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.