Cake Pops: A tale of triumph over disaster

This all started last Wednesday when I saw something awesome on the internet. Cake Pops. The idea is simple. Bake a cake. Crumble it up. Mix in frosting. Form it into balls. Put it on a stick. Dip it in chocolate. The result, essentially heaven on a stick. My options were clear. Make the Cake Pops.

Luckily, for me, I was invited to a triple birthday bash over the weekend, what a perfect venue for me to unveil these guys. I should have known, anyone who "experiments" in the kitchen knows that trying something new for a particular event is never going to end well. This would be no different.

I baked Martha's Yellow Butter Cake, which may have ended my quest for a good yellow cake recipe. It was pretty tasty. When it was sufficiently cooled I crumbled it up into a bowl, and put that in the fridge. Then I started in on Martha's Strawberry Swiss Meringue Frosting. I've fought with this particular recipe so many times. It sure requires a LOT of mixing. And this time, I nailed it. The frosting was perfect. And delicious.

I started adding the frosting to the cake, and here's where the fails began. I added too much frosting, so it was a little too gooey. I should have stopped, but I didn't really know until I had gone too far. Unaware of the potential disasters lurking in my future, I rolled the cake/frosting mixture into 1 or 1.5 inch round balls. Then I threw them back in the fridge.

I melted the chocolate in the microwave, following the package instructions, and after putting the candy sticks in the cake balls I was ready to dip. No dice. The balls were so gooey, and began to fall apart in the warmed chocolate. When flipped upright to harden, the chocolatey ball of goo just slid off the stick. I tried a few, and each one was worse than before. So I stopped. With only an hour before the party, I "cleaned up" by putting 40 balls of cake and frosting on cookie sheets in my fridge, and ran out the door.

Two days later, I was trying to figure out what to do with the cake balls when I realized they'd firmed up a lot more. So I tried it again. Success. They are not pretty, I have no idea how anyone made them look like little chicks - mine are clearly lumpy blobs. I guess, you have to start somewhere. You can follow the whole process here (note, there are a lack of pictures of the mess, who knew that it would be resolved and warrant documentation). Without further ado, I introduce you to my first Cake Pops!

and the nominees are...

Mini Raspberry Cheesecakes and Oreo Truffles.

I was invited to an Oscar party last night, and of course needed to bring some Oscar-worthy treats with me. I was disappointed in my execution of the mini-cheesecakes, those are definitely not winning for any type of technical or cinematic category. In my mind, I was making them with a chocolate crust, so they would be Black and White, very elegant. But, the chocolate crust was more light brown, and the cheesecake more very yellow. The whole thing just missed the mark I was aiming for, and while they were good (have you ever met a cheesecake that wasn't??) they just weren't the hit I'd hoped for.

The Oreo truffles looked small and delicate, and tasted AMAZING, a clear front runner in this race. But they weren't without their problems. The truffles were supposed to be dipped in melted chocolate, and I waited questionably too long to do this step. I pulled out my double boiler, dumped in the chocolate, and went to town melting it. It wasn't long after that it turned into one globby clump, took on a life of it's own, and told me that there was no way I was dipping anything into it - its consistency was barely even spreadable. Somehow, I'd managed to mess up the simple step of "melt chocolate". Infuriated, I rushed to the store for more chocolate, and called my kitchen-emergency hotline (thank, Mel!) to discover that, in fact, a ganache recipe she has made clearly states "Do not use chocolate chips". I had, in fact, used chocolate chips. They were on sale and cheaper than the bars that I would have had to buy. Bad move, Jenni. Luckily, I was able to make a game time switch, and got the good stuff. On second chance I melted the chocolate ok (actually, the white chocolate never recovered, but I ran out of time to fight with it.) While, even my visions for the truffles were not quite achieved, their taste made it a moot point.

And, the Oscar goes to....

Oreo Truffles, who are gladly accepting this award on behalf of Meryl Streep and her portrayal of Julia Child!

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**Oreo truffles, totally simple:

Crush up Oreos in a food processor (save 9 crushed cookies aside for later). Combine remaining cookie crumbs, 8oz of cream cheese, and 1/2 tsp of vanilla with a mixer until mixed thoroughly. Roll into small balls and chill in fridge for one hour. Melt 1 pound of chocolate in a double boiler - careful, this part is apparently tricky. I ended up using one bar of milk chocolate and one bar of bittersweet chocolate together, I think it was a good choice. Dip the chilled oreo balls into chocolate and place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle the remaining cookie crumbs on top. (I ran out of chocolate at one point, and simply rolled the oreo balls in the cookie crumbs for some - these were good too) Return to fridge to chill for one hour, or until you have to go!

Spice Up Your Life

A while back, about a month ago, my housemates and I threw a 90s party. We compiled a play list of over ten hours of awesome 90s music, gathered a bunch of friends dressed to the occasion, and had a backdrop of Clueless and Wayne's World looping on the muted TV. It was, I might say, a fantastic success. Of course, there needed to be some food for the occasion. I made "RED HOT CHILI PEPPER salsa" (which was just salsa from a jar put into a bowl and labeled), "REALITY two-BITE brownies" (which was nothing new or fancy), and "SPICE GIRL cookies", which were incredible. The recipe called for crystallized ginger, and that intrigued me. I was not wrong - were these ever delicious. I only wish I'd thought to make two batches and save one for the next day.

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup unsalted butter

1 egg white

2 tablespoons dark corn syrup

3 tablespoons chopped crystallized ginger

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1/3 cup granulated sugar for decoration

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 2 large cookie sheets. Cream the butter and sugar. Add egg white and corn syrup, mix until fluffy. Stir in the crystallized ginger. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger and cloves. Stir this into the egg mixture. When dough starts to come together, mix with your hands to form a smooth dough. Form dough into 1-inch balls and roll in white sugar. Place 2-inches apart on a cookie sheet, and press down with the bottom of a glass. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

Our friends are bakers, too!

Here at Broccoli is for Lovers the thing we love second to showcasing our own kitchen creations, is showcasing those of our friends. For the second year in a row, Maureen has decorated an adorable Yo Gabba Gabba cake for her now two-year-old (holy cow, is he two already? I can't believe it!!) son Fitz. What a lucky kid, his mom makes the best birthday cakes around. Happy Birthday, Fitzo!

And over at quasify, Nanio has finally baked up some Gooseberry goodness. In his own words:

my gooseberry tart thing recipe (hashed out with help of my mom & internet strangers)

1) Mix a can of gooseberries, two thirds cup sugar and three tablespoons of flour together, bring a gentle boil. Let that cool. It will set up into a liquidy gel.
2) Make a top/bottom pie crust recipe. Instead of balling in two, make 8 to 12 smaller balls.
3) Mix an 8oz cream cheese (softened) w/ three tablespoons of sugar.
4) Flatten small balls (optionally, with your newly purchased and totally bitchin’ rolling pin), smush a tablespoon or two of cream cheese in the center and cover with a similar amount of the cooled gooseberries.
5) Crimp those bad boys shut and trim excess. We’ll have to pretend like I did this part of the recipe correctly.

6) Bake at 400 for 10-14 minutes.

My not-very-objective opinion is these tasted pretty decent but didn’t turn out to be terribly attractive. I think had I baked them in a mini-cupcake cooking sheet instead of on a flat pan it might have kept the three dimensionality I imagined when I started the project. Next time.

Looks delicious, Nanio!

YJPumpkin YJPie

I spent New Years' in Boston this year, and after ringing in the new decade in the most perfect way I could have imagined, I began a whole list (in my head) of things I wanted to accomplish in twenty-ten. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a mere two days later, I would have made my very first pumpkin pie. A fine accomplishment if you ask me!

Yep, I've never made a pumpkin pie.

I didn't grow up being a pumpkin lover, it wasn't until college that I was introduced to pumpkin bread (thanks to my boyfriends mom and her AMAZING recipe), which quickly became an all time favorite of mine. I've since enjoyed many pumpkin baked goods, muffins, pancakes, ice cream, the list goes on. Still - pumpkin pie is not my thing. It's the texture I think. I don't know. But I've never really loved it, and I've never made one. Until now.

It was a total last minute idea, and started about 45 minutes too late probably, but with the help of Nanio and his newly organized kitchen, we successfully threw together a pumpkin pie! We simply followed the recipe on the back of the Libby's Pumpkin Pie filling can, which included evaporated milk, some eggs, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and probably a few other things. We used a graham cracker crust, because as I said we were extremely pressed for time.

I think I would have liked to have left it in the oven a little bit longer, but as it was we were leaving at the time we were supposed to be arriving at our friend's house for dinner - extra baking time was not an option.

All in all, I think the little guy turned out quite nicely. Everyone had a piece, and no one seemed to complain!

A new twist on an old favorite

I was searching for our many many, many posts on brie bites - is it possible we don't have any?! How has this tragedy happened, because I know they are made often.

Last night I reverted back to the complete baked brie - and not the bites. I was attending a "Scotch Night", that has become an end of semester tradition for the Cognitive Psychology PhD students at UT, and brie seemed like the perfect accompaniment to scotch. It's actually very simple. One wheel of brie. A few sheets of thawed phyllo dough. Some kind of jam/jelly. A little melted butter. Done. I'm partial to putting apricot preserves on the brie, I'm not sure why. I think apricot is a nice flavor with the cheese, it adds a little sweet, but can also be very savory. Last night when I opened the fridge to pull out the cheese and preserves I spied a package of fresh rosemary, and the wheels began turning. I chopped up some of that fresh rosemary, and mixed it into the preserves. And, this was maybe the best choice I've made all week! Delicious!

Slacker!

So let's see, it's already Thursday. First of all, how did that happen? I don't think Week 5 is happening this week unless it's on Sunday, which I consider to be the official start to Week 6 but maybe that's just me! My excuse? I've been busy and poor, waiting desperately for my paycheck! (I only wish my excuse were that I was busy training for and running in a half marathon, like some OTHER person that I'm so jealous of!) I'll try to make up for it with two new recipes next week, though I already know that neither of them will be for Thanksgiving. My family has requested an old recipe of mine for Pumpkin Cheesecake! I'll have some time on my hands though the rest of next weekend so I'm sure I'll get to a couple newbies for a lunch or dinner.