Showing posts with label buttercream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label buttercream. Show all posts

05 August 2012

Whole Wheat "Leftovers" Cookies

Well. It's my last Sunday subletting at HamCore and I have to use up all my food by (Thur|Fri|Sat) of next week.


SP and I made delicious whole wheat cookies with curry powder, cinnamon, and dark chocolate. We did not freeze the dough (as the instructions say), and after baking, we both proceeded to devour the whole batch of cookies (well, we made half a batch of cookies - 1 leftover stick of butter) while watching Sheep in the Big City. These cookies were quite filling (both emotionally and physically) and tasted a bit like gingerbread and had a satisfying sandy texture. I also wanted to just eat the cookie dough raw. So there - no more butter and chocolate! SP tried to grind  a cinnamon stick, first using a knife (nice little chunks, but highly inefficient), and then using a cocktail masher + bowl. We ended up with sizable chunks of cinnamon along with the puny bits.


I also had about a liter of skim milk leftover and I was afraid that it would go bad, so I decided to freeze it with some maple syrup, to make milk and maple granita. Basically, you break the ice slurry every hour or so until you have pin-sized ice crystals. You can easily chip at this structure to get a good amount of dessert. It is not creamy but it's fine. I'm not sure why I didn't make this with all the leftover milk and half&half during the semester. So, milk used!

Finally, I was a counselor for an Engineering camp last week, and at the final reception, there was a giant cake, with an anticipated 100+ servings (I assume - there were 69 students, and you have to include their families!). Miraculously, there were about 13 slices leftover, and they were going to trash all those slices! So, I claimed it, took it to DRL, fed some physicists, and brought the rest home to eat. Unfortunately, the end pieces of cake were slathered with "American Buttercream Frosting", a publicly-celebrated disaster. To me, that stuff is vile. Fatty and flavourless. I scraped off most of it from the cake parts and ate those, but I didn't want to throw out this butter+powdered sugar concoction, like I have done in the past (at least three times, especially whenever we got the Costco cakes). The answer hit me like a slice of pie hitting a serving plate - bake with it! Duh!




So I mixed it with the rind, juice and pulp of two lemons I happen to have, 1.5 c of whole wheat flour, a sprinkle of instant rice (just for experimentation) and some baking soda, and baked the stiff dough at 350 F for 10 minutes on the middle rack of the oven. I ended up with 18 cookies with a crusty exterior (crispy bottoms) and a cooked gooey filling. The cookie is not particularly sweet, and did not expand significantly while baking. It was quite lemony and I'm pretty glad I found a use for gross "American Buttercream Frosting"!




So, all I have now are about 6 eggs, some Brie, flour, almond meal, cocoa powder, oil, cooked pasta, rice, frozen mango, frozen veggies, an apple, and yogurt.

21 August 2011

Fairy Cakes

As a reward for being less of a whining brat than usual (she's "only" cried twice in the past 12 hours!), I taught my sister how to make fairy cakes. Basic fairy cakes, without creative fillings.
I got a... mini fairy cake recipe here but I modified it tolerate a stick of butter. I ended up with 10 really buttery fairy cakes, though I did make them in egg tart containers so they were slightly bigger than the conventional fairy cake. And, yes, fairy cakes are essentially cupcakes but the phrase "fairy cakes" sounds better.
My sister followed the recipe, weighed out ingredients (with my help), mixed everything (with my help), and went to read when I stuck everything in/out of the oven.

If an 8 year old can do it, you can. Don't ever revert back to those putrid cake mixes!!

To me, the recipe looks like it's for pound cake.
INGREDIENTS FOR 10-12 FAIRY CAKES
120 g butter
120 g caster sugar
2 eggs
vanilla
120 g self raising flour
METHOD
0. Let butter sit outside fridge for a (few) hours.
1. Cream butter and sugar.
2. Beat in eggs and add vanilla.
3. Fold in flour and drop a huge tablespoon into a paper case.
4. Bake at 177 degrees C/350 degrees F in an un-preheated oven, on the second-top shelf, for 22 minutes. I usually use the bottom shelf but today I had potato bread baking down there. The bottom shelf calls for less cooking time, obviously.
5. The top of the cakes should be cooked and a fork stuck into cake should come out with no crumbs or goop. (The fork test always prevails!!) The cakes may look a bit soft and gooey when you take them out, but once they cool, they harden a little but still remain moist (due to the butter).


Usually I'd be done now, but my sister wanted to put icing on four fairy cakes so she made the despicable butter-sugar mixture (with my help).

I made 1/4 of the icing recipe listed here, which was enough to liberally ice 5 fairy cakes.
So, my sister loved the cake. Obviously.