Suzy Creamcheese, What's Got Into Ya?

So, I decided that if I'm really going to let Ophelia talk me into doing this cake stuff, I'd better start taking it seriously. She gets torked when I jack around baking. I'm sure it has something to do with her horsepower being wound a little too tight. Whatever.

Anyway, the thing I like most about baking is that I rarely screw it up. It's something I can do when I need a break, or when I'm trying to take my mind off of more cerebral things. So, tonight, after I taught, I came home and got to work. I've done a fruit-theme cake (raspberry and lemon), a peanut butter cake (so, so good), and a deep, deep chocolate cake. What should I try, I asked Ophelia. She didn't want to make a cake tonight, but frosting was ok. So, it is...a Chocolate Amaretto cake with a Fluffy Vanilla Cream Cheese frosting. I have no idea how it tastes. It's in my fridge, and frankly, once I make them I'm kind of done with them. Plus, I love frosting so much that I can't help myself from trying to inhale any left over frosting, of which there is often much. In fact, I think I've had so much sugar tonight I may need to take a couple laps around the house to get to sleep. Anyone want some cake? Seriously. If you want some, you got some. Ophelia also takes requests, though she does reserve veto power. Just don't request anything with raisins. They gross her out.

Anyway, we decided we really didn't care about the cake so much tonight as we did the frosting. So, much more attention was paid to the consistency and taste of the frosting, and to the technique. After watching some DIY videos on cake decorating (totally helpful, I loves me the Internets:), we set off to work. I'd also gotten some professional cake decorating equipment, so I was antsy to try it out. The photos above show the outcome. Not too shabby for the first time out with them, I don't think. The bottom of the cake needs some work, yes. Ophelia wants me to note that the decorating was my part, the making of the frosting hers. She's got such an ego.

The recipe here isn't necessary, I don't think. It's not impressive, and I don't know how the cake is, but what I wanted to chronicle was the decorating skills as they (hopefully) get better. You'll see that Mindy invited me to join her for a cake decorating class, which I'm totally getting in on. The funny thing is that this is the what, fifth cake that I've made and decorated, and I think this is my worst one, aesthetically. I dumped some shaved chocolate on the top of it in an effort to cover up the bad decorating job, but I'm not sure it did any good.:) I'll let you know.

Ophelia wants off the cake for a week now (makes us sound like addicts -- we're getting off the sauce. Yes, I said sauce. I'm from the Midwest, where cake is our sauce and we say sauce. What?), so early next week when I return from my cousin Tiff's wedding (Huzzah! We love Tiff and her soon-to-be husband Dan!), we'll tackle something else. I've been eying this peach tart. I keep talking about peaches and never following through.:) It must be next time, it must.

*Update -- cake GOOD! The frosting recipe is a recipe I made up, and it's actually really good! I'll be trying this one again. The amaretto syrup I made was really good with it, too. Yummers, to quote A.!*

The Magic of Peanut Butter

Since I was a little girl, I have had an affinity for peanut butter. Perhaps it was watching my father make the only thing he knows how to make in the kitchen (peanut butter sandwiches with enough peanut butter to choke someone), or perhaps it was watching my Grandma M. make peanut butter cookies from scratch with no measurements. Anyway, I loves me some peanut butter. The more I can do with it, the better.

So, when I found this recipe for a peanut butter cake with a peanut butter frosting, I jumped at the chance. Ophelia had been on vacation for a little while, because of the start of school and all, so she was rested and ready. I was a little nervous, though. The frosting was unlike anything I'd made before, and I wanted to decorate it nicely (when I get out of hell, er, school, my first action is going to be to take a cake decorating class. Ok maybe my second, but certainly my second). Plus, with my love of peanut butter, I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize the wonder that is peanut butter.

So, here we go. Now, the recipe had me cheat a bit -- I was to use a box cake mix. Now, I wouldn't normally do this, but since it was my first time with this recipe, I followed it step by step and will mess with it later, depending upon how it tastes. I'll post on that later. *Update* YUMMY! It's ok to have peanut butter cake and diet pepsi for breakfast, right? Right?

Recipe (from allrecipes.com)

Cake:
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/2 c peanut butter (I doubled this to a c. because, well, I love peanut butter:)
1 box butter cake mix
2/3 c. water

Frosting:
1/2 c. butter, softened
1 c. peanut butter
4 c. powdered sugar
1/3 c. heavy cream (I found I had to use more, like almost 2/3 c to get the frosting to spread correctly)

For cakes: Mix first two ingredients for cake in your mixer (go Ophelia, go!) with the paddle attachment until fluffy and creamy. Add cake mix and water intermittently until mixed. Grease two 9-inch cake pans. Split cake mix evenly into the two pans. Smooth off top and bake at 325 degrees for 25-30 min. until done. Cool for 10 min. in pans, remove from pans and cook completely on racks.

For frosting: Cream together butter and peanut butter until light and fluffy. Add powdered sugar and cream (use cream sparingly just until frosting is spreadable) in small doses until combined.

Frost cakes when cool, with one layer of frosting in the middle. Chop peanut butter cups for decoration.

SO yummy, also very rich! Ophelia says enough with the peanut butter already, so we'll be moving onto something else (perhaps some bread) this weekend/week!

On Leaps, Longings and Lemons...

So, my super duper awesome friend D. has had a lot of changes in these past months. She has a new job, a new house, and a new car. She'll soon meet lots of new people, and experience lots of new things. She's no longer a graduate student. She's Dr. D. now. I admire her so much, and as you can see from previous posts, I'm so, so proud of her, and proud to be her friend. I'm thrilled, as well, to have been lucky enough to watch her leap and succeed. It's no small feat, I think, to follow a dream through, to have the ability to work hard and get what you've worked for. So, to celebrate, D. and M. are throwing a housewarming/celebration party, to welcome the changes in their lives and to celebrate with the people around them.

I'm SO happy to celebrate these accomplishments and changes with them. As we speak, I'm making lemon bars to take to their party. More on that later. I have to say, though, that I find myself tinged with a little bit of sadness, as well. Any change is like that, really. Lots to celebrate, and lots to reminisce about, along with some sadness about letting go of one thing to follow another. This will be the first year of my Ph.D. I have gone through without D. My first orientation without her there. We have done this together for so long that, sometimes, I find myself unsure how to do it without her. Any project, any conference presentation, any major or minor detail, we did together. So much of our stuff intertwines that I often forget what's hers and what's mine. I will miss her presence at school. Of course, we will still work together and help each other, because we can and she isn't moving across country, in fact she is staying very close. I am lucky, as often this is not the case. This isn't to say that I don't have many wonderful friends and people at school. I do. But, I will miss her presence, the daily of our routines. I will miss her as she moves into this wonderful, new position in her life. I know she will do great. She always does.

And, so, I make lemon bars. I thought they were appropriate -- plus, D. loves them. A lemon bar can be truly unique -- the lemon, initially, tart and bitter, but eventually sweet, the reward of the sweet far outweighing the initial tart bitterness. And, they leave you wanting another, and another, and another. I know it will be that way for D. -- the difficulties of starting anew now will give way to the sweetness of being a professor, of living somewhere with space and breathing room, of driving a trustworthy car, of having achieved something that seems so unattainable in these limbo years of our lives.

These bars are easy to make, really. It's a recipe from a town cookbook, a tried and true easy Midwestern recipe. We do love our cake mixes. Ophelia beat this filling like a champ. Boy do I love her. Plus, how can you go wrong with blue and yellow?:)

1 box yellow cake mix
1/3 c. oil
1 egg

Mix until crumbly. Remove 3/4 c. from mixture, and press the rest into 9x13 pan. Bake for 12 min. at 350 degrees.

1 8oz. pkg. cream cheese
1/3 c. sugar
juice of one lemon
grated lemon rind (to taste)

Beat until smooth. Add to top of hot baked crust. Sprinkle with reserved crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 min.

Enjoy!

Ace of Cakes I'm not...yet

Well, folks, this was our first attempt at a multi-layered cake. Ophelia and I are quite proud of ourselves, if we do say so. As you can see from the pictures -- success! More on that later. You see, P.'s parents are in town this week, so I wanted to have them over to celebrate and enjoy. I'd met them last night, and they are a hoot! I really enjoyed them. I can see now where P. gets her sense of humor and all around good/sweet nature. Her dad reminds me of many of the members of my family (tonight he taught us all about the new "Air Car," not to mention the fact that he rocks socks with crocs), and her mom is just as sweet as can be (she made me an amazingly cute apron -- what a perfect gift! Ophelia and I are totally decked out now). They made homemade applesauce yesterday and gave me some (YUM, eat your hearts out!), we worked on crochet (that's a story for another time, I am such a bad crochet teacher -- thanks for bailing us out, T!), went out to eat and tooled around for a while. So, tonight I wanted to welcome them to my home with a very heart-felt welcome and with many thanks. And how do Ophelia and I do that? Yes, that's right, with food. But not just any food -- something special.

That's where this cake comes in. It's called the "Perfect Party Cake" -- Ophelia and I, of course, wanted it to be the perfect party, so that's what we chose. It was a day of firsts for us, Ophelia and I. I'd never done a 4 layer cake. I'd also never made a true buttercream frosting before. Ophelia was as green as I was. If she was nervous, though, she didn't show it. What a champ. And thus the challenge began.

First, the cake -- it's a lemon-ish white cake, made with cake flour, lemon zest, butter, egg whites, baking powder. As you can see from the pictures, they turned out really well. It was much easier to deal with these cakes as opposed to the chocolate cakes I made for D.'s defense. I am sure it is because these were much less dense. So, while the cakes cooked, I began the buttercream frosting. In a double-boiler, I cooked 4 egg whites with 1 1/2 cups sugar. The directions told me to cook it for 3 min. or until it looked like shiny marshmallow spread. I likely cooked it for 5 min. because I wanted to make sure it was hot enough to actually cook. And, I also really like to put stuff in a double boiler. I have no idea why. I mean, whoever thought to do that kind of stuff?

So, once I did that, I was to let Ophelia at it. Ophelia was to beat the mixture for 5 min. or so until it almost tripled in size. Man, is she good at her jobs. I wish I was that competent. I think she likes that I'm a tad bit jealous of her strength and abilities. Notice she let me photograph her today. I don't think that the ego boost and the photograph is a coincidence. Just sayin'. Then, comes the butter. I almost had a coronary just looking at how much butter went into this frosting. I don't even think I can admit it here. Let's just say that Paula would be proud, very proud. And, I feel like I am doing my part to support the dairy farmers here in the Midwest. So, it's ok, right? Right?

Then, the final test for Ophelia -- just beat the shit out of this frosting for like 10 min., aerate it to the point of doubling, and then you're ready to frost. Ophelia handled it like a trooper. Sometimes, I swear I hear her whisper "bring it, bitch." It would figure my mixer would have an attitude.

And, then came the part I was dreading -- separating the cake layers. Now, I had never done that before, and considering how difficult the chocolate cake was to deal with, I was very, very afraid. But, then I figured if nothing else, I had ingredients to still make the brownies I had on hand as my backup, so I just went for it. Surprisingly, it was fairly easy to separate the layers. You can see that in the photos, as well.

Now, where the recipe divulged a bit from the original was with the frosting. It was to be a lemon buttercream frosting. Well, I made it a raspberry-lemon buttercream. Why, you may ask? Well, yes, Ophelia and both do enjoy pink very much. We also thought it looked very nice with the raspberries. And, while we could lie to you and tell you that's why, lying's really not our style. We let our crazy hang all out there.

I screwed up. Bottom line. I got the jam for the middle layers too close to the outside and knew that if I tried to spread that white buttercream frosting on the outside, I'd end up with pink streaks that were obviously not meant to be there. So, instead, we opted for a pink frosting that we made just by mixing in a few tablespoons of seedless raspberry jam.

Now, I will admit that this cake, for all the butter, is actually very light in taste. In fact, I might have liked a little bit heavier (in terms of weight and sweetness) buttercream. But, all in all, quite the party, and quite the party cake. Ophelia is sending me to an orchard tomorrow to get some apples and peaches, so stay tuned!

"Call Me" Blondie Brownies, or She Was What We Called a Suicide Blonde Maple Blondies

Well, as I am wont to do, at about 10:15 tonight I decided I wanted to bake something. I surfed the net for a bit, and found a recipe for Blondie brownies. Now, that spurred me to want my favorite dessert -- Applebees' Maple Blondie Brownie. I have no words to describe that dessert. My friend Janelle and I were having birthday lunch at the Applebees in the mall in Rochester, MN the first time I had that dessert. We'd had a Mucho Margarita fest, which commenced in a new sport (drunk shopping), which I only participated in once. I was, however, very good at this particular sport. My bank account didn't appreciate my greatness, however. Anyway, back to the story about the Maple Blondie. Janelle and I were known for enjoying food, so we went for it. The cold vanilla ice cream mixed with the creamy maple butter sauce with the decadent blondie was almost too much to handle. It's really the only other thing I remember about that day, thanks to the margaritas. I know Janelle and I had a good time, we always did, and the taste of that Blondie has stuck with me since that moment in 1998.

As you can see from the pictures, I decided to try to tackle it. I took some pictures of Ophelia, but she wasn't cooperating tonight. Sometimes, a star just won't be photographed. She might also be angry with me about a failed roll attempt yesterday, in which I had to throw some dough away that she worked very hard on. I apologized, but it might take a day or two. I don't blame her, I was pretty mad myself.

So, anyway, hoping I would come through for myself, I went hunting for white chocolate chips. In all my foresight, I had stocked some. I must have known this night was coming. And thus, the baking commenced.

Blondies:

1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. butter
1 c. packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp. vanilla

1/4 c. chocolate chips

Cream together wet ingredients. Sift together dry. Combine the two together and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Press into 8x8 greased pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Cut while warm.

Maple Butter Sauce (yes, of course this is low calorie -- do I make anything that's not?)
1/4 c. unsalted butter
1 8 oz. package cream cheese
1/4 c. sweetened condensed milk
1/4 c. white chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
Maple Flavoring to taste

Melt first three ingredients in sauce pan, but do not boil. Once combined/melted, add in chocolate chips, maple flavoring and salt, off heat, and allow to melt. Serve hot over blondies.

And, now both Debbie Harry and Saul Bellow's heads are spinning around as I type. Enjoy!