I Baked, I Conquered...I Cheated...

Lately, I’ve been trying to bake a little more. This is partially due to the fact that the stuff I want to eat isn’t easily accessible in stores near me. However, it’s also because I simply know I’m not particularly good at baking and want to be a more well-rounded cook.

While I lack the patience to ever be a very good baker, I will admit it’s rather fun to bake something, pipe frosting onto it, decorate it and give it to people to eat. This is particularly why I like making cupcakes.

When it comes to cupcakes, I have a confession: I’m a dirty rotten cheater. Sure, I can make the cakes from scratch but, well, I’m a bit lazy. Also, due to the fact that I’m not the most precise baker, my cakes never quite taste right or rise right. So, I use a box of cake mix. When I make the mix, I do often embellish as was the case on Saturday with my peppermint chocolate cupcakes. I added peppermint extract and mini chocolate chips to my devil’s food cake box mix.

Now, I do make the buttercream icing myself. It’s easy and tastes fantastic. Oh, fine, it’s terrible for you because it’s pretty much just butter and sugar but I wager it’s no worse than those cans of frosting that are made primarily from Crisco and corn syrup.

Recently, I’ve had a couple of people ask me for recipes. Thus, I decided to try something new and paste them on my blog. So, I’ve put my whoopee-pie recipe below. The filling is my own recipe based on my buttercream frosting. The Candy Cane Kisses do make it rather rich but if you’ve got a sweet tooth, you probably won’t mind.

They’re super easy and quite fun to make. Also, people think they’re pretty nifty if you take them to a party. When people are fighting over the last one and someone steals it to take home, you know you’ve got a hit on your hands:

Whoopie Pies

CAKES
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg

CREAM FILLING INGREDIENTS

• 2 egg whites , beaten
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 cups powdered sugar (10x)
• 1 cup shortening
• 12-14 Hershey Candy Cane Kisses


Instructions for the Cakes
• Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a bowl until combined. Stir together buttermilk and vanilla in a small bowl.
• Beat together butter and brown sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a handheld, then add egg, beating until combined well. Reduce speed to low and alternately mix in flour mixture and buttermilk in batches, beginning and ending with flour, scraping down side of bowl occasionally, and mixing until smooth.
• Spoon 1/4-cup mounds of batter about 2 inches apart onto 2 buttered large baking sheets. Bake in upper and lower thirds of oven, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until tops are puffed and cakes spring back when touched, 11 to 13 minutes. Transfer with a metal spatula to a rack to cool completely.

Instructions for the Filling

• Mix together egg whites,vanilla, milk and 2 cups of the powdered sugar. Beat in the butter and the remaining sugar. Chop, grind or mince the Candy Cane Kisses until they're in small pieces and add to the sugar/butter mix and stir/blend until smooth.
• When cookies have cooled, spread a dab of cream filling on flat side of cookie and top with another cookie to form a pie. Voila!

Happy Friday!

Cookies make Awkward Social Gatherings Better!

At long last, it's Friday. As far as weeks go, this hasn't seemed as long as other weeks. The time went much more quickly than I anticipated. I'm very glad of that fact. There have been times when I have needed to hide sharp objects from myself because the week has been so long and so tedious.

One of the reasons it went by so far may be due to the fact we had one of our Awkward Social Events yesterday at work. Oh, excuse me, I mean...company lunches. It was originally supposed to be a barbecue but then the managers decided to order out from a barbecue place, thus removing the need for the grill we store in the office's garage. Then when the weather proved to be grey, damp and rather chilly, we moved it into the conference room. So...not so much a barbecue as an inside lunch.

Naturally, silly me, I figured when I found out it was going to be catered, I thought it meant it wouldn't be potluck. Silly Captain Monkeypants. We got the meat bought in but we all signed up for sides and dessert.

Normally, I bring in a savory side dish since I prefer the idea of cooking to baking. I think it's because I'm an impatient creature. Baking requires those exact measurements, proper stirring technique, timing and a really good oven. I lack all those things. While I try to measure exactly, if there are more than 5 ingredients to my baking recipe, chances are I'll probably screw it up somewhere. So, in the past, I've brought in Buffalo Chicken Dip, Guacamole, Salsa Verde and Sausage rolls. All of these things require chopping and prepping but, in the end, can be made simply and easily and usually turn out well.

This time, I decided to be bold. I'd watched an episode of Everyday Italian on the Food Network in which the hostess, Giada De Laurentis, made this cookies called "Chocolate Ganache Cookies." They used store-bought sugar cookie dough, dark chocolate, cream and sugar and that was it. So, when we had to sign up for dishes for this past Awkward Social Gathering, I decided to sign up for dessert. I was the second person to sign up on the list and when I did so, the other person was bringing in something savory.

Well, when it came to cookie-baking time, I once again came to the realization that Giada De Laurentis is magical. I mean, the woman NEVER gets messy. I don't know if they cut her show so that she can wash her hands between each step of cooking/baking but she never gets messy fingers, never smears chocolate on herself and never squirts herself in the eye with a lemon. I find that amazing and slightly irritating. When I'd watched her make the chocolate ganache cookies with her niece on the show, they managed to do it it moments, cheerfully taking a melted chocolate/cream mixture, rolling it into neat little balls and wrapping the sugar cookie 'logs' around it.

Well, I'm Captain Monkeypants, not Giada. It took me about 30 minutes to roll out the 'logs' of sugar cookie. That chocolate mixture of melted dark chocolate and heavy cream got in my hair, under my nails and all over my kitchen. I tried to roll the balls the way I'd seen Giada do it and I ended up with brown smeared hands and had to wash them between each ball.

All in all, the 'quick cookie recipe' took me approximately 2 hours to complete and that's not including the time it took to cool down the ganache in the fridge.

I will say that the cookies were delicious. I know because I ate several when they were warm from the oven. I don't even care for cookies that much usually but these were rather tasty and delicious.

When I took them in to the "Barbecue", it turns out that it was more like "dessert with a side of meat." Normally, we have maybe two or three desserts. Yesterday, there were no less than seven. My cookies were ignored in favour of Chocolate Eclair Cake, Pumpkin Spiced Muffins and Hershey Pie. Needless to say, I was terribly thrilled. I was pleased that the people who did try my cookies ended up eating about three of them because they enjoyed them. I just don't like being out-desserted by Hershey's Pie and Pumpkin Spice Muffins. Especially since I signed up first.

Ah well, some potlucks are like that. It is nice to bake when the weather's chilly outside and the smell of warm chocolate fills the air as the cookies bake. I might have to try it again. This time, I'll try to be more Giada-like and not paint the kitchen with chocolate. What I am finding is that now I actually have a kitchen with space for cooling racks and baking sheets, it is a little easier to bake without fearing disaster. Of course, this does mean more surfaces to mess up but it's a trade off, right.

As for the Awkward Social Event....it wasn't quite so awkward. Being a software company with a large amount of geeky males, we apparently have two flat screen TV's and two video game systems. Thus, we spent about two hours listening to people caterwaling on the "Rock Band" game and beating the crap out of each other on boxing on the Wii. It was more fun that working although given the ratio of video game controllers to employee, there was a lot of standing around watching people play. I have always thought there's little more boring than watching other people play video games when all you really want to do is rip the controller out of their hands and have a go but it did beat sitting at my desk contemplating my next project as I'd normally be doing. All in all, it was definitely one of the better Social Events we've had in a while. Even if it was still a little awkward.

Still, the cookies helped.

Happy Friday. Have a great weekend!

In the Kitchen with Captain Monkeypants, The Sequel

It's a week until Christmas, can you believe that? I'm having a hard time realizing it, actually. I've been shopping for a while- I start looking for gifts early so that I'm not pinched for funds or time by the holiday. Of course, this doesn't mean I don't still have last-minute stuff to do. I do a lot of online shopping. Unfortunately, this can be a bit of a nuisance. I'm still waiting for two gifts to arrive. Even though there's a week until Christmas, I have to put one of those missing gifts in a box to ship to California. I was hoping to do that this week. Actually, I HAVE to do that this week, missing gift or not. I'm heading to my parents for the whole of next week and this means I won't be able to get my mail while I'm gone.

Still, aside from that, the holidays are sliding nicely into place. Last night was the Great Fudge Making Event of 2008. I cheated- my friend over at RadLincCrafts forwarded me a recipe for easy fudge because she's awesome. It's a website by engineers with really easy ways of baking and cooking. You can look at it here. Rather than have to do scary stuff with sugar crystalization and all that, I just melted chocolate chips, bunged some condensed milk and butter in there and melted it all. Voila, fudge! It looks like fudge. It even tastes like fudge. I put some peppermint extract in there along with some creme de menthe chocolate chips, sprinkled it with crushed peppermints and, well, it sort of looks like I knew what I was doing. I even used a pizza cutter to score the fudge. I even know what scoring the fudge is. Although when I put it like that, it feels like I should add "That's what she said" to the end of that sentence.

However, I now have something that looks like fudge in my fridge. It tasted pretty decent. I'm shocked. I also even baked sausage rolls. These are a British savory snack that are remarkably easy to make and are always a hit at parties. They consist of...sausage meat and pastry. They're quite tasty, if I do say so myself. My only calamity there was realizing I lacked a rolling pin. Naturally, this realization couldn't occur when, you know, I could do something about it. Also, given our recent ice-storm, running out to Walmart isn't as easy as normal. So I improvised. I used a bottle of wine.

Surprisingly enough, the wine bottle made a great rolling pin. I was very careful not to relive the Great Wine Disaster of 2008. I made sausage rolls. It was nifty. I even had a couple because, well, frankly, it is, as my grandmother used to say, "cook's privilege."

I had a bit of leftover puff pastry so I decided to get creative. Why waste good pastry? So I had a bit of ham in the fridge and I used that in place of sausage meat. I put a bit of mustard between the ham and the pastry and you know what? It tasted like one of those fancy hor d'ourves thingies you get at parties. HA HA! Captain Monkeypants baked!

If it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn, I'm not. Trust me. The fact that I managed to emerge from baking in my kitchen with no fire, no burnings and a complete set of edible goods is a little frightening, actually. I didn't break anything. I even got to use my meat cleaver to cut the sausage rolls. It's a bit excessive but I imagined I was Dexter and it was sort of fun.

Not that I have Dexter fantasies because that would just be weird.

However, this morning, contrary to normal happenings, the sausage rolls still look like sausage rolls and the fudge is still looking like fudge.

Now that the scary Cookie Exchange is taken care of, I can now look forward to Christmas. With a week to go, I have to squeeze in a lot of traditions. I still have to watch "Love Actually." I still need to have a mince pie. I need to finish shopping. I need to just enjoy the fact that it's Christmas and sit by the glow of my tree and take it all in. It's the small things that make me love this season most, the warmth, the lights, the snow, the food, the family and the friends.

I love Christmas.

Happy Thursday

The Great Cookie Exchange of 2008

So, today is one of those blogging days in which I have no intended topic nor do I have any clue what I'm going to blog about. Which means I probably won't have much of a point. For which I apologize.

I'm not feeling as gloomy today as I did yesterday which is definitely better, at least. My stray from yesterday found me again. He actually knocked on my door and found me. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't mind giving someone a ride but I don't like being hunted down. I also suspect he might be the owner of the alarm clock that goes off for hours and beeps. I can hear it through the floor. In every room. The reason I suspect this is that he's a student and he informed me he'd just got home 20 minutes ago from working all night on a project. I wasn't going to ask about his all-night project because, well, he's a student and there's such a thing as too much information. However, he told me it was a finals project though and he had been out at least twice this week and got in 20 minutes before he had to leave for school again. The incessantly beeping alarm clock finally stops about 20 minutes before I walk out the door, as though someone got home and realized he forgot to shut off his alarm. Yes, I'm very good at putting two and two together. It's as far as I got in maths and still managed to get an "A". If I'm right in my suspicions, that alarm clock will not be bothering me much longer because I will be Having Words with my stray. I'm a very wordy person as people like to inform me. It never sounds like much a compliment, unfortunately.

In other news, I made a monumental error late last week. I stupidly agreed to be part of a cookie exchange. Yes, Captain Monkeypants decided to get in the community spirit and participate in a festive event. Captain Monkeypants has since realized it was not one of her brighter moments in life. It seemed like such a nice idea: People bake a dozen cookies to give to everyone participating along with the recipe. In exchange, you get a dozen cookies back. Like a chain letter. With cookies. Nice, huh? What a nice idea, you give, you take, it's all good.

Except that it's not. It's not good at all. I thought they'd be about five of us participating. Sixty cookies is a lot but it's manageable. (See, look, my math skills are rearing their head again! Who knew?!). I could bake sixty cookies. Then, after I'd foolishly agreed to bake my cookies, I discover that there are ten people participating, not including me. That's ten dozen cookies. That's 120 cookies.

Now, if you're a baker or, at least, you like to bake, I'm sure you're thinking: "That's not that many! It's doable."

No. It's not. Trust me. Did I mention that I don't bake?I'm of the opinion that you're either good at baking or good at cooking. You might be able to do both but most people are stronger in one area than the other. Me? I'm not a baker. I'm a cook. I make soup. I can make good cabbage with juniper berries. I even make good potato pancakes. But that's not baking. When I try to bake, I end up with nasty little items that rarely resemble that which it should. My chocolate chip cookies turn into chocolate chip bullets. My cakes don't rise and, instead, turn into cookies that don't taste right because they were supposed to be CAKE. It's like the baked goods know it's me baking and they laugh in my face by morphing into something completely different. Some people blame their oven. Some people blame their pans. Not me. I blame me. I have no illusions. I'm ok with saying I'm a lousy baker.

The problem is, I think I like to bake. I like to have all those nifty little kitchen-looking things around that are part of baking. I like to put things in bowls. And that's usually when I realize what I'm actually doing and I want to stop but it's too late. That's why I thought the cookie exchange was a good idea. I thought, "Ooh! What a cute tradition! I want to play! I want to play!" And then as it inevitable does, reality set in. I can pinpoint the exact moment when reality hit: It was when someone said I had to bake 120 cookies.

I tried to get out of it yesterday. We were asked to say what type of cookies we were baking. I offered up my secret "Air Cookie" recipe- they're calorie free and taste exactly how you want a cookie to taste. They make no mess. Oh, and they're invisible. Apparently, being sarcastic also does not help you get out of a cookie exchange. I'm still in.

So now, I have to bake 120 cookies. I'm terrified. I did think of buying cake mix and doing something with it until I realized that cake mix is also not a success in my hands. No amount of frosting or icing can turn it into a cake; instead, it looks like a lopsided ski-slope. I'm thinking of making fudge. Yes, it involves stirring a lot but then you put it in a pan and you cut it and then you have fudge. 120 pieces of fudge is MUCH easier than cookies. Just because I actually don't like fudge doesn't mean I can't make it. Ok, so it's not a cookie but if I call it Cookie Fudge, then that counts. No one said it actually had to be cookies.

I'm going to find a loophole. I just need time. I have to keep reminding myself of Douglas Adam's famous words: "DON'T PANIC!". But it's 120 cookies. There's no running away from that. Eeek, gads. What have I done?

Happy Wednesday