It’s been embarrassingly too long since I last posted on here. I finished my junior year at UT, worked at a Chinese restaurant, interned at a performing arts center, went to Disneyland, and now am back in school. I know that’s not why y’all read this though. So let’s get to the good stuff. *snap*

I promise I’ve been baking a whole lot. I’ve kept up with the baking part and the eating part, but not necessarily the taking-pictures part. Katy fail. I captured some of my projects though. I made some cool Disney cookies for my boyfriend.

My favorites are definitely the Minnie/Mickey ones. I also sent him a box of sugar cookies decorated like M&Ms. I had tried to make Pretzel M&M cookies and they had failed miserably, so I just sent him the next best thing. He didn’t complain. When I visited him we made this awesome pie that turned out to be a huge hit:

Becky gets credit for the Mickey ears though. And for crushing the chocolate chips. I’ve made some cookies here and there, but this past weekend I went up to Fort Worth to visit Scott, and we made some of the most amazing cupcakes I’ve ever had. I found the recipe here, and they’re delicious. The cake doesn’t have any butter in it, so it’s more like a brownie. You hollow out the middle and fill it with ganache, which hardens and basically becomes a truffle in the middle of the cupcake. Delicious. We didn’t have enough ganache left over to drizzle over the top, but they still turned out beautiful.

Nom nom nom. Cupcake win.

Thanks once again to TasteSpotting, I found a recipe for Snickers Cupcakes. Intrigued, I followed the link to the blog of a stay-at-home mother who, judging by the pictures of what sounded like a delicious recipe, was not very interested in presentation. If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m super OCD when it comes to presentation, so to encourage my own baking vanity, I decided I would take on this recipe in an attempt to make them more presentable.

I think I did a pretty good job. I’ve been playing with different frosting tips, and I definitely will not use this one again. I don’t like the way it splintered out away from the main piping. I guess it works overall though; I’m too picky for my own good. I was surprised with the flavor of the cupcakes as well. There’s nothing outstanding or unusual in them other than peanuts, yet they still are rather tasty. The recipe I used called for whole peanuts in the cupcake, but I decided it would be better to crush them up. Sidebar: crushing things in my kitchen is one of my favorite things to do, because I don’t have a food processor, am too lazy to get out the blender, and don’t own a hammer. (I know, who doesn’t own a hammer, right? Me.) This means I get to crush up peanuts in a plastic bag with the handle of a screwdriver. Love it. Anyways, I used crushed up peanuts instead of whole ones, and this allowed me to put the nougat inside of the cupcake instead of spread on top, because the recipe also instructed to spread the nougat on top of the cupcake, and then spread frosting on top of the nougat. I put the nougat inside the cupcake, and I think the results are much better, and much more attractive. So below is my first adapted recipe!

Snickers Cupcakes:

9 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup plain yogurt
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped salted peanuts

Nougat:

1 7-ounce jar of marshmallow fluff
1 cup creamy peanut butter

Frosting:

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped
2 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 tablespoon vanilla

extra salted peanuts for decoration

Heat the oven to 350. Line muffin pans with paper liners.

Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. On medium speed, add the eggs, 1 at a time, then add the yogurt and vanilla. Scrape down the sides and stir until smooth.

Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just combined. Gently stir in peanuts. Pour into muffin pans. Bake in the center of the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool to room temperature.

For nougat layer, use a spatula to fold marshmallow fluff and peanut butter together until combined.

For frosting, melt the 2 kinds of chocolate in microwave, stirring as needed. Set aside to cool slightly.

Beat butter until creamy; add 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time until fully incorporated. Add chocolate, heavy cream, and vanilla. Beat until everything comes together. Add powdered sugar if needed.

Assembly: Once the cupcakes have cooled, use a knife to cut a cone-shaped hole in the top of the cupcake. Using your hands, pinch off pieces of nougat and press them into the holes, mounding the nougat as high as your want your frosting to be. Pipe the frosting around the nougat, and garnish with peanut halves.

Nom nom

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, my wonderful aforementioned friend Scott was able to complete the Warrior Dash today, even though he still has dozens of my cookies in his apartment. Turns out my cookies didn’t dash his Warrior Dash hopes after all.

My best friend in the whole wide world Scott Sidway (who named this post, by the way) had his first Graduate Recital on Wednesday. I planned about 3 weeks in advance to drive up and surprise him, and his wonderful mother allowed me to bake for the reception! Of course, I had a field day, because that’s what I do. I made snickerdoodles, peanut butter balls, and monster cookies (recipes courtesy of Dr. Almen), chocolate crinkles (recipe courtesy of Jeff Slagle), and used the dough leftover from the princess cookie recipe to make Scott some music cookies. It was nuts. I drove like a grandma up to Ft. Worth to be sure not to mess with the arrangements within the six boxes of cookies in my backseat. The genius that I am only took pictures of the peanut butter balls and the music cookies, so we shall desperately await Scott’s mom’s pictures. Oh and by the way, Scott totally rocked his recital.

AACB colors of course

I am so proud of these cookies. omg.

The music cookies took me all of Sunday to decorate. I had found an icing tip that makes a music staff, and could not WAIT to try it out. I was out of parchment paper, however, and the tip was rather large. Lesson: Wax paper and normal 8 1/2 x 11 paper cannot be used as substitutes for parchment paper pastry bags. Anyways, this was the second batch of cookies with completely original decorating ideas. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not technically original, because that’s all actual music. I got out my Disney piano books and looked up some sheet music online. I made Scott figure out each song before he ate them (but I don’t think he’s been able to bring himself to eat them yet). There’s Beauty and the Beast (two or three of them actually), A Whole New World, When You Wish Upon a Star, A Dream is a Wish, Love’s in Need of Love Today, and On the Sunny Side of the Street.

The tip was hard to use because royal icing is ridiculously thick and the lines weren’t very interested in staying together. The music turned out readable for the most part, and the border around the edges made them look so much better. The Mickeys, Treble clefs, and eighth notes were just filler. Overall, I am super proud of these cookies.

Top row: Beauty and the Beast; Bottom left: Love's in Need of Love Today; Bottom right: Zipp-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

Close-up on Beauty and the Beast

And for anyone who was wondering about the title, Scott has to run a 5K obstacle course this coming Saturday, complete with fire, barbed wire, tornado winds, and swimming through a bog. The funny thing? He has about 6 dozen leftover cookies in his apartment.

The other week I got an order for princess cookies. My friend Hugo said he was ordering them for my friend Jorge. At the time, and due to Hugo’s horrible communication skills (he doesn’t read this anyways), I was under the impression that Hugo was playing a prank on Jorge, and that the cookies were actually for Jorge. When I delivered them to Jorge, he said “yea Natasha’s birthday is tomorrow.” Hugo had been ordering them for Jorge, not FOR Jorge. Luckily, I had put 13 cookies in the box, so I had Jorge eat the one with his name on it. Crisis averted. Phew.

My personal favorite, and I got to use my pixie dust!

Also, note behind the slipper. Sean, that’s the closest I’ve gotten to those wallpaper cookies. That being said, I’m not even sure how I pulled off those hearts haha. This was my first set of cookies where I didn’t get the decorating ideas from the internet. These are my original decorative ideas, and I think I pulled it off quite nicely. It comes naturally, you know, being a princess and everything.

Lately I’ve been embarrassingly low on cash. I don’t know where it all went (ok lies, I know where it went. But I’ll pretend like I don’t to see if it gets me any donations), but it’s gone. This means I can’t just cruise TasteSpotting, decide what I want to make whenever I get in the mood, run to HEB, and create noms. This realization was difficult for me. I wanted to bake. So I sat there cruising TasteSpotting, and thinking “what do I have in my kitchen?” Lemons. I got lemons. And voila, what do I find but a lemon scone recipe. Perfect.

The first and probably only time alcoholism is beneficial to baking

I was super proud of myself for making these without having to go to HEB or borrow from neighbors (yea, like boys have anything in their pantry anyways). I used a shot glass as a cookie cutter, which entertained me to no end.

I personally felt that the scone part was a bit bland, so I drizzled the glaze on top, then dipped the bottoms, basically coating them in it. The glaze is super sweet and super lemony and I feel that it’s what makes the scone. Good recipe, few ingredients, and easy on my bank account. Awesome.

This was actually exciting because it was my first intense kitchen fail. I’ve had recipes that didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted to, or a batch of cookies that wouldn’t roll out just right, but nothing that was quite as horrendous as this. This recipe is another one from Dessert Gallery, and this is the first of her creations that I wasn’t able to recreate as pretty as the one in the picture (because I’m conceited enough to care about these things). The cake and the frosting themselves were executed alright. The fatal flaw occurred when I didn’t spray the bottom of the pans well enough. The yellow cake got hardcore stuck and broke a little bit. I thought I could just put everything together and it would be ok. Wrong. I was able to piece everything together, and it looked okay. The ganache also hadn’t hardened enough, so everything was kinda slippery. That was fatal flaw number 2. Liquidy icing + broken cake = fail. The cake stayed together for about 5 minutes. Until then, I was super proud. Thanks to the lovely John Bregger for helping me out!

John and the cake when it was still intact!

Alternate ganache and raspberry creme between layers = temporary win

Aaaaand splat.

Happy Easter everyone! I went back to Houston for the weekend to celebrate both Easter and my dad’s birthday with the family, and my grandmother was kind enough to pass on role of birthday-cake-baker to me. I’ve found this website (it’s not so new to everyone else, but it’s new to me) called Tastespotting, that just brings together recipes from other blogs/websites. I found a Mocha Marble Bundt Cake that I thought would be perfect, and it was. I love baking at home because my mom has so many fun little gadgets (for example, the Cathedral bundt pan I used), and my dad can take awesome pictures.

The marbling effect turned out beautifully as well:

Saturday afternoon I got a little bored and decided to try something else I had found on tastespotting. I dipped Peeps in white chocolate and covered them with sprinkles. It was super cute, and then I ran out of sprinkles. So I got a little creative, but I wish I had had more sprinkles to play with. My dad LOVES Peeps, so these made him very happy.

A rather successful weekend, if I do say so myself! In case y’all didn’t know, you can click on the pictures to see a larger version. Happy Birthday Daddy <3

You know you’re a musician when you refer to anything relatively important as a gig. Anyways, a huge congratulations goes out to the new Sean and Mary Beck. From what I saw of my dad’s pictures, the wedding looked amazing, and Mary, you looked absolutely stunning. I LOVED your dress. A huge thank you also goes out to them for hiring me to bake cookies and lemon bars for the rehearsal dinner!

I made three dozen lemon bars and three dozen chocolate chip cookies with sea salt. I had never heard of such cookies, but Sean specifically requested them, so I found a recipe on epicurious.com. When I tried them out a couple weeks prior to this weekend, my friend’s mom assumed the role of taste tester, and was actually offended that I had put sea salt in my chocolate chip cookies. They were really good though if you’re expecting the salt. The chocolate and salt are surprisingly complimentary. They use vanilla sugar, which I had never heard of prior to this recipe either. Turns out it’s really expensive: an 8.5 oz jar is $18.50 at Williams Sonoma. That’s right. A cup of that stuff is almost $18. A cup! I couldn’t get over that, and won’t be making this recipe again unless they’re specifically requested. But they are rather tasty. The lemon bars are from a previous blog entry, and I made them rehearsal dinner-friendly by putting them in cupcake wrappers.

Another nifty thing about being in Houston is that my dad can take amazing pictures of what I bake. I love it.

Oh yea, I almost forgot my St. Patrick’s Day cookies I made! I sold 5 dozen this time, and they turned out pretty nicely. Note to anyone going food-coloring shopping: forest green is ugly. Don’t use that. I used Leaf Green, and that was much better. Clovers are a tough shape to deal with in dough form because it is so easily deformed. I spent 14 hours in the kitchen just baking, bordering, and glazing the cookies (I made about 7 dozen), but it only took about 4 hours to decorate with royal icing. (I do realize that the fact that 4 hours is considered a short time is not a good thing.) Thanks to Sean for the photo because I forgot to take pictures this time!

I know I was so excited to get this blog and immediately abandoned it, but it wasn’t intentional, and it won’t happen again…intentionally. I was super busy, last week was spring break, etc. Excuses excuses. The important thing is that I’m back! And I have been baking. On the 6th I made the Lemon Honey Cupcakes I’d been lusting after for a while, and they were just as spectacular as they looked. The recipe was from Women’s Day magazine. The frosting was definitely the best part. This was a very high maintenance recipe, what with my stone age kitchen. Squeezing out lemon juice and zesting lemons is not easy to do here. But this time, it was worth it.

Tonight I made Cherry Coke Cupcakes. They taste pretty good. I’d probably recommend not putting all 4 cherries into the cake. 3 max was still kinda pushing it. Note: Lauren decorated them. There were several things I learned with these cupcakes:

1. When it says “Be careful not to overbeat”, it means it. That’s why there’s no whipped cream on these cupcakes. Woops.

2. We ran out of cupcake wrappers, so just greased some tins. Lauren and I decided that the only differences between cupcakes and muffins are that 1) the paper wrapper, and 2) the fact that muffins are for breakfast. When I eat one of these for breakfast tomorrow, it’ll be a cherry coke muffin.

3. Drain the cherries more.

4. I have a feeling this recipe will be just as successful with Dr. Pepper. Nom nom nom.

Cherry Coke Cupcakes from Annie’s Eats

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup sugar
16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cup Coca-Cola
1/2 tsp. maraschino cherry juice
4 tsp. vanilla extract
Maraschino cherries, stemless

For the glaze (optional):
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 tbsp. Coca-Cola

For topping:
2/3 cup heavy cream
3-4 tbsp. powdered sugar
Maraschino cherries

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Line  a muffin pan with foil or paper liners.  In a medium bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.  Stir together and set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar and butter.  Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy.   Mix in the egg until incorporated.   In a bowl or large measuring cup, combine the buttermilk, Coke, maraschino cherry juice, and vanilla extract; stir to combine.  (This mixture may look disgusting and/or curdled – it’s okay!)

Mix the dry ingredients into the butter-sugar mixture on low speed, alternately with the liquid ingredients, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing just until incorporated.  Divide the batter evenly between the cupcake liners.  Drop 4 or 5 stemless maraschino cherries into each cupcake well and push them down into the batter.  Bake for about 18 minutes (or about 24 for extra large cupcakes), or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the pan 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the optional glaze, combine the confectioners’ sugar and Coke in a small bowl and whisk until smooth.  Spoon or drizzle a small amount of the top of each cupcake.  Allow to set.

To make the whipped cream topping, add the heavy cream to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.  Begin whipping on medium speed, slowly adding the confectioners’ sugar and gradually increasing the speed to high as the cream holds soft peaks.  Whip until the cream holds stiff peaks, being careful not to overbeat.  Spoon or pipe the whipped cream on top of the cupcakes and top each with a maraschino cherry.