Happy Birthday To My Hubby!

Bobby's birthday was this past weekend, the big 3-2. This is the cake that I made him... I hope you appreciate the Instagram filter and disregard the beaten up paint in the background. We're in the midst of a bit of a kitchen overhaul (check out those new butcher block countertops!) and we haven't started putting up the backsplash tile yet. But, we got the call that they're in, so hopefully that phase will start soon. But, I digress... back to my "old" husband and his recent birthday.

Bobby's favorite cake is carrot cake (it's also my favorite, further proof that we're a match made in heaven), therefore, I baked him a carrot cake for his birthday. At the moment we're currently working hard at becoming supreme physical specimens (we're doing CrossFit and training for a 10-mile run that's in May) I knew he wouldn't want a giant birthday cake like I've made him in the past since we're trying to eat healthy (key word is trying). But, I wanted to make something for him for his birthday. Since it was just going to be the two of us I decided that a small 6-inch cake would be perfect. And, with the rest of the batter I knew I would have, I would just make cupcakes and take them to work, or give them away so they wouldn't go to waste.

The carrot cake recipe I always use is one that I received from my mom, who got it from a former co-worker of hers. It's the best recipe I've found to date and I always use it when I make carrot cake. I also always use cream cheese frosting for carrot cake because in my opinion that's the only kind of frosting one should use when making carrot cake. The recipe I use for cream cheese frosting is from Paula Dean. Yes, that Paula Dean. I first discovered it when using her recipe to make red velvet cupcakes and I've been using it ever since.

The carrot cake is very simple to make (I'll include the recipe below). I just throw all the ingredients in my stand mixer and then let it work for about two minutes blending everything together. I used 3 cups of batter for the 6-inch cake. I baked it at 350 for about 50 minutes. I have found with this recipe that the cake doesn't rise very much, which is nice because I often don't have to do much cutting to get a flat surface when I'm ready to frost the cake. With the extra batter I made cupcakes, I think I got roughly twenty. I baked those at 350 for 20 minutes, turning them halfway through the total baking time.

Going into making this cake I really didn't have an idea of what I wanted to do. In the past I've made Bobby some fancier cakes, but they were quite large. Since I knew I wanted to make a small cake, I felt pretty limited as to what I could do with it, but I wanted to make it special in some way without having to do too much work.

Finally I came up with the idea that's pictured above. I knew I had everything that I needed on hand and the birthday banner probably took me 10 minutes max to put together. I used pieces of card stock from my scrap pack that I have on hand. I highly recommend the scrap pack. It's great, you'd be amazed at how many things scraps of various colors and sizes of card stock can be good for. I think I bought mine at Michaels, but I'm sure you can find one at any craft store.

I grabbed five different colors from the scrap pack and started cutting out little triangles. I did it all freehand because it didn't need to be perfect. Once I had the number of triangles that I needed I arranged them in the color order that I wanted and wrote out a letter on each one with a thin Sharpie. I cut two lengths of red string that I also had on hand and attached the triangles to the string with small pieces of scotch tape. I had some wooden skewers on hand so I decided to use those as my posts since I couldn't think of anything better. Straws would probably work as well, but I didn't have any. The skewers were a little longer than I needed so I just cut them with scissors to make them a little shorter. The hardest part of the whole process was tying the strings to the skewers so they would stay in place and be the appropriate length. It was a trial and error process, but it only took a couple of attempts before I got it right. I've always wanted to try something like this with a cake, and I think it turned out to be a success. I was really happy with how it looked, especially for throwing it all together in just a few minutes. Most importantly, the birthday boy said he liked it and the cake was delicious!

Carrot Cake

2 c. sugar
2 c. flour
1 1/2 c. salad oil
2 c. grated carrots
1 c. well drained crushed pineapple
5 eggs
1 1/2 chopped nuts
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda

Put all ingredients in a large bowl, except nuts, and beat 2 minutes by hand (I don't use nuts because I don't like them, and I also beat everything with a stand mixer, but you could probably use a hand mixer as well).

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in 9x13 pan.

If you want to you can vary your pan size, you'll just need to adjust your baking time. These are just the instructions I got with the recipe. I have made this recipe with 6-inch and 8-inch cake pans. I've also made cupcakes with this recipe. I just alter the baking time, however I always bake at 350 degrees.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 lb cream cheese
1 c. butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
4 c. confectioner's sugar

Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla until smooth. Add sugar and beat on low speed until incorporated. Increase speed to high, mix until light and fluffy.

Raspberry Marble Cheesecakes

Can I interest you in a cheesecake? Good, because that's what I made this week. I'm fairly certain that this recipe for raspberry marble cheesecakes is the first cheesecake I've made up until this point. Wait, I retract that statement because it's incorrect. These apricot-glazed black and white cheesecakes were the first. How could I forget? They were so pretty.

I will give myself some credit. I think I rebounded quite nicely from last week's oatmeal-raisin episode, which can be found here. Not only did I not mess these up, I also performed a little experiment and taught myself something. Granted I did accidentally stumble upon this little experiment, which I will elaborate on later, but that's neither here nor there.

So cheesecakes, I've made my fair share in life. Cheesecake is one of my dad's favorite desserts, but since my parents have relocated to Florida and my fiance doesn't like cheesecake, I don't make it very often. I was excited for this recipe because it's something much different than a normal cupcake. Unfortunately cheesecake does often require much more work than normal cupcakes. That fact has not changed during my brief cheesecake-making hiatus.

Before I started anything I read through all the steps to make sure I didn't give an encore performance of last week. The recipe said I should get 32 cheesecakes, but since I only have 2 cupcake pans, and due to the long cooling process that comes along with making cheesecake, I was only going to make 24 no matter how much batter I had left. After establishing that I got to work.

First order of business was making the graham cracker crust. I put the graham crackers in my food processor until they were fine crumbs. This did not take long. Once the crumbs were mixed with the butter and sugar I pressed a tablespoon of the crumbs into each cupcake liner. I had a small amount of crumbs left over that may or may not have gotten me to 32 cupcakes had I needed them to. They did however get in my belly. My favorite part of cheesecake is the graham cracker crust. No question. With both cupcake pans prepared each one was baked for 5 minutes and then set aside to cool.

Next, the raspberry syrup. I've never made this from scratch and I was excited to try something new. I pureed the berries in my food processor (I washed it by hand after I made the graham cracker crumbs) and then worked on passing the puree through a fine sieve with my new pink rubber spatula. Apparently people aren't interested in having raspberry seeds in their cupcakes. This process worked, but it took awhile. I also probably could have gotten more syrup but frankly I was sick of straining the puree. I knew I didn't need that much to get through the recipe anyway. In the end I had way more than I needed.

Making the rest of the cheesecake batter was easy, I've done it plenty of times. When the batter was completed I spooned about 3 tablespoons of batter for each cupcake and added 3 drops of the raspberry syrup to the top of each. Then I used a toothpick to swirl together the cheesecake batter and raspberry syrup to get a marble effect. I thought they all looked great. I love making the marble effect. It looks so cool and it's actually really easy to achieve.

When I was younger my dad always told me that to make a cheesecake the right way you had to put it in a hot water bath when you baked it. That way the cheesecake wouldn't crack. Like the perfect daughter that I am I always answered with, "OK dad" and continued about my cheesecake making sans the water bath. Well, this time Martha also told me to bake the cupcakes in a hot water bath and Martha is one I will not ignore... at least in this case. To help matters, I also have a large roasting pan that was perfect for this. Had I not had the appropriate pan I would have ignored Martha, and dad, again.

I placed the first cupcake pan in the roasting pan and then filled it with hot water so it was about halfway up the pan. While transporting the pan to the oven there was little flood over one of the cupcakes, but I just mentally noted which one it was so I would know not to serve the water logged cheesecake to anyone. I baked this batch for 28 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. I probably could have given them a few more minutes, about 30 total, but they looked set enough to me so I took them out and let them cool on a wire rack.

Time for the second batch... with one problem. I have 2 different cupcake pans and my second cupcake pan is part of a Betty Crocker cupcake caddy and has handles that stick out on each side. My other pan does not. Can you see where I'm going with this? I thought so. The handles make the pan about a quarter of an inch too long on each side to fit in the roasting pan. Major bummer, what do I do now? Taking the freshly baked cupcakes out of the pan is not an option, they still have to cool for awhile and then go into the fridge to cool some more. I don't want to trash perfectly good batter either. I know... I'll perform an experiment. I'll bake these cheesecakes without the water bath and see what the difference is in the final product. Brilliant! Let me tell you, there was a difference, and I think my dad may have been right all these years. I can't believe it either. How do parents always know?

The cheesecake on the left is from the water-bath batch and the cheesecake on the right is not. I don't think I need to explain the difference to you. It's pretty obvious from the picture. However, the cheesecake on the right didn't cave in until after it cooled. When it came out of the oven it was nice and rounded (mind you it was cracked) like a normal cupcake. I actually thought it looked quite pretty and was hoping it would stay that way. Then I remembered it was made of cream cheese, not flour, and that outcome was highly unlikely.

Not only was there a difference in appearance, there was also a difference in taste. The water-bath batch had the perfect texture while the non-water-bath batch was a little tough. Now, they weren't tough like inedible or disgusting, they just weren't as smooth as the water-bath batch. For example, had you not seen or tasted the water-bath batch first it's quite possible the non-water-bath batch would have seemed perfectly normal. Tongue tied yet?

So this week I learned 2 lessons...

1. As painful as it is to admit, dad was right about the water bath. It really does make a better cheesecake.

2. If you're going to bake cupcakes in a water bath, make sure the pans you're using fit inside the roasting pan you're going to use.

I'm getting smarter every week.

Apricot-Glazed Black and White Cheesecakes

As a kid I hated cheesecake (calm down), but it was, and still is (along with blueberry anything) one of my dad's favorite desserts. It was often found at our house, or my grandparents around the holidays. Each year I would try it again, and each year I would take one bite and that was it. At some point my taste buds changed, or I finally came to my senses and realized what I had been missing all that time. While I enjoy cheesecake from time to time these days, at the moment I have 15 apricot-glazed black and white cheesecakes (no link, or anything remotely close on Martha's website) on my hands that I'm not willing to eat all by myself. Due to the wedding now being 6 months away (yikes!) and my current shedding for the wedding extravaganza being in full force I need to unload these bad boys. Any takers?

My favorite part of cheesecake is the graham cracker crust. I could honestly eat just that straight from a bowl, but I don't because I would judge myself the entire time. These cheesecakes however were to have a chocolate cookie crust... works for me! Martha suggested using Nabisco Famous Wafers for the crust, so that is what I set out to find at the grocery store. I have looked for these before for some other recipe and couldn't find them. I was afraid that was going to be the case again. I was standing in the cookie aisle looking up and down and getting frustrated because I couldn't find what I wanted. I was seriously thinking about buying Oreos or some other creme-filled cookie and just splitting them, scraping off the creme and then crumbling the cookies to make the crust. Yes, it would have been a lot of work, but I needed a crust.

Finally, a light shone down from the heavens and there they were, hiding from me on the top shelf in a skinny little package. And, with a stroke of luck they were even on sale! It was a great day. I knew I needed three-quarters of a cup of crumbs, and I wasn't sure how many cookies that would take. I stood for awhile deciding it I should get 2 packages of cookies because I didn't want to get started and not have enough. But even on sale, the cookies were almost $4 per box and I'm on a strict wedding budget. I got one package and kept my fingers crossed that it would be enough. As I sit here writing this, and snacking on the extra cookies I can tell you one package was enough. I only needed about half the package to get the amount of crumbs I needed.

First, I crumbled the cookies using my food processor. It is an annoying cleanup, but it's much more efficient than putting the cookies in a Ziploc bag and crushing them with a rolling pin. And since I was feeling lazy I just put the processor parts in the dishwasher after I was done. That's what it's for, right? I started to melt the butter for the crust in the microwave. I put it in for 30 seconds and then stopped halfway through to give it a swirl. Of course when I grabbed the dish it was in it was extremely hot and burnt my fingers. I couldn't believe the dish had gotten that hot in only 15 seconds. After I cursed and ran my fingers under some cold water I decided it would be better to just melt the butter in a pan on the stove. That way I wouldn't burn the butter, or any more of my fingers. It took a little longer, but it was the right way to go. I firmly pressed 1 tablespoon of the crust mixture into each cupcake liner. I ended up with enough crumbs for 16 cupcakes and I baked them each for 7 minutes with a turn halfway through.

While the crusts were baking and cooling I worked on the batter. I had remembered to let the cream cheese sit out overnight so it was room temperature and easy to mix. Other than almost forgetting to add the vanilla, everything came together well. The batter was just liquidy (technical term) enough for me to use my Pyrex measuring cup to pour it into the cupcake pan. I filled the liners as full as I could because that's what Martha said I should do, and baked each for 22 minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time.

Once the cupcakes were done I let them cool completely on the counter in the tins and then refrigerated them (while still in the tins) overnight. The following morning I worked on the apricot glaze, which wasn't really much work at all. Martha said that I should use apricot jam. Stop and Shop had apricot preserves. Whether or not they're the same thing I don't really know, but in the end the preserves worked. I heated the preserves until it was "loose" which to me just meant smooth, and I put it through a sieve so there weren't any chunks. I used my teaspoon and put a dollop of the glaze on each of the cheesecakes. Once the cheesecakes were dolloped (another technical term) they reminded me of a perfectly cracked egg, with the apricot glaze being the yolk. I think they would be really cute for an Easter dessert. I also think the apricot glaze could be swapped out for raspberry, strawberry or even blueberry (my dad would love those!) which is something I would probably like better as well. I didn't hate the apricot glaze though. It was quite good, as were my perfectly sized little cheesecakes. They are portion control at it's finest, right up my alley!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes

Peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, jelly... Family Guy anyone? Or at least I think that's from Family Guy. It's ok, I don't watch it either, but I've heard that somewhere before. First, let me start with the photos. A lovely friend of mine recently purchased for me a portable photo studio as an early birthday gift and these cupcakes were my first guinea pig in trying it out. I think they came out pretty well, especially since it came with no instructions. Practice will surely make perfect, right?

I should also apologize for being a day late with my post. You may or may not be aware of the massive snow storm that came through Connecticut this weekend. We were one of the fortunate ones to not lose power and to not have any significant damage to our home. However, some of our friends lost power and still don't have it back, so we've been taking people in so they have a warm place to sleep and hot water to shower. Needless to say things have been a little busy around the house and my office has been monopolized by house guests. Right now the house is currently empty, except for Rollins who's sleeping on the couch (gotta love a full day of doggy daycare) so I'm trying to make the most of my free time tonight before everyone comes back.

So, moving on to what's featured in my pictures... peanut butter and jelly cupcakes. These cupcakes are the last in the first section of the cookbook so I was excited to make them for many reasons. One, because I feel like I've reached a milestone in my project in the fact that I've completed the first section. Two, Bobby's favorite thing in the whole world is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yes, he may be 30 years old, but he could eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or pizza) everyday and be completely happy with that. So, I was excited to see how my peanut butter and jelly sandwich expert would like peanut butter and jelly cupcakes.

Before I started baking I remembered to leave out everything that had to be at room temperature before I started working. I also read through the entire recipe. My first order of business was chopping the peanuts, which is rather difficult considering that peanuts are pretty small (I also ended up using honey roasted because I can't read. But I will swear that when I put them in my shopping cart, the package said dry roasted). But, I did manage to successfully chop the peanuts without successfully chopping off any of my fingers. Hooray. After chopping the peanuts all the hard work was pretty much done.

Similar to these applesauce-spice cupcakes, the batter for these cupcakes was also quite thick so I wasn't able to use my pour-by-Pyrex method for the second week in a row. Very depressing. Again I used a tablespoon and spooned about 1 1/2 tablespoons into each cupcake liner. All the cupcakes came out pretty perfectly and I only yielded 2 less cupcakes than the recipe said I would. Both batches of cupcakes were baked for 22 minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. They came out perfectly with this amount of baking time. Golden brown, and just the right size.

Time for the frosting, and a new one to make at that! Double win! These cupcakes called for creamy peanut butter frosting, doesn't that sound delicious and fattening? This frosting wasn't too difficult to make (and I got to use my stand mixer) but I did have a moment of panic when I was afraid the heavy cream wasn't going to turn into medium-firm peaks. It took a little longer than normal and I nervously stared at it every few minutes wondering if it was ever going to firm up, and what my back-up plan would be if it didn't. Luckily, my whisk and mixer started doing their thing and I had peaks! I folded the whipped cream into the peanut butter-cream cheese mixture to finish everything off. The frosting wasn't as thick as I thought it would be and it was actually quite spreadable. For the finishing touch each cupcake got a little dollop of strawberry preserves. I went with preserves instead of jelly because I like that preserves have little chunks of strawberry in them.

To be honest, from the start I didn't think I would like these cupcakes. Not because I'm not a fan of peanut butter and jelly, because I am, but because I had a feeling these would be pretty dense and pretty peanut buttery cupcakes... I was right. I think I would have liked them more if the frosting was a little sweeter. I kept tasting it as I was adding each ingredient while making it, waiting for the sweetness to emerge and I got nothing. I didn't try a completed cupcake until I took the pictures and I still had the same issue. I needed more sweetness. I had one bite and didn't eat any more. I hate to say I didn't like a cupcake, because it feels wrong. But, I didn't like these. Luckily for me and my taste buds, there are roughly 50 more cupcakes to make... yes, I counted.

Applesauce-Spice Cupcakes

Finally we have come to a recipe that I've made before. It only took 18 cupcakes to get here (tells you how much I have baked from this cookbook). The first time I made applesauce-spice cupcakes (Martha doesn't have them on her website, she really wants you to buy the cookbook) I didn't include the pecans because as I've mentioned numerous time I'm not a huge fan of nuts. But, as I've also previously mentioned I'm doing my best to follow these recipes to a T in the spirit of my self-assigned project.

There wasn't much prep involved in this recipe, which I knew, and I almost didn't read all the way through it because I had made it before, but I did. And I'm glad I did. Because, I saw that I was supposed to include toasted pecans. Since I hadn't included them the first time I made these cupcakes I forgot that they were supposed to be in the recipe. So, first order of business, toast the pecans. While the pecans were toasting I worked on the rest of the recipe, which was extremely easy. Although I did leave out the butter to get to room temperature, since the weather has started to cool off it was a little hard when I was ready to start the batter. I nuked it in the microwave for 10 seconds and it was good to go (I also remembered to leave the eggs out to get to room temperature, but they were still quite cool as well). Fall is here!

Since the batter was a little thick I didn't employ my pour-by-Pyrex method to fill the cupcake pan. I used a tablespoon instead (I really need to get one of those ice cream scoops that I see the people on Cupcake Wars use) using about 1 1/2 good-size spoonfuls to fill the liners. Not the most perfect method, but almost all the cupcakes turned out to be the same size so I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Now for the brown sugar cream cheese frosting (no luck on Martha's website for this one either), whew, that's a mouthful. This is the first time I've made a true frosting in awhile. My most recent cupcakes have for the most part been frosted with whipped cream. Very unexciting. I like to get the practice of making different frostings. Yes, I had already made this frosting in the past to go with these cupcakes, but still, it was a nice walk down memory lane. It was a pleasant walk as well since this frosting is very easy to make. I just used a thin icing spatula (I don't even know if that's what they're called, but they look like this) to frost the cupcakes since that's what the cupcakes in the picture from the cookbook looked like they were frosted with. I tried to give the cupcakes a little height so they would make for more interesting pictures. Without using all my frosting for one cupcake I did my best.

As I sometimes do, I took these cupcakes to work with me to share and I received a really nice compliment. It's not uncommon for people to tell me they enjoyed the cupcakes, or they're delicious, things like that, and I of course appreciate everyone's kind words. But, on this particular day I was very flattered. After I had passed out the cupcakes to various coworkers I received an email with the subject line of Thanks. It's pretty rare that anyone emails me to thank me for a cupcake, especially someone I don't really know like this person. In all honesty, I introduced myself and then handed him a cupcake. I digress... within the email he had said that he enjoyed the cupcake. He went on to ask if I'd ever seen Cupcake Wars and that he had recently been a judge on the show that's going to air sometime in January. I am of course familiar with the show, duh, I blog about cupcakes. But he doesn't know that. So anyway, he continued to say that the cupcake I had given him was better than most of the ones he tried on the show. I know, I know, he didn't say it was better than all the cupcakes he tried, but I'll take being better than most. After all, I'm no professional. Part of me wanted to reply and ask him if he could point me in the direction of the Cupcake Wars people, but then I came to my senses and realized I have no business on that show. I would be blown out of the water. So instead, I simply replied thank you for the compliment, that's very nice of you to say, and forwarded the email to my home email address so I'll have it when I'm in the need of a pick-me-up. Dork? You bet.