds together. Then I made the dressing with vinegar, honey Dijon mustard, and canola oil.

We then transported the salad and dressing separately in Saran wrapped bowls to the church with everything clearly labeled. I then left detailed instruction on how to prep the salad with hopes that it would all turn out. We dropped out dishes off before church and magically after church the potluck was all set up for the congregation. Our salad looked great and was a huge hit :)

A mini Thanksgiving feast

Made October 22nd

By far the best dinner we have made was a mini Thanksgiving feast; Stuffed Turkey Rolls with Cranberry Glaze. We originally tried to make the dinner on Monday night but discovered that we were missing a key ingredient, the stuffing. So we realized it soon into making it we stopped with only doing a little prep. We called our friend who lives in our apartment complex and joined them for a delicious meal of Tilapia and grilled onions.

We resumed cooking the dinner on Wednesday night. We made the stuffing which consisted of grilled apples, garlic, onion stuffing mix and chicken broth. We then placed the stuffing on the turkey cutlets and rolled them up jellyroll style.

We cooked them in a skillet. We also made a cranberry glaze sauce, wild rice and Roman green bean, which are green beans with bacon and pine nuts. Brian is not a fan of vegetables so this is one way he will eat something green plus it is delicious.

We found the trickiest part of this dinner was picking which pot to cook everything in. The stuffing needed a no-stick skillet as well as the turkey. We only have one. We reused it. The green beans and the rice needed a medium size sauce pan and we only have one. We used a sauté pan for the beans. The cranberry glaze we could cook in our tiny sauce pan. After figuring out which pan to use for what dish when then realized we only had two big burners and we needed three. After playing pan and burner shuffle we ended up with a great meal.

I am actually not a huge fan Thanksgiving food but I think I have to change my change my tune after this meal.

Roasting our own Chicken

Made on October 15th

We decided to be ambitious, starting at 7pm. We had gone to the store the day before and were ready to try our hand at roasting our own chicken. We knew it would take a while but I don't think we had fully done the math.

Our first challenge was stuffing the chicken. We removed the neck and whatever else was in there ... eww and stuffed it with lemon pieces, Rosemary and garlic. I am still not sure it we did it right but nothing came out the back. We secured it with rubber band since we did not have any string :) We also had to rub an herb mix under the skin and onto the chicken, a task that was hard to do without ripping the skin off the chicken. Brian took care of these tasks

We placed the chicken in a roasting pan with cut up shallots and pears. Roasted in for 30 minutes and then based it. We did this combination three times! It was now 2 hours into our dinner experiment.

Once the chicken was fully cooked we made a sauce from the drippings from the chicken with 10 other ingredients and reduced it. We didn't have the patience to reduce it all the way from 2 cups to a 1/4 of a cups. We enjoyed our beautifully roasted and delicious chicken at 9:45 and the sauce tasted great.

Queso Expereiment #2

Made on September 19th

In our first attempt was to make queso, we have tried to use an actual receipt and real cheese, but were unhappy with the texture and effort. The cheese turns into this lumpy and grainy mess and it is way to hard to clean.

We made our own version on queso for the Texas v Texas Tech game back in September. We usually invite our friends over for such an occasion as watching UT football.

We started making the queso at4pm when the party would start at 7pm. This queso was the star of our spread. We bought Velveeta this time, a processed cheese substitute, and two pounds of it to be exact. I cut the cheeses :) into cubes and it alarmingly stayed in the same shape as before I sliced it and dumped in into the crock pot. The "cheese" itself looked pretty waxy but it did melt perfectly.

To add some heat to our queso we browned ground meat and added McCormick taco seasoning. We dumped that into the melted cheese and then added a whole jar a medium Pace Picante. I truly enjoyed every bite of unnaturally perfectly smooth cheese, spicy meat and chunk salsa.

Simmer for how long?

Tonight's dish comes from a compilation of recipes that go along with a CD. You are supposed to cook the dishes as you listen to the music. We own Smooth Cooking with smooth jazz music and Pleasures of the Caribbean with Calypso and Reggae music. We chose a recipe from Smooth Cooking but chose not to listen to the smooth jazz CD. Pappardelle with Bolognese sauce. As always, the recipe seems easy. Make your own pasta sauce and add the store-bought pasta.We went to the store and met our first hurdle, no Pappardelle. It is a short, fat pasta so we bought the closest thing: Linguine.

We began to make the sauce, pureed the tomatoes, mixed the spices and cut carrots and celery and then we read this: Reduce heat to low and simmer for 11/2 to 2 hours! Let's just say that we did not factor this into our time line.
We tried an aggressive simmer for 20 minutes to try to get the right consistency in the sauce. It turned out alright. The carrots were a bit crunchy, but in the end we would totally make it again. Linguine with Bolognese sauce:

Two days, two dishes!

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been a little while, but things have been a bit hectic of late. Unfortunately, our need for energy in other parts of our lives (mostly in taking care of our probably-epileptic dog) has sapped our energy in making difficult, advanced food in the kitchen...

But that didn't stop us from making some (sort of) easy stuff! First off, Sausage and Pepperoni Calzones:

These were modified from a Cooking Light recipe we've used before, but with many modifications. Originally, the recipie was for a chicken and basil filling inside Pillsbury pizza dough. We've tried that before and didn't like either iteration very much (we tried one version with ground turkey and one version with ground chicken), so this time we just went with stuff that was guaranteed to be good: Mild Italian Sausage and Pepperoni.

Once again, we split up prep duty, each of us taking on a task as we were best able to do it. This really just meant that it took me way longer to chop the sausage than I thought, so Sarah did everything else. When everything was prepared, we sauteed the sausage with some onions and minced garlic. Then we threw in the sauce, brought it to a simmer, then let it sit for a while to cool down so we could manage putting it into the calzones. The shells are super easy to make; you just cut a Pillsbury pizza dough can into 4 squares, then fill each one and pinch together the ends. Tada! You have a calzone. Bake in the oven until they're golden brown and you're set to go!

...Unless you forgot the cheese you're supposed to put inside. Which we did. Oh well, it works equally as well sprinkled on top. To add to our wonderful meal, we had a wonderful dinner guest, Merida! She is awesome and brought Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes. Good thing there's a gym here.

Dish number 2!

This is really just an appetizer, but dang if it doesn't deserve to be in here. We made potato chips with a blue-cheese dipping sauce for our Small Group meeting tonight. We had tried oven-frying potato chips before, but to great, great failure. This time, we were armed with better knowledge (pat the chips dry before you bake them) and powerful new weapon: the Mandolin.

For those of you who don't know what a Mandolin is, it's a board with a blade in it that you slide something against (potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, fingers) to create paper thin slices of that object. It works about 1,000,000% better than a knife for stuff like this.

Once we sliced the potatoes to bits, we just coated them with some PAM and salt and let them get nice and crispy in the oven. The sauce was a mixture of blue cheese, mayo, and some other stuff that Sarah put in before I got there. The result was as great of a success as the previous attempt had been a failure. The chips were gone in about 15 minutes and we are left with some delicious dipping sauce for whatever we have lying around...or just a spoon.

Very French

Now the great thing about cooking together is that you can get it done twice as fast and have a blast, but as we have found there is a down side. Trying to tell each other what to do while staying out of each others way in a tiny kitchen AND not burning anything can be a challenge.

The recipes in the Bride and Groom cookbook have three levels of difficulty indicated by a number of spoons ranging from one to three. This evening we chose a three spoon recipe:

Chicken Braised in Red Wine, very French.

As all good evenings of couple cooking start we went to the grocery store together. Our first challenge , 1 bottle of fruity red wine. Now Brian and I are foodies "not Wine Snobs" plus we are partial to the white grape. So after much standing and bottle searching we decide on a "Sweet Red Wine" with fruity notes :)

The recipe itself looked easy enough.
First reduce the red wine, then dredge and brown the chicken in butter, take out the chicken and cook the onions, garlic and bacon in chicken butter plus more butter . At this point I just wanted stop and eat my saute pan. Then we added mushrooms and spices and a bit of brandy. Then we moved the onion and mushrooms to our Dutch oven and add the chicken , the red wine and chicken stock.
Then were supposed to bring it to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes.
This proved to be our most challenging step. It involved Brian holding the giant pot full of all the ingredients over the burner and then placing it back down to get that perfect simmer.
Then take the chicken out... again.
Next, we reduced the sauce even more, which was also interesting, as we stood over our boiling pot discussing how thick thick was supposed to be.
Finally, a garnish of parsley and OH MY

It was the best thing we have ever made. The sauce was so thick and rich, no surprise : butter, onions, bacon, garlic, and red wine. The chicken was so tender because it cooked in this amazing sauce for 30 minutes. Brian and I did not say anything during dinner except "wow" and "awesome". This is a definite re-cook hopefully for company ;)

The night ended with a cleaning the red wine splatters off every inch of the stove and a mound of dishes.
We look forward to our next couple culinary creations.

Inspired

We are foodies and we love to cook, so it was no great surprise that we were greatly inspired by the movie Julie and Julia and decided to start our own cooking/ foodie blog. Now not to be a complete copycat, the blog will feature recipes from many different cookbooks, starting with the Williams Sonoma Bride/Groom book . This cookbook is designed for two people to cook together so, for an added twist, this blog will include stories of our greatness or calamity in the kitchen together. My husband and I will be sharing the blogging rights.

Our life would not be complete with out our other member of our family, Boddington, the 70 pound Olde English Bulldogge who will also be featured from time to time as he does things that are too great not to share.