coconut cupcakes

These are from Barefoot Contessa recipe from the Food Network.
They have coconut flakes, almond and vanilla extract.

We are taking them over to dinner at my brother's house.

Baking Saturday

Spent some time today baking to bring some treats to my niece's birthday party tomorrow

I made these turtle brownies from scratch, using a recipe from Cook's Illustrated

here's a mix of butter, unsweetened and bittersweet chocolates

I made caramel from scratch, and it was in a middle layer in the brownie mix, as well as swirled into the top layer.  then another layer of caramel at the end to give it a polished top. 

I also baked these, they are Bouchon chocolate corks, but it was a little bit of a cheat, because they are from a mix purchased from Williams Sonoma. 

I've had the silicone mold for almost a year, and haven't been able to get my act together enough to make the batter from scratch. They are tasty, and I am motivated to make them from scratch in the future! 

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving - credit to Collin for his work on the turkey and a majority of the cooking. We were busy eating, so this is the only food picture we took.

It was a special occasion b/c this was our niece's first Thanksgiving - here she is getting to know the cats!

hostess cupcake make over

My husband and I watched an episode of Cooks Country from PBS where they make these cupcakes.
They are a remake of the classic hostess cupcake. I really love Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/and also Cooks Country. They are chefs and food scientists.

The recipe is called chocolate cream cupcakes and it's free on their  website (recipes from their shows are free, and there's also further archives access for a fee). for the free one, you need to register with your email address at http://www.cookscountrytv.com/

This recipe makes 12 cupcakes which is a perfect amount. Well maybe it could be a little bigger yield, since while the cupcakes were cooling, a few cupcakes were lost to taste testing...

cut out the top to make a space for the filling

the filling is a mixture of marshmallow cream, butter, and gelatin
and what would a cupcake be with out the curly Q frosting? still working on the uniformity! but they are quite delicious. Thanks, Test Kitchen!

popover pancake

also known as a dutch baby.

they get all their volume from steam!

the ingredients are simple - eggs, flour, milk, salt, butter.

from our trusty cast iron pan.

the recipe was from the book: The Good Egg by Marie Simmons

cake wreck?

I made a red velvet cake for a friend's birthday party this week.

The recipe is from Cook's Country website.

The frosting job was borderline for a cake wreck. I thought better than to attempt to spell something on the cake.


This was the same cake recipe from earlier in the year, but the choice of word candles turned out nicer!

from the garden

for dinner today, we grilled chicken, made fajitas. 

we tried to use a grill basket for peppers and onions. the slots in the basket were rather large, so i'll have to remember to cut the veggies a bit larger next time. 

also we ate some veggies from the garden courtesy of collin.  we ate these with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of sesame oil. 

we pulled up what we thought was a radish. it had a great concentric pattern! it was pretty sweet, so we think it may have been a beet.

blueberry and cream cookies

today, I made these cookies from a recipe in Bon Appetit.
They are from the Momofuku Milk Bar article