2013 - Week 24

Wow, so much to tell this week :)

First of all, I've been keeping up with my Wii boxing game for exercise, and for task, yes, I'm still reading. I started the Hunger Games series and I'm on the final book, "Mockingjay" right now . . . we'll see how it ends (DON'T tell me) :)

The surprise that I alluded to last week shall now be revealed: I made a cake (no surprise there), but it was modeled after a Mexican molcajete bowl filled with guacamole. I found the recipe here: Guacamole Cake. I couldn't find candied cherries, and my attempt at making my own ended in hard, charred ones (ick), so I went without. The cake was a bit messy to make (Oreo bits all over my kitchen) and time consuming, but I think it turned out tasty and really fun. The taste wasn't quite up to my standards because so much of it was just store-bought and processed, but it was still a neat experiment. Will I make it again? Probably not, but it was fun to try once.

Molcajete base pre-coating

"Guacamole" ice cream with cinnamon sugar pita chips

The finished cake

The next dish I made was a creamy portobello mushroom pasta with caprese salad (which I later chopped up and put on top of the dish, which was also tasty). I adapted this recipe: Chicken in Creamy Pan Sauce that I also tried this week (it turned out really yummy with some green onions and fresh garlic added to the sauce.

Chicken in Creamy Pan Sauce served over spinach with tomatoes and basil

Anyways, for the portobello dish, I adapted this recipe for Roasted Portobello Mushrooms by using mozzarella cheese instead of blue cheese and I added some plain bread crumbs as well. They turned out really well, and I would recommend this recipe with those changes, I can't say how it would be with blue cheese. Once I had that made, I made the sauce from the pan sauce base: 1 cup beef broth this time (instead of chicken) with 4 oz. cream cheese cooked with green onions and fresh garlic. I sliced the mushrooms, put them on top of linguine and covered with with sauce. I put a small caprese salad to go on the side too . . . all in all, it was a really tasty dish, both variations were very good and I would order it in a restaurant :)

 Creamy Portobello Pasta with Caprese Salad

My final creation was probably my best one: mini turtle cupcakes with caramel German buttercream. Did you even know there was such a thing as German buttercream? I didn't. I knew of the super sweet American version, the rich French version, and even the light and buttery Swiss version, but I never knew about the German one, and honestly, I don't know how that is even possible considering it's made with a custardy pastry cream base, which is one of my favorite foods ever :). My husband doesn't have the same affection for the Swiss version that I do because he thinks it tastes too much like pure butter, so since these cupcakes were for a party for him, I looked for a new variation to try. I discovered the recipe here: Bravetart German Buttercream, but thought that two pounds of butter was a little excessive. Luckily, I found this recipe: Food-ology German Buttercream and it only used one pound, plus vanilla extract instead of vanilla beans, and it worked out perfectly. It was great by itself, but I wanted caramel frosting, so I added about 10 oz. of store-bought caramel dip (the kind that is usually paired with apples), and it incorporated seamlessly into my frosting and it was so good. It might have bumped Swiss buttercream off of to the top of my list of favorite frostings :)

For the mini cupcakes, I used my go-to chocolate cake recipe: Sandy's Chocolate Cake. I didn't know how many it would make, but since the cake recipe is for three 9" round cakes, I figured it would be a lot (it was . . . I didn't even try to count them all, but I'm guessing about 150 mini cupcakes). I tried with cupcake liners but it was sticking, so I greased the pans instead, still sticking, then finally I really greased and floured the pans and although they didn't have perfectly round tops, they did come out of the pan better. I also experimented with piping in the caramel filling (I just used the straight caramel dip) before and after baking and decided that after worked better. My husband helped me by ladling the batter into a funnel that I used as a dispenser . . . kind of a fun trick that worked pretty well :) So needless to say, with all of the sticking going on, I was a tad bit frustrated with the cakes, but the frosting saved the day. I piped the frosting on and topped half of them with pecan halves and they were beautiful and little mouthfuls of goodness. I highly recommend trying German buttercream for your next cake.

Pastry Cream base

Before and After Frosting

YUM Turtle Goodness

Hungry yet? I hope you all had a good week . . . come back next week to hear about more adventures in my Life's Lab Notebook :)