Saturday, February 27, 2010

Daring Bakers: Tiramisu

OK, ready? I've made tiramisu a bunch of times before. It's pretty easy. So when I first saw what this was I thought piece of cake, no big deal. Then I looked at the recipe. They required us to make the mascarpone and savoiardi. Who does that? The mascarpone is like $8 for the tub and it's only in the cheese section of the fancy grocery store but whatever. That's how it's always been. As the lady fingers, it's not uncommon for christmas gift baskets to have lady fingers in them so those became tiramisu. Why would I do it any other way?

Making the mascarpone was pretty easy. Heat the cream. Add lemon juice. Stir a bunch. Strain. <$1 for ingredients, 10 minutes on the stove and overnight sitting in the fridge instead of paying $5+ for that little tub is definitely worth the effort. I'll definitely do that again next time i want mascarpone.

I am not really sure why we made a pastry cream, zabaglione, whipped cream, and folded them all together. The tiramisu's I've made before were just zabaglione with whipped cream folded in. Ah well. It was pretty good and rich regardless.

Apparently I never took a pic or am too lazy to get it off my camera. Whichever.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of
My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Barefoot Bloggers: Baked Shrimp Scampi

It's been a rough week. I won't go into it in much detail because it's all stupid shit but it's been rough. Or maybe I'm just crazy and it just feels rough even though it wasn't really. I don't know. I guess it doesn't really matter. Anyway.

The second recipe for the month was Shrimp Scampi. It was chosen by Jill.

This has been a good BB month for me. Both of these recipes came out really good. Now that I've looked at my picture it doesn't look so great but this was definitely tasty.


It was rich and buttery and satisfying that's a good meal when you've had a rough day. Granted I didn't actually eat it during that time but I am thinking about it now so that's close enough right? And there is still some left in the fridge that hopefully hasn't gone bad that now I'm thinking about heating up.

So I'll hold on to this recipe. We'll see if I actually think to make it again.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Barefoot Bloggers: Coconut Cupcakes

OK so somehow it was already the last weekend before this post was due and I was just getting around to finding out what the recipe was. Never a good start. Oh well.

This recipe was chosen by Jamie. She chose these Coconut Cupcakes. Which is good because after my shrimp bisque disaster I needed something to work out better.

I started off intending to do the recipe as is. 18-20 cupcakes, no big deal right? Then I started looking at the recipe. 1.5 lbs of butter for 18-20 cupcakes. That's ridiculous! I only had 1 lb of unsalted butter and I had already run to the store for everything else so I wasn't going again so I decided to halve the recipe and make it into mini cupcakes.

And this recipe makes a ridiculous amount of frosting. If I had used all of it, they would have been 50% by volume frosting. So I have a pint of cream cheese frosting waiting in the fridge for the next thing it should go on. Maybe some cinnamon buns.




Wanna know a secret? I put some key lime curd inside of them. And it is wonderful.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Apple Cider Donut Hole Mini Muffin Puffs

So I saw all those posts on donut muffins probably last summer or so. I starred them and meant to make them. That didn't happen.

Then in the fall when apples started coming into season I started seeing posts about the Apple Cider Donuts at assorted places, which made me think of the ones at Delicious Orchards in NJ. mmmm. So I starred a couple recipes and never made those either.

So now, several months later I have finally decided to combine the two and make something that vaguely resembles them.

They were good when they were hot. They were a little rubbery the next day. I suspect I overmixed so be careful about that.


PS I finally stopped being lazy and uploaded pics to a bunch of my old posts.


Apple Cider Donut Hole Mini Muffin Puffs
based on a combination of these three recipes

2 cups apple cider
3 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup applesauce
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs

2 tbsp butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon


Boil the apple cider down to 1 cup. Cool to room temp. Mix together the applesauce and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time. Sift together the dry ingredients. Alternate adding the dry ingredients and apple cider to the applesauce mix so that you have 3 additions of dry and 2 additions of cider. Pour into a greased mini muffin pan. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes until done. Brush with melted butter. Mix together cinnamon and sugar and toss the buttered mini muffins in the sugar.