Thanksgiving - A Bit Delayed

It now feels like we're close to Christmas and Thanksgiving is well in the past, but I had some pictures from the desserts I made that I wanted to share. The dessert menu started off even more ambitious, but when I realized we were only having nine people for dinner, I scaled it back so that everyone didn't have to eat two whole pies each.

The whiskey apple pie

On the menu was apple pie (my favorite recipe from the Baked cookbook), salted caramel ice cream, and pumpkin cupcakes. Apple pie is my favorite type of pie (and apparently my father's least favorite). This was the very first time I made my own pie crust, and I'm not sure why I haven't tried it sooner. As long as you have a food processor, it's so easy. The Baked pie recipe calls for a tablespoon of whiskey, so on the morning of Thanksgiving, I had the bottle of Scotch out on the counter. Every single person who came down the stairs felt the need to question me whether that was what I was drinking for breakfast.

Salted caramel with salted caramel ice cream

I almost tossed the ice cream after I cooked the custard on the stove. It seemed lumpy and like it was not going to turn into a good finished product. My mom convinced me to just strain it one more time and put it in the ice cream machine (one of my favorite impulse purchases we've ever made). Moms are so smart. After coming out of the machine, it was a really beautiful texture - very smooth and rich. I made it with a salted caramel I had made the day before (also from the Baked cookbook). There was extra caramel sauce left, and everyone ended up pouring it over all of the desserts.

Pumpkin cupcakes

The pumpkin cupcakes were as delicious as they always are. I had really wanted to make all the desserts for Thanksgiving. At one point, I was even talking about making the chocolates that we serve with fruit course, but that plan had to be scrapped when I realized there was just not enough time to do everything, especially since I was going out to the bars Wednesday night. My dad apparently didn't know the plan was for me to make everything, and he ordered a cheesecake from someone who was selling them at his work. All throughout the dinner, I talked trash about the cheesecake. By the time dessert came, no one would touch it, I think out of fear that I would throw a fit at the table. I ended up feeling bad that the only person who ate a slice was my dad, but fortunately my mom was able to reserve it a couple nights later at a holiday gathering she had. Sorry, Dad! For Christmas don't be ordering any outsider cakes!!

My sister with a cupcake - Meliss, you finally made the blog!
(Eric, hold your comments)

Halloween Cookie Packages

One of the things I love the most is receiving surprises in the mail. Whether it's a card, something I purchased and forgot about, or a new magazine, it really brightens my day. When I was in college, I would make my mom send me boxes of surprises several times a semester. I really loved opening up the box and finding usually a mix of things I needed and asked her to send plus some unexpected items. Unfortunately, it feels like all I ever get is bills and junk mail, and I'm sure this is the case for most people.

I forgot to take pictures of the actual cookies, but this is a packaged bundle of cookies

The other week, I mixed up a batch of monster cookies from the Baked cookbook. Monster cookies are sort of a hybrid of oatmeal, peanut butter, M&M, and chocolate chip cookies. It's an everything but the kitchen sink cookie. I know I've mentioned how complicated and tricky the Baked recipes can be, and this was another one that was just truly baffling. When I was looking over the ingredient list, it seemed like a large quantity of ingredients (5 cups of oatmeal!), but the recipe said that it made 36 cookies. So I went ahead and made the full batch, and ended up with almost more dough than could fit in my mixer bowl. I immediately took half and froze it - that's still in my freezer in case I need a spontaneous batch of cookies one day. The other half needed to chill in the freezer for 5 hours, so I planned on keeping it there overnight and baking the cookies the next day. Then I got the flu and my plan was put off until I was noncontagious. Flu cookies are not the type of surprise people like to receive in the mail.

Melissa & Joe's package

Once I was successfully over the flu (regular, not swine), I pulled the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and began baking. These cookies turned out really beautifully. Me and cookies have major issues usually. As easy as cupcakes are to me, cookies are the polar opposite. That's the thing about the Baked cookbook - the recipes are truly difficult, but if done correctly, they make beautiful things (if done incorrectly, you end up with a ganache flecked with large visible chunks of butter). Once these baked and cooled, I wrapped them in plastic wrap and then tissue paper and packaged them to go out. One box went to my sister and her boyfriend (who will never be receiving anything from me again because he complained they weren't cupcakes!), another to my friend Vica, and a third to my brother's girlfriend Meghann. I would have sent one to my brother, but I knew he wouldn't have eaten anything in the box. In addition to the cookies, I threw some other Halloween-related items in there, including glow bracelets, which have to be one of my favorite things in the world.

Meghann's box

While these cookies came out great, later on that week I wasn't as lucky. I'll be posting the pictures soon of my failed M&M cookies.

Baking Challenge: Whiteout Cupcakes

Prior to yesterday, I hadn't baked in almost two weeks. I was feeling up to a difficult baking challenge, so I cracked open my Baked cookbook. For whatever reason, Baked has the hardest recipes in them. Almost all of them span multiple pages, have countless (and very expensive) ingredients, and utilize baking techniques I've never even contemplated before, much less used. Out of all the recipes in Baked, I've only tackled two of the recipes - the Sweet & Salty cake (twice, the first time was a disaster that produced a frosting flecked with chunks of butter) and the brownies (delicious, but they contained about $15 worth of quality chocolate).

Cupcake with the Baked cookbook

I picked the whiteout cake because it seemed like something that would appeal to a lot of people. We recently moved to a new office and I now work with more people than I used to. Which just means more people to eat my baked goods, an exciting prospect for me.



The first thing that gave me pause with this recipe was that the liquid in the cake batter was ice water. It's usually milk, cream, buttermilk...something more substantial than water. I went along with this, finished the batter and popped the cupcakes in the oven. While the cupcakes were cooling, I started on the frosting. The first step was to melt white chocolate on a double boiler. Easy enough. Then the next step said to combine white sugar, flour, milk and heavy cream on the stove until it thickened and boiled. Flour?? In a frosting? I guess I got distracted by that thought because somehow I let my first attempt at this burn. The second attempt turned out much better. After that mixture cooled, I gradually added an unspeakable amount of butter, small pieces at a time, and then the melted white chocolate. The result was a lighter, smoother frosting than my typical frostings. I liked it a lot and they were a big hit in the office today.

I'm looking forward to trying more Baked recipes this fall; for whatever reason, I feel they're more cool weather desserts. I'm also going to try to make the trek to Baked in Brooklyn this fall...I've been dying to get there for over a year now.