Livin' in the South

I took a Food and Wine Pairing class online where we had to take a traditional Southern recipe and update it. I guess I'm boring (or lazy) (or both) because I just went ahead and picked a pound cake. I also think of pound cake as being one of the most basic cakes.



I went through countless traditional recipes of pound cake, each asking for "a pound" of each ingredient. I updated the recipe, measurement-wise, and added a pecan element as a callback to the Southern requirement of the assignment. I also added a maple drizzle. Don't ask me. I don't know why.



This wasn't my favorite thing. But it's a pretty basic pound cake, when it comes down to it. If you're a big pound cake fan, then you should try this. Otherwise, maybe just look at the pretty pictures and feel satisfied in that.

Butter Pecan Pound Cake with Maple Drizzle
Makes about 12 servings

1 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
3 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon rum (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk
1 cup chopped pecans, plus 1/3 cup whole pecans
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons maple syrup

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt pan.

Using paddle attachment on a standing mixer with a stationary bowl, cream together butter, shortening, and sugar until very fluffy, about seven or eight minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well-combined.

In a small bowl, combine rum and vanilla extract with milk. In another bowl, whisk together baking powder and flour. Alternately add liquid and dry ingredients to the butter mixture, starting and ending with liquid.

Stir in walnuts. Pour batter into prepared Bundt pan. Bake for about 70 minutes until cake tests done. In a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar and maple syrup. Drizzle over the cake after it cools for twenty minutes. Sprinkle whole pecans over cake.

Too Much of a Good Thing

My boyfriend has two simple favorites when it comes to food: peanut butter and bacon. In fact, he was the person to introduce to me the Peanut Butter and Bacon sandwich. As the girl that bakes for him on a regular basis, I am always trying to find more recipes that he will go nuts over. This cookie meets both of those qualifications.



Although I also really enjoy both peanut butter and bacon, I did not enjoy these as much as he did. I felt like the bacon added a somewhat unpleasant meaty flavor to the cookie, as opposed to a more smoky accent. This could also be due to the fact that I used extra bacon to make it extra bacon-y delicious.



Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies
Makes 1 1/2 dozen cookies

1 cup chunky or smooth peanut butter
1 cup sugar (1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup granulated sugar)
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 to 8 slices of bacon, cooked, cooled and dices

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a skillet over medium high heat, fry up bacon until cooked through and let cool on paper towels until cool enough to dice. Dice up and set aside.

Grease a baking sheet with butter and set aside. In a mixer combine peanut butter and sugars until well combined, about 2 minutes. Add egg and baking soda and mix for another 2 minutes. Fold in cooked bacon. Roll into large walnut sized balls, roll in granulated sugar, and create a criss-cross pattern with a fork. Bake for 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on a baking sheet for five minutes.

Strawberries and Such

On the search for my Dream Cake, I frequently encountered recipes for strawberry cream cakes and strawberry shortcakes. Martha, as usual, made the most compelling bid, and I decided I should make it during the dog days of summer.



I know what you're thinking. Do I ever get tired of strawberries? The answer is, when it's 100 degrees outside, no. I never get tired of strawberries. On top of this, freshly whipped cream is one of my favorite things in the world. This slightly-sweet cake paired with the cold cream and the fresh strawberries make me think of...well, a relaxing treat on a hot summer's day.




Strawberry Cream Cake
Makes about 10 servings

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk
1 pound strawberries, hulled and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin (from a 1/4-ounce envelope)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter bottom of an 8-inch round cake pan, and line with parchment paper. Butter and flour paper and sides. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

Using an electric mixer on high speed, beat butter and 1/2 cup sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. With mixer on low, alternately add flour mixture in 3 parts and milk in 2, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until combined. Spread batter in prepared pan.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes; invert onto a wire rack to cool completely. Using a serrated knife, split cake in half horizontally; place bottom half, cut side up, on a serving plate.

Make topping: In a large bowl, combine strawberries and 1/4 cup sugar; set aside. Place 2 tablespoons cold water in a small saucepan, and sprinkle with gelatin; let soften 5 minutes. Place saucepan over very low heat, and stir until gelatin is dissolved. Remove from heat; let cool.

Using an electric mixer, beat cream and remaining 1/4 cup sugar in a large bowl until very soft peaks form. Continue to beat, and gradually add gelatin mixture; beat until soft peaks form.

Arrange half of strawberries over bottom cake layer; top with half of whipped cream, leaving a 1-inch border. Cover with top half of cake, cut side down. Top cake with remaining whipped cream, leaving a 1-inch border. Refrigerate cake and remaining strawberries separately, at least 1 hour (or up to 1 day). Just before serving, spoon strawberries over cake.

Blueberry Hill

My dad really likes to eat fresh blueberries during the summer. Let's face it, who doesn't like fresh fruit in the summer? Fruit is awesome.



Anyway, my mom and I made this cobbler from the recipe on the back of an old Bisquick box. It was quick, as the name would have you believe. Quick and delicious. I don't think there's anything wrong with using mixes, especially not when the result is this wonderful.



Bisquick Blueberry Cobbler
Makes about 10 servings

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups Bisquick baking mix
2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups fresh blueberries
2 tablespoon. sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Measure milk into a bowl and stir in sugar until dissolved. Add vanilla and stir. Whisk in Bisquick just until combined.

Wash blueberries and pick over, removing stems. Toss blueberries in 2 tablespoons of sugar, or enough to coat. Mix blueberries into batter. Pour batter into prepared baking dish and bake in preheated oven for about 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream topping. Toss a few extra blueberries over the topping.

My Dream Cake

Sometime around the age of 16, I stumbled across this picture:



Since then, I have spent every birthday trying to recreate a cake that I only have photographic evidence of. After I did more research into my dream cake, I realized that it was actually an ice cream cake. I chose to ignore this and thought of it as a fluffy white cake with thick, creamy buttercream frosting, and a sweet strawberry filling. Until this year, I never really knew what it would taste like.

Until...


I'm going to go ahead and be honest here: this is the best cake I have ever made. Not only is it the prettiest, it tasted exactly the way the original picture looked. There was just the right amount of frosting, cake, strawberries, heaven, etc. It was moist, creamy, and tangy. It was my dream cake. And it came from this Frankenstein of a recipe.



Fluffy White Cake White Chocolate Frosting and Strawberry Filling
Also known as My Dream Cake
Makes about 12 servings

18 tablespoons (2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
4 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising) plus more for pans
1 1/2 cups whole milk
9 large egg whites, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 cups sugar

9 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped
3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks/6 oz.) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 small carton strawberries, separated
Sugar, to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9-inch round cake pans, tapping out excess flour; set aside.

In a medium bowl, stir together, milk, egg whites, and extracts. Into a second medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for 30 seconds. With machine running, gradually add the sugar. Continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl as necessary.
Add one-third of the flour mixture and one-third of the milk mixture, and beat on low speed until just incorporated. Add remaining flour and milk mixtures in 2 separate batches beating between additions to fully incorporate. Scrape down sides of bowl, and stir by hand to finish.

Divide batter evenly between prepared pans. Smooth surface with a rubber spatula. Bake until top of cake springs back when lightly pressed and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cakes cool in pans on wire racks for 5 minutes. Run a small metal spatula around the sides of the pan, and invert cakes onto greased racks. Reinvert cakes onto cooling rack. Let cool completely before filling.

To make the frosting, melt the white chocolate in a double boiler. Stir until smooth. Let cool to room temperature. Sift the confectioners' sugar into a medium bowl. Stir in the milk and vanilla. Add the butter and salt and beat until smooth. Stir in the cooled white chocolate. Refrigerate until firm enough to frost the cake, about 30 minutes.

To make the filling, mash up about ¾ of the carton of strawberries. Add in sugar, just a little at a time, until desired sweetness is reached. To assemble the cake, take one layer and cover with a thin layer of frosting and then cover with strawberry filling. Take the other layer and frost one side with a thin layer of frosting; lay this second layer, frosting side down, onto the first layer (so the order is cake-frosting-filling-frosting-cake). Frost the top and sides of the cake. Cut the remaining strawberries into decorative shapes and place on top and sides of cake. Top with white chocolate shavings.

Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate

My brother takes after my mom in that he doesn't really go after sweets. They both like sweets alright, but unlike my dad and me, they don't have crazy cravings and super sweet tooths. I always have to coax my brother a little every year around his birthday to let me make him a cake of some sort. This year, he actually requested a chocolate cheesecake.



I've only ever made two other cheesecakes (my birthday cheesecake and the pecan pie cheesecake), so I was a little skeptical about baking this. Luckily, my buddy Emeril was here to guide me to a recipe that looked fairly easy. The end result was pretty great; it mixed a lot better than my birthday cheesecake and had a deep chocolate flavor. My brother enjoyed it, too. The only thing I would change if I made it again would be the strawberries - after about two days on the cheesecake, they started to get slimy and the cake touching the strawberries did the same.



New York Style Chocolate Cheesecake
Makes about 12 servings

1 1/2 cups chocolate wafer crumbs
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped from inside of pod and reserved
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream
8 ounces melted semisweet chocolate, cooled slightly
Fresh strawberries, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (if using a light springform pan; or 325 degrees if using a dark nonstick springform pan).

Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan. In a small bowl, combine the chocolate wafer crumbs, 3 tablespoons of the sugar, and the butter and mix well. Press onto the bottom of springform pan and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, combine cream cheese, remaining cup of sugar, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean seeds; beat until light and creamy. Add the flour to the cream cheese mixture and beat until smooth.

Add the melted chocolate and sour cream and mix well. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until just blended. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for one hour, until the center is almost set.

Run a sharp knife around the rim of the pan and allow cake to cool on a wire rack before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate at least four hours, or overnight, before serving. Cheesecake may be made up to 2 days in advance before serving and will keep for up to one week in the refrigerator. Serve the cheesecake garnished with fresh strawberries.

Another Another for Your Afternoon Tea

For St. Patrick's Day this year, I decided to make some cookies that were featured on Martha Stewart's site. My boyfriend really likes simple butter cookies, sugar cookies, and all sorts of shortbreads, so I figured I could pawn them off on him if I thought they were too boring.



However, these cookies must have met a new standard in blandness because he only ate about half of them. They were buttery and that's about it. Maybe complexity is too much to ask from butter shortbread, but I wasn't really impressed. If you want a very very basic tea cookie, though, this is pretty good.



Irish Butter Shortbread
Makes 2 dozen cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar. With the mixer on low, slowly add flour. Continue mixing until dough comes together to form a ball.

Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface; roll out dough to about 1/4-inch thickness, dusting rolling pin with flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Using a 2 1/4-inch round, fluted cutter, cut out dough. Transfer to prepared baking sheet, spacing about 1 inch apart. Gather up any scraps, gently re-roll, and repeat cutting process. Take care not to overwork dough.

Transfer baking sheet to oven and bake until shortbread just begins to turn golden, about 30 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Shortbread may be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Yet Another for Your Afternoon Tea

The only real experience that I have with scones was buying a Baking cookbook at Borders when I was 17; it turned out to be British, which had me confused for quite some time. What we call biscuits, they call scones; what we call cookies, they call biscuits.

If you actually read the things that I post, then you probably know that I made some Snickerdoodle scones before and that, while they weren't terrible, they also didn't really blow me away. I have had a hard time understanding what the point of a scone is when a biscuit or cookie can do the same thing.



However, these lemon scones came about as a way for me to use excess lemons and try my hand at scones one last time. I cast my net through the interweb and found a suitable recipe for me to try. Luckily, they passed the test and were the perfect combination of buttery, tart, and crumbly. I ate them with tea, I ate them plain, and I ate them warmed up with just a smidge of butter on top. They were delicious!




Lemon Scones
Makes 8 scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold butter or margarine
1/2 cup sour milk
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
Additional sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking sheet and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add milk and lemon peel, stirring just until mixed.

Turn onto a floured surface; knead gently six times. Shape into a ball. On a greased baking sheet, pat dough into a circle about 1/2 in thick and 8-1/2 in. in diameter. Using a sharp knife, cut wedges in the dough, being careful not to cut all the way through.

Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Pre-Christmas Dessert

The recipe for a Pecan Pie Cheesecake has been tucked in the back of my mind since before Thanksgiving; originally, I had planned to make it for that big turkey holiday meal. But I ended up making a birthday dessert for my mom because we celebrated so early, and the cheesecake was stuck there, lurking, unmade.



Luckily, my grandma held a casual dinner while my cousin's family was in town and I was asked to provide a dessert. Although it was fairly short notice, this recipe is fairly simple and quite difficult to mess up. If I had to make it again, the only thing I would likely change would be the actual cheesecake; removing the brown sugar would make the topping less sweet and improve the overall taste of the dessert.



Pecan Pie Cheesecake
Makes about 10 servings

1 3/4 cups vanilla wafer crumbs
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted

1 cup sugar
2/3 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 eggs
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine wafer crumbs and brown sugar. Stir in melted butter. Press into bottom and up sides of a 9” springform pan. Bake for six minutes. Set aside to cool.

Combine all pecan filling ingredients in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened, about 8-10 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour into crust and set aside.

Next, make the cheesecake filling. Reduce oven to 325°. With a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat cream cheese at medium speed until creamy. Add brown sugar and flour and beat until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Stir in cream and vanilla.

Pour over pecan filling. Bake for 1 hour. Turn off oven and leave cheesecake in oven with the door closed for 1 hour. Remove from oven and run a knife along the outside edges to loosen cheesecake from sides of pan. Let cool. Chill for at least 4 hours before serving.

Running Out of Time?

In the eighth grade, a girl brought this platter of chocolate-dipped blobs to a school Christmas party and everyone was sort of apprehensive. Eventually, I tried one and discovered that they taste like awesome in your mouth. When I asked her for the recipe (a strange thing for a 13-year-old to do?), she wrote three ingredients down on a small piece of paper and explained the simple process.



Since then, Oreo Truffles have been my throwdown for parties, meetings, and other get-togethers around Christmas time. I'm sure they could be made year-round and still be good, but I just associate them with Christmas.



Oreo Truffles
Makes about 3 dozen truffles

1 (18 ounce) package of Oreos (Double-Stuf tends to affect the consistency in a weird way)
1 (8 ounce) package of cream cheese, softened
24 ounces of melting chocolate (18 ounces semisweet and 6 ounces milk chocolate)

Slowly melt the chocolate over low heat in a heavy pan.

Put five or six Oreos at a time into a food processor until they turn to crumbs. Pour Oreo crumbs into a large bowl. Mix in softened cream cheese. Roll this mixture into small balls.

Dip balls in melted chocolate, turning until completely coated. Place on wax paper and leave at room temperature or refrigerate until cooled. Store loosely-covered at room temperature.