Halloween Treats

Halloween will be here soon. Not only am I excited about Halloween but Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have decided to host a rally and march in DC that weekend which is going to be tons of fun. And when that weekend couldn't get more awesome, it did when Rachel decided to come visit! Me, Rachel, and my roommate Moriah got Star Trek costumes to wear that weekend, which will be cute. My friends in DC also have other friends coming in that weekend so it's going to be a crazy few days. I'm looking forward to it!

Even though I don't have anything to cook for this Halloween, I thought I would share two things I've made for parties near Halloween in the past for anyone still trying to figure out fun dinner items!

These cake pops are adapted from Bakerella. I'm not going to post the recipe so hop on over to her fantastic website for it, but these are super easy and fun to make. I didn't have lollipop sticks so I used popsicle sticks and while not as good looking, they did the job. There are so many different things you can do with these but I, obviously, made vampires. I think this was actually for a Twilight part, haha.

 

Another Halloween party that I went to had asked me to bring a salad. I searched and search for some type of salad that I could make Halloweeny. I finally found this idea for eyeball caprese salad and they turned out great! I don't have a link because I don't remember where I found the idea - but they are made with a basil leaf, tomato slice, sliced mozzarella cheese balls (the kind you can get at an olive bar at the grocery store), and topped with two kinds of olives to make the eyeballs. I used a straw to poke holes in the halved green olives and in the black olives. I took the inner part of the hole out of the black olive and placed it into the hole I made in the green olives. I topped them with olive oil and pepper. I was quite happy with how cute these little guys were :)

Pecan Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake

This cheesecake has gotten the best reception of anything I have taken to work thus far. I made it for a friend at work's baby shower because he loves pumpkin. I had never made this recipe before and it turned out amazing. This is definitely a keeper and I'll be making it again. It would be a great alternative to pumpkin pie during the holidays. I really feel like the homemade caramel makes the cheesecake but you could certainly use store bought.

 

Butterscotch Cookies

I did a lot of cooking while I was home in September and these cookies were one of the things I made. I'm hesitant to post them here because I wasn't a giant fan of them but everyone else who tried them liked them so maybe it was just me. This recipe calls for browned butter, which I had never done before, so I may not have done it right. I also usually prefer soft or chewy cookies and these were very crunchy, which may have had something to do with it. I love butterscotch so I'm going to have to give these another try soon but let me know what you think if you end up making them!

German Chocolate Cake

I don't have my limited decorating tools here in DC, but it won't stop me from attempting to make a pretty cake! A friend a work's birthday was last week and his favorite cake is German Chocolate Cake. I had never make a German Chocolate Cake (and actually never even tasted one!) but I'm always up for trying to make a new type of cake. It turned out pretty good and would definitely make it again. I'm discovering that almost any cake recipe that calls for buttermilk is going to be a winner.

A little trick I've learned is to make the actual cake portion a day early. Not only does this give you a little breathing room when putting everything together, it also makes working with the cake a lot easier. Cold or frozen cake just behaves so much better and is a lot easier to decorate than warm or even room temperature cake. I don't know about you, but I rarely seem to give myself enough time when making a cake to get everything done just how I want it and the decorating and assembly is always the step that suffers. Breaking the process up into two portions allows you to focus your efforts appropriately.

Just let the cakes cool down to room temperature and wrap well in plastic wrap and pop in the fridge for a few days. If you need to keep them for more than a few days, put them in the freezer (and if you really want to be sure they are well wrapped, put them in those giant freezer bags).

Oh - and isn't this cake stand just gorgeous?? But seriously, $65? No thanks. But this one, at $20, is just as cute and comes in multiple colors! Oh goodness, once I have a stable house/apartment again, I'm going to be spending so much money on kitchen stuff. And I should really look into taking a class or two on cake decorating because I'm really starting to enjoy it. I'm sure DC has tons.

I hate the fact that this picture turned out so yellow. Darn fluorescent lights.

Strawberry Cheesecake

I love cheesecake.  It's one of those decadent treats that you only make on a special occasion.  Or should only make on a special occasion.  Our special occasion was we had strawberries that needed to be used.  When I asked Andrew what I should make with the strawberries, he chose strawberry cheesecake.  So cheesecake it was.  I don't need much convincing to make cheesecake!  This recipe from bakerella was pretty good taste wise.  I thought the consistency was just a tiny bit grainy but I didn't let it sit overnight in the refrigerator like you're supposed to, so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

You can top it with this strawberry sauce (which, by the way, was amazing), chocolate sauce, caramel (oooh my that would be good..), whipped cream, or pretty much anything you like.  bakerella made some amazing white chocolate decorations for the top of hers that I would like to try at some point.

 

Best Birthday Cake!

My dad's birthday was May 7th and, since I've gotten a few good cake decorating tools lately, I decided to try my hand (again) at baking a pretty cake!  This is really my second attempt.  I made this for Andrew's mom's birthday a few months ago but used a chocolate technique rather than piping.  As usual, I didn't given myself enough time to work on it so I had to rush through the last few steps.  I'm not posting a picture of the cake after I wrote on it because it was pretty much awful.  I used writing chocolate that was too runny and too warm and it just melted together.  I've had a lot of trouble with writing chocolate lately (I can never get the proper combination of chocolate and oil) so I think I'm going to write with icing next time.

With this cake, I meant to do the base color blue and the decorations white but I added the food coloring before I pulled out any icing because I just plain forgot.  So I ended up with two different shades of blue which actually turned out better than I thought it would.  My mom bought me a little turn table which is amazingly helpful for decorating as I can just turn the cake rather than trying to contort myself around it.  I very nearly messed up the piping by sticking the piping bag in the fridge while I was putting the base icing on.  Bad idea.  This icing is mostly butter and it turned rock solid.  I had to work the bad with my hands for quite awhile to warm it back up but the entire time I used it I just running into hard spots which messed up my piping.

Key Lime Pound Cake

I love pound cake.  I love everything about it.  So, I'm always game to try different types of pound cake.  I've had the idea of a key lime pound cake stuck in my head for a few weeks so I went to the internet in pursuit of a proper recipe.  The internet never lets you down, right??  Wrong!  I only found 2 lime pound cake recipes and I really wasn't comfortable with either of them.  However, in my search through some of my current food blogger reads I stumbled upon a new site - Smitten Kitchen - and pretty much fell in love.  I spent several good hours that day reading back through Deb's posts and, with the help of some email correspondence, finally settled on a recipe for Lemon Pound Cake with the substitution of key limes for lemons.

The final product turned out impossibly delicate and quite tart but still very good.  While I don't think it quite beats my aunt's recipe for Cream Cheese Pound Cake (which will make an appearance here in the near future, I'm sure), it's certainly a light, summery option worthy of a special occasion.

Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

I ran across this recipe on Fake Ginger's blog and couldn't resist.  Now I have an amazing oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe from my friend H's mother that I'm sure I will share on here sometime, but it never hurts to try something new!  Plus, upon querying Andrew as to what he would prefer - oatmeal chocolate chip, chocolate chip, or snickerdoodle - he chose chocolate chip.  

This recipe was amazingly quick and easy to throw together.  I'm an instant fan of any baking recipe that called for melted butter rather than room temperature butter because I rarely have time to let butter soften properly (and I've yet to find a method that softens it better than just leaving it on the counter for a few hours).  The original recipe called for huge cookies - I'm not kidding!  It used a 1/4 cup measurer to scoop the dough onto the cookie sheet!  While that may be fun for kids, I thought this size was a bit more manageable.

I made these cookies to go with Andrew to a soccer tournament he was refereeing this past weekend - for him and to hand out to the other referees there.  The result?  I'm apparently making them for the next tournament too.

Chocolate Chip Poundcake with Whipped Chocolate Ganache Filling topped with Chocolate Glaze

This cake was an ordeal, let me tell you.  I started the entire process at about 6pm and stuck the final product in the refrigerator to harden at about midnight (I saved most of the clean up for a few days).  Even though it was very time consuming and had multiple steps, I enjoyed making it. 

(picture using my iPhone*)

The three recipes used for this cake come from The Whimsical Bakehouse by Kaye Hansen and Liv Hansen, which my mom got me for Christmas.  I've been dying to try my hand at making a cake from their book because the pictures are just too cute.  Andrew's mom's birthday is next Tuesday so we went to visit this weekend.  This gave me a good opportunity to try one out!

Vegan Chocolate Truffles

The event that pushed me to actually create this blog was making these truffles.  Katie, a very dear friend of mine, is vegan.  It was Valentine's Day and since she is one of the few close friends that I see on a regular basis, I wanted to make her something.  I thought this was going to be a challenge.  Vegan + candy usually does not = easy to make.  Candy making isn't something that I've dabbled in much (if you don't count Christmas treats and if you DO count Christmas treats, I'm pretty much a failure because divinity is HARD) but when I stumbled upon this recipe, I had to try it.  The ingredients were fairly simple and straight forward.  The only "strange" substitution was vegan cream cheese.  I intended to send Katie home with the entire batch until Andrew tried one and demanded that we keep some.  They were that good.

(picture courtesy of Katie Cosby)