An Apple a Day...

Baking a pecan pie on Saturday really motivated me to make my first apple pie of the season. Now I know there are some strong opinions about what kind of 'topping' belongs on an apple pie. The majority of my family loves some crumb topping but in my book, save that for an apple crisp. I am a die-hard, old-fashioned, apple pie lovin' kind of girl. And lucky for this girl, the hubby hates fruit which means the whole thing is mine!

That being said, you can still be old-fashioned while throwing in a little style.  Along with the pie crust silicon cover from the last post, my sister-in-law got me these adorable pie crust cutters and I figured this was the perfect time to bust them out.

After making a batch of pie crust and coating the sliced apples in a wonderful cinnamon-sugar concoction, I rolled out the top half of the pie crust to about 15" in diameter.  I love the leaf cutout, especially with it being Fall, so I made cutouts throughout the topping before placing it on top of the bottom crust and apples.  

The leaf cutouts were too cute to waste that I used them around the outside of the pie to complete the crust. Before baking, I brushed the top with milk and sprinkled with sugar. 

In my opinion, a little bit of vanilla ice cream resting on top of a slice of warmed apple pie with a glass of cabernet is the perfect way to call it a night. I did have to fight the urge to bake more pies today. At some point I'm going to have to find somewhere to get rid of these pies or we will be forced to eat them all and pack on the pounds before the holidays even get here!

Now to decide on the next pie to make... And who to donate it to...

Pecans Anyone?

New home. New job. New recipes.

As I logged back into my blog I couldn't help but feel embarrassed and disappointed in my lack of projects in more than four months. Yes, I did have to pack up my Hampton Roads life into way too many boxes for one person and have it trucked across the great state of Virginia to it's new home in Blacksburg. Yes, I am obnoxiously OCD so every box was unpacked within two days of being delivered so time wasn't necessarily an issue. Yes, my sewing machine went into a closet for safe keeping compared to the sewing room it once enjoyed in Portsmouth. There is just not enough room in the new place to leave all of my supplies constantly set up so into the closet they went. No, I have absolutely no excuse for not baking. Everything is right there and waiting for me in their cabinets.

After closing one chapter in the Coast Guard and moving to Blacksburg to finally (after five long years!) live with my husband, I began nannying for an amazing family in town. I thought there would need to be a drastic change in the way I approach the daily events in my new job, but it turns out the adults I used to work for threw very similar tantrums to the ones the kids all under the age of 7 throw. Anyway, adjusting to a new schedule along with a new everything else, I somehow lost track of time and before I knew it, here I am with three months of nothing to show in the way of project progress.

As the fall temperatures continue to drop and the Thanksgiving festivities near, I couldn't help but get the urge to make a pie. I love fruit pies with apple being my all-time, forever favorite. Unfortunately, my husband doesn't do anything fruit. Seriously, nothing. He does, however, consider himself a member of the pumpkin/pecan/french silk pie eating club. I have never had, let alone tried to make, a pecan pie so tonight was as good of a night as any to give it a whirl.

I was shocked at how simple of a recipe a pecan pie actually is. I started with a simple pie crust out of one of my favorite, classic cookbooks:

This single pie crust recipe is a no-muss no-fuss, limited-ingredient, all-around, great recipe made for those of us who can so easily screw one up.

After finishing the crust and placing it in my (brand-new) pie pan, I combined a stick of butter, 1 cup of light brown sugar, 3/4 cup of light corn syrup, and 1/2 tsp salt into a medium sauce-pan on medium heat and waited for it to start to boil. Once it began to boil and all of the ingredients were blended, I gave it about ten minutes to cool down before adding 2 cups of halved pecans, 2 tsp vanilla, and 2 tbs bourbon. Yes, I said bourbon. The Jim Beam kind of bourbon. Sounds amazing, right?! After all of those ingredients were combined, I slowly mixed in three beaten eggs and poured the batter into my waiting pie crust.

Knowing I love to bake, one of my sister-in-laws got me this silicon crust cover for my birthday. With the crust molded correctly, it allows the crust to cook through while preventing burning. Great invention and so much easier to use than aluminum foil. 

Since I have never eaten or made a pecan pie before, I don't know what I was expecting but I really don't think this was it. For some reason it looked more glazed and ooey-gooey in my self-created, mental version. The recipe called for the pie to be baked at 400 for 40-45 minutes. My oven routinely needs more time than what is required but I didn't want to risk it and set the timer for 42 minutes. I might shave some time off the next time I make it and see if I get the results I thought I was looking for. Regardless, we cut it open and placed some vanilla ice cream on top and it was delicious. It's incredible how sweet of a pie it is from a small amount of brown sugar and corn syrup. The most important thing is that my husband gave the thumbs-up approval so I must have done something right. 

 Tomorrow's adventure: apple pie. Oh boy it feels good to be back at it again.

A Blanket For A Boy

After nine crazy years, my time as a Coast Guard officer is quickly coming to a close. With just a handful of days left in my job, I can't help but think back through the years and about those who have made the good days great and the bad days something to laugh about later. One of my co-workers in my current job has definitely become one of those people. She has been blessed with a second baby boy due this August but it turns out her due date wasn't actually the timeline I was running up against. In less than two weeks I am (a girl who hasn't lived more than five miles from a large body of water in nine years) packing my bags and moving to the mountains of western Virginia. Knowing the stresses of moving would soon be weighing down on me, I attempted to finish this project early....

I didn't do that.  More like just in time.

For this blanket I wanted to use a combination of bright colors and textured fabrics. I also wanted to stick with the standard quilted squares design but use much larger square pieces than I have in the past.

After cutting the fabric pieces, I sewed them into rows and attached the rows to create one large piece of fabric. This part of the process was very quick and took me less than an hour to sew it all together. 

The next step was to create the backing for the blanket. When it comes to baby blankets, I am slightly obsessed with minky fabric. It is unbelievably soft and the raised dots make it pretty adorable and fun to work with. Rather than have one large piece of fabric for the backing, I opted to have a square pattern here also. I measured out four pieces of fabric and sewed them together to create one large sheet.

After attaching the front to the backing, I chose to emphasize the grid pattern more create even more by sewing two additional seams in each direction. As you can see below, the yellow thread pops nicely against the baby blue fabric. 

I really liked the way the seams stood out on both the front and the back and gave the blanket that little bit of extra character. The different textures of each fabric were definitely a great touch to complete the project. 

This will be my last sewing project for a few weeks as all of my belongings get packed into boxes in a few short days, but rest assured that my sewing machine will be hard at work again soon. Making a blanket for this particular co-worker was a perfect project to press pause after for a little while. While I am waiting to get back into the swing of things, I'll be doing some research to find some new projects!

See you next time!

Fireworks & Cupcakes

Happy Belated 4th of July!!!

For months, we have been planning on heading to the Outer Banks to spend the weekend of the 4th of July at a friends beach house. Lo and behold, the first hurricane to hit the East Coast of the 2014 season decides to aim it's slowing moving self straight for the Outer Banks. Luckily, we managed to be going to the one town in the OBX that acted as the cut off point for the storm's path of destruction and the forecast was still calling for a beautiful weekend in the Carolinas. Our plans changed a little but I spent my rainy 4th of July baking cupcakes in preparation for the weekend ahead. The inspiration: red, white, and blue of course.

Using a vanilla cake batter recipe, I made two batches and dyed one blue and one red. While the batches were baking and cooling, I made a large batch of cream cheese icing and divided it into three parts to dye two red and blue and leave the last one white. I realize 24 cupcakes is not enough to create the full American flag, but I figured people would get the idea... (I was still called out). 

I wanted a different texture for the "stars" icing so I used a 4B tip for the blue and a 1M tip for the red and white.  Since there were so many cupcakes to decorate and then place on a cupcake carrier to transport during the 1.5 hour drive, I placed all of the cupcakes on the carrier first, then decorated. 

This was a quick, fun project to kick off our 4th weekend and I think the cupcakes turned out deliciously.  Never a surprise anymore, I ended up with enough batter to make a mini cake. I used one blue layer, one red layer, all three shades of icing, and chocolate chips to build a sweet treat that would hold us over for the night. 

I am just one week away from picking up my life and moving from one end of the state of Virginia to the other; so bear with me as I try to get settled in over the next few weeks and hopefully unpack in a way that will help me find all of my baking supplies. Until next time, enjoy!!

Sunday Zest

I can only clean my home so many times in a long weekend before even I have overdone it. My husband was out of town this weekend so by the time Sunday afternoon came around I was ready to bake! On today's menu were chocolate cupcakes (yes, again) with a lemon zest icing. My plan was to use the 1M and 104 tips to create the flowers on the two cakes below from my Surprise-Inside book:

Unfortunately, as you can tell from the first picture, that is not a cupcake. The last time I used this chocolate cake recipe there was enough batter for 18 cupcakes and two mini-cakes. This time I halved the recipe thinking the measurements were all easy enough to divide up, so what could go wrong?!

As it turns out, it somewhat ruins the recipe. While the cupcakes tasted delicious, they looked pretty awful. They didn't rise nearly enough and I refuse to show anyone how pathetic they were when they came out of the oven. Lesson learned: do not halve this recipe. I will, however, continue to use the full recipe because it creates an amazingly delicious/heavy/rich cake. If you are interested in creating your own piece of chocolate heaven, search for One Bowl Chocolate Cake III by 'shirleyo' on allrecipes.com. It ends up being a very thin batter after you add a cup of boiling water and makes you question if you followed the recipe correctly, but the consistency is what creates the very dense texture.

Luckily, I had just enough batter left over that I filled two of the mini-cake pans when I put the cupcakes in the oven. Since my husband would be coming home from his trip that evening, I thought it would be a nice surprise to have a personal cake waiting for him after a long day of traveling. Un-luckily, it was the same batter so the two cakes didn't rise enough but they were still manageable for this purpose. 

I filled the bottom layer with the lemon zest icing and sprinkled mini chocolate chips in the middle for the surprise inside. Next, I piped a layer of icing around the edge to sit between the two layers.

After filling the inside of the top layer with icing, I assembled the two cakes and used my 1M tip to pipe a rosette style topping.
 

I think it sort of looks like a massive macaroon. 

 

I ended up doing something I shouldn't have done and knew it before I even started. The top didn't look just right to me, so I scraped off the icing and attempted to do better. I ended up doing worse and should have fought off my OCD more than I did. I knew I wasn't going to do better but I am still learning when to leave well enough alone (it's really a life lesson, not just for baking). The end result still looked nice but after looking back through pictures I realized I should have just stuck with the first attempt.

As you can see, there are still no cupcakes in this post. I did decorate them for practice and tried very hard to decorate one in particular for a co-worker's birthday, but the rest will go in the trash. I would much rather discard the unacceptable's instead of tempting my will power if I can't (won't) give them away. 

There is still a sewing project in the works, so check back soon!

Happy Monday!

Expect the Unexpected

As I get more into baking, I can only be thankful for my family graciously enabling me in my new hobby. Not only did I get two sets of baking pans for my birthday, I also received a gift card to Michaels to let my imagination run wild in the baking aisle. One item in particular has continued to catch my eye whenever I am in Michaels: the Wilton "professional" decorating tip kit. I have a few decorating tips already and could continue to buy each one I want for another $.99-$2.99 a piece, but this kit just makes so much more sense. While it provides an almost unfathomable amount of creativity (at least to me) for the true professionals out there or amateurs like myself, this bad boy runs $50! That's a lot of money for a newbie with lofty goals to spend. Lucky for me, Michaels frequently posts coupons online and I found a 50% off one item before I hit the register.  I know it might seem like I'm talking this kit up a little too much, but I guess for someone who gets pretty dang excited over different icing techniques, finding this is like finding the holy grail.

So after purchasing this kit, I obviously returned home with the notion that I need to practice with as many of the tips as I can in one day. It also occurred to me that even though I may be working on another sewing project on the side, I haven't actually blogged in almost two months. Life has been a little busy in the last month or so but if I can't find time to bake some sweets for the hubby and co-workers I am doing something wrong. 

What's the best way to practice as many different styles of icing as I can at once? Cupcakes! I suddenly remembered I had forgotten, luckily, about the pack of Oreos I purchased a week ago after hiding them in the very top of the cabinet. So my sweet tooth took over and I set out to make chocolate-oreo cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

I made chocolate cake batter for what is unfortunately the very first time from scratch, making sure to add just a little more cocoa than what the recipe called for. After filling the cupcake pan, I realized I had far more batter than anticipated and decided to also use one of my new pan sets I received for my birthday. These pans are pretty exciting to me because they create space in the middle of the pan to add other sweets or "surprises" of your choice without having to go through all of the work I have in the past. Even better, they're smaller and allow for some flavor creativity and personalization.

While the 16 cupcakes and four mini-cakes were baking and cooling, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting, which I must say turned out amazingly! I'm not usually a fan of cream cheese frosting but thought it might go along pretty well with the Oreos and the chocolate; a buttercream icing just didn't seem to fit with this combination.

Now to the whole point of this little adventure: the decorating! After filling three icing bags with different decorating tips, I anxiously started out on my "practicing".  I could lie and say that they ended up exactly like I had imagined but I have to tell you, it was such a failure! The consistency of the frosting made it all blend together in one lifeless blob instead of holding the beautiful shape it was supposed to make with my brand new tips! In the past, my OCD would lead me to scraping off the frosting and starting over but my patience was already wearing thin after how quickly my excitement died off.  Luckily, simply placing an Oreo on top made the whole thing look intentional, at least I thought so, and I called it good. 

After my defeat in the Battle of Cupcakes, I looked to the mini cakes with a hope for inspiration. I have been craving strawberry shortcake lately and decided that was a good place to start but with the obvious chocolate twist. I filled the inside of one cake layer with a little bit of icing and filled it the rest of the way with sliced strawberries. Then I filled the "top" half of the cake with icing and placed it on top of the other layer, hollow side down. After again trying to decorate the top of the cake with the new icing tips and once again failing, I sliced up more strawberries and placed them around the top in what I would like to think was an artistic method. 

 

Pretty, huh?!

I had two more layers left and unfortunately my husband doesn't like fruit, so I gladly returned to the remainder of the Oreos to complete his cake and eliminate the option of me eating any more of those delicious devil cookies. I repeated the same process of filling the inside of the cake layers with icing but then used crushed Oreos for the surprise inside.  Again, of course I attempted to decorate the top of the cake but failed even worse than before, resulting in icing falling all over the sides and me having to keep the process going in the direction it was already choosing to. I coated the entire outside of the cake with icing and topped it off with more crushed Oreos. I have to say, I ultimately really liked the way the two cake's colors complimented each other.

I have so far only taste-tested the strawberry cake but it was delicious!!! Even though I completely failed at what I initially set out to do and must now sacrifice my diet to "practice" decorating again later on this week, I was so pleased by the end result of the surprise-inside cakes.

 

Moral of the story: just start baking and see where you end up. I can almost guarantee you have plenty of people to eat your baking failures, too. 

Enjoy!