Chocolate Guinness Cake

I'm not Irish but we like beer here so I picked up a six pack of Guinness, knowing I had an easy cake recipe that I saved on Facebook.

The cake was actually very easy to make and it came together very quickly. Melting butter with beer, adding sugar and cocoa, whipping in the combined sour cream, eggs and vanilla, and then finally whipping in flour and baking soda. All in a saucepan!

I made the frosting while the cake was baking and well, I guess a few spoonfuls went missing. I don't love frosting but this one is oozy and just slightly sweet. Yum!

I think the frosting is meant to look like foam on top of a very dark beer.

The outside of the cake, where it baked against the springform pan, is slightly crusty but the rest of the cake is moist and delicious. Deep, dark chocolate. Not at all boozy.

Now I hope we can eat it all!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake.

Christmas Cookies 2014

I love Christmas cookies. I like that I get to be in charge of them every year (for both sides of the family) and I like making something new each year.

I asked my family for their requests. I received these: almond crack candy, Mexican wedding cakes, peanut butter blossoms with dark chocolate kisses, and chocolate peppermint crackles. Yay! The chocolate chip peppermint crackles were new to me, and I added Cinnamon Sugar cut-outs to round it out.

 

These didn't make it to the Christmas platters but I made gingerbread cake balls for a work holiday potluck. They were a hit!

 

A picture of my handy chocolate melter. I never thought it would get so much use. Melting chocolate for strawberries, for candy melts, cake balls, and now making my own body butter/creams (a later recipe?)

 

Back to cookies.

The Chocolate Chip Peppermint Crackle cookies were better than I expected. They had crushed peppermint candies inside the dough, tasted brownie-like, and then were topped with a piece of peppermint candy to make them pretty. I was so glad these made it on the platter!

The peanut blossoms are a pretty standard cookie but my Jimmy said these tasted better than usual. It's that love ingredient, you know! And the dark chocolate kisses were a great choice. Good job, Richie!

 

 

The Mexican Wedding Cake cookies. Can you believe that I didn't even try these? They are made with pecans. I'm okay with pecans but the peanut butter blossoms and almondy candy called my name so much more.

 

 

I really, really enjoyed making royal icing this year. I had this plan of making gnome cookies for over a month. I wanted to try an easier technique using royal icing and it worked so well! I made one huge batch of royal icing and then separated it into a few bowls for different colors. I only made one consistency of royal icing- thin enough to spread but thick enough to stay put. I used this woman's blog for her technique.

Here's Frosty the Snowman, complete with a flower on his hat! These were fun but required a lot of patience. The colors needed to be piped one color at a time, so they didn't run together. I'd wait 15-20 minutes and then go back to the cookie with another color or to add a detail on top of a color. They were worth it. I think they were darn near perfect.

 

One gnome as Santa!

 

The gnomes were the most fun. I knew my sister would love them :) I was even able to add the tiny eyeballs once I became familiar with the consistency of the royal icing. Delicate work.

 

The cookies dried overnight but I still took care that they wouldn't smear. I kept recalling my Thanksgiving cookie fiasco so I made sure the covered pan had plenty of room above each cookie and then I carried the tray on my lap during the car ride. They made it!

 

Yay for cookies!

 

Click here for the stolen recipe for Gingerbread Cake.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Cut-out Cookies.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Hershey's Peanut Butter Blossoms.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies (or Snowball Cookies).

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate Chip Peppermint Crunch Crackle Cookies.

There is no shared recipe for the Almond Crack Candy. Sorry!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Guinness Beef Stew

We don't really do St. Patrick's Day but we do do Guinness beer and Irish whiskey!

I made this stew the weekend of St. Patrick's Day.

 

It was good. I am still in search of a better stew though. The meat didn't get as tender as I hoped, and I kept needing to put salt in my bowl to give the stew some flavor. Maybe I was just in a foul mood because normally a stew/soup puts me in a good mood! Soup is good food, yo.

I must have been crabby. I didn't even wipe the rim of my bowl for the picture. So messy. Apparently, I wasn't caring about the possible blog picture.

 

I'm sure the stew was fine. I didn't get any complaints from the hubby (he wouldn't dare?)...

Click here for the stolen recipe for Guinness Beef Stew.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pumpkin Pie Fudge

I had never made fudge!

 

I made this fudge for my friend Jessica, a fellow pumpkin lover. We had a Secret Santa exchange and I was thrilled to draw her name. She's the best-est!

I bought these pretty little bowls at Target and filled them up with probably 1 1/2 pounds of fudge.

The fudge was very sweet and full of a wonderful pumpkin flavor. I didn't know what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy fudge is to make. Evaporated milk, white chocolate, marshmallow fluff, walnuts, canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, sugar, etc. I didn't have a good thermometer so I did some guesswork on when it was done. I'm glad it turned out well :)

I froze a bit of the fudge and some of it made it on to my Christmas cookie platters a week later. Yay!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Pumpkin Pie Fudge.

 

Posted with Blogsy

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.

4th of July Strawberries

I saw these on a food blog but the idea is simple- white chocolate dipped strawberries with blue sparking sugar.

They are very sweet but also very pretty!

Peppermint Bark Ice Cream

I almost didn't post this one. It has good flavor but it took a long, long time to completely set up. It isn't a custard based ice cream, but one that is a simple mixture of heavy cream, sugar, milk, crushed candy canes, chopped bittersweet chocolate and chopped white chocolate.
+

Again, good flavor but I think next time I would make a traditional vanilla ice cream and add the separate add-ins.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Peppermint Bark Ice Cream.

Thanksgiving

It's amazing how little time it takes to scarf down all that food, all that love, energy, and time spent cooking for two days. Was it worth it? Of course! I was very happy to try so many new recipes. I don't think a single one really disappointed. My cranberry walnut rolls weren't light and fluffy, but kind of dense but still good. It was one recipe I wouldn't repeat as is. I wonder if I kneaded too much? Anyway, lots of good food. And I made my own gravy! Very proud and happy :)


OH! And my husband made both desserts. I can't make any claims on those. He did a fabulous job!


Appetizer-

Stuffed Mushrooms

Meal-

Pioneer Style Herb Roasted Turkey with Sage Gravy

Unfortunately, I didn't get any "after" pictures of the turkey. This is the 20 pounder slathered in herb butter. James declared it "yucky" looking.

The turkey ended up with a fabulous brown crust. It was darn pretty. I am so regretful that I did not get one little picture. Oh well. I have something better- leftovers!

Pioneer Woman's Creamy Mashed Potatoes- These were great because I made them ahead of time and just stuck them in the oven while the turkey rested.


Brussel Sprouts Gratin- This isn't a picture from tonight's gratin. I was flying around the kitchen at the very end and didn't take a picture of the gratin or the turkey. Bummer.



Sourdough Stuffing with Carmelized Onions and Apples

Framboise Cranberry Sauce

Cranberry Walnut Rolls

Dessert-

Jim proudly serves up his creations.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Chocolate Pecan Pie

We are all satisifed and full. Our guests all went home with plenty of leftovers. That 2o pound bird was more than enough for our meal and many others. Happy Thanksgiving!