Saturday, February 26, 2011

S'More Pie



We did not enjoy this pie at all, obviously. Not one little bit.
This scene of destruction was a mere 4 hours after the pie was ready to eat.

This pie was really, really good. I made it from Smitten Kitchen's recipe. For the chocolate base, I used a bar of bittersweet Ghirardelli baking chocolate and a 3/4 of a big bar of Hershey's milk chocolate. It was amazing.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Green Eggs and Salm

Green Eggs and Salmon, that is!

This is not the most appetizing looking thing ever, so I won't put the photo right at the top to spare those of you are are sensitive.

Essentially, all I did was fry some capers and break up a salmon fillet in olive oil, throw in a a little lemon juice, puree a cup of spinach with three eggs and a bit of milk, and then cook the whole thing up. After it was cooked, I threw in some chunks of low fat cream cheese. Yum!

Also, I think somebody needs to call the protein police on me, because that meal was out of hand. It was really good though and I'm extremely full.


I would also recommend that you not accidentally dump the spinach all over your kitchen floor after it's pureed. It's not super fun to clean up.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Vegan Banana Cupcakes with Creamy Peanut Butter Frosting

I made these along with the vegan cookies 'n cream cupcakes and the lemon meringue cupcakes. The frosting was amazing. My roommates and I ended up eating the leftover frosting on the remaining Oreos. Yum! I also really liked the cupcake recipe, but I might have just used it as a muffin and not bothered to frost it.

Recipe from here which comes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I've been really impressed with all the recipes in this book - I might have to go out an buy it!

Vegan Cookies 'N Cream Cupcakes


These cupcakes are the ones that finally convinced me I needed to start piping with tips and bags. The crushed Oreos just kept clogging up my tip, even though I was using the largest one Pampered Chef has available.

I used this cupcake recipe and associated frosting recipe, which I think come from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

These went really fast at our bake sale. Something about Oreos seems to really suck people in.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes


These look prettier than they taste. I lazily omitted lemon curd from a white cupcake flavored with lemon zest and lemon juice. It was a mistake.

I made these for another impromptu bake sale for the journal. More photos of those cupcakes are coming.

The recipe for these is really unexciting - I just flavored my basic vanilla cupcake recipe with zest of a lemon and 1/4 C of lemon juice. The meringue is 3 egg whites and 7 tablespoons of sugar - just under 1/4 C. I finished baking the cupcakes, flipped the broiler on, slathered on the meringue, and shoved the cupcakes back in the oven until the meringue browned.

I am really sleepy. I had too much caffeine last night and ended up being awake until 4AM. Don't worry, I did really important things like Bluebooking.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes


I made these cupcakes using the recipe at Whisk Kid which came from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

I'm not actually a vegan, but one of my law school friends is and I decided to finally make a cupcake for a bake sale that he can eat. These cupcakes are really good, and the "cream cheese" frosting has the same tang as dairy cream cheese frosting. I used Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese in it.

I had a little problem with thickening the soy milk. I think I let it sit a bit to long, so I actually had small curds form. The cake tasted good, but the texture was a bit irregular. I'd let the soy milk and vinegar react for less time if I made these again.

Friday, February 4, 2011

It is possible that...


...I have too many cupcake liners. This does not include about 250 plain black and green ones I have AND I took this photo after I made all the cupcakes for the journal's bake sale.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Devastation


Two nights ago, while preparing for the massive cupcake bake sale, I broke my Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator. User error, entirely. I broke off the thumb press, so I spent the next two days frosting cupcakes by pressing down on the top. And I frosted approximately 5 dozen cupcakes. FUN TIMES.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Lavender Orange Cupcakes


This cupcake is in a cup because I wanted to take a picture of it in the snow drift on my balcony. Unfortunately, so much snow blew up against the door that I couldn't open it - and it's a sliding door. Also, where the heck is my camera? I'm not a good photographer, but taking pictures with my Blackberry is NOT helping matters.


This week, a friend and I held and all-cupcake bake sale for our journal's upcoming symposium entitled War On...:The Fallout of Declaring War on Social Issues. It was meant to be two days in duration, but it seems that the weather had other plans for us. Last night, I was worried that we would still have school, so I needed to bake a few more cupcakes. I tried to go to the grocery store right after class, but almost slid off the road going approximately 12mph - I am experienced enough on snow to know that this is not a safe circumstance.

Anyway, at this point, I'd already baked approximately 6 dozen cupcakes, and I just wanted to make two more types. I didn't have any milk, lemons, or canola oil (I couldn't even bake a boxed cake!) and I was running low enough on sugar that I wasn't sure I'd have enough for multiple batches of cupcakes. And so this recipe was born. And it's delicious. If you want to use regular milk, I'd add back in a heading quarter cup of sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

Ingredients
  • 1/2 C White Sugar
  • 1/2 C Unsalted Butter at room temperature
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1/4 tsp Orange Oil (or zest of an orange)
  • 1 1/2 C All Purpose Flour
  • 1 3/4 tsp Baking Powder
  • 3/4 C Vanilla Almond Milk
  • 2 TBSP Lavender Syrup
Instructions
  1. Heat oven to 350 and line a 12 cup muffin tin.
  2. Cream butter and sugar together with a mixer VERY thoroughly - at least 5 minutes.
  3. Add in eggs, one at a time, mixing until fully combined after each one. Then add in orange oil.
  4. Pour the lavender syrup in with the milk and the baking powder in with the flour. Alternate adding wet and dry ingredients until everything is fully combined.
  5. Add 1/4 C of batter to each muffin liner and bake for 20-24 minutes.
For the frosting, I made a basic frosting with 1 stick of butter, almond milk, lavender syrup, and enough powdered sugar to make it a thick enough consistency to put through my piper.