Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

After making the Basic Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes, I thought I'd try the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. Chocolate on chocolate...how could it be bad? So yummy! Here's the recipe, I hope you enjoy it too :)

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

¼ cup margarine, softened

¼ cup shortening

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (sifted if there are clumps)

2 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

3 Tablespoons soymilk

1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1. Cream together the margarine and the shortening until well combined. Add the cocoa powder and incorporate well. Add the powdered sugar in about ½ cup batches and beat well, adding a little splash of soymilk after each addition. When all ingredients have been well incorporated, add the vanilla and beat until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes with a hand mixer, 7 minutes if mixing with a fork).

Variation:

Add a teaspoon of coffee extract for mocha buttercream

Basic Vegan Chocolate Cupcake

Your Basic (Vegan) Chocolate Cupcake

My best friend Christina is a vegan. I admire her for that. Although I love vegetables and fruits, I'm a meat and potatoes kinda girl.

She's always suggesting new recipies for me to try. Most of them have been very good. Some, not so much :) (ahem...chocolate "pudding" that's really mashed up avocadoes mixed with vanilla and cocoa powder!)

She told me about a cookbook called Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. She told me about how good these recipies were and how everyone that's tried them when she makes them loves them. So, I decided to get the book and put her "claims" to the test. I decided to try the Basic Chocolate Cupcake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

The verdict? Delicious!! Holy cow, Anthony ate 3 of them in one day! I don't really even care for chocolate cake but I have to say, these were so good! VERY rich! I gave some to a friend of mine (so they wouldn't stay in our house) who has two kids and she said they all thought they were really good. So, thank you Christina for telling me about the cupcake book. I can't wait to try some different flavors!

Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake

1 cup soy milk

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

¾ cup granulated sugar

⅓ cup canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon almond extract, chocolate extract, or more vanilla extract (I used more vanilla)

1 cup all-purpose flour

⅓ cup cocoa powder, Dutch-processed or regular

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line muffin pan with paper or foil liners.

2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, and vanilla extract, and other extract, if using, to the soy milk mixture and beat till foamy. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat till no large lumps remain (a few tiny lumps are okay).

3. Pour into liners, filling three-quarters of the way. Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and let cool completely.

* I topped them with the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

(recipe in a separate post)

Turtle Cheesecake

Turtle Cheesecake

Servings: 12

I have decided to master the cheesecake. I think I did it with this one! It turned out so good! Yes, I may have added more chocolate chips and pecans on top than what it called for, but how on earth could that be a bad thing? :)

I found the recipe at http://www.allrecipes.com but I made a few adjustments:

-I used chocolate animal crackers for the crust

-I used caramel ice cream topping instead of the caramels and evaporated milk.

-I also used the mini chocolate chips instead of the regular ones.

-Instead of melting chocolate and adding it to the batter, I just sprinkled chocolate chips on top of the caramel topped crust with the layer of nuts. (I hope that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't!)

-Finally, I added more caramel on top of the final cake and loaded the top with more nuts and chocolate chips!

Here's the original recipe that I found. I'm sure it would be good following the recipe as is.

2 cups vanilla wafer crumbs

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter

14 ounces individually wrapped caramels, unwrapped

1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk

1 cup chopped pecans

3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese

½ cup white sugar

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

2 eggs

½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter one 9-inch springform pan.

2. Toast the pecans at 350°F for 6 minutes. Remove pecans and set aside. Leave oven at 350°F. In a small saucepan, melt the unsalted butter.

3. Combine vanilla wafer crumbs with the melted butter then press into the bottom of the prepared springform pan. Place the pan onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool.

4. In a double boiler, or a bowl set over barely simmering water, melt the caramels in the evaporated milk. Stir until smooth. Pour this over the cooled crust. Sprinkle the nuts over the top.

5. In a bowl, combine the cheese, sugar, and vanilla and beat until smooth, scraping down the bowl several times. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat until smooth. Melt the chocolate chips in the double boiler and mix into the cheese mixture. Pour the batter over the caramel layer.

6. Bake at 350°F for 40 minutes or until barely set. Chill over night in the refrigerator before serving.

Bubble Bread

What a yummy treat. It's sweet. It's gooey. It's covered in pecans. It's total "lick-your-fingers-because-it's-good" food! While also known as Monkey Bread, I grew up calling it Bubble Bread. It's so easy to make and it's always a hit. There are never any leftovers!

Bubble Bread

Ingredients:

½ cup chopped pecans (I usually add more)
18 frozen dinner rolls cut in half if you can. ( Small ) In bags in frozen foods.
1 (3.5 ounce) package cook and serve butterscotch pudding mix
½ cup butter
½ cup brown sugar

Directions:

1. Generously butter( or spray well) a Bundt pan.
2. Sprinkle pecans in bottom of pan.
3. Place frozen dinner rolls on top of pecans.
4. Sprinkle dry pudding mix in between and over the top of rolls.
5. Combine butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan. Heat until melted and sugar is disolved well, then pour over rolls.
6. Cover with plastic wrap or wax paper and allow to stand overnight.
7. In the morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
8. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden brown.

Turn over on a serving dish and enjoy!

*I'd actually like to try making a non sweet version. Maybe a cheesy garlic version. Hmm...

Hazelnut Cake

Hazelnut Cake

When I started my new job back in December of 2009, one of my new co-workers, Karen, gave me a calendar. It's the Pillsbury® Dessert Recipes 16 month 2010 Calendar. I thought she was being nice. Little did I know, the "catch" was that I was supposed to make the special dessert that was pictured each month. Okay, fine. I guess I can do that :) Although, I haven't really stuck to the month to month thing. I just kind of make whatever looks and sounds good at the time. So, this is actually the recipe for the month of June.

The picture I posted includes the original picture from the calendar (top cake) and how mine turned out (bottom cake). Looking at the two, I think I did a pretty darn good job! Now how about the taste? Honestly, I think it was good. It wasn't real sweet, which I liked. It might have been a little dry, but I think that might have been because I used too much ground up hazelnuts in the batter. It was still very good though. All my co-workers seemed to like it. I did double the chocolate glaze part. I work with all women, we love chocolate :)

Here's the recipe, courtesy of my Pillsbury® 2010 Dessert Recipe Calendar.

Hazelnut Cake

16 Servings

Prep Time: 30 mins

Start to Finish: 2 hrs

½ cup butter or margarine

2 packages (2½ oz. each) hazelnuts (filberts) or pecans

3 eggs

1½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

2¼ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

Glaze:

½ cup whipping (heavy) cream

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (6 oz.)

½ teaspoon vanilla

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Lightly grease bottom only of 10-inch spring form pan with shortening or cooking spray. In 1-quart saucepan, melt butter over low heat; set aside to cool.

2. Reserve 8 whole nuts for garnish. In food processor or blender, process remaining nuts until ground, making about 1 1/3 cups. Reserve 1 tablespoon for garnish.

3. In large bowl, beat eggs, sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed 2 to 3 minutes or until thick and lemon colored, scraping bowl occasionally. On low speed, beat in flour, baking powder, salt and ground nuts, scraping bowl occasionally. Continue beating, gradually adding cooled, melted butter until well blended, scraping bowl occasionally (mixture will be thick). Spread batter evenly in pan.

4. Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes. Remove side of pan; run long knife under cake to loosen from pan bottom. Place heatproof serving plate upside down over cake; turn plate and cake over. Remove pan bottom. Cover cake with cloth towel; cool completely, about 30 minutes.

5. In 2-quart saucepan, heat whipping cream just to boiling; remove from heat. Stir in chocolate chips until melted and smooth. Stir in ½ teaspoon vanilla. Spread glaze over top of cake, allowing some to run down side of cake. Sprinkle reserved ground nuts around top edge of cake; arrange reserved whole nuts over ground nuts.

High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): Heat oven to 375ºF. Increase flour to 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons. Bake 30-40 minutes.

Baking Tip: No spring form pan? Just use a 9-inch round cake pan. Line the pan with foil and generously grease the foil with shortening or cooking spray. Bake the cake for 45 to 55 minutes. After cooling for 15 minutes, use the foil to lift the cake out of the pan.

Enjoy!

Toilet Seat Covers

Toilet Seat Covers. To me, they've always been a blessing and a confusion all at the same time. I've never used a Port-A-Potty and I don't ever plan to! I really do hate having to use a public bathroom. Of course, when nature calls sometimes you can't ignore her. This calling usually ends up with me lining the seat with toilet paper just in case I touch it while I assume the squat but don't sit position. For the lucky times there happen to be toilet seat covers present, I get all excited!

After all these years, this is how I've been using a toilet seat cover. I used to leave the flap part out. Don't know why. I was never taught the correct way to use them so that's how I did it.

Well thank goodness for one of the stalls at work. It actually had the instructions printed on the cover of the cover container. (did that make sense?) Anyway, thank you Health Gards for teaching me the correct way to use a toilet seat cover! The flap goes IN the water. I guess that makes sense. It acts as an anchor to keep the seat from moving. Then when you flush, the water pulls the cover in so you don't have to touch anything. Brilliant! You get a thumbs up from me!

Yay for instructions and for my learning something new!!

Our First House!

May 20, 2010

What a "grown up" day for Anthony and I! We closed on our first house! Yay for us!

Exactly one week after we closed, we got the keys to our house. Such a fun day! I hate that we had to wait a week but we decided to be nice and give the two guys we bought it from a few extra days to move out. Had we known that they were going to leave the house as dirty as they did, we might not have decided to be so nice!

We got the keys!

The front of the house. I love the white with black shutters :)

The front bathroom. This is going to be a big work in progress for us, but we're ready to tackle it!

The living room. When looking at the picture, the front door is to towards the left and the dining area is to the right. That door leads to the kitchen.

The master bathroom area. Lots of storage! The wall paper has got to go! It's so ugly! So nice of the guys to leave us that beautiful picture...yeah, thanks :P

Anthony in one of the corners of our master bedroom. It's SO big! Lot's of room for furniture. Too bad we don't have any! haha!

The dining area looking out into the back yard. We have a yard! Yay! At least the guys left us some nice light fixtures. I kept hitting my head on this one. You think I would have learned the first few times. It's a good thing I'm hard headed!

The kitchen. I love that it's got lots of space. The colors have got to eventually go! The stove is a ceramic cook-top. We negotiated to keep the refrigerator. It's the kind that has the freezer on the bottom.



The laundry room. It's HUGE! Along with the washer and dryer, the guys had a round bistro table and two chairs in there. Not exactly the kind of place I'd like to sit, but it looked cute. To the right of the picture is a door that leads out to the 2 car garage.

We've got a big storage shed in the backyard. That will definitely come in handy!

The backyard. There's a big trench that runs along the back. Because we're technically in a "flood zone", the yard slopes down. Not my ideal backyard but it's ours! I still love it :)

We'v got 3 beautiful rose bushes. One is yellow, one is red and the other is a dark pinkish color. We also have a white oleander. Anyone want some oleander tea? haha, just kidding!

The backyard, again. I love that we have a yard :)