The End of a Blog

Hello, all. And by "all" I mean the four of you who have been following me. :)

I've enjoyed sharing my baking adventures with you, but I'm afraid I no longer have the time to post about them. It's been a fun few years. I share with you one last baking adventure.

Red Velvet Cupcakes 

with Cream Cheese Icing

This was a super simple one. I used the Duncan Hines red velvet cake mix. (For my money, there's no better cake mix than Duncan Hines. They can feel free to contact me for promotional purposes anytime.)

The icing is the same I used on my sister-in-law's carrot cake a few years ago. You can find it here.

If you want to follow my writing adventures, you can find me on my author website: www.ajcattapan.com. On this site, I review children's book, share grammar topics from my classroom, and discuss writing in general. Maybe every once in a while, I'll even be tempted to post about baking. :)

Miniature Devil's Food Cupcakes

As promised last week, here's the recipe from the cupcakes pictured with the chocolate buttercream frosting. The recipe is an adaptation of a recipe from the Chocolate Bliss recipe collection pictured at the right. You can purchase it on Barnes & Noble online or Amazon.

One funny thing about the recipe is that the directions start off with "This one-bowl batter makes dark, moist, cupcakes." The recipe then proceeds to give directions to use small, medium, and large bowls! Ha! So much for "one-bowl batter."

The cupcakes were pretty tasty, but to be honest, I'd just as soon use a Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix.

Nonetheless, here's the recipe.

Miniature Devil's Food Cupcakes

Ingredients:
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup boiling water
3 tablespoons buttermilk*
2/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
3-1/3 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

*If you don't have buttermilk, add one teaspoon lemon juice to 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons milk. Stir and let sit five minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line mini-muffin pan with baking cups.

In medium bowl, stir the cocoa and hot water together. Add buttermilk and stir until blended. 

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt.

In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually beat in cocoa mixture and flour mixture. (See what I mean about three bowls?)

Using a small cookie scooper, scoop batter in mini muffin cups. Bake 10-15 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan for two minutes. Remove to cooling racks and cool completely before frosting.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Here is a chocolate buttercream frosting recipe that I rather enjoyed. I'll post the recipe for the cupcakes next week.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2-1/2 cups powdered sugar
5 tablespoons milk
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla

Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Beat the powdered sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in melted chocolate, butter, salt, and vanilla. If frosting is too thick, add a little more milk. If it is too thin, add a little more powdered sugar.

Homemade Fudge

I think this is the last of the Christmas cookies my friends and I made that I'll be blogging about. We needed something chocolate, and homemade fudge certainly fit the bill. The recipe originally came from allrecipes.com and was called "Aunt Teen's Creamy Chocolate Fudge."

Homemade Fudge

Ingredients:
7 oz. marshmallow creme
1-1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 teaspoon vanilla

The original directions called for an 8x8 pan, but we found a 9x9 pan actually worked better. Line your pan with aluminum foil.

In a large saucepan, combine the marshmallow creme, sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt. Bring to a full boil over medium heat and cook for five minutes, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and pour in both kinds of chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in nuts and vanilla. Pour into prepared pan. Chill in refrigerator for two hours or until firm. Cut into bite-size pieces.

Black Forest Pudding Pie

I made two of these for a family potluck dinner. They were easy to make, didn't bother anyone's egg or nut allergies, and tasted pretty yummy. However, they were a little soft and sloppy when they were cut. If I made them again, I might try a little less milk so that the pudding becomes even thicker. 

Black Forest Pudding Pie

 
Ingredients:

Oreo pie crust (8-inch)
3 oz. chocolate instant pudding
1-3/4 cup cold milk
1/2 tub of Cool Whip
1/2 can of cherry pie filling

You can either make your own Oreo cookie pie crust or buy the prepared kind. If you make your own in a 9-inch pie plate, I'd recommend doubling the remaining ingredients.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the pudding mix and the cold milk for two minutes. Pour into pie crust. Refrigerate at least one hour.

While the pudding is setting, be sure to put the Cool Whip into the fridge to thaw it. Spread the Cool Whip on top of the chocolate pudding.

Spoon the cherry pie filling on top of the Cool Whip.

Yummy! You really can't go wrong with cherry and chocolate, can you?

Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

On New Year's Eve, I wanted to make a small batch of cookies to take to a party. I started with a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe that said it made 30 cookies. Because I didn't really want leftovers, I cut the recipe in half. I figured if I did a half recipe with a small cookie scooper, I'd still get a decent number of cookies but not the 30 large cookies that the original recipe said I'd get.

So I made the necessary changes to the recipe and then started scooping the cookies with my small cookie scooper. Sixty-four cookies later, I was done! That's right. Sixty-four cookies. So much for not having leftovers.
  

Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1-1/4 cups oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup pecan chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In a large mixer bowl, beat butter until creamy. Beat in both sugars. Then beat in egg and vanilla. Add as much flour mixture as possible. You made need to use a wooden spoon to finish the combining.

Stir in the chocolate and pecan chips.


With a small cookie scooper, drop onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes until edges are light brown. Cool one minute before removing to cooling rack.

Yields: about 60 small cookies

Rugelach

This will surprise some of my friends, but I had never heard of rugelach until they made some a couple years ago. I did a little history search on it and found out it's a Jewish pastry. So when did my friends and I make some rugelach? For Christmas, of course. When else do you make Jewish pastries? :)

 Rugelach 

Ingredients:
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 cup butter, softened
2-1/4 cups flour
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon, divided
1/4 cup Solo brand raspberry cake & pastry filling

Beat cream cheese and butter on medium speed. Gradually add flour. Divide dough into four portions. Pat into 1-inch thick circle with flour hands and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line baking sheets with foil or parchment paper.  

Mix walnuts, 1/2 cup sugar, and 2 teaspoons cinnamon. On lightly floured surface, roll dough into 11-inch circle. Dough should be very thin by now. Spread each circle with a tablespoon of raspberry filling. Sprinkle with 1/4 of nut mixture. Using a pizza wheel, cut circle in 16 wedges. Roll up each wedge, starting from wide end. 

Place point side down on prepared cookie sheet. Sprinkle with extra cinnamon and sugar. 

Bake 25 minutes until lightly browned. Remove to wire rack for cooling.   

Fruit-Filled Almond Shortbread Cookies

A friend saw another friend post a picture of these on Facebook, so off I went in search of a recipe online. There are several similar ones.

My friends and I decided to follow this recipe on food.com, but we used cherry cake and pastry filling as well as lemon curd instead of the prescribed raspberry jam. 

A couple weeks later, I made these cookies again. This time I used seedless black raspberry jam. All three variations were yummy.

Fruit-Filled Almond Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups flour
1/2 cup fruit filling*
1 cup powdered sugar
3 teaspoons water
1/2 teaspoon almond extract     
 *you can use Solo brand cake & pastry filling, lemon curd, or seedless jelly or jam

In a mixer bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the almond extract. Gradually add flour until dough forms a ball.

Cover and refrigerate for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll into small balls. We discovered small (less than 1-inch) balls worked better than bigger ones. Place onto ungreased cookie sheet. With the front knuckle of your forefinger, make an indentation in the cookie. 

Fill this indentation with a small amount of fruit filling. (I found it easiest to use a pastry bag fitted with a large round opening to fit the jam into the indentation.)

Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes. Remove and place on wire rack for cooling.

When the cookies are cool, combine the last three ingredients to make a glaze. Drizzle glaze over cookies in a zig-zag fashion.