Master Baker March Challenge Part I

Master Baker hosts a baking contest each month, and each month there is a different theme ingredient. This month's ingredient is Easter Candy. I am definitely inspired! I started with a list of about 15 different ideas and variations thereof. My favorite was a cupcake with a Cadbury mini creme egg in the middle, but a quick search turned up evidence that someone else has already tested and come up with a good recipe for it, which they are already entering, so I went back to the drawing board.

Another immediate thought was that peeps belong in some sort of s'mores-inspired dessert (which could be triggered by seeing s'mores cupcakes recently) I opted for more of a pie/bar sort of dessert. It has a gram cracker crust, a layer of peep bunnies, and then a layer of chocolate ganache. Heated, up for about 30 seconds in the microwave, the idea is that it's just like a

s'more, all melty and gooey. I just have to try this one out and make sure that it actually is good.

Then, I wandered the Easter candy aisle in the grocery store, and found true inspiration! I had no idea that there were Reese's easter eggs that are peanut butter filled chocolate. I had to make a cheesecake with them!

Reese's Egg Cheesecake

1 bag of reese's eggs
6 oz cream cheese
1 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 oreo crust (I use a deep dish or extra capacity pre-made. If you use a regular size pre-made, you'll have extra batter)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Unwrap and layer reese's eggs on the bottom of the pie crust. (I didn't use all of them, but somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of a big bag).
Beat softened cream cheese until fluffy.
Add milk slowly, and beat until smooth.
Add vanilla and egg, and beat until combined.
Pour cream cheese mixture over eggs.
Bake at 350 for 35-40 min.

I think next I'll try this recipe with a layer of mini Cadbury creme eggs. I just have to decide what to submit for the contest. I have a few more ideas, but I think I'm most excited about the Reese's cheesecake.

EDIT: After taste-testing the reese's cheesecake, I think that I want to try again with an actual sprinform pan. While the ready-made crusts are easier, I just don't feel like the ratio is right that way. I think if I could pile the cheesecake higher, it might compensate better for the sugary richness of the layer of peanut butter chocolate on the bottom. I'll try take 2 when I recover from the sugar coma I'm in. Perhaps it'll do better as mini cheesecakes with just one egg each? This requires more thought and a lot of veggies to flush out my system. It also requires that someone eat all the food coming out of my kitchen!

EDIT again: Everyone else seems quite happy with the richness. It's possible that I was biased from eating too many sweets before getting to this taste-testing.

St. Patty's Day

I did indeed make the Guinness cupcakes. They were AMAZING! Of course, I probably didn't need to make 4 dozen of them. Maybe I should have checked to see how many it made before stating in on it. The icing was perfect, and the whole thing was quite rich and satisfying. Now, I just have to find a way to get rid of all of them.

On another note, I have managed to break 3 cameras this year, so I was quite digicam-less. I gave in and bought another camera, but I couldn't get the one I wanted in town, so I will have to wait until I receive it from Amazon. In the meantime, I went up to Wal-Mart and picked up a super-cheap ($20) digicam, just so that I can at least get some images of my baking up, while I'm so inspired. The quality will be awful for a while, but I figured that bad pictures are better than none. So, I apologize.

Mmmmm... St. Patty's Day!

I just found this blog through another blog, and I'm drooling! A delicious cupcake recipe a week sounds like wonderful inspiration! The Five Star Irish Stout: Chocolate Guinness Stout Cupcake with Chocolate Ganache and Bailey's Buttercream Swirl looks AMAZING! I wish that I hadn't had so much work to do for class yesterday, because I would have loved to recreate this one for today!

I'm back from Hawaii! (and somewhat recovered)

I had an amazing time! There were snorkeling, and helicopter-riding, and hiking, and amazing food, and waterfalls, and beaches, and all-in-all, it was paradise. I think that I really ought to take the bar out there instead of here. Really, it's just so perfect. I highly commend the trip - if I had unlimited time and money, I never would have left.

As the purpose of the trip was a birthday of one of the people we were visiting, I felt I couldn't show up empty-handed. So I baked! I was rushed, so I went with a recipe that I've done before, but modified it a bit. I made the brown sugar pound cake, but tried adding dark chocolate chips, and splitting it to make 2 bundt cakes. That solved my earlier problem of overflowing, and actually made two perfectly-sized cakes. It makes me a little angry to think that the original recipe didn't just say that! I finished it up right before we left so that it would be as fresh as possible when we arrived, and I let it cool in the car on the way to meet Chris. At Chris's place, I wrapped it up and tucked it in my luggage. Surprisingly, it came out largely intact (with one edge only slightly squished) more than 24 hours later, when we actually arrived at our first Hawaiian destination - an amazing B&B on the big island.

I make bad decisions

My roommate and I watched the Oscars last night. I bought a few bottles of champagne and Sunny D to make Juno mimosas. Roughly half an hour into the awards themselves (we started with the red carpet), we had finished 3 bottle of champagne and a small portion of the Sunny D. I was in bed by 8:30.

Never again.

Hawaii! (edited to reflect the places that we actually went)

I'm headed to Hawaii with the man! We head out on Thursday morning and return 10 days later. I'm terribly excited! We head first to

View Larger Map,where we'll be staying in a B&B with a bunch of his friends. One of them is celebrating a birthday, so they're all getting together to celebrate. I plan to bake some sort of something as a hostess gift/birthday gift, but I'm having a lot of trouble deciding what to make. I suppose I'll post something once I decide. I'm having to come up with something that's portable, chocolate, and hopefully delicious!

Then, it's off to Honolulu,
View Larger Map where we'll be staying with a couple of his friends who live on the island.

Then, the final stop will be on Maui
View Larger Map, where we're staying in a resort by the beach. It turns out that the resort has been voted the "most Hawaiian" resort, and they are quite proud of it. I totally believe it too. I would definitely return there.

New icecream maker

I've been slowly recovering from a bit of a cold bug, and it seems the only thing that is helping me recover is trying new recipes. I finally used 2 amazing gifts that I've left untouched since I received them.



The first is a shiny icecream maker attachment for the kitchenaid! It is super-easy to use, and I was able to start using it within a day oftaking it out of the box. The bowl had to spend a night in the freezer to get it ready, but that was really all the prep needed. I've already popped out 2 batches of ice cream, and I'm in love! I made a batch of nuetella ice cream first, and it was so easy that I went on to make a batch of darm chocolate peanut butter too. I think that may be my favorite rish dessert now. I used the same recipe, stolen from chocolate & zuccini (who was apparently thinking the same thing) for each:



1.5 cups nutella (or all natural dark chocolate peanut butter spread)
1 can evaporated milk



Whisk the 2 together until smooth.
Cover and refrigerate blend about an hour.
Whisk lightly and pour into ice cream maker.

Churn until done.


The nutella took longer (I think because it was less dense to begin with) - it took about 30-40 minutes. I think this is more of a normal time.


The dark chocolate peanut butter only took about 15 minutes. This could be because of the denseness, and/or because of the fact that I left in the fridge a little longer. Next time, I do think that I'll try to lighten it up a little. While I loved it, I think that it would be way to rich for most people.





Of course, ice cream is not nearly as amazing if it doesn't have baked goods to accompany it! I pulled out one of my new favorite recipies - a brown sugar pound cake. Normally I'd make it with pecans, but I had a bunch of walnuts and used them instead. It's a Southern Living Recipe. I love it with the tiny exception that I was the recipe was scaled back a bit. I don't have a single dish that can hold the full amount of batter that this makes. And rather than learn from my mistakes, I keep trying to get it all to fit, which results in a very dirty oven. One day, maybe I'll learn.





After cleaning out the oven, I finally tried another of my gifted toys - a madeline pan from Williams-Sonoma. Purr. (This also gave me a great chance to use my new dish.) I found a nice, basic recipe on cooks.com, and went to work. The recipe left out adding in the vanilla, so I may have added it later thanI should have, and I wasn't sure how to fold in solid butter (although maybe it should have been done more like a croissant, which would have made it more flaky?), so I melted the butter first.





I've never actually had madelines before, but I think they came out OK. They tasted cakey, and I'm assuming that's normal. I also though the flavor was a little lacking. They smelled wonderful, but the actual taste didn't quite live up, for me. To have any real idea of how mine turned out, I think I'm going to have to sample someone else's.

Germs

I hate being sick. The is a cold bug running rampant through populated buildings in Virginia. I swear that the germs are incubated in the law school, the General Assembly, and the AG's office. The General Assembly has even begun to leave hand sanitizer stations throughout the building. I should have caught on.

Nonetheless, here I sit, feeling ill since Friday morning. Thankfully, the symptoms waited to really set in until after the party was done. I just wish they'd waited until after I was really done clenaing up. Instead, I mopped and moved furniture in short bursts for 3 days, during my moments of more energy. Still, 2 boxes of kleenex and a couple rolls of tp later, things are looking up!

American Gladiators

The party actually turned out pretty well. Everyone loved Lauren't cut-outs, the decorations were lovely, and I we finished off two kegs and four dozen jello jiggler shots, and almost finished off two big things of punch (one blue and one red).

Party Planning

I am hosting a Feb Club party. The one I was given is the American Gladiators themed party sponsored by one of our Journals. I was alittle worried about the theme at first, but now I'm really excited about it.

I've been planning - there will be the predictible decor - red and white stripes, blue Christmas lights, and lettering on the walls, etc. That isn't nearly enough, though. I enlisted a (very kind) friend who is in town visiting to paint giant Gladiators on plywood that someone else will cut the face out of and brace to stand alone so that people can stick their own face in and take pictures. I ordered star shaped ice cube molds to make jello shots in, and an ice luge mold.

I'm also planning a flip cup tournament to take place during the party, and the prize is this wonderful beer drinking trophy!

The food will all be themed, of course, with twizzlers; red, white and blue funfetti cupcakes; red and blue tortilla chips with salsa; and red and blue punches.

I absolutely can't wait! Now I just want to make sure that everything is ready by Thursday.