C is for cookie…

That’s good enough for me!  In fact, these were fabulous!

Two Words of Warning:
1. Make these near a sink.  I’m sure you know this, but ice cream melts.  I rinsed my hands off approximately 947 times.  (Have I ever told you that I just might exaggerate slightly?)
2.  Hide your pets.  The recipe involves mini chocolate chips and if you’re anything like me they will be all over your kitchen floor.  Kyra pounced on them like a jungle cat.  Seriously, there was no way I could stop her.

Last week I bought a gallon of ice cream as an addition to the strawberry sauce I was taking to my sister’s birthday party.  There were 6 of us and somehow my brain computed that a gallon of ice cream was necessary for that crowd.  Obviously I had a boat load of leftovers.  Hubby doesn’t love ice cream (I’m convinced he’s some sort of mutant.), but I could eat it every single day.  Probably every hour of every single day…  The devil must have invented ice cream, don’t you think?  I mean, can you think of anything more tempting than a darn-near full gallon of ice cream staring back at you?  Yeah, me either.  I had to get it out of my house.  The opportunity presented itself in the form of a work lunch potluck.  “I call dessert!”  Time for Mini Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches from Delish!

Ice Cream not included due to melt factor

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
Leftovers from buying far too much vanilla ice cream (The recipe says 1 pint…I have no idea how much I actually used)

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350° F.
2.  Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.  Truth be told, I have no idea why this is necessary…I just listened.
3.  Read the directions wrong and add the granulated sugar to this bowl as well.  Yell out “Oh, crap!” and try to scoop out as much white sugar out from the white flour mixture as you can.  Fail miserably and move on.
4.  Re-read the directions (correctly this time) and add both sugars and the butter to a separate bowl.  Beat together.  Add sour cream, egg, and vanilla and beat until smooth.
5.  Turn the mixer on low and gradually add in the flour mixture.  Mix in 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips. (The original recipe calls for 1 cup into the dough.  I usually reduce the amount of chocolate in cookies because I find it to overpowering otherwise.)
6.  Drop chunks of dough (about 1 TBSP) onto a cookie sheet and bake until golden. (About 10-12 minutes)  Move cookies to a cooling rack and cool completely.
7.  Here’s where I stopped listening again.  The recipe calls for softened ice cream…lies, I tell ya!  First of all I’m far too impatient for that, and second if you START with soft ice cream you will have a ginormous soupy mess by the time you get all the sandwiches made.  I used the ice cream right out of the freezer.  I used two large spoons (Are they called tablespoons?  That feels weird…) to form a flat looking ball on top of one cookie.  Then I just smooshed another cookie on top of it and rolled them/pressed mini chocolate chips into the exposed ice cream.  Place on a wax-lined cookie sheet and freeze for 2 hours.

The not-so-mini ice cream sandwiches

Verdict:
Everyone at work loved them, but I still had leftovers (I work in a small building) so I took them over to my in-laws during their pool party.  They disappeared in seconds and I got rave reviews.  Really, they aren’t very difficult to make and these cookies are A.MAZ.ING!  I’m storing this recipe away and will definitely make these cookies minus the ice cream as well.  They were so soft!  This is a 5 star recipe for sure!

I’m linked up over at Simply Sweet Home.  Check me out and say hi to some other loverly bloggers!

 

Happy 4th!

Hello Blog World!  I hope you all had a fabulous day off of work…er…Independance Day.  I used this patriotic holiday as an excuse to make some adorable desserts – Red, White, and Blue sugar cookies and cupcakes!

I divided each of the batters into 3 sections.  I kept one white and used Wilton dye  to turn the other sections red and blue.  The colors didn’t quite have the oomph I was hoping for, but they worked!  For the cookies I took a little batter from each color and formed them into a ball.  I placed the ball on the cookie sheet and then smooshed it with the sugared bottom of a glass.  I’m not including the actual sugar cookie recipe because I didn’t really love it.  I would assume you could follow the above steps for any recipe you’d choose.

The cupcakes turned into a complete guessing game and I ended up overfilling the pans a little bit.  It wasn’t a big deal, but we had some rather large cupcakes.   I decided to put the filling into the liners as blue, red, and then white.  I baked them (yep…cake mix), frosted them (with canned frosting…sometimes I’m just too lazy for the extra steps), and topped them with red and blue sprinkles.  Yay Festive!  Coordinating with the holiday or event makes me all warm and fuzzy inside!

 

Slackers R Us

If at some point in this crazy string of days we call “life” I would decide to open a store, there’s a very good possibility I would name it “Slackers R Us”.  Actually, that’s a really good reason for me to NOT open a store…  The thing is, I am the Queen Bee of procrastination and you just cannot properly procrastinate without first mastering the art of slacking.  (Plus, Slackers R Us has a much better ring to it than Procrastinators R Us…)  I’ve done a lot that I could blog about the last couple of weeks, but I have neglected to sit my tooshie down to actually blog about it.  I am here to apologize to all 5 ½ of you that read said blog.  My tooshie is firmly planted here until something shiny comes along to distract me once again. 

PS – I’m cheating on this blog.  It’s 3 blogs in one so that I can catch you up to speed all at once.  Yeah, yeah…Cheater, cheater pumpkin eater.  I can’t help it.  At least I have a theme, right?  Cakes.  It’s been quite the eventful couple of weeks – Confirmation Party, Graduation Party, and a Birthday Party!  Here’s a little synopsis of each of my cake adventures.  And we’re off!

 Round 1: Confirmation Party
My sister was confirmed this year and my mother put me in charge of making her cake, (gulp!) and I needed to make two of them to have enough for all the people coming (double gulp!).  I did a bunch of research on both decorating ideas and working with fondant, and came up with a plan. (Remember the F word post I did way back when?  Yeah, that’s how long ago I made her cake…whoopsie daisies!)  I was going to make a round layer cake (red velvet) and a cross cake (yellow).  And heck yes, they came from a box…

With all of my research I learned that frosting a cake doesn’t have to be as hard as I had been making it.  It really IS possible to frost a cake without having a million little crumbs showing through.  One little thing that will change your life forever:  Freeze.The.Cake.  I’m not joking.  Holy easy cake frosting, batman!  The party was on Saturday so I baked the cakes on Wednesday and froze them until Friday when I decorated them.  I also added a crumb coat layer of frosting before doing the topcoat.  The crumb coat is literally just a thinned down layer of frosting that you allow to harden a bit.  I used a bit of milk to thin it down, frosted the cake, and set it in the fridge to crust up.  Yeah, that sounds disgusting but it’s what the “pros” called it.  After that I was able to frost the cake without any crumbs!  I added some flowers and lettering and Voila! – Cake #1

Cake #2 was being covered with fondant.  In order for the fondant to adhere to the cake, it also needs a layer of frosting.  (Can we say sugar coma!?)  I took the frozen cake and gave it a crumb coat.  It then needed to thaw completely so it wouldn’t make the fondant sweat.  Speaking of fondant… That was rather…frustrating, at first.  I needed to roll out a chunk that would be big enough to cover my cake, but my counter space isn’t very plentiful and I kept ripping the fondant when I would pick it up to place on the cake.  I learned 2 things from this experience:  Number one – ask your husband for help BEFORE you haphazardly pick up a huge chunk of fondant and then have to stand there frantically screaming for his help because you didn’t think it through and now have nowhere to go.   Fact – The fondant will fall apart before he casually walks into the kitchen and looks at you like a nutcase.  Number two – if you use a rolling-pin and sort of roll the fondant on to it, you can use that to unroll the fondant right over the cake thus making your life a million times easier.  You have to be smarter than the fondant, Erica… 

I did eventually get the cake covered in fondant.  Then I was able to make the lovely bow that YouTube taught me how to make.  Really not very difficult, and it is simply gorgeous!  I jazzed up the ribbon tails with my fondant roller and embossing ring.  The way this cake turned out made me über thrilled, but what really matter was that my sister loved it!

Round 2: Graduation Party
Super Duper cheating here.  I didn’t bake this cake OR frost it.  Yep, I just showed up and put my pre-made fondant cut-outs on it and wrote on it.  Easiest.job.ever!  This was my cousin’s graduation party and my godmother requested my assistance so I was off on another adventure!  My cousin is a boy (Hi Brock! ) so we wanted to stay away from pinks/purples and flowers.  Stars and Dots seemed like a fun and easy solution to me!  I used some of the fondant I had already made and dyed some green and some blue.  I just love the blue/green contrast, don’t you?  We have it EVERYWHERE in our house.  Virtually every room is painted either blue or green.  Our dinner plates?  Blue and green.  Our wedding colors?  Yep… blue and green.  Hmm…temporary tangent here.  This is just screaming for a google search on what these colors mean to us. *Goes to search google*  So, green is my favorite color and blue is my husband’s.  If you know us, after reading this you will notice the distant sound of the hammer striking the nail dead center.  Dan is seriously the most passive individual I have ever met.  He doesn’t understand why I care at all what other people think, but there I am freaking out about it as he shakes his head.  How interesting!  This has absolutely NOTHING to do with this cake, but I get sidetracked easily. Ohhh.emm.gee! Colors were just my something shiny!  I honestly thought I could make it through this post without a massive tangent.  Oh well, at least I warned you…

ANYWAYS…  I made blue and green fondant and I cut out stars and circles with cookie cutters and let them dry on the counter for a few days.  I also rolled some snakes out of green and blue and twisted them together to form his graduation year.  That looked pretty banging!  (Hmm…that’s not really a word people use anymore, is it?)

Round 3: Mom’s 50^th Birthday
There was a little banana peel on the road to Mom’s cake.  It goes by the name “chocolate ganache.”  The ganache was super delish and gave the cake a fun shine, but it was not one of my finer moments to combine that with a big, heavy, fondant bow.  The ganache doesn’t have the stick power that regular frosting has, so my gift bow slowly slid its way apart.  It was kind of a lot of work to make that bow, so it was a little disappointing that it didn’t turn out quite as I planned.  Thankfully the cake still tasted delicious!  I made a red velvet cake (thank you, Betty Crocker!), a cream cheese filling, and then topped it all with the ganache.  I’m glad that I decided to go the ganache route, because more frosting would have made the cake far too rich. 

Since I made this cake forever ago I no longer remember what recipe I used for the cream cheese filling, so I’m going to skip that part in my description.  Just imagine me doing an amazing job of it.   The ganache was really easy.  Heat cream, pour over chocolate chips, stir.  After that hard labor you just sit and wait for it to cool down and give it a stir every once in a while.  Seriously, that’s it.  I put the cake on a Tupperware lid for a bit more support and then put the cake on a cooling rack.  Under the cooling rack I had a cookie sheet covered with wax paper.  I took the cooled ganache and poured it on the cake, starting in the center and gradually circled further outwards.  The cake looked fairly decent, but not amazing.  I put it in the fridge to cool and then poured another layer.  Layer two was fabulous!

Here’s the part where I should explain to you fine folks how I made a fondant gift bow, instead I’m going to take a rain check.  I’ll try it again sometime and when I actually succeed I promise to fill you in. 

Just don’t hold your breath waiting for me…

The F Word…

Fondant.

What!?  Of course I didn’t mean THAT F word.  Though, I really thought that word would escape my mouth about 100 times while making homemade fondant, but it didn’t!  Okay, I probably said it.  Afterall I was making fondant for over an hour…that’s quite the stretch of curse-free time.  But, without lying, I can tell you the F bomb was not delivered due to the pain-in-the-arseness of Rolled Marshmallow Fondant.  Once again, Erica stumbled upon a recipe that was actually easier than anticipated.  After accomplishing the first batch sans troubles I actually made a second batch.  Both batches were made and cleaned up after in an hour and a half! 

Ingredients: (The directions really recommend name brand products) 
1 package (16 ounces) white mini marshmallows
2-5 tablespoons water
2 pounds (about 8 cups) sifted confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

 Directions:
1.  Place marshmallows and 2 TBSP water in microwave safe bowl.  Microwave for 30 seconds.  Stir.  Microwave for another 30 seconds and stir again.  Repeat the process until all the marshmallows are melted. (It took my marshmallows 2.5 minutes to melt.)
2.  Put about 3/4 of your powdered sugar on top of the melted mallows.  Fold in the sugar.
3.  Scoop out your shortening and put it in a separate dish.  You’ll be reaching into this dish throughout the course of your fondant kneading. (Your measurement here doesn’t need to be exact.)
4.  Cover your kneading surface and your hands in shortening.  Really, really cover them.  Load those babies up!
5.  Dump the contents of your bowl onto your greased surface.  Knead away and slowly add in the remaining powdered sugar.  
Warning: Don’t dump a bunch of powdered sugar on top and haphazardly press down on it.  You will, in fact, create a powdered sugar volcano in your very own kitchen.  Disastrous results immediately follow.

Powdered Sugar Explosion!

 Honestly, that’s really it.  Re-grease your hands and surface as you knead.  If the fondant is too dry and tearing, add small amounts of water until you reach the correct consistency.  I added about 1.5 more TBSP of water as I kneaded.  Oh, and you’re going to be kneading for like 10 minutes.  So make sure to crank some tunes before you get all greased up.

I did dye half a batch of fondant once it was all kneaded and ready to go.  I just used Wilton’s dyes and added a small amount with a toothpick and kneaded it in well.  I went with purple!

One batch of fondant

The directions say it is best to let your fondant sit overnight.  Double wrap it and store it in the fridge.  It’ll keep that way for a few weeks.  You know you want to try it.  Bust out your Crisco and get cracking! 

Word of Warning:  Making this F word turned out to be a literal pain in another f word…finger.  Between the fondant making and yard work I did last week I seem to have strained my thumb.  Try not to knead the fondant like a crazy person, and maybe you’ll be okay.

 

I linked up at It’s a Keeper!

Smells like roses…

Roses and Daisies, that is!  Do you remember my first post?  I blogged about my first foray into cake decorating.  I started “simple” with drop flowers and leaves and I was surprised at how well it went.  I should have learned something from that experience, but in true Erica form I did not.  I was quite certain that making Royal Icing Daisies would be a walk in the park and learning to make roses would be the death of me - I.was.wrong.

I did some research (Youtube rocks, by the way!), and started this adventure with the daisies… since they looked simple.  Daisies did NOT start off well.  I eventually realized that my Royal Frosting wasn’t stiff enough, so I put it back in the bowl and beat it so more.  (That helped tons once I reached the roses.   PS – When the directions say to beat for 8 – 10 minutes…beat for 8 – 10 minutes.)  My main issue, though, was that I couldn’t figure out the spacing of the petals.  They kept turning out lopsided and awful looking.  I took a break from the daisies, made some roses, re-watched the youtube daisy video and tried again. 
Use a rose tip (I started out with #104 but switched to #102 later on.) with the larger end towards the top and directly above the wax paper.  The trick with the spacing is to first make four petals in the shape of a cross and then go back and put one petal in each corner.  Then you can fill the center in with a round tip and a different color.  Voila!

 

Roses look incredibly difficult, don’t they?  I’m hear to tell you that not only can Youtube teach you anything, but also…roses aren’t that hard to make!  Mine don’t look nearly as pretty as the ones the professionals make, but you can still tell they’re supposed to be roses…or at least some sort of flower or naturey-thing.  Once again, you use a rose tip (uh…duh, right?).  I used #104.  You start with a flower nail and a piece of wax paper affixed to it with a dab of frosting.  You’ll squeeze a mound of frosting in the middle and pipe petals around that.  Go ahead and click on that link because I will never be able to explain it as well as she does.

 

 

 

Gimme S’more of That!

This past weekend I had a party to go to.  Naturally, I decided to make a dessert.  I thought it would be a great time to try out individual mini desserts.  In my quest I stumbled upon these marvelous little gems: Caramel S’more Cups from Betty Crocker.  Personally I would change their name to “Little Cup of Heaven”.  Who doesn’t love chocolate chip cookies and caramel?  Throw some marshmallows and a little more chocolate on top and you’ve got yourself a winner!

These desserts were definitely easy to make, and I highly suggest that all of you lovely people give them a try.  My only word of caution is their calorie content.  One little cup is a whopping 132 calories.  I could easily scarf down 3 of them without even thinking.  As a comparison 396 calories is a bit more than a McDouble from McDonalds.  Add that to the list of things we never wanted to know, eh?

Caramel S’more Cups:

Ingredients:
1 pouch Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 egg
37 Rolos
111 mini marshmallows (about 1 cup)
1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees and spray mini muffin cups with cooking spray.
2.  Make cookie dough as directed on package.  Shape dough into 37 balls about 1 inch.  (The original directions call for 36 balls but, for the life of me, I can never actually make the amount the recipe calls for.)  Place one ball in each muffin cup.
3. Bake 8 minutes (until edges begin to brown).  Remove from oven and firmly place one Rolo into each cookie.  Top each cookie with three marshmallows and place back in the oven for 2 – 4 minutes (until mallows puff).
4.  Once cookies are cooled, drizzle with melted semi sweet chocolate.  Serve!

My mom told me I could never make these again… Having these around is just far too dangerous. 

Oh…and don’t worry, there are plenty more than 37 Rolos in a regular sized bag.  Feel free to eat one (or six…) as you’re unwrapping them.

 

I linked up at It’s a Keeper!