Anyways, about the recipe, these are really good! Nice, light and fluffy vanilla cupcakes with creamy vanilla frosting. I made them mini because they were going into my mom's office and needed to last a while, but you can just as easily make them regular-sized as well.
The bestest thing ever happened yesterday. My house got a new oven installed. It's awesome. Get this, it actually bakes my cupcakes within the baking time suggested, and evenly! Our old oven never got up to the right temperature and baked really unevenly, the convection option didn't work, and it lost heat really easily and wouldn't readjust after losing heat, so we got a new one. I even found out after playing around with the different functions that it has a setting for proofing dough, so when you want to proof your bread dough in the winter when your kitchen is too cold and you don't want to kill the yeast in a 200 degree F oven, you can set the oven to 100 degrees F and proof it in there! I am just so excited! I used the oven yesterday for chocolate chip cookies that went to work with my mom, and naturally she came back with an empty tin. Today I'm making her cupcakes to bring into work, isn't that awesome! I even have this cool cupcake carrier to package them in! It's actually just okay, because it's dropped a cake before and it's huge and awkward to carry, but it works better than a regular plastic container that will squish my frosting.
Anyways, about the recipe, these are really good! Nice, light and fluffy vanilla cupcakes with creamy vanilla frosting. I made them mini because they were going into my mom's office and needed to last a while, but you can just as easily make them regular-sized as well.
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You've all heard me rave about Biscoff spread before, so now it's time to rave about Biscoff cookies. These cookies are mainly sold in Europe, although if you're lucky you may be able to find them around here, too. Other than being sold in supermarkets and candy stores, these cookies are also oftentimes served with coffee or tea. When I went to France, we went to go get coffee at a corner coffee shop, and my friends, who ordered espresso, were served a small packet of two Biscoff cookies to eat with their coffee. This is actually one of the main reasons I made them. My sister is coming home for her birthday this weekend (expect to see pictures of a birthday cake coming up soon), and our plan is to use all these beautiful new teacups we were given by our grandmother's best friend to have a tea party. I thought it sounded adorable, although I'll probably have hot chocolate or something because I don't like tea. Anyways, I made these for our expected tea party because they're a nice little sweet to have with coffee and tea. Plus, if you know what a Biscoff cookie is or have ever tried one, I was very impressed by how dead-on this recipe got the taste of them. Took me back to France again!
I think I've officially gotten to the place in my baking where I've made pretty much all of the basic recipes in all of the basic categories, and now I'm getting a bit more funky with it. I've shared recipes with all of you for chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, gingersnaps, snickerdoodles, oatmeal raisin, etc. Then there's brownies, blondies, the basic chocolate, vanilla, carrot, and red velvet cake, and apple pie and crisp. So, now it's a matter of combining some of those recipes into one mash-up recipe, or using a different flavor in one of my basic recipes to create a whole new product. So, in comes the white chocolate chip molasses cookies. They are a bit like gingersnaps with more flour and white chocolate chips. That's a good summary of these cookies. Therefore, they are not at all snappy, they are actually quite soft. Also, you must chill the dough, so beware. Enjoy the recipe, and look forward to all new types of unique and out-there recipes!
Today was another day where I just felt like baking. Plus, once I realized the cookie sheets I had been using after all these years were also jelly roll pans, I went crazy. I thought that was so cool! So, I decided to make a jelly roll. They just look so cool, so why not?
This jelly roll was quite a success for a first-timer, I'd say. There were a couple cracks in the cake, but I made up for that with frosting and powdered sugar on top. Also, there were quite a few crumbs when spreading the frosting and when rolling the cake, which made my cross-section photos look a little messy, but still awesome. Concerning the taste, it was amazing. Very rich, as my mom said. I lowered the amount of butter for the recipe I have below. Also, just know that I didn't actually like the taste of the frosting by itself after I made it (because you have to taste test frosting, right?), but once I tried the cake with the frosting inside, they paired really well together and I loved it!. It also just looks so cool, am I right? I'm right. So, go try this! You may fail on your first try, jelly rolls are not easy, but once you get it correct it is really rewarding. I didn't fail, but I think I can do better next time. It's all about practice, so give it a go! It sure is fun to make! I'm making this for my mom's dinner tonight. She's apparently having a friend over that she met in college and she told her all about my baking, so she was excited to taste some, so of course I would bake for her. I saw this online and instantly put it onto my "Recipes to Try" list, because it is so cool. First of all, it is a one layer chocolate torte, which is different from the two-layer buttercream-frosted cakes I usually make, and I like making something different. Also, the truffles on the top of the cake are homemade, by you! All you do is scoop bits of the ganache onto parchment paper, chill it, and then form it into balls and roll in cocoa powder, and voila, you have homemade truffles to decorate an already pretty cake! So go put this on your recipes to try list, if like me you have one (or 5) of them, and try making this!
These cookies were amazing. As I've stated many times before, I love white chocolate, so I guess it would've been pretty hard to make a cookie with white chocolate chips that I don't like. However, these just tasted perfect. A lot of it had to do with the extra two teaspoons of vanilla extract than normal. I even used vanilla bean paste, since I almost always do now and I swear I'm not an advertisement when I say that I think you all should to. Nevertheless, the combination of vanilla extract in the dough with the white chocolate chips worked perfectly.
Fun fact, did you know white chocolate is not chocolate? It's cocoa butter that is oftentimes even dyed white. My boss taught me that (I work at a café so it's not a big surprise). But I still love it, sorry. This is yet another batch of cookies going to be served to the French Club at my high school. I went on a little hunt for some interesting cookie recipes I can try and made a list that I am hoping to get through in the next couple of weeks. My only problem with some of these cookies is that the dough needs refrigeration, which I usually don't like, but this time I planned accordingly and it worked out. So, beware, the dough needs to chill. And it really isn't optional, it NEEDS to chill. Chocolate chocolate cookies like these ones are oftentimes a bit like brownie batter, so if you don't chill them they will come out like brownie crisps. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself, and you will get brownie crisps. Don't worry, I've done it before. Everyone has their fair share of baking fails. Speaking of which, I made a cake for my cousin's 9th birthday yesterday. Beautiful, chocolate cake, all finished and packed up in my handy-dandy cake container. As I walked out the door it fell out of the container and the cake fell splat on the top. Five-second rule, right? Everyone said it was delicious, but not the prettiest of all my cakes, I'll admit. Although, my uncle pointed out, I still have a pretty good record. I've made probably like 50+ cakes before and that was my first fall. Although I have had a bundt cake disaster, but that's a story, and if you've made a bundt cake, you have also probably had a bundt cake disaster, don't try and deny it.
Anyways, to the recipe. These are soooo delicious. They are so addicting it's crazy! Thank god they're leaving my house tomorrow, or else I would gain like 5 pounds this week just from these cookies. They are nice and soft, just like I like them, but not cakey, because I don't like that. Plus, they are loaded with chocolate! What's better? I'll tell you, nothing's better. I made these biscotti for my mom's Italian-themed dinner party, but I actually make them every week at the café I work at, so that can go to show you how good they are. They're super easy and amazingly quick! I call these "Basic Biscotti" because this is the recipe I use every time and then I spice it up by adding different ingredients for a new flavor every week. Some ideas for flavors are:
The biscotti pictured above and below is chocolate chip pecan biscotti. These are all the flavorings I've tried before. However, there are infinite many possibilities, which is one of the reasons I love biscotti so much! I was thinking the other day about maple walnut biscotti. I haven't tried it yet but I would do 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp. of vegetable oil (instead of 3/4 cup), add 2 Tbsp. maple syrup, and do only 3/4 cup sugar, then use walnuts for the nut. They all sound so delicious! Tomorrow is another french club meeting at my school, which if you actually read my little blurbs under each recipe, you know that I am one of the leaders and bake for the members of the club every other Tuesday. They are some lucky people. I'll be honest though, since I always have to make them on a monday night when I have a lot of homework, I usually do something quick and easy like brownies or chocolate chip cookies (all homemade though, don't even mention boxes in front of me or I'll go off on a an extremely heated tangent). However, since I went to Florida last week and haven't posted in a while, I went with something more interesting so I could post it for you all.
And all this landed me at peanut butter stuffed brownies. I've made brownies before with King Arthur Flour mini peanut butter cups on top, and I've made peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, but these brownies beat them all. I'm telling you, these brownies are perfectly fudgy, decadent, wonderful brownies, made even better with a melt-in-your-mouth peanut butter filling. We all know peanut butter and chocolate is a combination made in heaven, but this is the best combination of that combination I've ever tried, if you can follow me. Anyways, all I'm trying to say is go make these now! You probably have all the ingredients in your pantry and even if you don't want to eat them all (which will be hard not to do), then you can make some pretty good friends. Tomorrow is my cousins birthday, so happy birthday Delilah! Naturally, as the baker of the household, I was assigned the cake-making. I had a blast, as you can see. She almost always asks for chocolate, but being myself, I didn't want to be as unoriginal as a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. As yummy as that is, it gets boring year after year. So, since I know she loves raspberries, I made raspberry chocolate layer cake! It is a classic chocolate cake recipe with raspberry jam on each cake layer, then chocolate ganache. You have to refrigerate half the ganache to let it firm up, then the other half you pour over the cake and then freeze the whole cake so that firms up, so that's the main reason it takes so long. Other than that, it's surprisingly easy for such a decadent and impressive-looking cake. My ganache didn't even firm up very well and it still worked fine, so don't fret if it's still runny after an hour in the refrigerator. I then decorated the top with raspberries and powdered sugar, plus a couple mint leaves in the very middle, as shown below. You can cover the whole cake with raspberries if you'd like, but I thought that would be a bit too much, so I liked this design instead. Enjoy!
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AuthorMy name is Katherine and I love, love, love to bake! You can find all my baking adventures on this blog, plus you can follow me on Social Media by clicking below! Archives
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