Grandma Betz’s Sugar Twist Christmas Cookies

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to send all of the adults in the family a tin of cookies for Christmas. The ones I remember most were the ones she sent to my dad, these sugar twists. My grandma died back in 2002 after a long fight with emphysema. In 2007, I asked my grandfather to send me a couple of my grandma's cookie recipes. He sent me this one, but at that point, I wasn't a good enough baker to execute these cookies. I remember sitting in M's kitchen in Grinnell and rolling out the dough, but in the end, they ended up being too dense and they didn't have any layers.

 This is in black and white because...uh, it's like a memory.

In the intervening years, I lost the recipe he sent me - I'm guessing it has to do with the approximately eight times I've had to move since then. I was scouring the internet trying to find the recipe, and I thought this looked close. I decided to make them, but I also added my own touches. I've also written instructions that are a little more clear than the original.

 Sugar Twists

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 tsp Yeast
• 1/4 C Water (between 105 and 115 degrees Farenheit)
• 1 C Unsalted Butter (cold)
• 3 3/4 C Flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 Eggs
• 1/2 C Sour Cream
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 1/2 C Granulated Sugar
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 1/2 tsp Lemon Bakery Emulsion

Instructions

1. Stir yeast into warm water and allow to sit while you mix up the rest of the ingredients.
2. Combine flour and salt. Dice butter and work into the flour mixture. 
3. Add in the eggs, sour cream, 1 tsp of vanilla, and yeast mixture. Mix until well combined and dough forms. 
4.  Mix the granulated sugar, 2 tsp of vanilla, and lemon emulsion together until the sugar appears uniform.
5. Refrigerate the dough for at least two hours.
6. Preheat oven to 375. 
7. After refrigeration, spread 1/2 C of vanilla on a cutting board and roll out 1/2 of the dough. Place the remaining dough back in the refrigerator until you are ready to roll it out. 
8. After the dough is rolled out into a large rectangle approximately 1/2" thick, place 1 TBSP of the vanilla sugar along the middle third of the dough. Fold the left and right thirds over one another. Then fold the dough into thirds again so that it is square. Roll out the dough back into the large rectangle. Spread another 1 TBSP of sugar down the middle section and refold back into a square. Roll back out. Add more sugar as needed throughout the rolling out process.
9. Cut the dough into strips and twirl them into desired shape. The middle cookie in the picture above was folded in half and then twisted. The other cookies were just twisted. 
10. Repeat with remaining dough.
11. Baked on a lined baking sheet for 15-10 minutes until golden brown.

 

My grandma really loved coffee, but it's Coke Zero in this cup! 

Lavender Orange Macarons with Lemon Curd Filling

So, I might be addicted to making macarons. I also might have a problem with doing nothing but stare at them while they're baking and pray that they come out. When the first cookie sheet of these gave the slightest indication that they were getting feet, I felt like dancing. My macarons are working, my macarons are working!

Anyway.

These macarons have ground culinary lavender in them as well as some orange extract. Matt showed up with both of these items from an awesome market he went to in Atlanta while he was helping his brother move back in August. I have a pint of lavender and it cost just over two dollars. Now I just need to think of more lavender things to bake.

Lavender Macarons
If you can actually pipe uniformly, this should make about 15 total macarons (30 shells)

• 3/4 C Almond Flour
• 1 C Powdered Sugar
• 2 Large Egg Whites
• 1/8 tsp Cream of Tartar
• 1/4 C Granulated Sugar 
• 1 TBSP Culinary Lavender
• 1/2 tsp Orange Extract
• 1/2 tsp Almond Extract

I'm still not going to include the directions for making the macarons because I'm so not confident in my strategy yet. But, for this recipe, I pureed the lavender in my food processor along with the almonds and powdered sugar. 

Lemon/Citrus Curd

•  3 TBSP Lemon Juice
• 3 TBSP Granulated Sugar
• 2 TBSP Butter
• 1 Large Egg
• 1/2 tsp Orange Extract 

1. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and cook over medium. Stir consistently with a whisk. Try to encourage the butter to melt - you can expedite this by cutting up the butter before putting it in the saucepan. 
2. Cook until it the mixture starts to thicken and as you bring your whisk across the bottom of the saucepan lines in the curd remain visible. 
3. Place in a container in the refrigerator and cover the surface with plastic wrap.

Spumoni Cheesecake: Version 1.0

Two Saturdays ago, my mother and her boyfriend decided to take M and I to dinner. But first she wanted to go for a walk around Gray's Lake in Des Moines. Fine, I thought, it's just a little walk around the lake.


On our way back to the car, my mom remembered this other attraction she would like to see - it's call the high tressle bridge and it's located in a town about 30 minutes northwest of Des Moines. Fine. Let's go. So we drive. We get lost. We go to a Casey's. We find the trail leading to the bridge. And then we walk 2 miles total, so we can see the bridge and get back to the car. We narrowly avoided a thunderstorm, but we did not avoid a big buzzing cicada being trapped in the car with us. Let's just say I spent a good 3 minutes hyperventilating with my cardigan over my head while the rest of the car tried to get it out. I am not into bugs, and my outdoors capacity had already been met for the day.

High Tressle Bridge


By the time we got back to Des Moines, it was nearly 10PM. I don't know if you hang out much in Des Moines, but dang near nothing is open at that hour, and especially when you don't want to go to a bar. My mom remember that an Italian restaurant, Noah's, is open until midnight. So that is where we went.


Noah's has good classic Des Moines Italian food; more spectacularly, they have amazing desserts. Three of the four of us got desserts and shared them. The highlight for me was the spumoni cheesecake, something I'd never heard of or seen before.


I have searched the internet high and low and cannot find a recipe for this. I decided to create my own. So...here it is. It's not perfect, and I'm planning to make it again and not use pudding. I think the pudding gave it a different texture. [EDIT: My mother was a really big fan of this cheesecake. She actually called to tell me how much she liked it. Hmmm.] I'm going to go all out the next opportunity I get and actually grind the pistachios myself and use real chocolate . Post forthcoming! I have no idea when that will be, by the way as I'm in the midst of my summer job and mostly living away from my apartment and baking supplies.

• 1 C Crushed Chocolate Graham Crackers


• 6 TBSP Unsalted Butter


• 1/2 C Sugar


• 3 8oz Blocks of Cream Cheese (softened)
  


• 3 Eggs


• 3 Packages of Instant Pudding: Chocolate, Pistachio, and Vanilla


• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
  


• 1 1/2 tsp Cherry Flavoring
  


• 1/4 C Chopped Maraschino Cherries

1. Mix the crushed chocolate graham crackers, butter, and sugar and press them into the bottom of an 8 inch spring form pan. Do not try to press the crust up the sides, just make a bottom crust. Bake for 7 minutes at 350.
   


2. Mix the cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth. Add in the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated. Then add in the vanilla extract and mix until smooth.


3. Split the cream cheese between three different bowls and try to do so as evenly as possible. Add about 1/3 of a package of pudding to each bowl - chocolate to one, pistachio to another, vanilla to the last one. Add the chopped cherries to the vanilla bowl and then add the cherry flavoring as well.


4. Layer the cream cheese pudding mixtures on the crust - cherry, then pistachio, then chocolate.
   


5. Bake for 60-70 minutes, until the the cake is solidified but still jiggly in the middle. If you have the patience or risk tolerance, bake it it a water bath - that will help to keep the cheesecake from cracking.
   


6. Cool for at least 8 hours and then serve.
   

Banana Crunch Muffins

These muffins are full of bananas and are absolutely delicious. I took them to a bloody mary brunch, where nobody really liked bloody mary's. Imagine that.

Banana Crunch Muffins
Adapted from Ina Garten

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
• 1 C brown sugar
• 1 C sugar
• 2 extra large eggs
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 3/4 C milk
  
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 bananas, diced
• 2 C granola (I used vanilla almond)
• 1 C dried coconut (optional)
  
• 1/3 C broken dried bananas (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two 12 cup muffin tins. Melt butter, and allow it to cool.
   
2. Mix sugars together, then add in butter and eggs. Stir until combined.
   
3. Mix mashed banana, vanilla, milk, and cinnamon together. Add to the butter mixture.
4. Sift in baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour. Combine well, but do not overmix.
   
5. Fold in 1 C of granola, coconut, and sliced bananas.
6. Measure out 1/4 C of batter into 24 muffin tins.
7. Mix broken dried bananas and remaining cup of granola together and then sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.
   
8. Bake for 26-30 minutes.
   

Basic Brownies

I made a 9 by 13 of these brownies about 12 hours ago. There is less than 1/3 of the pan left and I just ate one for breakfast. Yep, my roommates and I are adults.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last week, M came to visit for his spring break. He brought me some glorious provisions from Costco, including vanilla extract and 72 ounces of chocolate chips. He also brought me a giant ahi tuna steak. It's love.

I am sitting at home this evening, not feeling very well. I think it's one of those things where you have a slight relief of academic pressure and your body shuts down. Fun.

Anyway, I baked these cookies because those stupid chocolate chips were just taunting me and I had a ton of butter because Hy Vee was having a sale on butter.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Panthera at All Recipes.

• 1 C Softened Unsalted Butter
• 1 C Brown Sugar
• 1/2 C White Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 2 tsp Vanilla
• 1 3/4 C Flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
  
• 3 C Quick Oats
• 1 1/2 C Chocolate Chips

1. Preheat oven at 325.
   
2. Cream butter and sugars. Add in eggs one and a time and mix until thoroughly combined. Add in vanilla.
3. Mix in flour, baking soda, and salt. Add oats, then chocolate chips.
4. Spoon dough onto greased cookie sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes. Cookies will still be soft.

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.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Apple Ginger Glaze, Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting, and Candied Walnut Garnish

I love just about any baked good with pumpkin in it. The inspiration for these cupcakes was pumpkin + my favorite fall flavors. I took these to a party, and they were extremely well received!


For the cupcakes:

• 1 Box of Yellow Cake Mix
  
• 3 Eggs
• 1 14oz Can of Pumpkin
  
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
• 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
  
• 1 tsp Vanilla

1. Heat oven to 350.
   
2. Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix together until well blended. This is a thick dough.
3. Put 1/4 C of batter into each prepared muffin cup. You will have enough batter for about 16 cupcakes. I made 12 and then baked the rest of the batter up in a mini muffin tin measuring out 1 TBSP of batter in each.
   
4. Bake for 18-22 minutes. (The mini muffins take less time, but I forgot to record how long.)
   

For the Glaze

• 1/2 C Powdered Sugar
• 2 tsp fresh grated ginger
• 1 TBSP apple juice (or more, depending on desired consistency - I made a very thin glaze that you can you barely see for the pictured cupcakes, but I'd go for a much thicker one next time.)

1. Mix together all ingredients.
2. Poke a few holes in the tops of the cupcakes, and pour a bit of glaze over each cupcake.
   

For the Frosting

• 8oz Brick of Softened Cream Cheese
• 4oz of Softened Unsalted Butter
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1 TBSP cinnamon (more or less to taste)
• 2 TBSP apple juice (more or less for desired texture)
• 2 Cups Powdered Sugar

1. Beat together with an electric mixer the cream cheese and butter until smooth.
   
2. Add in the remaining ingredients. Beat until well combined - about 2 minutes.
3. Frosted the cupcakes. I had a fair bit of frosting left at the end, but I frosted the cupcakes rather conservatively.
   

For the Candied Walnuts

• 2 oz walnuts
• 1/4 C Butter
• 2 TBSP Brown Sugar
• Splash of Water
• 1/2 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (Or whatever spice you're into)

1. Melt the butter in the microwave.
   
2. Add everything but the nuts, stir, cook for another minute, and stir.
3. Dump in nuts. Cook for 40 second intervals, tossing in between. Do this 4-6 times, and sniff the nuts aggressively towards the end to make sure they aren't burning.
4. Pour the nuts out onto a lined baking sheet or a Silpat. Allow to cool and then garnish the cupcakes.
   

These cupcakes are for the Sweetest Kitchen's Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge. This month's theme is "orange", which can either be the color or the flaor. I'll remind you when voting starts, so you can mosey on over and vote for your favorite cupcakes!

The winner of October’s Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge will receive prizes from:

• Angela's Images; a selection of handmade crafts
• Bake It Pretty; a $5 electronic gift card
• Beanilla; 2-fold Madagascar vanilla extract & 3 Tongan vanilla beans
• Hello Hanna; a pack of Sweet Stands cupcake stands
• Lisa Orgler; an 8.5"x11" original art print of your choice
• Miss Kitty Creations; a handmade cupcake charm of your choice
• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25
• Tundra Books; a selection 3 very sweet children's books

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!

Oven S'Mores

I am obsessed with S'mores. I made S'more cupcakes early this summer. Then I revised the recipe into a bundt-style recipe. The batter looked pretty:


Last week, Our Best Bites posted a recipe for oven S'mores. I wish I'd never considered the option of making an actual S'more in the oven. It was way, way too easy. At least with a cupcake, I have to dirty some bowls.

Here's what you do:

1. Turn your oven to broil.

2. Lay out all of your graham crackers on cookie sheets

These graham crackers are upside down! Don't do this!

3. Put your marshmallows on top.


3. Get your chocolates ready! I used Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey Bars. Yum! Once you pull the pan out of the oven, you've got to go go go, so make sure you have all of the candies unwrapped and broken.

4. Put the pan in the oven for 1-2 minutes, whatever your marshmallow preference is. I'm a big fan of burned marshmallows, but I realized this was kind of burning the graham crackers, so be aware of that!


5. Pull them out when you're content with the marshmallows' brownness. Put the chocolates on top as quick as possible!


6. Stick the second graham crackers on top! Done!

I ate one while it was hot and then shoved the rest in the freezer so they'd cool and be easy to stack up in a tupperware. These babies were bake sale bound!

Multi-Cereal Treats

Earlier in the summer, M and I bought a giant multi-pack of cereals from Costco. It had 30 boxes of Kellogg's cereals in it. As of this morning, we still had 10 boxes left. I'd eaten all of the Raisin Bran, all the Frosted Mini Wheats, and a good portion of the Frosted Flakes. I decided to make a variation on Rice Krispie Treats to try to get rid of some of the cereal before we move next weekend. I used Rice Krispies, Corn Pops, Fruit Loops, and Corn Flakes. All in all, not a bad way to use up an excess of cereal. Now...what in the world and I going to do with the leftover Apple Jacks? I never did like those...

Recipe - okay, you probably know this one, but just in case!

• 3 TBSP Butter
• 4 C Mini Marshmallows
• 6 C Cereal (we used 7 mini boxes that we measured to have just under a cup in each of them)

1. Melt butter in large pot over medium heat.
2. Add marshmallows and stir until melted.
3. Turn off heat and stir in cereals.
   
4. Put in a 9" X 13" pan coated with non-stick spray.
   

Lavender Milk Tea Cupcakes for Sweetest Kitchen's Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge!

Inspiration

I am in law school. I study for a significant portion of my waking hours. One of the locations I like to study at is the public library. It looks like this:

This library is great. It has lots of big tables, tons of plugs, and best of all, a wonderful little coffee shop in the lobby. When I face a particularly grueling day of studying, I go to this library and promise myself the reward of their amazing lavender milky tea. I'd never had milky tea before this coffee shop, but it's quite popular in Hong Kong. (Thanks for the knowledge, Wikipedia). Anyway, what I like most about this tea isn't the it's milk + tea (that's fairly standard, I'd say), it's the lavender. Lavender is absolutely delicious in this drink and completely makes it the wonderful thing that it is.

The Great Search

Culinary Lavender

The coffee shop makes their lavender milk tea with a lavender syrup. After searching the internet, I found a few different options of incorporating lavender into baking.

1. Lavender Oil
2. Lavender Sugar
3. Lavender Syrup

Unfortunately for me, these all required me to find the product, find some lavender, or pay stupidly expensive shipping costs and risk the lavender product not arriving in time to enter the competition.

Lavender is tricky. It is a flower, but it's not a flower people always eat. That means that if you're using lavender in cooking, you have to be exceedingly careful that it is food grade lavender, preferably organic, and not covered in pesticides or inedible oils meant for massages, etc.

There is a wonderful cooking store in Des Moines (Shout Out: Kitchen Collage) and I recently bought lemon and orange oil there by a brand that makes lavender oil. However, they did not carry the particular line from the brand that has lavender oil in it, so my local search continued.

There is a farm here in Iowa called Mariposa Farms that sells fresh herbs in tons of grocery stores. According to their website, one of the herbs they sell is lavender. I decided to check the local grocery store chain Hy Vee. No luck.

My next thought was that I would go to the fancy gourmet market - Gateway Market - and see if they had fresh lavender or any type of lavender product. I met a lovely store clerk there would was an absolute peach. They didn't have any lavender, but he offered to call his ex-wife (seriously, WHAT A NICE MAN!!) because she owned a bakery and might have some info. This was the low point of the day, as she told him that she got her lavender supply from Chicago and she wouldn't be willing to sell any to me since she herself is a baker. Boo.

At this point, I went to my mother's house and pouted. Considered a different theme all together. BUT NO, THIS WAS A FLAVOR COMBINATION OF WONDER. Then my mother suggested we hit up one of the health food stores right by her house. They have tons of herbs available by the scoop and also a wide selection of teas. At this point, I was just hoping for a lavender tea I could sift the lavender out of or something. But, BUT, they had a huge bin of fresh lavender and it was very reasonably priced. So, thank you Campbell's Nutrition for helping me out on this quest! I couldn't have done it without you!

Issue #1: How to get the lavender in the cake

From the list above, I quickly eliminated making lavender oil. It looked complicated and I don't know much about oils. I considered lavender sugar and it might have been preferable, but I didn't have two weeks to let it steep. I decided to go with making lavender syrup. I tried to use my skills from 7th Grade science to cook the syrup back down to just sugar crystals, but I got too nervous about burning the whole thing and pretty much just ended up with a thick and concentrated lavender syrup. It also had buds floating in it because my summer rental lacks a fine enough strainer to get them all out. Still, it smelled amazing and I decided it would work fine as substitution for a bit of liquid and sugar in the recipe.

Issue #2: How to get the tea in the cake

I didn't want a subtle tea flavor - I wanted these to actually taste like tea. I found a recipe that suggested 6 tea bags was the magic number in making the flavor actually be tea-y, so I used 3 of my family sized tea bags.
The difficult part of this was that many of the lavender cupcake recipes out there substitute the lavender syrup for any other liquid in the cupcake. But...I don't think you can steep tea bags in syrup. So, I had to come up with a way to make this work. I briefly considered using ice tea mix, but I have a deep aversion to instant tea and couldn't bring myself to do it. I ended up using a tried and true white cupcake recipe as the base and steeped the tea bags in the listed amount of milk after boiling it. I know from experience that this cupcake can be a bit dry, so instead of adding extra milk as I normally would, I added the lavender syrup instead. VICTORY.

Recipe

Concentrated Lavender Syrup

• 1 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 Cup Water
• 1/4 C Culinary Lavender Blossoms
  

1. Put all the ingredients in a pot. Boil. After boiling, turn off heat, cover, and let sit.
   
2. After 5 minutes sitting, strain the mixture into a sauce pan, removing as many blossoms as possible.
   
3. Bring the mixture to a boil. Allow to boil for 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning. This will boil off some of the water and make a more concentrated syrup.
4. Place in refrigerator and allow to cool. Make sure you use this the day you make it, as the sugar tried to escape the solution since it was beyond saturation the next day. Oh, science.
   

Cupcakes

• 3/4 C Milk
• 6 Black Tea Bags
• 3-6 Tbsp Lavender Syrup
  
• Heaping 3/4 C Sugar
• 1/2 C Unsalted Butter (softened)
  
• 2 Eggs
• 1/8 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• Scant 1/8 Tsp Lemon Oil (Optional, I'm just obsessed with it right now)
  
• 1 1/2 C Flour
• 1 3/4 Tsp Baking Powder

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with liners - you will probably have about 4 extra cupcakes on top of this, however.
   
2. Bring the milk to a boil, either in your narrowest sauce pan or in the microwave. Add the tea bags and allow to steep, off the heat, covered. You want to get the most tea out of these bags as possible, and the most difficult part for me was having deep enough milk.
   
3. After about 5 minutes, squeeze out the tea bags and transfer the milk/tea mixture back into a measuring cup.I lost about 1/4C of milk when it boiled, it will probably vary for you. To make up the difference, add lavender syrup. If you've added 6 TBSP and it's not yet back up to 3/4 C, add in milk until you get there. It will dilute the tea mixture, but that's better then overpowering lavender. Put in the freezer to cool down quickly - do not use right away!!
   
4. Cream together butter and sugar. Do it longer than normal , at least 5 minutes. This batter needs air.
5. Add in eggs, one at a time, and beat them in for about a minute each.
   
6. Add in vanilla & lemon oil. Beat thoroughly.
7. Add in flour and baking powder. Beat thoroughly.
8. Add in milk/tea/lavender mixture. This is a lot of liquid for the batter to take up, so give it time. Beat until very well incorporated.
   
9. Fill the cupcake liners. I would opt for just under 1/4 C of batter for each. I went above this and got weird, spread out, cookie tops that I ended up pulling off. (The muffin top was not all that.) This is probably a symptom of my janky summer oven, but just to be safe, go on the small side.
10. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the tops are firm and stick inserted comes out cleanly.
11. Allow to cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes before removing them. I am the worst about removing things early, but these are a pretty fragile cake, so really let them sit.

Frosting - Adapted from Our Best Bites

• 4 1/2 TBSP Flour
• 3/4 C Milk (I usually use skim, but I used whole milk because I really wanted a very milky flavor)
• 3/4 C Unsalted Butter (real butter, and softened)
  
• 3/4 C Flour
• 1 TBSP of Lavender Syrup

1. If this is your first time with a frosting like this, I highly recommend you hop over to Our Best Bites for their wonderful mixture tutorial.
2. Add flour and milk to a pan. I like to use my 10" frying pan. Heat over medium heat, and whisk constantly to get flour to dissolve into milk.
3. Keep whisking. As soon as you see the whisk drag and the bottom of the pan peep through, remove from heat.
4. Strain through your finest sifter to get out clumps, and refrigerate. Make sure it's really not warm, or it will ruin everything in the following steps.
5. Cream together butter and sugar.
   
6. Add the lavender syrup to the flour/milk mixture. Pour that mixture on the butter and sugar. Beat forever. No really, it takes at least 5 minutes.
7. This frosting looks weird for a bit, but do not despair. Keep mixing!
8. Eventually, it will be gorgeous, poofy, and milky deliciousness.
   

Assembly

1. Frost cupcakes generously. Add sanding sugar or lavender blossoms as garnish. (I used this light blue sanding sugar.)

Oh right, this is a contest!

Now, about this contest! It's all explained here - it's The Sweetest Kitchen's Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge. Every month, there's a different ingredient that must be used in the cupcake. This month's ingredient was tea!

Voting starts on or about July 20th, so please go check it out! I'll remind you when the time comes!

This competition is really awesome because there are such wonderful prizes!
The winner of July’s Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge will receive prizes from:

• Bake It Pretty; $5 electronic gift card -- I used their liners for this cupcake!
  


• Beanilla; Tahitian vanilla fleur de sel & 3 organic Indonesian vanilla beans


• Rishi Tea; the new Tsuki tea pot and 2 tins of tea


• Soapylove Glycerin Soap Design; a Soapy Pop


• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25

Thanks to all our prize sponsors!

Key Lime Pie

My friend Allison came through on a quick visit earlier this week while back in the Midwest for a wedding. She and I had recently dicussed Ben & Jerry's Key Lime Ice Cream and our inability to find it. This is unfortunate because it sounds pretty awesome.

With Allison coming to town and her birthday just around the corner, I decided to make the next best thing - a key lime pie.

Key lime pie is one of the first things I ever learned to bake. I probably made 5-10 of them in the summer of 2007. That summer, I worked three jobs (Security, Alumni Relations, and a Thai restaurant), had six roommates, and taught myself how to stay alive in America. This on the heels my adventures in the Czech Republic, from which I returned with what Allison and others will always call "clown mouth" -- AKA lesions on the sides of my mouth from vitamin deficiency and clear indication that I was not an adult. ANYWAY, BACK TO THE PIE.

Key lime pie is really, really easy. I consider it one of those things where, if you go above 4 ingredients for the filling, you're doing it wrong.

Key Lime Pie
4 Egg Yolks
1 Can Sweet & Condensed Milk (I'd use Eagle Brand or Carnation - brand names for something like this)
1/2 Cup Lime Juice (Fresh is best, even if it's just a normal lime, not a key lime)
1 tsp Vanilla
9" crust (You can make your own graham cracker crust, but sometimes I'm lazy and just buy a pre-made one. Homemade is amazing, but sometimes I'm not up for the mess.)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Stir together egg yolks and S&C milk until smooth. You really want smoothness.
3. Wisk in lime juice until well-combine and consistent throughout. If you think this thing needs to be green (heathen), then add your food coloring in.
4. Pour into crust and bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature and then refrigerate until serving.

Engagement Party S'More Cupcakes

I am officially at the phase in my life where everyone I know it getting engaged. I have had at least 3 law school classmates get engaged over the summer break - I will surely find out about more when I go back to school in the fall!

I made these cupcakes for the engagement party of a dear high school friend's older sister. In all fairness, she didn't ask me to bring anything, I just had a baking urge and the engagement party seemed like an excellent opportunity to pawn off some of my baked goods!

I am a big fan of S'mores. But S'mores aren't a food I get much opportunity to eat these days, as I am what might be described as...indoorsy. No bonfires in my recent past or foreseeable future, that's for sure.

However, I think I came up with a delicious S'more Cupcake recipe after using an amalgamation of many other recipes.

INGREDIENTS

Cupcakes - Adapted from Our Best Bites and Bakerella
2 C Flour
1/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder
1.5 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 C granulated sugar
1 C firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 large eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 C luke warm water
1/2 C buttermilk
1/4 C Graham Cracker Crumbs

Filling
Toasted Marshmallow Creme
(Regular will work just fine, but the toasted is a fun touch!)

Frosting
Our Best Bites' Chocolate Frosting
Follow their directions, as this was the first time I made it and it worked out perfectly!

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift flour, salt, and baking soda into a medium bowl.
2. Cream the butter and the sugars together with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy and well incorporated. Add in eggs, one at a time and mix until fully incorporated. Add in vanilla and continue to mix until smooth.
3. Mix together buttermilk and water. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk/water mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and alternate with the flour mixture. This is going to look a little weird - don't worry. It will work itself out.
4. Divide the batter in half - there should be about 6 cups total. If you mess it up, you just won't end up with equally chocolately and graham crackery cupcakes. Not the end of the world.
5. To one of batters, add the cocoa. To the other batter, add the graham cracker crumbs. Mix both until well incorporated.
6. Add your cupcake liners to your muffin tin. I used foil to evoke camping, but part of what's really cool about these cupcakes is the two color thing - that's not visible if you use foil!
7. For each cupcake, add two tablespoons of the graham cracker batter and top with two tablespoons of the cocoa batter.
8. Bake cupcakes for 15-20 minutes. I wish I could be more definite, but my summer oven is a weird one and I pretty much have to watch everything and don't think it provides much indication of what others' ovens might do.
9. After cupcakes have cooled, fill the cupcakes with the marshmallow fluff. Don't go overboard, as it's really sweet.
10. Frost cupcakes with the chocolate frosting. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs over the frosting and top it all off with a marshmallow!

Flan & How to Carmelize Sugar

Hello Friends! Sorry I've been out of commission. My computer fan bit it slightly after finals and work/journal/moving has absorbed lots of time.

I made flan for one of my study groups during finals, and never did get it up here. So, here you are!

Flan (adapted from Food Network)
- 1 1/2 c white sugar
- 2 standard sized cans of sweet and condensed milk (I am a big off-brand shopper, but you can really taste the difference in this. I'd go with Eagle or Carnation for this)
- Milk to fill each of the cans
- 8 Eggs (It's a custard, what do you expect?)
- 1 Tbsp almond extract (I probably actually use more than this, but I'm an almondoholic)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 325. Caramelize the white sugar over medium heat. If you've never done this, I highly recommend this video. The first time I made this, it took me 4 tries to get it to work. Caramelizing sugar is a skill, you should have it! Here are some photos to walk you through the process.

Sugar in the saucepan
The sugar will start to clump up. This is the sugar starting to melt and it sticking to itself.
Then it gets really clumpy and starts to turn color. Almost there.
Ta Daa! Caramel!

2. Pour the caramel in the bottom of your dish. I use at 8" x 8" Pyrex for a nice, thick flan. If I had a prettier dish, I'd use that. Do this quickly, and be sure to tilt the dish so that the caramel spreads around evenly.
3. Whip the eggs until smooth. Then pour in the two cans of sweet and condensed milk. This stuff is weird, if you've never used it - you'll probably need a spatula to get it all out. Mix the sweet and condensed milk into the eggs - the s & c will try to sink to the bottom, but try your best to blend them together.
4. Fill the cans up with regular milk and pour that milk into the mixture.
5. Add in the almond, vanilla, and salt and stir until totally blended.
6. Pour the mixture through a strainer (to remove weird extraneous egg stuff) and into the baking container.

That weird texture on the surface? That's me forgetting to strain the mixture before putting it in the Pyrex.

7. Bake in a water bath. I usually use my 9" X 13" Pyrex for this. Place your baking dish in a larger, oven safe container. Fill outer container with warm water so that the water reaches about halfway up the sides of the baking dish.
8. Bake covered with aluminum foil 90 minutes or until center is firm.
9. Chill until serving. To serve, invert the flan onto a serving dish and let sit for a moment while the caramel pulls away before removing the baking dish.

Pumpkin Donuts

Fall made me pumpkin crazy. I made far too many pumpkin recipes. One of the best, however, were these pumpkin donuts with citrus glaze.

I adapted the recipe from the Neely's Maple Glazed Donuts.

To make these beauties, you'll need:

3 and 3/4 Cups of All-purpose flour
1 and 1/4 Cups of granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon of Baking Powder (Make sure it's fresh!)
1/2 Teaspoon of Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon of Nutmeg
1/2 Teaspoon of Cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon of Clove
(You can substitute Nutmeg, Cinnamon, and Clove with Pumpkin Pie Spice - 1.5 Teaspoons!)
1 Teaspoon of Salt
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup of Buttermilk (You can also substitute milk and vinegar or lemon juice - look here for how!)
3/4 Cup of Canned Pumpkin
3 Tablespoons of Melted Butter
1/2 Teaspoon of Almond Extract
1/2 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
Oil for Frying

1. Start oil heating over medium heat - you're aiming of 375 degrees
2. Mix together dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in another. Mix wet and dry together until fully combined.
3. Turn dough out onto floured service and roll out to 1/2" thick. Cut out donuts with a round cookie cutter or the bottom of a glass. Cut out the center with a small cookie cutter or a soda bottles cleaned lid. Works wonderfully! Be sure to cut the center out as it helps for even frying.
4. Fry the donuts and let them dry on a wrack on a cookie sheet with paper towel underneath to absorb the oil.

Orange Glaze
1 Cup of Powdered Sugar
1-3 Tablespoons of Orange Juice (pulp free is best)

1. Stir sugar and orange juice together adding more orange juice until is a smooth consistency.
2. Pour glaze into a bowl and dip tops of the donuts one at a time and then let the glaze dry over the tops.

Enjoy while watching a new episode of 30 Rock with your favorite law school classmates and their significant others.