It's the Yeast I Can Do
When a Knead-To-Know Basis just isn't enough
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P’s graduation brunch cupcakes, 05.18.13
P graduated from law school this weekend! Naturally, there’s no celebration like a two-day food fest, so… I made my old standby chocolate cupcakes with coffee buttercream, and then, to make something the doctor of jurisprudence could actually enjoy, found a healthier carrot cake recipe. Well, we found like half a dozen, but this one passed muster. Check it out:
Carrot Cake (adapted from Eating Well)
1 20-oz. can crushed pineapple
2 c whole-wheat flour
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2 t ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 1/2 c granulated sugar
3/4 c low-fat buttermilk
1/4 c canola oil
1/4 c unsweetened applesauce
1 t vanilla extract
2 c grated carrots (4-6 medium)
1/4 c unsweetened flaked coconut
1/2 c chopped walnuts, toasted12 oz reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 c powdered sugar
1/2 T vanilla extract
flaked coconut, toastedPreheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners.
Drain pineapple in a sieve set over a bowl, pressing on the solids. Reserve the drained pineapple and 1/4 cup of the juice.
Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Whisk eggs, sugar, buttermilk, oil, vanilla and the reserved pineapple juice in a large bowl until blended. Stir in pineapple, carrots, and 1/4 cup coconut. Mix in the dry ingredients until blended. Stir in the nuts. Scrape the batter into the tin.
Bake until the top springs back when touched lightly and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack.
Beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Spread the frosting over the cooled cake. Sprinkle with toasted coconut.
Makes 24 cupcakes
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Chocolate chip pecan blondies 03.10.13
South by Southwest is the worst thing ever. Not only have I been too busy to bake for most of the last few months, but now it’s so bad it takes me a week to even post a shitty picture? Geez.
I ate a large chunk of this, took most of it to work, and found a reserved corner in my messenger bag the other morning at La Barbecue. That’ll do.
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
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Chocolate root beer bundt cake, 02.21.13
The fourth in a series of chocolate things for James’ birthday. I’d been meaning to remake this cake with enough time to do it right after my hurried version last year, and I think it turned out great. I guess they’re serious when they tell you to let things cool completely.
Via Crepes of Wrath
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Samoas bars, 02.19.13
For dessert tonight with Christian and Rita. They’re richer than the originals, I think, and with an obviously higher ratio of chocolate to cookie, but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing…
Via Crepes of Wrath
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Superbowl cookies, 02.03.13
And then, two weeks later, I made those same cookies again. Except this time, for the first time in the dozen or more times I’ve made those toffee beauties, I found tiny Heath bars to chop up instead of using Ghiradelli’s Toffee Interludes (which, while delicious, is more chocolate than toffee). Delicious. I set them out at the beginning of halftime, and they were demolished before the blackout.
Also, you know, snickerdoodles. For variety.
Both recipes via Smitten Kitchen
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noJ’s birthday cookies, 01.12.13
Yes, I’m seriously that far behind in posting.
This year, I had the good sense to only bake off one sheet’s worth on the day of, and then I left him with a frozen log of the rest of the dough so that he might slice and bake additional ones when he was less at risk of a self-inflicted diabetic coma. (He finally just baked the whole rest of the batch this week, and at the whole lot, presumably for dinner. So much for that idea.)
Via Smitten Kitchen
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Chocolate chip cookies, 12.19.12
There’s no doubt in my mind that my favorite kitchen appliance is my KitchenAid, but it sure has made me a lazy baker. And I’ve been incredibly busy these past few weeks with holiday prep and work, so when I realized last night I needed to bake another batch of cookies, I almost dreaded it. But then…
This is the first time in ages that I’ve done everything by hand, and I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to cream butter and sugar with a spatula. I branched out from my usual chocolate chip cookie recipe and cracked open a new cookbook and got to thumb through the crisp pages (before they become all glued together with sugar), and it all calmed down for a minute. Leave it to chocolate chip cookies to really take you back to basics.
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Chocolate chip pecan pie, 11.16.12
Lesson: Never tell me you’re buying a grocery store pie for an event.
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Hippie dippy chocolate chippy cookies, 11.02.12
Full disclosure: These are not my usual fare. In fact, their original title was “Postpartum Cookies,” which makes me more than a little uncomfortable given my whole #nobabies philosophy… But it was a recipe that needed testing for the Austin Food Bloggers Alliance cookbook, and who am I to judge a cookie without trying it. Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised. They’re definitely better warm, and you can tell there are some health food things in there (I told the people at Central Market not to judge me for asking where to find hemp seeds), but they’re decidedly not terrible.
Which, if you’ve ever given me a cocktail to try, you know is actually higher praise than it sounds.
Recipe via Lisa Goddard
