Baking

Have I lamented on here about my inability to make my brownie recipe work?

I have this WICKED brownie recipe that I've been making for the last 10 years and my mother's been making it for at least three times as long.

It.is.divine.

But it doesn't seem to work here in the Prairies.

Maybe it's the weather?

Maybe it's the altitude?

Maybe it's the ingredients?

I don't know.

What I do know, is that I have finally

FINALLY

found a recipe that works.

And guess where it came from?

My head. 

Ha! 

So, I will test it once more tomorrow and if it stands up, I'll post it here.

Elsie P

PS - How do you like your brownies? I want mine like thick, fudgy cake. Yum.

Valentine's Day (Catch up post 4)

I love baking. I love making something with  my own two hands.

I especially love watching people enjoy what I've made.

So, any occasion (read: Excuse) I can find to bake

I take advantage. 

This was Valentine's Day.

I started by making chocolate pound cake baked in two round pans.

Then, I printed out a heart shape and placed it on top of my cake.

I cut around the stencil and made two hearts.

Next, I put a layer of Chocolate Ganache on top of one cake

Next, I covered the ganache with fresh strawberries

Then I placed the second cake on top of the first. 

I whipped up a batch of pink buttercream icing and iced the cake

I wish that I had had some fondant to cover the chocolate crumbs on the buttercream!!

Elsie P

PS - if I was going to do this over, I would have made a half recipe of the chocolate pound cake, cut each layer in half  to  make the cake half as tall. It was a lot of cake, though it was delish!!

Bookshelf

Well, I noticed how one sided the bookshelf looked. 

So I shuffled things around: 

I want to get some flowers for the middle of the shelf

Whaddya think?

Elsie P

PS - I have a terrible feeling I will be changing this around on a day-to-day basis...

Lookie here!

Part of moving in to a new place means setting up new furniture.

Which is what I did today.

I had a vision of what I wanted my front room to look like. 

Slowly, but surely, I am getting it there. 

Here is what we started with. Blank-ish space.

Here are the players. Can you guess what I'm making?

Anyone recognize this?

Here is a more blatant hint.

The directions said not to do this on your own.

I think.

There was a picture of a man, all alone with a big X through it.

Then there was a picture of two men - one with a hat on so we didn't all think that we were supposed to try and clone ourselves, I think - and they both were smiling.

I managed to get to this stage, with the screw driver, and realized I'd put on a piece incorrectly.

Whoops. THen I had to pull it apart and reverse it, while still trying to follow the instructions. 

I figured it out. 

THis is the first time I have ever had to use a hammer, nails and a screw driver to complete a piece of IKEA furniture. I feel that they are moving in a positive direction. 

And here's the final product! Pretty neat, huh? I made the shelves a different heights on purpose, FYI

Ta-da! Doesn't that look nice!! The back of it photographs a little oddly but other than that, I'm happy with it! I just need to find a new home fro that screen...hmmm....

Elsie P

PS - I only suffered one injury ... I somehow sliced the top of my middle finger and didn't realize until I saw the blood on the bookshelf. Imagine my string of profane words and my utter disgust when I incorrectly assumed some careless Swede had sent me a piece of their DNA along with my new bookshelf!!

Can you guess what I'm making?

Here are the ingredients

Not sure? How about this:

Still can't guess?? Okay fine, I'll tell you

Red Velvet Cake. Yum! 

And here's the recipe:

Sift together 2.5 cups of flour, 2Tbs Cocoa, 1/2 tsp salt. It will look like this:

Next, beat 1/2 cup butter until soft. Beat in 1.5 cups of white sugar. 

(or if you're like me, and forget and only add 1/2 cup I'm writing this while it's baking, we'll see how it tastes...!)

Now add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Scrape the sides down and add 1 tsp vanilla extract.

In a measuring cup, whisk together 2 Tbs red food coloring with 1 cup buttermilk 

Add the half the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Add all the buttermilk, then add remaining flour mixture.

In a small bowl, mix together 1 tsp vinegar with 1 tsp baking soda. Allow to fizz and then quickly fold in to batter. Pour in to baking vessel and bake for 20 mins at 350 degrees F 

or until toothpick comes out clean. 

Elsie P

PS - If I was going to make this recipe again, which I will, I would double the cocoa, add the food coloring with eggs and vanilla. I liked the taste the reduced sugar gave, so in doubling the cocoa, I would likely bump the sugar up to 3/4 cup. 

The BEST Chocolate Cupcakes You'll Ever Have!

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 4 heaping Tbls cocoa
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Set aside
2. Melt butter on the stove on medium heat. Add Cocoa and stir to combine. Add water and pour over flour mixture
3. In a measuring cup, mix together the buttermilk, eggs, baking soda and vanilla extract. Add to the flour/cocoa mixture.
4. Mix well and pour in to sheet cake pan/muffin cups/round pans; bake for 20 mins at 350 degrees F

The BEST Frosting You'll Ever Have!

Trust me, this is a good one! Don't be skeptical!!

Ingredients
5 Tbls Flour
1 cup Milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup white sugar
1 cup butter

(I know what you're thinking, flour? In Frosting!?)

Directions

1. Pour 1 cup of milk in to saucepan; add 5 Tbls flour and whisk to combine. Place over medium heat, whisking as the mixture thickens. Remove from heat when mixture resembles wallpaper paste. (that's very thick, if you've never wall-papered before)
2. COOL THE MIXTURE COMPLETELY (this is a very important step, in case you couldn't tell by the caps lock)
3. Add 1 tsp vanilla to the wall-paper paste flour mixture.
4. Place 1 cup of butter (at room temp) in bowl of mixer. Beat slightly. Add 1 cup sugar and whip until light and fluffy. 
5. Add the cooled wall-paper paste flour mixture and whip until consistency of whip cream. (I did this on speed 5 for 20 seconds, scraped down the sides and then beat on speed 7 for about 45 seconds)
6. Refrigerate 1 hour and spread on the delicious cupcakes (recipe below)

Bacon, Eggs and Buttercream

You know what I love most about Sunday mornings? The routine.
Every Sunday I get up around 8am (I know, it's the weekend, I should sleep in. But 8am is sleeping in!) and start the day by throwing a load of laundry in the wash. Then I survey the kitchen, what dishes are left from last night? are there beer bottles lying around? do we have bread? eggs? bacon? am I going to bake today? Once I have made my mental list, I wash up any of the dishes that are there, don a pair of yoga pants, a fleece zip up and head to the grocery store.
Usually, by Sunday mornings, we are out of bread and milk. Most Sundays, I am lazy and don't want to bake bread for breakfast so I'll cheat and buy a cheap, $2 loaf from the grocery store.
Today, I was excited to try out a new recipe from P-Dub's kitchen. (If you haven't heard of this blog, you seriously need to check it out. Both recipes I'll share are from her Tasty Kitchen) and I knew I needed a few things from the store. I love Sunday morning shopping. I really should do all my grocery shopping on Sunday mornings because the store opens at 6am and there is never, ever anyone there. AND they have self-checkout, one of my absolute favorite inventions of the last ... 10 years.
I digress, though!
So, I arrive home, change the loads of laundry, fold some towels, put on some coffee and turned on the trashy radio station that plays the songs kids in high school make out to on Friday Nights.
I started by putting the bacon on. In my mind, there is nothing better than slow cooking bacon in a frying pan and subsequently using the grease to fry eggs. YUM CORONARY! Simultaneously, I was whipping up a cake batter that is touted as "The BEST Chocolate Sheet Cake". It was different from other cakes I had made as far as process goes. But I have to say, it is the best chocolate sheet cake I've ever made/had! (I turned it in to cupcakes, btw) I kept laughing and hoping the delicious bacon smell didn't invade my cake batter...though maybe it did and that was why it was so good...no...definitely not. :)
As soon as I had 36 mini-muffin cups filled with batter, I put the eggs on and threw some bread in the toaster. This kitchen was rockin.
The eggs were perfect, the bacon was delicious, the coffee was strong and dark and the whole meal was perfect. At least, I thought so.
Just as I finished breakfast, the timer went off and it was the moment of truth: How did these little suckers turn out?
Answer?
Perfectly.
If you love chocolate cake or cupcakes and the best frosting you've ever had, you have to try these recipes, pilfered from PW's Tasty Kitchen.

Elsie P

PS - I left the camera at work so I'll take/post pics tomorrow.

A New Clutch

Well, I have begun to label these posts and I am hoping it will help to keep things sorted as this blog has taken on a very broad spectrum of topics. I wish I could be like BA's blog and label things see, wear, think, do, dream, love but I don't want to steal her idea. (okay so I totally do want to steal the idea, but I think it would be wrong) So I am labelling things sort of as I go...hopefully it works out.
But I digress. The label for this post is "Create" because it is about something that I want to make !! (which is a whole new facet of this blog now!) On a day to day basis I have all these little ideas floating around in my head; some of them hit the surface of my conscious self and I think, "HEY! That's a good one! I will have to remember to do that!" well, I have no problem remembering these little projects, but with no sense of accountability to complete them, I never get around to doing them. So, I am using you, cyber-non-audience, as my accountability.
Today's Create project is actually something I have been thinking about making since November 21st, 2009. I know the date so specifically because it was a wedding, and a girlfriend of mine at said wedding had this absolutely fabulous (aka ABFAB) clutch that I totally thought would be easy to make!! It was beautiful, black satin with just a TON of black feathers. It actually looked a bit like a crow. This isn't a great pic, but it's the best one I have ...



Anyway, I have some sketches of what I want to do, some general thoughts on getting the feathers on to the purse (hand sewn, of course). What I can't decide is whether I should just scour the thrift shops for a black, satin clutch or if I should check out the fabric stores for the clasp part and use the black satin material I have an abundance of, or if I should just buy a clutch from a thrift shop and strip the fabric to use the clasp. Thoughts?

Elsie P

PS - expect completion on this by February ...