French Vanilla Cake w/Caramel Frosting & Brandied Pecans

Holy deliciousness. The french vanilla layers, caramel frosting and brandied pecans in this cake came together like a holy trinity of sweetness. The frosting tastes shockingly similar to the extra icing they sell at Cinnabon (yes, I've indulged in the extra icing, don't judge), and the brandied pecans are sweet and crunchy without having an overly strong, sugary coating like some pralines. The nuts would also be great served as a stand-alone snack or in any other dish that calls for sweet nuts. And as for reviews, I served this mini-cake to seven other people (plus yours truly) and got eight gold stars.

Last weekend, when my main squeeze announced he was doing a poker night with the menfolk, I decided to host a little ladies get-together at my place. So while the dudes were playin' Texas Hold-Em and slugging whiskey, we drank wine, enjoyed this tasty cake and engaged in some chicky shenanigans.

We played a charades game called "Celebrity" (also referred to as "Lunchbox" in some parts; thanks to the team effort from Phil and Laurel for suggesting!). I highly recommend it if you're looking for a game for a bigger group. It's easy to explain, works well whether the guests know each other or not and is very entertaining. (Oddly, of the hundred or so celebrities that we wrote down, there were only two duplicates - Jeff Bridges and Fabio. I'm not sure what that says about us.)

In the past, I've generally made layer cakes with 9" cake pans, and unless we're having a big party, the cake never gets finished. It's just too big for a few people to polish off and the last thing I need is extra cake sitting around our house (considering the fact that I already indulge in most of the baking rejects that don't end up being shared...). So after my friend Erica introduced me to the 6" springform (via an amazing turtle cheesecake), I became a mini-cake convert.

The recipe below is measured for a 6" cake, but if you want a bigger cake (8" or 9"), just double the recipe. Similarly, for any recipes that call for bigger cake pans, divide the recipe in half if you want a 6" cake. If you make a lot of cakes, 6" pans are a great investment. I got eight perfectly-sized slices out of this cake.

French Vanilla Cake (from misshomemade.com)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1-1/3 cups plus 1 tbs. flour
1-1/8 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 tbs. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift dry ingredients together. Cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer; add eggs, vanilla and milk. Slowly add dry ingredients and continue to blend with electric mixer. Divide batter evenly into two 6" cake pans. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.

OR if you want a bigger cake, double this recipe and use two 9" cake pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

Brandied Pecans

1/2 cup pecan halves, roughly chopped

1 tbs. brandy (bourbon, sherry, Grand Marnier would probably all work)

1 tbs. sugar

Stir brandy and sugar together in a medium bowl. Stir chopped pecan pieces into sugar mix until nuts are coated. Spread nuts onto a pan lined with parchment paper or silpat. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes, stirring once. Be careful, these will burn FAST. Better to take them out early than late.

Let cool and break up any nuts that are stuck together.

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting (adapted from Whisk-Kid)

1/4 cup light brown sugar 

10 tbs. unsalted butter, softened and divided (4 tbs. and 6 tbs.)
1/3 cup heavy cream 

4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
2-3 cups powdered sugar*

*My apologies, the amount of powdered sugar originally listed here was short.

Melt brown sugar and 4 tbs. butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil over medium heat; remove from heat. Whisk in cream until completely blended. Transfer to a heat-resistant bowl and cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally. When cooled, pour a quarter of the sauce into a ziplock bag to save for drizzling.

Cream remaining 6 tbs. butter and cream cheese in a large bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in vanilla and salt. With mixer running, slowly pour in cooled brown sugar mixture and beat until smooth. Add powdered sugar gradually, beating well after each addition until completely smooth. Chill slightly for a firmer texture, stirring occasionally.

Assembly:

To assemble cake, place one cooled cake on the plate or cake stand on which you plan to serve the cake, flat side (bottom side) down. Generously apply a layer of frosting and a layer of nuts (about 1/3 of the nuts) to the top of the first layer.

If you want to get a flat cake top, like the one pictured, using a large, serrated knife, slice the rounded top off the second layer of cake (this should be just the top few millimeters of the cake). Place the cake, cut side down on top of the first layer of cake and frosting. If you don't care about having a flat-top, skip the slicing and place the second layer on top of the first layer, rounded side up.

Frost the entire cake with a thin coat of frosting to catch any loose crumbs and fill in divots or gaps. Place cake in the fridge for 20-30 minutes so that the first coat frosting hardens. Then frost the entire cake with a generous second layer and top with remaining nuts.

Snip the tip off the reserved caramel sauce in the ziplock bag and drizzle over top of cake. Serve to friends with a nice white and side of charades.

Mint Oreo Cupcakes and Uh, Laziness

 

Sooooo, I feel like we know each other pretty well now . . . and I feel like I can be honest with you all. The cupcakes pictured here are um, well, they're from a box. I wrote it really tiny because I'm ashamed. Like the little kid who whispers and turns away when he has to tell his parents that he flushed his brother's underwear down the toilet. I found myself baking at 11pm not once, but twice this week and I just didn't have the energy to bust out my measuring cups. Please don't judge me.

The thing is, they were so easy and delicious, I don't even regret it. If I want to make a fancy kind of cake, like something with fresh fruit, or if I'm baking something really special, I take pleasure in making a cake from scratch. Or if I want to experiment with a new kind of flour, I'm totally game for measuring ingredients until I'm blue in the face. But when the star of the show is really the homemade mint frosting and surprise cookie crust (coupled with the fact that my chance at getting more than 5 hours of sleep is getting smaller and smaller), I'm ok turning to a box. Organic food stores now have some good choices for boxed cake mix if you're concerned about ingredients. This girl, however, turned to Betty Crocker.

I made these cupcakes twice this week, once with red velvet cake mix and once with plain chocolate. The red velvet was definitely the winner. It tasted better with the cookie and the frosting (plus made a nice red and green theme for our holiday treats). I also tested out using a full oreo cookie in each cupcake versus twisting off the top wafer and just using one wafer plus icing. Using the full oreo was the clear winner.

Secret: if you want to wow your friends with cupcakes, just use a pastry bag for the frosting. Not only does it produce beautiful, evenly frosted cupcakes, it is SO FAST. I probably frosted 16 cupcakes in three minutes. Just do your best to avoid air bubbles in the pastry bag when filling it with frosting. I'm lucky enough to have a BFF that owns an amazing bake shop in NYC, CityCakes (if you live in the city, go there! Owner chefs Marc and Benny are nice and easy on the eyes), so I learned from the best. But it's not rocket science and I'm confident you too can make a perfectly frosted cupcake.

I used a standard Wilton brand pastry bag with a wide metal tip. If you don't have these tools, grab a gallon sized ziplock baggie, fill it with your frosting, and then snip off a corner so that you have about a 1/2 inch opening. Voilà, you are a pastry chef extraordinaire.

*Helpful tip for boxed cake mix: I make a lot of cupcakes, but it's rare that I ever want the full 24-28 cupcakes that come in a box. Or sometimes I want to make different flavors, but don't need a whole box of each. So instead of wasting ingredients, I divide the mix into thirds (thirds because boxed mix usually calls for 3 eggs). Measure out 1-1/4 cups of the dry mix and store each third in a small ziplock baggie (there might be a smidge extra, so just divide it among the bags). Store the unused bags of cake mix in the original box so that you still have the directions when you use the remainder and so that you remember what flavor it is. 

This recipe in particular will make even more cupcakes because a large chunk of the batter is replaced with a sandwich cookie.

Mint Oreo Cupcakes

Makes 30 cupcakes

Cake

1 box red velvet cake mix

1 package mint sandwich cookies (mint Oreos, mint Newman-Os, or Mint Joe-Joes from Trader Joes)

3/4 tsp. peppermint extract

muffin cups

Mint Frosting

12 oz. cream cheese

8 tbs. butter (1 stick)

6 cups powdered sugar (or more or less as needed)

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. peppermint extract 

6-8 drops green food coloring

bar of chocolate (optional decoration) 

Line muffin tin with muffin cups. Place one sandwich cookie in each cup. Prepare cake batter as directed; add 3/4 tsp. mint extract. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and bake as directed. Let cool before frosting.

For frosting, use room temperature ingredients. If you forgot to take out your butter in advance, microwave it for 5 seconds, then flip the butter chunk and microwave for another 5 seconds. Mix cream cheese and butter together with a hand mixer. Add powdered sugar 2 cups at a time and continue to mix. First it will get crumbly, but keep mixing! 6 cups of powdered sugar is an estimate; add sugar progressively until you get the flavor/consistency that you like. Mix in extracts and food coloring.

Fill a pastry bag with frosting and pipe onto cooled cupcakes. For an added decoration, shave pieces of you favorite chocolate bar onto frosted cupcakes. I used a standard vegetable peeler on a large milk chocolate bar. Another yummy option would be chopped up Andes candies bits.

Your holiday entertainees will be too busy scarfing up your cupcakes to care that they came from a box. 

Halloween Triple Fudge Brownies with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Icing

It's Halloween!!!!!!!!! No, wait, it's not Halloween. It's November 7, which is nothing (unless you count the first day after daylight savings time as an event worthy of mention; your call). But I've discovered that this whole blogging about real events thing doesn't always translate into "current" posts. Cuz dang, folks, cooking/photographing/editing/writing/posting is a time consuming process. Generally, I can get around this problem by fudging when events occur, but for some things (e.g., major holidays), that just doesn't work. 

Since becoming a food blogger a month ago, I've tried to check out as many other food blogs as I can. And let me tell you, there are LOTS, just oodles of food blogs out there. People will post about anything from baking dog biscuits to filling nearly empty peanut butter jars with yogurt (I read not one, but two blogs in the same day highlighting this pb jar phenomenon). Some bloggers tell you all about their lives and experiences and make you feel like you're BFFs even though you've never met (Front Burner Blog - thanks for the intro, Carrie!), and some have photographs and styling that are so breathtaking, you could just die (What Katie Ate - seriously, so good it kills me; see the cheese shop photo shoot).

I've discovered that some people can just blog and blog and blog and blog and do it everyday. They must have superpowers (or no day jobs). These super-bloggers are reading my post now saying, "Ha! What a weakling! This girl only posts once or twice a week!" But it's the best I can eek out for the time being and I'm ok with that.

So, now, one full week after Halloween (and 8 days after the party where these brownies made their debut), I'm sharing them with you.

I happen to think brownies from a box are awesome (in particular, the Ghirardelli Turtle Brownies, made in an 8 x 8 square pan so that they come out thick and gooey). I could never understand why anyone would want to make brownies from scratch, when such perfectly delectable chewy brownies could be whipped up with just an egg and some oil. But since I blog about food now, I figured I should Martha up and do some homemade brownie bites. I started at Whole Foods and bought four kinds of chocolate. I didn't use all four, but I like to be prepared. The "triple" fudge ultimately came from: 1) semi-sweet chocolate chips, 2)  bittersweet baking chocolate, and 3) unsweetened cocoa.

But the real deliciousness comes from the PB cream cheese frosting. Holy hannah, it's good.

And a sneak preview of our Halloween costume prop . . . 

Buuuut, I won't make you wait too long for the main event. :) Our costumes were inspired by my amazing arm wrestling feat from earlier this Fall. We were the DC Roller Girls:

I played the part of the "jammer" complete with helmet stars, and we crafted these snazzy t-shirts with sweet roller derby-esque names.

In total we had a six man team, but could never get our act together for a full team photo (roller derby girls are known for being all over the place and generally a little crazy . . . we were just playing our roles).

And there was even some arm wrestling:

Halloween was way fun and resulted in dancing until 4am. Sadly at that point all the brownies had been eaten.

Triple Fudge Brownies with PB Cream Cheese Icing

Brownies

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil (divided in half)

1/2 cup boiling water

3 oz. melted bittersweet chocolate

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1-1/3 cups unbleached flour

1 cup milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix cocoa, salt and baking soda. Add 1/3 cup vegetable oil and boiling water and mix well. Over a double boiler (or a bowl set on top of a saucepan filled an inch high with simmering water), melt the bittersweet chocolate. Stir melted chocolate into cocoa/oil/water. Add sugar, eggs, vanilla and remaining 1/3 cup of oil and mix well. Mix in flour until just incorporated. Fold in chocolate chips.

Grease two muffin tins. Pour batter evenly into tins (cups should be about half full). Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. When testing the "doneness" of brownies, I will often take them out even when they seem a little raw in the middle (something I wouldn't do, for example, with cake mix). This helps avoid burned edges. Also, the general public seems to delight in underdone brownies.

PB Cream Cheese Icing (ratios adapted from Food.com)

6 oz. cream cheese (easiest if room temperature)

2 tbs. butter (easiest if room temperature)

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2.5 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup creamy, all-natural peanut butter

Blend all ingredients using an electric hand mixer until smooth and fluffy. This will work best if your cream cheese and butter are both at room temperature. If you lack the foresight for that (like me), you can microwave each for 5 seconds, then flip and microwave for another 5 seconds. You can obviously use any peanut butter you want, but all-natural PB has a very different texture that makes this frosting AAH-mazing. Smucker's make an all-natural PB, so you should be able to get it at any grocery store.

My brownies came out like craters (the tops weren't flat, more like tiny bowls). To remedy, I did a first layer of frosting to fill in the bowls and catch any crumbs, and then popped the frosted brownies in the freezer (10 or so minutes is fine). Then I did a quick second layer of room temperature frosting, which works better for the spiderwebs.

Ganache (for making spider webs)

2 tbs. heavy cream

1 oz. chocolate (I used bittersweet)

Microwave cream in a mug for 1:45-2:00 minutes (should be simmering when you remove). Add chocolate and stir until smooth. Transfer ganache into the corner of a small plastic ziplock baggie (for use as a piping bag) and snip off the very tip of the corner. Use piping bag to make three concentric circles on each brownie. Using a sharp knife, run the tip of the knife from the center of the brownie outwards through the ganache circles 8 or 9 times (see photos above). Do the knife step shortly after piping the ganache, as it will start to harden up and won't look as webby if you wait too long.

Garnish with Halloween spider rings (or, um, bats if that's all you have . . . ).

Makes 22-24 spooky brownies