Uh...

So I did bake this weekend. It was McK's birthday recently and he lurves him some red velvet cake. So I made him 26 red velvet cupcakes, which he ate half of and then got hella sick.

That's the good news. (Except the sick part.)

I totally didn't take any pictures and the whole thing was from boxed mix.

:( Next week! We swears it!

Blueberry Muffin Madness!

Hallo intar-wubs!

I feel better. My last post was written in a cranky, sleep-deprived delirium. Yes, I realize I posted it at like 3:30, stfu.

Since that time, I have had some lunch (and some cheesecake and some muffins) and I feel better now. Also, I went shopping for baking paraphernalia YAY.

Okay, so as you know last week I was called out by McK and he ordered me to bake him some blueberry muffins. I, being the enter-pe-noor that I am, charged him $10. For 20 muffins. I am such a sucker.

BLUEBERRY MUFFIN MADNESS:
(recipe from allrecipes.com)

You will need:
4 cupps flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup softened butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups frozen blueberries, unthawed

(OPTIONAL) FOR LE MUFFIN TOPPING:
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

HOW TO MAKE MUFFINS OF WONDER AND DELIGHT*:

0. Preheat oven to 375 F.

1. Take flour, baking powder & salt, dump in bowl.


2. In a separate bowl, cream butter & sugar.

(My butter was frozen, so I cut it up into strips for easy creaming.)

Er... we may be having some technical difficulties here. See, I'm at Felder's folks' house today and there is a suspicious lack of butter/sugar creaming implement. Whatever it's called. Maybe a fork will work?

No.
How about a knife?

Nuh-uh.
Meat tenderizer?

Nyet.
Okay, time for drastic measures. Take off the rings, re-wash the hands... and knead.

Yep. Of course it worked.

3. Add eggs, milk & vanilla, mix well.




(Humor me and pretend that this is well mixed, okay? Thanks.)

4. Stir into dry ingredients until you have batter. Recipe says "until just moistened" but I kept thinking "oh good, I'm done" and then flipping over the dough and discovering a rich vein of pure flour right in the middle of my nice dough. So just use your judgment on this, I guess.)



Please try not to throw stones at me, the lighting is really awful in these.

5. Fold in frozen blueberries. Whatever that means. FYI - in case you haven't picked up on it by now, I don't know what I'm doing. If it looks right, then you probably did it right.


Perfect.

6. Put the batter in the paper cups (or I suppose directly in the baking pans if you like) (thought - it would be interesting to make muffins on a cookie tray. Like muffin bites. Mmm.)


7. Mix the topping together in a bowl and sprinkle over the muffins. Stick the muffins in the oven & cook for 20-25 min. Why? Cause I said. What? You wanna make something of it? PUNK?


Okay, you really can't see the topping on the muffinlets, but I swear it's there.



8. Devour, because OMG THESE ARE AMAZING MUFFINS. I gave a muffin to my FMFIL** & FFIL*** and they both had mouth-gasms. ^_____^


I made 23 muffins. OMG.

Side note: My FMFIL has a spectacularly clean and well-stocked kitchen and also these bowls. Are these not the most adorable mixing bowls you have ever seen???


It's a cow bowl. And the little stabilizing feet make it look like an udder. OMG. SO. CUTE.

Side side note: I took me way too long to write this because of YouTube. And music videos. And this song.

Side side side note: Maybe cheesecake next week? Y/N?

Side side side side note: The best part of baking is giving the product to someone else and seeing their reaction. This is sometimes the worst part of baking, too.

Side side side side side note: The Brother got a haircut. It's extreme and also intense. Not baking-related, but I'll post a pic soon.

*Also of blueberries. And possibly the devil because I cannot stop eating them.
**Future Felder In Law
***Future MomFelder In Law


<3,
TWC

Fabulous Frosting

Hello internets!

I got this recipe from the Pioneer Woman - I was making cupcakes this weekend and also really really wanted to try out my new pastry bags, plus HELLO FROSTING. So really, it was the natural response.

Okay, less babbling, more recipe.

1. Combine 5 tbs flour with 1 cup of milk.

Lookit how cute that is! The flour made little bubbly balls when I tipped it in. D'aww.

No? Not cute? Ah well.

2. Combine the two in a saucepan over medium heat - the Pioneer Woman used a whisk but (confession time!) I have not yet gotten the hang of using a whisk and I ended up burning some of the flour that got stuck to the bottom of the saucepan, so I switched to a spatula.

...Wait a minute. (rereads recipe)

OH.

RIGHT.

Combine them FIRST, then heat. A-durr. ...LOOK, A DISTRACTION!

(My first, optimistic photo.)


Ewg, lumpy. I suspect that I did not blend this well enough because there were still some interesting lumps in it when I was done. :/

3. Let it cool completely. Why? Hell if I know, I just work here. It'll be SUPER thick, like oatmeal.

You can stick it in the fridge for a bit to cool it down faster.

4. Add 1 tsp vanilla.


Stir that motherf*cker in.


Trust me on this: DO NOT BOTHER SNEAKING A TASTE AT THIS POINT. IT TASTES GROSS.

5. Mush up 1 cup sugar with 1 cup butter. The recipe didn't specify powdered sugar or what, but since I am like Einstein (no, really), I figured out that it is, in fact, powdered sugar.

Mush it all together till it's light & fluffy, like whipped cream.

6. Now add the oatmeal flour/milk mush. Whip it on medium high until it has the consistency of frosting. (Man, I dunno... wing it? The recipe says it will have the consistency of whipped cream, but I must have screwed something up pretty bad.)

Also, it will look like a science experiment.

7. Yay! Frosting! Frost your cupcakes/cake/whatever.



8. Sprinkles optional.



Crunchy.

You can also get really excited about using your new pastry bags, like I did, and experiment.




Results: Everyone (except me) loved it. I thought it was so-so, but seriously, HUGE thumbs up from Felder, Chuck*, McK and Eeeeeeeve.

Go, go, gadget professional cook?

<3,
TWC

*Chuck is a professional chef who happens to work with me at my day job.

A new Challenger has Appeared!

And he has stolen the blag!

(It was my birthday yesterday and the mansome McK made me a cake!)

Hello, this is McK, and I made TWC a pound cake for her birfday and she suggested I do a guest blag. So here I am!

Pound cakes are interesting. They are called pound cakes not because they weigh a pound but because they take a pound of each main ingredient. I shall list the ingredients now so you get the idea.


3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
5 eggs (yokes included)

That there is three pounds. Now the rest of the of the ingredients.

2 sticks (1 cup) softened (room temp) butter.
1/3rd cup shortening (fat).
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder (NOT BAKING SODA, DO NOT MISTAKE[won't be horrible explosion or anything, it just won't turn out as good and doesn't hold moisture as well])
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I just eyeball it, but unless you've made this cake four or five times I'd suggest measuring it for the first go as baking isn't like cooking where you can eyeball everything)
1/2 cup milk.

I should mention that I took a lot of pictures making this cake. I felt pressured as I'd never done this type of thing before and I wanted to do it well. Also the pictures aren't very good 'cause I took them with my iPhone which isn't forgiving of a shaking hand. But before I launch into my story I will give you a little back story:

My kitchen is laughably small. The thought of making a pound cake in there was not a fun one, especially since I've done it before and it is indeed not a fun experience. So with brilliance I grabbed my laundry, headed over to my mom's and begged the use of her kitchen (and washing machine). Her only fee was that I bake TWO cakes, one for m'dad and m'bro (she's dieting).


So, now enjoying a much larger and better furnished kitchen, I grabbed the old recipe book that is probably older than me. It's so aged and beat up that if it was a leather bound book it'd look like the Necronomicon, except for holding the spells to the zombie apocalypse it would hold the spells for never-ending deliciousness. This is the same cookbook that holds the secret of the Buttermilk Brownies.

I had a hard time reading it because I have a hard time reading all handwriting but thankfully (and irritatingly) Mom was there to coach me along and several times I had to shoo her away and say "My cake! No--Nono, no, no more help! Go watch Gene Simmons!"


I had a slight "Oh crap" moment when I thought I didn't have enough eggs to make two cakes, but I found some nestled away in the east wing of my mom's refrigerator (it's deceptively large). That is water on my hand, by the way, not slime or some other best left unmentioned fluid.



And now onto the actual cake makingness!


Get your two sticks of room temp butter and dump them into your mixer (I was lucky enough to use my mom's mixer but if you don't happen to have a super chef for a mom one of the hand mixers should do well--it's how I did it in my pitikitchen) with your shortening. You can start mixing it then or wait until you dump in the sugar, it doesn't really matter. (As you can see by the giant glass measuring cup, my mom has the COOLEST stuff to cook with)

You do this for 3-5 minutes until everything is nice and creamy. That's what we're doing at this point, I forgot to mention: Creaming the butter. Or the eggs. We're creaming something. Don't look at me.

Anyway, when it looks like this (left) it's time to add the eggs! One at a time and don't add the next until the last one is nice and mixed in there. Keep the beater at a slow pace whenever adding something to the mix. You do this because if it's at high speed it creates a geyser of liquid/flour/sugar/blood(should your finger get caught in there) and it makes a mess.

Now while the butter is creaming, if you want to multitask (I did on the second cake and the prep goes waaaaay faster) drop your flour, salt and baking powder in a sifter and sift it into a bowl. Then scowl at it. Trust me, the anxiety it feels from the scowl will make it taste that much better. (You cannot tell from the picture, but I am scowling the shit out of that flour).


At this point you should have your eggs and sugar and butter and shortening and vanilla all creamed together into a nice almost-batter. Now you take your half-cup of milk and while the mixer is mixing you pour in the milk a little bit at a time. A leeetle beet heeer, a leeeeeetle beet theere.



After that's well and mixed in there grab your flour mix and add that in there too! I'd advise a slow and steady approach with the mixer running low, otherwise you get flour in your eyes and it blows. Like a Thai hooker. In your eyes. Don't look at me.

And after THAT'S all mixed in you grab your bunt pan! I only know how to make it in a bunt pan and I dunno how different pans will affect the cooking process, so if you want another pan you can go right ahead and experiment. Let me mention, however, that this batter does not rise very much. In the bunt pan it rises maybe an inch to an inch and a half, if that.


Spray your pan with some non-stick spray (momma uses Baker's Choice), then grab your batter and glop it in there reasonably level (mine looked like a mountain range, the batter is thick).

Oh, I prolly shoulda mentioned this before, but preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Stick that bad boy in there for an hour.













Stick a toothpick in it to see if it's done. If it comes out clean, it is done. If part of the cake collapses or the stick comes out with stuff on it, not done.


Mmmmm. Doneness.








And here's the final product! Remember, I made two cakes, and this is the one my family has probably already destroyed. I would never offer the first slice of a birfday cake to any but the birfday person (in this case, birfday girl).

TWC devoured her piece like she had Ebola and the cake was the cure.

Took me about 3 hours to make two cakes but the second one about 30 minutes once I knew what I was doing.

-McK