Happy Birthday Mac

My mom gave me a cake mold for Valentine's Day, so I decided I wanted to use it and I attempted to make a cake for my brother's birthday.

This is what it was suppose to look like:


I mixed up the cake mix, in this case, gluten free cake mix, so my mom could eat it. The directions said to divide the mix between the two molds evenly. That didn't even cover the mold, but cakes rise some, so I figured it would work out. Always follow the direction the first time, then change accordingly, they always say. It didn't cover the mold, turns out. So basically I had the outside ring, and an awkward cupcake looking cupcake that wasn't connected. But I decided to put together the cake anyway. Earlier I had made a chocolate mousse sort of concoction. I used:

*6 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate morsels
*3 eggs, searated
*1/4 cup water
*1/8 tsp salt
*1.3 cup firmly packed brown sugar


First you melt the semi-sweet chips, you can do it over a double boiler or in the microwave.


Next add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add water and beat until smooth.


In another bowl, combine egg whites and salt. Beat until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in brown sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.


Gently fold in chocolate mixture.


Chill in the refrigerator a couple of hours or until read to serve.

After I made that, and it was a little runny, and not up the the texture I wanted, I probably should have made a sort of chocolate/whipped cream mixture. Next time!

I put the chocolate mousse in the middle of each cake half and layered strawberries on top, then flipped the top over on to the bottom. I iced it with chocolate icing. After that, since there was a gap between the side ring and the middle section, I realized I'd either need to fill it up with lots of icing or figure something else out. So I just cut up some more strawberries and made a little decoration on top of the cake!


Next I used my not so great piping skills to make decoration around the bottom (which is hard to see in the picture below) and I wrote a happy birthday message to my brother.


I put the cake in the fridge, and the next day we ate some without my brother. He went out of town that morning, and so we celebrated my mom giving birth to him instead of him being born. I know, weird, but we got cake! It was interesting, and didn't look nice when cutting the pieces out, but at least it was edible!


I like how you can make out the bottom of a heart in the cake. I'm definitely going to try to do this again, but with a different center, and more cake mix!


~Taylor~

Ravioli Soup

The other day my grandma got me a dutch oven while we were out at Home Goods. I was really excited because a lot of the recipes I've been wanting to try out have called for a dutch oven to be used. Now, I have no idea why a dutch oven is different from another pot, I guess I could look it up, but I wanted one anyway. So I finally have a dutch oven and I came across the Ravioli Soup recipe in one of the cookbooks my grandma gave me. I thought it sounded really good, and made plans to make it the next day! I will now share the recipe with you!


Ingredients:


1 pound ground beef
2 cups water
2 cans (one 28 ounces, one 14-1/2 ounces) crushed tomatoes
1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
1-1/2 cups chopped onion
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
2 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon onion salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 package (9 ounces) refrigerated cheese ravioli
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese





First you want to brown the pound of beef in the dutch oven over medium heat. You could probably use more beef depending on how meaty you want your soup to be.





Just make sure you get all nice and brown, and there is no more pink!





Then you add the water, tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, parsley, garlic and seasonings. I didn't use onion because Kevin and I aren't huge fans of onion and I haven't worked with it too much. I've seen that you can cook up the onions, take them out and then cook your beef and add them back in later so they're already cooked and don't stay so hard. I'll have to try that some time, but for this instance, I left it out!





Bring the soup to a boil.






Turn the heat down, cover, and let simmer for 30 minutes.





Meanwhile, cook the ravioli based on the directions on the package. I got frozen ravioli and I put the whole package in so there was a lot more ravioli than called for, but it's so yummy, so who cares!?





Drain pasta.





Once the soup is finished simmering, stir in the ravioli and heat through.





Stir in the cheese.





Serve immediately! I topped the soup with a bit more cheese.





I've had a lot of fun cooking this soup and it was quite tasty! Let me know if you have any tips in making this soup even better!


~Taylor~

Nesting Baby Bluebird Cupcakes

Today we had a baby shower for a co-worker. A few weeks ago, I started looking for something fun to make for the baby shower, since I love to make things that look awesome/cute. I googled recipes for baby showers and came across Martha Stewart's Nesting Baby-Bluebird Cupcakes. Seriously, how cute do they look!?





Naturally I jumped on the chance to make them for the baby shower! I emailed my friend and basically informed her we were making them together. On Martha's site she gives recipes for cake and the icing, but to make life simple...we bought white cake mix and butter cream icing in a tub.


After I had decided to make these, one of my friends had made cupcakes and had dropped food coloring down into the batter filled cups to make them marbled.





So, naturally, I wanted to do that too! We put half the batter into the cup, swirled some blue food coloring around, and then put the rest in and repeated. That way it was more incorporated into all the batter since my friend's swirls were just on the top.


After the cupcakes were all baked, we iced with the regular icing, then took the leftover icing and split it up to make blue and yellow icing.


Sorry I didn't take too many pictures of these, but I had icing and food coloring all over my hands!


I unfortunately didn't have the correct piping tips, but I had ones I figured would work. One was a star tip, which created an interesting look with the bird's bodies. Sort of gave it a featheredish look. Then I had a tiny round piping tip that I used to create the beaks. I melted a piece of my yummy Guiridelli dark chocolate I had on hand and used a toothpick to add the eyes. Some of them were droopy, but the way the rest of the bird looked, it didn't matter!


Once all the piping was finished, we added toasted coconut to make the nest. Since some people, like me, don't like coconut; we made some of the nests out of chocolate sprinkles.


I guess I should show you what they looked like...just remember I had only used a pipe bag once before this, not successfully, and this was my first (and probably last) time making these!





They actually seemed successful at the baby shower, I got lots of compliments and such...but I'm still disappointed they didn't exactly turn out correctly. At least you can tell what they are. Not to mention they tasted really good!


~Taylor~


iPhone pic:

Cupboard Chocolate Chip Cookies

Really, the recipe calls them "Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies," but I changed the name of them because I made them from what I had in my cupboard! And the four "C"s in the title just look so cute!


Anyway, this story begins with twitter. Naturally. I twittered about a website I had once used, but couldn't find it again, and I almost immediately got a similar and better website from Kevin's mom!





I went to supercook.com and entered in all the ingredients I could remember having. Mainly, it was hard to find something to make because we have one egg and no sugar. We have Splenda, but Kevin uses that for his sweet tea, so I didn't want to take away any of his sugar.


I searched through all the recipes I could make, trying to find something I could make for dinner, but I didn't seem to really have anything that would work. I ended up making cereal, but Kevin was saying he wanted cookies. So I found a recipe finally that I could make with the ingredients I had! The Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies that I renamed. :)


I did make some alterations...I used a cup of whole wheat flour and a cup and a quarter of the all-purpose flour. I read somewhere that you can substitute whole wheat flour in anything as long as there is equal parts...and I guessed it wouldn't be a big deal to have 1/4 more all-purpose. Also, I only had bittersweet chocolate chips...so it's got a little kick with the chocolate. However it's 60% cacao and that's good I think!





This is the batter after I spooned a dozen cookies out already. They were in the oven.





After those came out of the oven, I added the rest of the batter to the cookie sheet.





And the final product!





It was fun making real cookies...I've been buying the packaged kind that you just tare apart a place on the cookie sheet. It's just so easy! But so were these! And I got more out of making them and I didn't have to buy anything for them! Plus if you get over the bitter chocolate, they are really good.


~Taylor~