I found this recipe while flipping randomly through one of my many cookbooks. I was in one of those moods where I wanted to bake something, but not anything required a whole lot of time and or energy. . . . . . .  . . I was in a lazy baking mood.   Luckily for me this delicious carmelly apple goodness was just waiting for me!!!  

I made this with one of my sisters a few days later and both her and her kids LOVE it!!  She has officially named it the “Apple Thingy” as in ‘Hey Heidi can you make that apple thingy again?’    Well yes dearest baby sis I can, and so can you!!!! 

Here’s what you’ll need: 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup flour, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1 apple, 2 tablespoons butter.

  

   

  

   

     

First thing your gonna do is cut up the butter and place it in a 8 inch circle pan. Then stick the pan in a hot oven (400 degrees or do)

 

.

 .

 .

 .

         

Once the butters all melty, sprinkle on the sugar and the cinnamon  

 

This is whats going give the apples the lovely carmelly goodness!  Please note: if your making this for a certain Twin, who just so happens to be all concerned about calories and health and all that kinda junk, you can use less butter and less sugar.  For example, I used only 1.5 tablespoons of each instead of the full 2 tablespoons!!!  Man the things I do to show Twin how much I love her.

Next: Take an apple……………..and………..

…….. wait for it……

. 

. 

 .

 .

 .

CHOP IT UP!

Make sure to slice the apple very thin.  Large pieces are not nearly as tastey as thinner ones.

Place the apple slices on top of the sugar/cinnamon in the pan.  Notice the apples on the lower left portion on the pan……yup those ones…… well they are definitely not thin enough.  Now notice the apples in the middle?  That’s the size you should be aiming for!

Take 2 eggs, crack them into a bowl. 

Then add the milk and the flour and mix that all up! 

Be sure not to over mix, just stir till everything is mixed and most of the lumps are gone.

Pour the egg mixture over the apples.  Bake for 30-35 minutes in a 400 degree oven.  Check it at 25 minutes, if the top is golden brown then its done.

See like this!!  Nice and golden brown.  

 

Immediately loosen the sides and invert onto a plate.  M M Good!!  (Sorry for the bad quality pic…apartment lighting sucks)

Serve yourself a piece of this!!!  Seriously I order you to make this……….please   You will not be sorry.  Apple sugar cinnamon eggy awesomeness! Perfect for breakfast..or lunch ..or supper…or night snack…or late night snack….whenever!

So I finally got around to finishing another recipe from the book.  I’ve baked a large number of cakes in my time, the amount of flour/eggs and milk I’ve used could probably sustain an entire village for 12 years (not 11 and not 13….12!!  Don’t ask me how I know this I just do.)  However in my cake baking craziness I’ve never before made a pound cake! 

Like how weird is that!!!  What kind of self-respecting baker waits 24 years before producing her first delicious orange infused pound cake????? 

Well don’t worry this disgusting faux-pas has been righted.   Behold I give you the saviour of my credibility:

Lets bake this shall we!  First grate a ridiculous amount of orange peel, 1/3 cup

  It looks like my grater is smiling in the second picture, I guess it was happy to be used once again.  Also it should be noted that it is VERY hard to remove used and dried on orange peel from a smiling grater.

After you’ve grated the life out of a whack load of oranges, cream butter and sugar together till nice an combined.  Then beat in eggs one at a time, then throw in the orange peel and the rest of the ingredients….. like flour and what not.  Then mix!!!  

Place the batter in two greased and floured loaf pans. Smooth it on out……sssssmmmmmmmoooooooottttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Then throw the whole sha-bang in an oven and bake it just right. 

Once the cakes are done baking let them cool for 5 min, while their cooling heat up some orange juice and sugar to make a lovely orange glaze.  Pour the glaze liberally over the cakes.  This step is KEY!!  You may think your over glazing the cake but your not!! I would even advise that you place the cakes on a plate then pour on the glaze, so that the bottom of the cake can soak up the glaze that pools at the bottom!!!  This orange glaze while soak into the cake a provide the most amazing coating…..I sooooooo serious here, DO NOT UNDERGLAZE (I under glazed  don’t be like me)

I opted to not add the “second” icing, the white icing seen in the book, if you glazed properly that alone should be enough to produce a sweet-but-not-to-sweet orange infused pound cake.

I wish I could explain how amazing this crumb is.  Moist yet dense with the glaze creating a layer of chewy(not the right word) moist, crunchy, soft, orangey fabulousness at the top!!!  

MAKE THIS CAKE !!!!  You won’t be sorry……..unless you under glaze……or hate oranges…then you’ll be sorry. But everyone else make this!!!

Continue to read the reciepe

Read the rest of this entry »

 Ever get a craving?  Sure you do.  Ever get a craving for food that you just can’t eat?  ME TOO!  I craved s’mores!   Now techinically I can eat s’mores, the difficulty I was having this past sunday, was that in order to make them I would need to build a fire.  Don’t get me wrong here, I definitely know how to build a fire, however the landlord of the apartment building I live was somewhat less then excited to here my plans for an in door fire pit.  (Some people!)

I though maybe I could try building it without her knowledge, but then I remembered that Twin is the appartment complex snitch, and she’d have no qualms about ratting me out! !!   So with my apparent lack of sibbiling loyalty I decided to create my own inside version of a S’mores!   Well, maybe “create” is a little to free of a term , I kinda stole ideas from 2 such recipes, and combined them to make my version!!

Here’s how it all went down.

First thing your gonna do is crush up approx 20 graham crackers and add 1/8-1/4 cup melted butter to the crumbs.  Mix that up so the crumbs are nicely coated, but don’t add t omuch butter.  We want just enough to make the crumbs not dry, but not enough to make that stick together.  Got it?    Good.

Take and spoon the crumbs into baking cups, I’m not entirely sure what the exact measurment is here, but lets say 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup.

Next, whip up a batch of chocolate cake batter!  I used a boxed mixed ( no hate mail please), Betty Crookers Chocolate fudge cake mix to be exact.  I added about 1/2 cup of flour to the box, it makes the cake a little more dense and not so airy.  I like my cakes denser and very moist!  Adding the extra flour seems to produce the results I like.

Fill the cups to about 2/3 ish full with the batter.  The throw them into a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes.  Check at 15 minutes to make sure your not overcooking them.

Perfect!  Set them out to cool.  Now lets make the to-die-for marshmellow icing!  First take 2 sticks of butter (room temperature please), and beat them until creamy.  Then add 2 cups icing sugar and beat that until its nice and fluffy.  Finally add 1/2 tsp vanila and 1 16 oz jar of marshmellow fluff!!!  (drool )   Whip the icing till smooth! 

 

Place the icing into a parchement icing bag and cut a large tip into it.  Swirl a very unhealthy amount of the icing over the cupcakes.  Next artfully place a piece of graham cracker and a piece of a Jersey Milk chocolate bar on top of each cupcake!

VOLIA!! You have just made S’Mores cupcakes!  They’re perfect for every occasion, family picnics, meetings, kids lunches, mid-night snacks and even pre-workout munchies (although that might be a conflict of interest)!!  And the best part is you don’t have to break any saftey or fire codes!  That’s what I call the best of both worlds.

Enjoy! 

Fondant is a beautiful and fun icing to cover and decorate cakes with.  However most fondant icing is tasteless at best, sometimes it even leaves a gross after taste. You can add flavourings to your fondant if you want or. . . .  . . You can make MARSHMELLOW fondant!! 

If you like the taste of Marshmellows, you’ll like this fondant.  If you like extremely easy recipes, you’ll like this fondant.  If you prefer to not add ingredients like glucose or glycerin to your baking, then you’ll like this fondant!

The ingredients for MMF are very simple:  Marshmellows, water, icing sugar and Crisco shorting.   Thats it!!  Four simple fun ingredients! 

Step 1:

Place 2 tablespoons of water and 16oz (or 2 cups) mini marshmellows in a bowl, over a pot of simmering water.  You could also use the microwave (if you enjoy killing your self slowly with harmfull micro-waves!!). 

Step 2

Generously grease the countertop.  Really grease that baby up!  Seriuosly you’ll feel like you’ve gain ten lbs just watching your self throwing the grease down.

Step 3:

Place 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar into the melted marshmellow mix.

Step 4

Dump  the mix onto the greased counter.  Grab about 1/4 cup of the shorting and slather it on your hands.  YUMMY!  Then digging into the lovely sticky mass and begin to knead the mix, adding icing sugar as you go.  You’ll probably use up to 3 1/2 – 4 cups icing sugar in TOTAL! 

Step 5:

Keep kneading and adding sugar until you have a ball of fondant that will be a good rollable consistancy and is also stretchy!  It took me between 8-10 minutes of kneading to get the icing to where I wanted it.  Also note that throughtout the whole kneading and sugar adding process you should keep reapplying shorting to your hands and the counter. You may not use the whole 1/2 cup but I know I sure did!

Step 6

Next double wrap the fondant in plastic wrap.  The adove work is a total of 3 double batchs of fondant.

Step 7

You can use the fondant right away, or you can store it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge for a good week or so.

There you have it!  A simple and satisfying fondant recipe.  I have yet to cover a cake with this perticular recipe (I have with the Wilton fondant recipe), but once I so I’ll let you know how it holds up!

Enjoy!