Blueberry Muffins

I'm not convinced I liked these muffins. I do admit that I should give them a try because I did make a substitution that may have made a difference.

I read that you can substitute greek yogurt for sour cream in some recipes. I figured it would make it healthier too. Well, the muffins were very soft. You would think that's a good thing! I do like my muffins tops to be a bit crispy. Maybe I needed to let them bake a bit longer?

They look pretty though :)

Yes, I do need to make these again. I just saw on the original blog that they are a Baking Illustrated recipe. It should be THE best recipe. I will re-blog if and when I make these again.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Blueberry Muffins.

Stained Glass Jello

Why oh why didn't I take a before picture??

The jello looks cool but it didn't turn out the way it was intended. I made two colors of jello (red and blue) and then cubed it. I made a gelatin mixture of sweetened condensed milk and unflavored gelatin and poured this over the colored jello in a 9x13 pan. It was very cool looking. The idea was to cut out star shapes and have cool looking stained glass jello. You can check out the link for the original idea/picture.

I hope this is still BBQ worthy!

I think I should have made half a recipe so it was thinner? It would have been easier to cut.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Stained Glass Jello.

White Chocolate Coconut Cream Cheese Poundcake

Yeah, that's a mouthful! I followed a recipe for Cream Cheese Poundcake and it suggested adding a cup of chopped white chocolate in the batter. So I found my new favorite white chocolate at Target today and chopped that up. I figured that since it was White Chocolate Coconut I'd substitute coconut extract for the almond extract. Oh yeah...



The cake is very good but it stuck to the bottom of my bundtlette pans. Darn. And then I finished the rest of the batter in my Williams Sonoma Sunflower pan, and I even sprayed the hell out of that thing, but it still stuck again. Oh well. I broke the cake into large pieces and froze them. I figured I'd find something to do with it- cake pops or trifles.

I really was just making this recipe for the hell of it, not for any specific occasion so I'm glad it was a semi-fail when it didn't count for much.

I broke a bundtlette into pieces and layered it with cheesecake pudding (Jell-o, not homemade) and blackberries. Pretty good :)

I told Jim they were healthy because of the berries and the fat free/sugar free pudding. Nevermind all the butter, chocolate and sugar that went into the poundcake!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Cream Cheese Pound Cake.

FAIL?

Well, Jim is eating his but maybe he's just being polite?

I made these "apple pies". I followed a recipe for the caramel apple pies and then just sauteed apples with butter, sugar, and cinnamon for James' pie. I call them pies but they're not really. Well, they have pie crust but only on top. I made little star and moon cutouts on the tops, so I knew that the star was James'. I guess I didn't figure that the caramel would ooze up and out of the ramekins.





Well, the crusts were fine. I think I'd make that recipe again. The caramel filling? Well, I didn't have Southern Comfort so I substituted another liqueur, Jim's ginger stuff. It seemed very thick and rich, but I thought it would bake up thick and rich too like a pecan pie filling. Well, no. It ended up kind of gloopy, for lack of a better word. The consistency of a raw egg white, you know, when you let it drip from the egg shell. It just hangs there, not really breaking off but just hanging on. Gloopy.

I didn't care for it.

Click here for the recipe for Spiced Caramel Apple Pie.
Click here for the recipe for Martha's Perfect Pie Crust (Pate Brisee). (I would make this part again. I am imagining using this for pot pies, minus a bit of the sugar.)

FAIL

Its very rare that a recipe doesn't turn out for me. I always find recipes on trusty blogs or cookbooks that I know and love. Well, this cake was inedible. Like I literally spit it out of my mouth!

I had all of these clementine oranges that were sitting around, about to be wasted because my son lost his enthusiasm for eating them. I did a search in my Google Reader for "clementines" and the wonderful Smitten Kitchen had this cake recipe. I was excited but then a little hestitant after I read that it was made with ground almonds- no flour. I do like flourless cakes but this was a lot of effort for an experiment- boiling the clementines for two hours? Not hard but I was then obligated to hang around and wait for them. Anyway, the texture was grainy and the taste was like mush. I have texture issues, I know, so maybe I was hasty in throwing out the entire cake. It also stuck to the bottom of my pretty cake pan, so I was beyond frustrated. Yeah, maybe I should have used the suggested springform pan but I don't have one at the moment. Whateva.

Anyway, failure is okay. It happens! Just not in this kitchen often :)

Click here for the FAILED recipe for Clementine Cake.