Banana Cupcakes

Banana Cupcakes

There are some problems in this world that are good to have, great to have ..like… too much cream cheese frosting, and nothing to put it on.  I woke up early Friday morning to bake carrot cake cupcakes (i used the carrot bundt recipe in cupcake pans and baked for 30 minutes) and made a double batch of cream cheese frosting to bring into work for ‘frost your own’ cupcakes and a co-workers last day. After the cupcakes had all been devoured there was still quite a bit of cream cheese frosting left. I thought to myself, how could one remedy this delicious problem with a equally tasty solution?

As luck would have it,  I found two wonderfully ripe large brown bananas in my kitchen and I began thinking.. Banana cupcakes. After confirming with the owner of the ripe bananas that I could use them, I grabbed  a recipe and started mixing. The first book I opened was  Hello, Cupcake!. I was originally considering just adopting my banana bread recipe, but had no apple sauce on hand, so i decided to use the cupcake book that I had originally just bought as eye candy.

The recipe asks for three bananas but I only had two and they worked fine. Make sure your bananas are really ripe. I constantly have a stash of ripe bananas in mushy bags in my freezer. My boyfriend looks inside and has no idea what they are. Perhaps I should start labeling. Peeled brown bananas are not the most attractive things to come across when searching for dinner options. I made these cupcakes on Sunday and by Monday evening they were completely devoured.. So i think everyone here can recommend. Again, I used Jessie’s Cream Cheese Frosting recipe which we posted with our red velvet whoopie pies.

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Bourbon Ball Cake

Two of my favorite people are having a Kentucky themed birthday party this week, so I wanted to make a cake that was really special and fit with the Kentucky theme.  I decided adapt a Kentucky Bourbon Ball into a cake.  The important components of a bourbon ball are pecans, confectioner’s sugar, dark chocolate, and of course — bourbon.  I ended up using a 200 ml bottle of bourbon for this cake and it only had the slightest bourbon flavor.  If you love bourbon you might want to incorporate more.

Since I basically created this recipe, and wasn’t able to try it before I went to the party, I was really nervous when we first cut into it.  There was no need to worry.  The overpowering bourbon flavor that I tasted in the batter had mellowed, and the simple syrup had kept the cake moist.  (I made the cake Saturday night and we ate it on Monday).

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Chickpea Turkey Burgers

Turkey Burger

Yes I swear, Jessie and I eat more than just cakes and cookies. We eat real food too! Today, yummy, ‘colorful’ turkey burgers.

I used to love the bean burgers of the Pomeroy dining hall back at school. Those were a wonderful mix of kidney beans, oatmeal, chickpeas and spices. The other day while flipping through a cookbook I saw a recipe for a fresh meadow turkey burger which incorporated kidney beans among the ingredients. It sounded like a good way to add more protein into your dinner and since I had a food processor I thought I could invent my own bean turkey burger. However inventions usually take many trial runs.. and this recipe could have used some more. .

At the store I decided on chickpeas and then thought spinach leaves may be a good addition as well. I started mixing all the items in my food processor, ground turkey, spices, oatmeal, egg, and worcestershire sauce and then decided to add the spinach.. As soon as those blades started spinning I immediately knew i had a green monster on my hands. The meat turned green! Obviously spinach would make the meat turn green! My roommates and I thought it was pretty hilarious and everyone enjoyed them anyway. Though testing for doneness was difficult.. what color does a green burger turn when it is done? For future use, I may leave this recipe til St. Pattys Day
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Spice Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

This cake is very good and very forgiving.  I had to make a number of substitutions because I was baking it during the blizzard and it still tasted wonderful.    In the past I’ve avoided spice cakes and spice cookies because I hadn’t really enjoyed them that much.  I was drawn to this recipe because of the orange cream cheese frosting and am so glad I tried it.  I think my aversion to “spice” desserts isn’t because of the spices, but because they so often contain molasses and I don’t enjoy molasses.  This cake is sweetened with sugar so the spices are able to be the prominent flavor.

This cake also taught me a valuable lesson.  Do not buy whole cardomom when you need ground cardomom and just figure, “It can’t be that hard to grind, right?”  It turns out when you don’t own a spice grinder or a mortar and pestal it can be THAT hard to grind.  I spent a good 20 minutes crushing the pods, extracting the seeds, and then grinding the seeds multiple times seeds in my pepper mill in an attempt to get them fine enough.   The strange part is I didn’t get all all annoyed.  The whole process was so absurd that I found it pretty funny.

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Double Chocolate Eclair Cakes

I absolutely love when people request specific desserts from me.  I attempt to try a variety of recipes when I’m baking, but it’s difficult for me invest time make something that I don’t thing I will enjoy that much.  I’m usually drawn to recipes containing cocount, banana, or ginger and shy away from chocolate.  This past weekend we were visiting a friend in Hoboken for lunch and I suggested he make a dessert request.  The only conditions were that he couldn’t request chocolate chip cookies or brownies — I really wanted to try something new.  He requested this Chocolate Eclair Cake.  While I’m sure it’s delicious it seemed more appropriate for  a crowd, rather than a lunch with three people.  I decided to use the idea of an eclair cake as my inspiration and make my own recipe using a combination or pudding, cake, and chocolate ganache.

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Heart Shaped Linzer Tarts

Photograph Robert Cass

My cousin Heather was over this past weekend while her bathroom was under renovation, so we decided to do something fun and delicious.  Since Valentines day is just around the corner it seemed like the perfect time to pull out this great Heart Cookie Cutter Set that I’d gotten from a from a friend back in college, but had only used once before now (my set was actually from Williams-Sonoma but they do not seem to sell it anymore, these look quite similar.)

As with any cut-out cookie these cookies take a lot of patience, but unlike the usual sugar cookie dough it does not require any refrigeration.  This makes it an ideal cookie recipe to work with when you have a last minute need for sugar cookies (or late night craving) because you don’t have to wait hours for the dough to chill in the refrigerator. (I did stick the second circle of dough in the fridge while working with first other one though.)

*Note about cooking times, when I made my first batch I cooked the top cut out cookies for the same amount of time as the bottoms and they burned.. So next time I adjusted the time reflected below.

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Red Velvet Whoopie Pies w/Cream Cheese Frosting

Photograph Taken by Robert Cass

Valentines Day is coming up and I think it is a perfect holiday to celebrate with baking. Red Velvet cake is no brainer but while looking for a recipe I came across a few of these  red velvet cookies that looked very fun, and more portable and less messy than a cupcake or cake. I am looking for a better red food coloring substitute, using a whole bottle of dye in one cake mixture just doesn’t seem right. Next time I am going to experiment with beet juice and crushed strawberries, I’m hoping that will yield a moist and more natural cake. For the time being this recipe is very easy, takes no time to make and even less time to be eaten by your roommates.

I’m planning on making these for valentines day and handing out to my friends. Much more fun than the usual whitman sampler, and who doesn’t get excited by a hand held cake? Why hasn’t hostess jumped on this yet?

*I’m going to suggest cutting the sugar on these, I found them very sweet. I think you would be fine using only 1/2 a cup. and upping the baking soda to 3/4 teaspoon. They look a little flat as shown above.

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Berger Cookies

Last week one of my coworkers got a shipment of Berger Cookies, a Baltimore specialty, sent to work.  After one bite I knew I wanted to try and make them at home.  They are a soft cake-like cookie piled with a chocolate fudgy frosting.  Typically I prefer less rich desserts, but these were just so unusual that I was won over.  The actual recipe is a closely guarded secret, but I found numerous blog posts of different attempts at the recipe.  Rather than using any of these I decided I’d try to create my own.
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Tea Party

Last Christmas my friend Tenaya received a beautiful tea set from her Mom. For over a year we’ve been saying we were going to have a tea party.  This week we finally did it.  I knew I wanted to make something small and precious and decided I would like to try petits fours.  After reading several recipes it seemed traditional petits fours with almond paste and poured fondant were maybe be a bit too much work for an afternoon with two friends.  While brainstorming other ways to make cute square cakes, I remembered I also had an unused Christmas present that had been sitting in my cupboards for over a year, a Calphalon 12 square bar pan.  Even though I’d known it would make adorable brownies or bars, I’d never used it because I’m a person who prefers the gooey center.  I hate edges and assumed everyone else did until the brownie edge pan in the King Arthur catalog the first time.  Using it to make cakes wasn’t something that I’d thought of previously, but now that I have used the bar pan for this purpose I see lots of little square cakes in my future.  They were so cute!

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Carrot Bundt Cake with Sugar Glaze

I received a food processor for the holidays from my parents, upon request and was dying to test it out.  I have memories of carrot cake as a kid, often with the frosting carrots on top. This cake is drizzled with a simple sugar frosting making more of a lighter breakfast or snack cake, as opposed to the traditional cream cheese slathered confection.

cooking note: *I found this cake extremely moist. Make sure you grease the pan very very well, it will want to stick.

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