Test #16 – Mint Chocolate Cupcake

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I had to do something green so mint came to mind.  Of course chocolate goes well with mint so the result is a chocolate cupcake with mint whipped cream frosting.  I added a little juinor mint on top for a little something extra.

Hopefully this combination turns out ok since I’ve never used mint extract before…

Test #15 – Red Velvet Cupcakes

I know I’ve been neglecting my baking but the holidays came and went, work has been crazy, and my wonderful husband has put us on budget watch 2011 (I guess I was making too many trips to Target last year )…  so those are my excuses but I’m back in the saddle with some red velvet cupcakes.

I’ve always wanted to make these since they are so popular and found a recipe that seemed easy enough.  Most people don’t realize that’s it’s just a chocolate cupcake with LOTS of red food dye, so there’s really no magic to it.  A. had fun with the melted chocolate and licking it off the spoon and I think the cream cheese frosting is just enough but not too sweet to bring it all together.  Hope you enjoy!

Test #14 – Salted Caramel Cupcakes

It’s been a while since my last test but I think I came back with a good one today.  I love salted caramels and have been on the lookout for a great cupcake recipe that included these flavors and finally found one.  So A. and I got busy in the kitchen and A. got to wear her new little “cupcake” apron that her Auntie Becky gave her, which she loves!

These cupcakes take a little more work since you need to make caramel to put as filling in the cupcake and also for the frosting but I have to say it was worth the effort.  I did lots of sampling to make sure I got it just right and I think they turned out yummy.    The recipe only made a small batch so I will make more if feedback is good on these.  Hope you enjoy them!

Test #13 – Cherry Garcia Brownies

I saw a recipe for ice cream sundae brownies and thought those would be fun to try.  I used Ben & Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia” ice cream and added in some dried cherries instead of hot fudge like the recipe called for.  That seemed way over the top.  I guess you can use any type of ice cream but Cherry Garcia sounded good to me.  This was a fun Sunday afternoon activity with A. and she loved licking the spoon!

Test #12 – Peanut Butter Jelly Cookies

For lunch today we had cookies for dessert and of course I had to try several of them to see if I could taste something new or be inspired.  I had a peanut butter cookie that was pretty good and an interesting thumbprint cookie with what seemed to be apricot jam in the middle.  Taking those two ideas together I decided to try peanut butter and jelly thumbprint cookies.  For some reason A. is not a huge fan of PB&J sandwiches but maybe I’ll get her to like these cookies.  The cookies looked really good and had great flavor but I think I need to leave them in the oven just a tad longer since they seemed a little too soft and chewy…

Test #11 – Mini Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I still had some pumpkin puree leftover so decided to make cute little Halloween cupcakes.  A. had fun with this one since she got to put candy corn on top of each of the cupcakes and got to sample the candy corn in the process.

Test #10 – Mini Pumpkin Pies

October means Halloween and that means pumpkins.   I’ve never made anything with pumpkin before so searched the Web for different cookie and pie recipes.  I came across Pumpkin Pie Bites off the Bakerella blog and got inspired by the really cute jack o lantern faces.

Instead of using canned pumpkin I tried to make my own puree using a Kabocha squash, which is supposedly sweeter than pumpkin.  I baked it in a 400 degree oven for over an hour, scraped it out of the shell, and pureed it in the blender.  I used the same size cookie cutter that Bakerella recommended but next time I’ll have to use something smaller since there seemed to be way too much dough.   I also forgot the egg wash on the tops of the crusts which probably is important.

When I was done they sort of looked like what they were supposed to.  The Kabocha ended up lighter in color and the lack of eggwash on the crust didn’t help so my mini pies ended up a little washed out (no pun intended).   At the end of the day, I really liked the pie filling but this was not my best effort due to the overpowering crust.  Maybe I’ll have better luck with regular pumpk

 

Test #9 – Salted Caramel Bombs

I’ve been thinking about salted caramels for a while and finally got around to testing it out this weekend. I used my base oatmeal chocolate cookie dough, leaving out the chocolate chips, and filled the center with either a square Kraft caramel candy or leftover dulce de leche I had in the fridge. I Added a sprinkle of sea salt on top and voila, salted caramel bombs two ways.

I think both turned out pretty good but the consistency of the cookies is very different — one is stick to your teeth chewy and the other is soft and creamy. Let me know which one you like better and why.

9A – Caramel Candy Bomb

9B – Dulce de Leche Caramel Bomb

Test #8 – S’mores and Rice Krispie Treats

What do you do with half a bag of marshmallows leftover from a camping trip… rice krispie treats!  Since I can’t just use the regular recipe and my earlier attempt at dulce de leche treats failed miserably, I went digging into my pantry to see what else I could add.  The marshmallows were originally used for s’mores on our trip so I decided that I would combine these two ideas together.  This idea is not new based on all the recipes that came up when I searched for it online but what is new, is using little teddy grahams for the graham cracker part (thanks Bryan for the idea).  Teddy grahams are a favorite of A.’s so we definitely had those on hand.  I added in some mini chocolate chips and in less than 10 minutes we had s’mores rice krispie treats.  Note, the chocolate chips melted when I added them so the krispie treats ended up looking as if they were cocoa treats.  These were definitely the easiest and fastest things I’ve ever made but hopefully just as tasty as everything else.

Revised Cherry Bombs

Last time I made these I didn’t have enough to really pass them around so figured I would try  them again.  Personally, I really liked these and can imagine using this form factor with a variety of filling options to include seasonal fruit or other gooey goodness.

“Real” Vanilla Cupcakes

Surprisingly I got some very good feedback on the “healthy” vanilla cupcakes.  I was not a huge fan of them but that could be because I was biased knowing they didn’t have any butter in them.  I decided to make traditional vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting last night and they are definitely more my style.  Plus it was fun making pink frosting and the little mini cupcakes are just too cute!

Test #7 – Vanilla Cupcakes

A.’s birthday is next week and I wanted to bring in homemade cupcakes to her daycare for a little afternoon party.  My goal was to try and make a more healthy version of a cupcake, if that’s possible, by taking out half of the sugar and most of the fat.  I’ve been watching a lot of random cooking shows and happened to catch a part of the show called “Cook Yourself Thin” and they were making vanilla cupcakes with NO butter whatsoever.  This intrigued me because everything I normally bake has to have butter in it…  The “secret” ingredient for the cupcakes was finely grated zucchini (yes, that’s right, zucchini).

Everything looked and smelled great out of the oven.  The frosting recipe did not have any butter in it as well so it ended up with a fluffy marshmallow consistency.  I also tried for the first time using a ziploc bag to pipe the frosting on and it worked beautifully.  Just scrape the frosting into a bag, cut a corner off, and you’ve got some pretty swirls for the top.  I added some colorful sprinkles since A. likes those and we had what looked like a normal, pretty cupcake.  I can’t wait to hear what my beta tasters think of this healthy version…

Revised Dulce de Leche Brownies

Our good friend Derek is having a movie premiere for his film Go West Happy Cow on Sat night and requested some brownies to share at intermission.  There will likely be over 100 people and I’ve never baked for this many people in my life. While I am always happy to help out Derek, I’m also a little nervous about premiering my brownies for such a large crowd.  So before the big night I wanted to do another test run on this recipe to see if it’s still yummy.

I got some advice from an expert dulce de leche maker (thanks Bea and your mom!) and decided to try the boil in the can method.  I put the condensed milk cans in a pot of boiling water for 2 hours and it turned out awesome.  You do have to pay more attention with this method to ensure that the cans are always covered completely by water but it was worth the extra effort and time.  The sauce was creamy, gooey, and really tasty.  With my new batch of dulce de leche on hand I whipped up the brownies and made sure to add more dulce de leche based on some comments from the first test.  I also waited until the very end to sprinkle some sea salt on top to see if that would make a difference.

Hopefully everyone enjoys this new batch and continues to give good feedback since I’ve got a lot of brownies to make before Sat night!

Test #6 – Dulce de Leche Brownies

 

I really needed some marshmallows but didn’t feel like going to the store so after taking inventory on what was in my pantry decided that I had just enough ingredients to make brownies with the remaining dulce de leche from Test #5.  I don’t make brownies very often and when I have, it’s been been from a box mix.  Making brownies from scratch doesn’t take much longer but I did just randomly find a recipe online and added the dulce de leche in the middle on top to see what would happen.  I also sprinkled some sea salt on top since I love sea salt on caramels and chocolate but I don’t think I added enough.

Cookies are more my style but let me know if this brownie is a keeper.

Test #5 – Dulce de Leche Krispie Treat

Dulce de Leche is not something I’ve ever made before but one quick Google search and I had directions.  I tried the baking method written up on the Carnation website since they don’t recommend boiling an unopened can, which is what a lot of people do.  I know that method works but I just pictured a huge explosion in my kitchen and I didn’t want to risk it with A. running around helping me.  The Dulce de Leche turned out OK but I think next time I need to let it sit even longer so it gets that dark golden caramel color.

Rice Krispie treats are very easy to make and it’s hard to mess them up.  I wanted to see if I could use Dulce de Leche instead and had seen a recipe to make Dulce de Leche Krispie cookies that I thought I could adapt.  Let’s just say it didn’t turn out to well but it was still fun since A. really liked mixing this one together.

On my first attempt I figured putting wax paper on the cookie sheet would make it easy for me to get the cookies off.  Nope, all that happened was the cookies melted into the wax paper.  For my second attempt I thought just putting them straight on the cookie sheet would work.  Looking back I should have just sprayed the cookie sheet with some cooking spray but it’s supposed to be “non-stick!”  Oh well…  I did like the flavor of this cookie from the bits that I could scrape off so I may try this again but use half marshmallow and half dulce de leche and just try making squares vs cookies.

All was not lost and I salvaged the dulce de leche and made brownies.  See next post. 

Revised Cherry Chocolate Chip

Thank you all for the great feedback and suggestions.  The general consensus was that I needed more cherries in this cookie so that’s what I did.  Also, I wanted to see if dark chocolate chips would make a difference.  I didn’t realize when I bought the chips from the store that they would be bigger than my normal chocolate chips but it worked.  I added fewer chips but because they were bigger the balance between chips and cherries in my opinion were great.

Test #4 – Cherry Bombs

C. liked my cherry chocolate chip cookie but suggested trying out cherry pie filling as a twist.  Great idea but how do I get the cherry filling into a cookie?

Since the filling is a little gooey and chunky I thought a thumbprint cookie might work.  Here’s the result which didn’t turn out too well.  The flavors were yummy but it’s not a very appealing looking cookie and knew I could do better.

Every year at Christmas I make my Reese’s Peanut Butter Delights, essentially a peanut butter cookie baked in mini muffin tins with a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup pushed in the middle.  I took that same idea and applied it here with my chocolate chip dough and the cherry filling.  Voila!

I wasn’t able to make too many of these to share but definitely think these are cute and want to refine this idea until I get it right.  Unless I hear otherwise from you lucky beta testers that tried them that it’s not worth the effort, stay tuned for more on this one.

Test #3 – Bacon Chocolate Chip

Bacon makes everything better, right?  I know it sounds weird to put bacon into a cookie but I saw a cooking show recently where they put bacon into a cupcake so why not a cookie.  It definitely smelled great while they were baking.  I can’t wait to hear the feedback on this one.  Maybe this will turn into a new breakfast option with a side of eggs…

Test #2 – Cherry Chocolate Chip

It’s summer and cherries are in season.  Both A. and I sat down the other day and polished off a whole bowl of cherries to ourselves.  So this led to Test #2 to see if adding the tartness of the cherries would go well with the chocolate.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

My favorite recipe to make is the chocolate chip cookie.  Not only do I get the most compliments from this recipe but as a chocolate fan, it definitely satisfies my sweet tooth.  The oatmeal that I add to the batter helps to give it a little extra texture so it’s not your ordinary Tollhouse recipe.

This is going to be my baseline recipe for chocolate chip cookies and from here we’ll see what other combinations I can come up with.

Test #1 – Banana Peanut Butter Bread

Growing up I ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches with sliced bananas on top.  The two flavors were great together.  So one night as I was in my kitchen staring at 3 bananas that were starting to become over ripened, I thought about making banana bread and what I could do to jazz it up a bit… the result — banana peanut butter bread.

The recipe I’ve used for banana bread over the years is fool proof.  I got the recipe from Mrs. Jim, a dear family friend who was the first person that introduced me to the world of baking. I spent lots of time in Mrs. Jim’s kitchen licking the spoon and helping her make all kinds of breads, cakes and cookies.  With this recipe in hand and my daughter A. ready to help, I figured I couldn’t go wrong just by adding a little peanut butter to it.  So I added half a cup of peanut butter to the blended bananas and hoped for the best.  The batter was yummy and A. agreed by licking the spoon with me.

At 45 minutes, I got a little worried that my little experiment wouldn’t work since the toothpick I inserted came out all gooey.  The oven was on 350 degrees so I wasn’t sure what was going on.  Normally by this time the banana bread would be ready to go.  I ended up leaving the bread in for another 15 minutes and it seemed to do the trick. 

Upon tasting the bread it seemed to be OK, except it wasn’t as moist as my banana bread normally is and the peanut butter overpowered the banana a bit.  My husband C. tasted it and he seemed to be fine with it, not really noticing too much of the peanut butter.  I decided to take it into the office for some more objective criticism.  The reviews were mixed.  Some people thought there was too much peanut butter and others thought there could be more.  I did get a couple of comments about it being a little dry.

On a scale from 1-10, the high was an 8 and the low was a 4, with the average at about 6.  So for my first test, I came in above average.  Not too bad for just winging it with the peanut butter…