Whoopie!

Last week for bookclub I finally decided to embark on making whoopie pies.  I printed out the recipe from epicurious probably 6 months ago but figured they would be kind of time consuming and continued to put it off.  Well, it really was not very hard and they were totally worth the work!

(sorry my pictures are worse than usual, with the weather being so dismal it's hard without natural light!)
I pretty much followed the recipe as written, but for the filling I used about half shortening and half butter.  A lot of people complained in the reviews about the filling being too messy so I made the filling first and let it sit in a pastry bag upright in the pint glass in the fridge while I made the rest.  The frosting seemed kind of gritty at first but after it sat for a while that totally went away!

I just cut the bottom off of a pastry bag which made filling the pies super simple... it was fun! 

just in time!

This is a little late notice but it was brought to my attention that I hadn't posted the recipe yet for the mint brownies I made for my friend Mal's going away party.

The recipe for the brownie portion is...

1/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c white sugar
1/3 c butter, melted
1 T water
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1/3 c unsweetened cocoa
3/4 c flour
1/4 t baking powder
1/8 t salt

Mix together the sugar and butter.  Beat in egg, water, and vanilla.  Gradually stir in cocoa.  Lightly mix in flour, baking powder, and salt.
Bake in a greased 8x8 pan at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, a toothpick should come out clean.

Once the brownies are completely cool you can start layering.

1 c confectioners sugar
1/4 c butter, softened
2 t peppermint extract
1 t vanilla extract

Mix ingredients until smooth.  Spread over brownies and chill in fridge until set hard.

3 T butter
1/2 c chocolate chips
1/3 c crushed candy canes

In double boiler, melt chocolate chips and butter until smooth.  Allow to cool slightly and carefully pour over brownie mint layer.  Sprinkle with crushed candy canes.
Cover and chill for at least 1 hour. 

These are really festive and delicious!

Merry Christmas!

where did the month of October go?!

Now that I am back in the world of modern conveniences, I am hoping to update much more often! 

Fall just might be my favorite season to bake--it's nice to have the oven warming up our apartment and I love baking with pumpkin and apples!  I like to bake with actual pumpkins and I'll do a post on that later but this week was a canned pumpkin kind of week...

I was anxious to get baking once I moved back into our apartment and one of my favorite fall recipes are these pumpkin cookies.  I used half brown sugar and half white sugar and I have been buying whole nutmeg seeds lately and grating them myself.  It adds much more flavor!  With all glaze recipes, be sure to check the consistency of the frosting--it's hard to measure confectioner's sugar accurately so take a spoon and make sure it will adhere and not just drip off.  I added cinnamon to the glaze and made it pretty thick so I could use a cake decorating bag to ice the cookies.

Yum!

cheating this week...

This morning I started work at 6:30 am to conduct a tide pooling program... it was fun, but it's been a long day.  So this week I am going to cheat a little bit and just send you off to another blog that I found my bookclub recipe this month on :)  This chocolate-berry ice cream cake is an easy, perfect summer treat--sweet & chilled with chocolate and fresh fruit!  Enjoy!

Strawberry Shortcake

Yesterday I was going through the fridge and saw that we still had heavy cream from my coconut pie.... then at the grocery store I saw that strawberries are finally coming into season.... Bingo!  I have to make strawberry shortcake!  I have made this recipe once before a couple years ago and Dano said it was "the best dessert" so, it was definitely time to make it again!

The original recipe is from "Vegetarian Cooking for Dummies" which actually has a lot of great recipes.  This isn't like a "cake" but more like a biscuit.  If you want it to be sweet like cake then add more sugar to the batter.  I like it a little blander because then it really brings out the sweetness of the strawberries.

1 qt strawberries, sliced and sprinkled with sugar
2 T sugar
2 c flour
3 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/3 c vegetable oil
1 c milk (regular or soymilk)
powdered sugar and/or whipped topping for garnish

Preheat oven to 450. Grease 8" cake pan.
Combine flour, baking powder, salt, oil, and sugar in bowl and mix with a fork until crumbly.  Add milk and stir just enough to dampen dry ingredients.
Scoop batter into pan and press evenly with fingers.
Bake 20 minutes or until browned.
Allow cake to cool and slice lengthwise, fill with strawberries, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Since it is just the two of us I just cut wedges and topped them so it wouldn't get soggy.

Enjoy!

Coconut Cream Pie

I have been wanting to make a post about this for a while but we have been so busy with the Godwit Days birding festival that I just haven't had time!  There is nothing that will wear you out quite like driving around looking at birds from sun up to sun down.... especially in the rain!

But we got the amazing opportunities to see tufted puffins (which can only be seen from shore one location in California), marbled murrelets (an endangered species), and this morning I got a great look at the brown shrike, an Asian bird that somehow lost his way and ended up in Humboldt!  People have been flying in from all over the country to see this bird that is hanging out right by our apartment--how amazing?!
Here's the picture I took through the scope

The real reason for this post though.... was my attempt to make my own coconut cream pie for book club last week!  If you like coconut cream pie, I highly suggest you attempt this recipe because it is delicious and easy.  I used this recipe from Allrecipes but made a few changes with the suggestions in the reviews and I used wide coconut for the top just because I thought it would be prettier ;) 

1 1/2 c canned coconut milk
1 1/2 c half and half
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 c sugar
1/3 c cornstarch
1/4 t salt
3/4 c coconut
1 t vanilla
1/4 c wide coconut, toasted (on a baking sheet for about 5 min at 350)
whipped topping
pie crust- using allrecipes article for baking

The only difference I made in the actual combining of ingredients is that I slowly added the already beaten eggs once the mixture was slightly warm.... otherwise you can just follow the directions in the link!

Enjoy!