Happy 2nd Birthday, Nelly!

Today is my crazy precious Weimaraner's 2nd birthday!  You may remember that last year I made Nelly a yummy, pink strawberry cake with whipped cream-cream cheese frosting.

This year, I steered away from "traditional" cake and went with an old favorite---Cherry Cheesecake.  Now this isn't your ordinary cheesecake.  For one, it's not baked. Two, there's no eggs.  Three, it has less fat.

It's more of a "whipped" cheesecake. And that's all you need to know.

This recipe is one my great-grandmother used to make for Sunday dinners, along with an assortment of other pies and cakes.  It's a lightened up version of a regular cheesecake, but I say just as good. 

The cake calls for cream cheese---I used light cream cheese---, sour cream---I actually used Fage Greek yogurt, because that's what I had and it's essentially the same thing---, and Cool Whip---there's no skimping on Cool Whip. Just go with it. 

I almost put fresh blackberries on top instead of the cherry pie filling, but I just loved the idea of the contrast colors with using my brand new bright yellow pie dish that we got for a wedding present (grin) and the bright red cherries.  So there ya go, sugary goodness on top. We'll save the fresh berries for summer.

Since we haven't cut into it yet, here's the disclosure: this cheesecake does not cut like a regular cheesecake---you pretty much have to scoop it. Don't expect clean cut slices, it won't happen. Unless you freeze it. Then maybe it will. 

Nelly can hardly wait for her birthday celebration tonight. Can you tell?

Love you, Nelly!

Cherry Cheesecake 

1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup sugar

1 cup sour cream (or plain yogurt)

2 tsp vanilla 

1 graham cracker pie crust (I used a box of graham cracker crumbs and made my own crust)

1 cup cherry pie filling 

3 1/2 cup Cool Whip

1 can cherry pie filling (or any pie filling)

Beat cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Blend in sour cream and vanilla.  

Fold in whipped topping, blending well.

Spoon into crust. Chill until set, at least 4 hours. Spread cherry pie filling on top.  Chill until ready to serve. 

Back to baking

Pretty sure it's been a few months since my last post---my apologies.  A little thing called "planning a wedding" seemed to consume and take over all of my time.  Now that that's out of the way---back to baking.

With a wedding, though, comes a multitude of presents.  Only problem is....I have no space to unpack them.  Hence the reason, these said presents now make up the "present room."

I can hardly wait to get into a bigger and (much) better place and start using all of these wonderful items.

Until then, I've stuck to my same old baking dishes, but tried out a few new recipes.

First up, Chicken Parmesan with Pepperoni.  I made this last night and I'm pretty sure the words "You're the best wife ever," came out of my husband's mouth.  And rightly so. This might be my new favorite meal.  No lies.

I admit, this pictures makes the dish look super greasy, but I swear that resting "grease" is what cooked out of the chicken, with a little pepperoni goodness/grease on top.  

I can't wait for leftovers tonight!

In addition to the chicken parmesan, I tried out a recipe for Salted Caramel Butter Bars that I found on a blog my younger sister reads.  They looked fabulous, sounded fabulous, and you can't really go wrong with butter.  I put my own twist on the recipe though and added "low-sugar" apple pie filling.

I call them "Caramel Apple Pie Bars" (with lots of butter).

Little bit closer? Here ya go.

After the husband tried these, he said I was "definitely the best wife ever."  And I smiled.

Try these yourself. You won't be disappointed.  And now I need to go for a run.

Chicken Parmesan with Pepperoni

adapted from Food and Wine and ELR

4 Chicken Breasts, pounded thin

2 cups Panko bread crumbs

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup milk

1 cup shredded mozzarella

2 ounces pepperoni

1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan

1 large jar marinara sauce

1/4 cup oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450.  In a shallow dish, combine eggs and milk.  In another shallow dish, pour panko. In one more dish, spread the flour.  Add salt and pepper to the flour.

Pound each of the chicken breasts thin (I didn't get mine thin enough). Dip each chicken breast in the egg mixture, then the panko breadcrumbs, then the flour.  

Heat oil on medium heat in large skillet.  Add the chicken breasts and lightly fry until golden on each side and cooked through.  Because my chicken breasts were a little on the "thick" side.  I cooked them until golden brown on each side, then put them on a pan in the oven for about 5-10 minutes until cooked through, so I wouldn't burn them in the skillet.  

Place cooked chicken breasts in 9x13 pan and cover with marinara sauce.  I used 3/4 of the jar on the chicken breasts and put the rest aside to put over my pasta.  Sprinkle the parmesan cheese and mozzarella over the chicken breasts and top with pepperoni slices.  

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown and serve with noodles....and a Pinot Grigio. :)

Caramel Apple Pie Bars

adapted from Cookies and Cups

Crust:

1 lb. salted butter room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 tbsp vanilla

4 cups flour

Filling:

1 can apple pie filling (or any pie filling for that matter)

Topping:

1/2 bag of caramel candies (I used the ones in the baking section that were already unwrapped)

To make the crust:

Preheat oven to 325.

In a large bowl, combine the butter and sugars.  Beat until creamy.  Add the vanilla.  Add the flour until mixed and soft dough forms.

Spray 9x13 dish with PAM and press half of the dough evenly into the pan.  Place rest of dough in refrigerator until ready to use.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until a pale golden brown then take out of oven and let cool for 10-15 minutes.

Pour can of pie filling onto crust, then crumble the rest of the dough on top of the filling and baking for another 30-35 minute, until lightly golden.

While bars are baking, microwave caramel pieces until melted and smooth.  May need to add 1-2 tbsp of milk to thin out.  

Once bars are out of the oven, drizzle caramel over the top.  Let cool and serve.  

Rainy Day Bread

When the weather outside looks dreary,

And you have these items sitting in your fridge:

It only seems practical to make this:

That, my friends, is Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Chip Bread. And here's how you make it. First, you need the following ingredients:

Then, you mix the wet ingredients together (in your pretty pink mixer, of course)

Now mix the dry in a separate bowl:

And add them to the wet.  Be sure to mix only until combined:

Should look something like this:

Now pour it into a greased 9x5 pan and suddenly remember that you forgot to add the oil to the wet ingredients. Well, don't follow these instructions exactly...maybe follow the recipe. But yes, I completely forgot to add the oil.  I seriously contemplated pouring the mixture back into the bowl and adding the oil....but then I decided to just skip it. I've made plenty of recipes substituting apple sauce or pumkin puree for oil, so we'll see how it turns out.

End result:

Moist and delicious pumkin/banana/chocolate chip bread. (Actually the recipe I followed did not call for chocolate chips, I just added them for good measure.)

Who needs oil? Not this recipe.

Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

adapted from Allrecipes.com

2 ripe bananas

1 1/3 cup pumpkin puree

2 eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil (optional)

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup sugar

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp cinnamon

3/4 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Mix wet ingredients with dry ingredients until just combined. Pour into greased 9x5. Bake at 350 for 45-55 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool and enjoy!

Cupcakes for Mere

My little sister's 10th birthday was this week and in order to celebrate a very special birthday (double digits now!), I decided to make some very special cupcakes.

Meet Meredith! She is a bundle full of energy and precious.  Last week, she showed me some cupcakes that she liked and wanted for her birthday, so of course, I wanted to make them.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to celebrate with her on her actual birthday, so I took these cupcakes over a few days later---just kept the celebration going!

                         

I used a recipe that I found on Monica's blog at Lick the Bowl Good.  Her recipes never fail me.

                                        

Then I added colors that reminded me of Meredith. Bright blue, neon green, hot pink, and purple, the color of Meredith's bedroom.

Added a vanilla cream cheese frosting (which I wish could have been a little whiter, but it tasted good) and voila'!

                      

Cupcakes for Mere :)

But they needed one more thing....

                     

Sprinkles, obviously.

                    

These cupcakes are so vibrant and fun. I was anxious to see how the actual cake part tasted since usually box mixes are a go to sort of thing, but I was pleasantly surprised with this cake.  I didn't have the vanilla bean that the recipe uses as an option, so I added a little extra vanilla, but I think that vanilla bean would have made the vanilla "pop" a little more.

                  

So cute.

Double Vanilla Cupcakes (from Amy Sedaris)

1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 3/4 cups sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 tsp of baking powder

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/4 cups milk

In a medium bowl, mix together salt, baking powder, and flour. Stir to combine then set aside. 

Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl, then add in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla extract and the seeds of half of a vanilla bean. Beat until well combined.  Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the butter/sugar mixture. Start with flour, end with flour.

Divide batter into separate bowls (however many colors you like) and add dye to desired color. Layer in cupcake liners. (I put mine in plastic bags and snipped the ends)

Bake at 375 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

Vanilla Bean Frosting

2 sticks butter, room temperature (1 cup)

1 package cream cheese (8 ounces)

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out

4-5 cups powdered sugar 

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy. Add the cream cheese and beat until combined.  Then add the vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, and 3 cups of powdered sugar and beat a low speed, occasionally stopping to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, until light and fluffy. Add more powdered sugar to arrive at the consistency and sweetness you like. Frost cupcakes.

Cupcake Kick

So I've officially decided I'm on a cupcake kick....or there just happened to be two birthdays within a week's span of eachother and rather than make a whole cake, I chose cupcakes. Regardless, July 4th was my good friend Kendra's 25th birthday. Kendra and I have known eachother since 1st grade (crazy, I know) and grew up great friends. When we were younger, she would spend every birthday with my family out at the lakehouse, it sort of became a tradition, but as we got older, birthday at the lake became a thing of the past and we both went off to different schools and only recently became reunited!

Moving on.  Same as last week, I did my research (aka text said friend) and asked what her favorite kind of cake was.  Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Okay then. Easy enough, right? Wrong.

Little did I know, yellow cake is actually a baker's dilemna.  The more and more I searched for the perfect recipe, the more and more I read about homemade yellow cakes coming out dry and "not as good as the box." Well, I was determined not to use a box mix and googled and googled homemade cake recipes with good reviews.

I finally found one from the Smitten Kitchen that she called the "Best Birthday Cake Ever." Her post about the cake seemed confident and I was sure it had to be better than a box.

When it came time to bake my cake, I had already gone to the grocery store for needed ingredients, set them all out on the counter, got out my measuring cups and went to work.  First ingredient, cake flour. Drat! I didn't have cake flour, I had "all-purpose" flour.  Would they work the same? I wasn't sure. And didn't really want to google it and find that it did indeed make a difference. So I went with it.

The batter was delicious but.......very thick. Is that a flour difference? Probably. Oh well, I scooped my batter into cupcake liners and baked.  Smelled good, looked good. Have you noticed that homemade yellow cake is not nearly as yellow as box cake? I choose to believe that box cakes probably add yellow #50 and my batter didn't have dye in it. 

Initial cake test: tasty but a little dry. Boo. Maybe icing would fix it?

I also searched for a good chocolate buttercream icing that was relatively simple.  Nothing that sparked my interested so I used my great-grandmother's no fail chocolate frosting recipe.

Chocolate Frosting

1 stick butter (room temperature)
4 cups powdered sugar
3 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla
4 tsp milk

Mix butter, sugar, and cocoa. Add vanilla and milk. Blend till smooth.

Icing=yum.

Icing on top of cupcake=semi-yum.  Still wasn't pleased with the cake texture. Not that it stopped me from eating them.

All topped off with some colorful sprinkles!

Now you may wonder why I didn't do some sort of red, white, and blue theme, since her birthday is Fourth of July afterall. That's so overdone. I kept my cucpcakes simple but cute.

Still on the lookout for a good yellow cake recipe...or maybe I'll just follow the instructions next time and use cake flour.

Delish.

I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately. No excuses. But I'm glad I've made a comeback with these cupcakes, because there is only one word for them. Delish.

One of my friend's birthdays was this past week and for her present, I knew I wanted to bake her something. Obviously.  So I did a little research (aka I texted her) and asked her what her favorite cake flavors were. 

Response: Strawberry cake, carrot cake, pretty much any cake.

My thoughts: 

Strawberry cake: I could make the same strawberry cake I made for Nelly's birthday, but I wanted to make cupcakes and wasn't sure how they would turn out in that form

Carrot cake: don't really have a good carrot cake recipe but I'm sure I could come up with something

Pretty much any cake: too many options. I was overwhelmed.

So I went to my handy-dandy, trust, ginormous pink binder of recipes....and found....

Steven's Carrot Cake.

My brother-in-law, Steven, has a recipe for carrot cake that he got from his mom and he made for my sister the first year they dated for her birthday.  It was so moist and yummy so I, of course, asked for the recipe.  Imagine how surprised I was when I read the secret ingredient.  Baby food carrots. That's right folks. Two jr. size jars of pureed baby food carrots.  Putting aside my initial disgust, I realized the only thing in baby food carrots is pureed carrots. Go figure. Maybe they're not that bad.  Not saying I would eat jars with a spoon or anything, but I suppose they can go in my cake.  Just like applesauce, right? Right.

The batter came together so easily and although the recipe is for a 9x13 in. sheet cake, I turned them into cupcakes.

Now cream cheese frosting is my absolute favorite, but sometimes it's tricky to get the right consistency and flavor, so I googled a bunch of different recipes, visited my go-to blogs, and came up with what I consider the "perfect blend."

You all know how addicted I am to cinnamon.  Well, it only seemed appropriate to pair it with cream cheese icing and carrot cake.  Therefore, I give you...cinnamon cream cheese frosting. Um, yes please.

I could eat this by the spoonful (and believe me, I did). 

My only disappointment with these cupcakes was that I forgot to borrow my mom's icing decorating tips and kit so I was forced to use a ziploc bag with a cut corner for my decorating purposes. Next time.

Moist cake. Delicious icing. I'm ready to start my bakery with these bad boys. 

Now I just need to work on my decorating skills.  All in time, my friends. All in time.

Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls

Do not be fooled by the title.  Yes, these cinnamon rolls have sweet potato in them. No, these cinnamon rolls are not healthy. Slightly more nutritious with the sweet potato and whole wheat flour that I added, but in no way less caloric or sugary.  Regardless, they are wonderful.

I have this recipe that I pulled out of the January 2007 Southern Living magazine that was the "Grand Prize Winner."  Grand Prize Winner of what, I'm not sure. I would initially have said "Grand Prize Winner of Cinnamon Rolls" but on the back of this page is a "Finalist recipe" for Mexi-Texi Bistec Pedazos.  That has nothing to do with cinnamon rolls.

I'm pretty sure when I first made these cinnamon rolls, I made them over and over again for a good couple of months. Then I got sick of them and retired the recipe.  I remembered them being very, very sweet, but very, very good.  Today, Nelly wasn't feeling so hot so I decided to spend the day at home...baking.  I had sweet potatoes already and every other ingredient.  Fabulous.

These rolls do take some patience, but time was all I had today.  The dough came together easily and it rose perfectly.

Now if only I had taken pictures of the rolling out and rolling up and slicing.  And the "before going into the oven" picture.  I'm learning.

The filling was easy....brown sugar, cinnamon, nuts and butter.

The recipe uses a food processor to make them, I used my pink mixer.

And now, the finished product.

Mmm...I remembered them needing more time in the oven than the recipe calls for so I baked them an extra 5 minutes....I may have overbrowned them. :)

Delicious, none the less.

Yum. See the caramel sauce on the bottom of the plate? Yes, please.

I did make a few changes to the recipe myself.  Instead of all white flour, I used half whole wheat flour.  I also made my own buttermilk with vinegar and milk.  The texture with the whole wheat flour is a little more "grainy", if you will, but is still really nice and you can see specs of sweet potato.

I found the recipe online for Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls for everyone to try, that way I don't have to type it all out.  Hope you'll try it and enjoy.