Rainbows, Chocolate Marshmallow & THANKS.

First off, I'd like to say a big buttery THANKS to the crazy 24 followers of this blog. I have not been as loyal to updating the Spatula as I would like to be, schedule of life just doesn't quite allow it. But I will be better than I have been previously, since you guys deserve to see all the stuff that comes out of my kitchen, even if I can't make a big post accompanying the images.

I went back to my 'roots' this week, ala cupcakes! I had a request for rainbow cupcakes, and honestly I have never been crazy about these things from images I have seen online since it seems like most peeps use cake mix and then the frosting is all haphazard and crazy with rainbow sprinkles. So when a friend asked me to do them for a birthday, I thought REALLY? Are you sure? Yes well..I did it. And ummm, if I do say so myself they came out SUPER CUTE.



How do you make them? It's pretty easy. Take your favorite vanilla or butter cupcake recipe. Separate it into 3-4 small bowls, try to make them even because if you don't..as I found out, you are left a lot of batter for 2 colors only and then your 'rainbow' looks more like tie-dye. Spoon a bit of each batter into the cupcake liner. I guess some people do it right on top of each other, but I did it kind of side and top on each other and it came out cute. Not quite perfect, but I liked the look.



The other experiment that I spent a few hours on this week turned out to be Chocolate Marshmallow Cupcakes. Well to be honest with you, I started out trying to make S'mores Cupcakes since one of my pals has requested it for her bday and I want them to be PERFECT. I have seen a lot of S'mores recipes on the blogs. But I didn't want to do the typical graham crust, choco cake with marshmallow topping.

Taste wise they came out amazing...but sorry it wasn't S'mores. They need WAY more graham cracker. So back to the drawing board. However, they were somewhat inspired by Sprinkles Chocolate Marshmallow cuppie...which I had last week while we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary in Scottsdale, AZ, so it's not a total failure because those were bomb tasting. I definitely plan to make these beauties again and again.



Use your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe for these, I used the famous Epicurious 'most downloaded recipe' Chocolate Layer Cake. I filled them with marshmallow cream which is simply a bag of marshmallows, 1/4c milk, and 1/4c heavy cream heated up until it is all melty and warm. Let it cool up to 30 min and thicken, then cut out the tops of the cupcakes and spoon it in. Next time I will top them with marshmallow 7 minute frosting as well as have the cream inside, most people said it still needed more marshmallow, the chocolate was pretty intense. I dipped them in ganache for the tops, just using dark chocolate and heavy cream with some corn syrup. Still wondering about how to get the graham going in correctly.

While I noodle over how to make the base cupcakes turn into S'mores, I had to make actual S'mores for my hub and me on Friday night, yanno just to make sure I know what I'm trying to achieve. BTW, they were sinfully good, almost better than any gourmet dessert I have had. What's THAT about???

Puff Pastry Chocolate Croissants.

So here's the jist. I love croissants and took the class I wrote about here. But I didn't love the dough and outcome all that much. Too doughy, too bready, too thick. Still tasty, but I thought it could be much flakier.

I discovered according to the King Arthur Baking Cookbook that there were two ways to make croissants. With yeast and without. The former is what we made in the class...but the latter was intriguing.

I used the recipe in the book and set out to experiment. I am sure my buttering, folding, and turning methods were not totally spot on...it WAS my first time doing this all on my own. Who knows if I was making letters or orgami with my folds. But I kind of figured that as long as the butter got in, the dough and butter stayed cold, and I folded, turned, and chilled 5-6 times that it would pretty much be ok.



Erueka. I was right! I was worried that because this recipe had no yeast in it, these would turn out to be small croissants with not much lift. Surprise..the idea of keeping them cold in the fridge until baking straight into the hot oven, is so that the fat of the butter in the pockets of the dough can create steam and explode into the flaky layers we all love so much in croissants and other pastries.



The croissants rose nicely in the oven. So far I love this recipe. No worrying about rising time and puffs like crazy? I made most of them with chocolate, but I did try basting some with almond extract since I did not have time to get almond paste. And of course, I had to attempt Nutella..which was amazing.



Overall, this was a winning recipe BUT next time I will add sugar to the recipe. There was none in this recipe at all and while the fillings are sweet, they don't quite compensate for the lack of sugar in the dough. Also I'd put bit more salt.

The funny thing is that this is one of the only books/recipes that talks about making croissants with puff pastry non-yeasted dough. Pretty much every other recipe I found uses yeasted dough. Which leads me to believe that there must be some great flaketastic recipe that uses yeasted that is going to be fluffy and not bready like the ones we made in class.



Anyone got some yeasted flakealicious recipes that they want to push my way? I am on a mission now!! I want to make this recipe again with some mods, but then I want to try a few yeasted recipe for comparison's sake. Fatty buttery goodness, here I come!

Love in a Roll... Croissant Class.

Who doesn't love croissants? I love them in an unhealthy way. As in the last few times I have gone to Paris for work, I end up consuming about 2-3 per day while I am there. I would probably eat more but it's limited purely by the amount of time I have outside of meetings to search down and eat croissants.

Paris croissants are all seemingly incredibly flakey..so that when you bite into one, you immediately have a shower of buttery goodness down your front. No time for embarassment. Must eat more croissants.



So when my baking pal, Betty ala Miss EatMyCupcake, said let's take a class at Sur La Table, we both said Croissants. Having visited Paris just a week before the class, I had the memory of those flaketastic buttery morsels fresh on my tongue.

I love taking classes at Sur La Table. They have a huge kitchen, a fabulous setup, lots of great volunteers surrounding a usually pretty knowledgeable teacher. Cheese n' crackers, fresh water, bathroom breaks. LOVE IT. It makes the $80 you pay for the class for 2.5 hours seem more than worth it.



This class was no different than past classes in how much fun I had and how much I learned. We were taught how to make, butter, roll, turn, chill, cut, fill, and bake the croissants. The one thing that I did not love about this class was the croissant recipe. The instructor noted that there were hundreds out there and that they are all different. What she chose WAS a good beginner recipe. And it tasted fine, esp when filled.



BUT what we made and ate were not the crazy flakey croissants of my most recent memory. A bit more bready, and thick...thesee did not inspire a shower of buttery crumbs but rather the idea that you could easily slather some jam on them, and eat an extremely filling carb-laden breakfast with just one. However, the class itself was great...and I left there thinking about all the ways that I could make a better croissant. I couldn't let it lie...read on!! Next post.

Magnolia Banana Pudding.

One of my pals went to NYC a year ago and came back raving about the banana pudding that a lot of the bakeries there sell. I was happy to find a recipe online, and bookmarked it, yes almost a year ago. Things are busy.

We were going to have a big housewarming bash this wkd for our new home. However, it's rained out (unheard of in California, where are we?!?)so we rescheduled it. Instead, we are having a few of our favorite couples for a small dinner instead.

Since I want to make the banana pudding in a super-mondo-sized batch for the BBQ..what better way to test it than on 6 of our friends. However, I just made it and honestly, it doesn't need to be tested on anyone, this stuff is bomb. As in really amazing. I am not a big fan of licking the spatula (I know, I know!) but when I was done making the pudding, I was all over the spatula AND bowl.



The recipe itself is easy...it just takes a bit to assemble. I used instant pudding because I can never really find the regular stuff, and it tasted good to me. Also who has the time to wait for pudding to set 4 hours in the fridge nowadays?

Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding
From 'More From Magnolia' Cookbook
Serves 12

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups water
2/3 cup vanilla pudding mix
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
3 cups cold heavy cream
1 (12 ounce) box vanilla wafers
4 ripe bananas, sliced

Directions
Whisk together the water, pudding mix and sweetened condensed milk until will mixed. If not using instant, refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. If using instant, it will be ready to go within 15 min.

When pudding is ready, whip the heavy cream in a chilled bowl until soft peaks form. Fold the pudding mixture into the whipped cream until well incorporated.

In a deep glass bowl (or pie pans or whatever you want to use to layer...but honestly the deeper the bowl the more it will all 'mish mash' together), layer the pudding, wafers, bananas and pudding again. Continue until all the mixture is used up, ending with either wafers or pudding. Don't end with bananas because they will just turn brown and end up looking unappealing. I sprinkled crushed wafers on top of mine.



Refrigerate for 1-8 hours, but many blogs say the longer that you have it in the fridge sitting all together, the better it seems to taste. This dessert also looks amazing layered in an ice cream sundae glass.

Mods I made include adding a bit of banana cream pudding mix with the vanilla, using instant, using more bananas and nilla wafers than it called for. I also sprinkled a bit of rum on one of the layers of wafers, why not??? Next time I might experiment with adding coconut cream pudding into the mix as well.



Quite honestly, originally reading the recipe I thought...this sounds like a cheat. Pudding mix? Nilla wafers? It probably won't be very good. How does Magnolia sell this stuff? But, oh no. As I assembled this stuff I kept right on snitching some of the cream pudding. If you can't wait the 1-8 hours to taste this all together, take a wafer, scoop some pudding onto it and put a banana slice on top. Heaven in an instant.

Don't wait a year to make this like I did. Enjoy!!

Happy Easter!! Carrot n' Hummingbird Cupcakes.

OMG ... yes I am still alive! I know it's been forever since I have posted anything on my blog, but I have been existing and baking. Moving in Jan was brutal on us...but then I was also very sick most of Feb with two colds and a flu. Yes, it was nasty times. I spent most of March getting back into the saddle and we have been very busy working to make sure we can continue to pay both our mortgages while our old home went up on the market.

I have made a fair amount of cupcakes in March, I'll try to post those pictures in the next post. But for now this is about Easter! We are hosting a BBQ tomorrow for my family in our new place, and I spent about 2 hours today making these super fun cupcakes. They turned out SO cute I thought. Because I typically tend to 'over-schedule' myself as my husband likes to say, I don't normally have the kind of time it takes to decorate things like this the way I'd REALLY like to. So I really enjoyed doing it today.



I made Hummingbird cupcakes, a recipe I have been wanting to try for over a year now. It has walnuts, coconut, banana, and pineapple in it. Sounds funny? It's GOOD. I got it from the Martha Stewart website, and it turned out VERY yummy. My adaptations included adding a tablespoon of sour cream and tablespoon of milk, along with omitting the vanilla, and adding a bit of the pineapple juice. Excellent cupcake. I also made carrot cake cupcakes, using a new recipe on MSNBC from Epicurious, which I guess is one of the most used recipes ever on their site. It reminds me a lot of Dorie's Bill's Carrot Cake recipe, but the cake is far more substantial which I like. I also added 1 tblsp of milk and sour cream to this one as well as my favorite RUM SOAKED RAISINS.

One of our fav couples came for dinner...and Betty brought her own Easter cupcakes as well, of course it was time for a Peep Photo Shoot. So, Happy Easter all and I hope to be posting more often now that we are settled in!

TWD: Chocolate Gingerbread Cupcakes.

So yeah, I am on baking hiatus. Thank the move, thank my shattered kitchen, thank my tired nerves. We're 2/3 there...and I really miss baking. After seeing Martha Stewart's Cupcake show caught on TiVo this weekend, I was itching to be back in the kitchen.



Therefore this TWD came in right at the perfect time. It's a cake, which typically means 'easy' for me, and meant to be made in a 9x9 pan with a thin layer of frosting. However, since I moved most of my kitchen already, I only had cupcake tins sitting in the oven. Perfect. I was in the mood for a rich cupcake anyway.

So I made chocolate gingerbread cupcakes. Slathered with a spicy gingerbread chocolate coffee frosting. I ate more than my share, I am happy to report.



Since I am partially moved, I did a one bowl routine on the cupcakes, and did not have fresh ginger so I used pumpkin pie spice, ground ginger, and vanilla instead. The cupcakes baked up nice and large.

Overall, the recipe is very good... quite moist and delicious. I think I used a bit less chocolate than required, so it was more of a 'hint' of chocolate in the cake than anything else. Next time I will double it...but given that these are cupcakes, the frosting more than makes up for it in this particular shape and form!



This is probably the last time I will bake in my old kitchen... it's a little nostalgic and sad as we spent 5 years here, and it was our first house together..and we have experienced a lot of firsts here.

But we move onto better things I suppose. I can't wait to play with the oven in the new house. Until then...here's my TWD. Check out the rest of the TWD bakers here. I won't be around next week as I am traveling for work but hopefully back the week after AND testing out the oven in the new house. XOXO.

Blog Slack BUT... Big News!

So yeah..I haven't posted on my blog in about a month, just shy. I think about baking, and I get out the cookbook, usually my TWD book and then I look at the recipe, and then I look at the couch ...and then I want to sleep.

Here's why. We're moving! We bought a new house and we have been 'moving' all month long. The process is pretty long and complicated because the new house has to have the 2nd family room modified back into a garage (someone's bright idea 20 years ago)....so the construction has hindered us from moving in entirely.

So we've been taking our town since we still have our existing place, and have been slowly moving things in and organizing as we go. 5 years in our place has turned us into CRAZY packrats. The new house, while way more expensive thanks to this ridiculous area where we live...is smaller sq ftage but has a very big front and back yard and an excellent elementary school for the child we don't have yet. So we have less space for more money, but actual dirt. Awesome!

No but really we are excited. But busy ... esp since how can I have SO MUCH STUFF I have to go through...and I haven't been baking hardly at all. It's so depressing. I even started craving cupcakes from OTHER places today, sacrilege. Desperate times.

Anyway, I just wanted to post and let you all know that I am still here and reading blogs, but just without time of my own (and within a few days without a kitchen as we are moving it this wkd)... to do anything. I am hoping to be BACK in the baking saddle come first or second week of Feb. Woop!!!!