Do You Know the Muffin Pan? - Cakes

I promised there would be a dessert muffin pan recipe, so here it is! This was on the same Brit+Co post as the tacos.

I think I was looking forward to making (and EATING) this more than the tacos. Don't get me wrong, they were both delicious, but let's get real, who doesn't love a warm, chocolate cake? This recipe pretty much had my name written all over it.

It's time to wash those jumbo muffin pans after making your tacos, because trust me, you'll want to use them again! Here is the recipe for the muffin pan molten chocolate cakes.

Molten Chocolate Cakes

(Muffin Pan Edition)

You will need:

1 cup chocolate chips (maybe a little bit more) ;)

1 cup butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups powdered sugar

4 eggs

3/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon paprika

We only had one stick of butter, so I had to cut the recipe in half. It still made four cakes, though, which was plenty.

First, melt the butter and chocolate chips together. I did this by using a homemade double broiler. I showed how to do this in one of my previous posts. However, the chocolate melted much faster than the butter. I ended up melting the butter in the microwave, then mixing it with the chocolate while it was still on the broiler. It was sort of lumpy at first, but after adding more chocolate and stirring, the mixture turned out smooth like it was supposed to. 

Add the vanilla, eggs and powdered sugar and stir until everything is combined. Don't let it sit for too long or it will get hard. Just a heads up! Mix in the flour and paprika and stir well again. 

Fill the muffin pan with the batter. Each cup should be about 3/4 full. The cakes will rise while they are in the oven.

Evelyn, Georgia, and I had some fun licking the extra batter from the bowl. 

Georgia

Evelyn

Georgia doing the "turkey" to Evelyn and I.
Sorry about my weird, mouse-looking face.
Pictures aren't really my thing unless I try to look weird.

Bake the cakes at 425ºF for ten to thirteen minutes. The sides will be firm, but the center will be all melty and "jiggly," according to Brit+Co. When I think of "jiggly," I think of Jell-O, not chocolate. But hey, whatever floats your boat. 

It's better if you serve these right out of the oven, but make sure you let the cakes sit for about two minutes before removing them from the pan. I skipped this step without realizing and got a melty, chocolatey mess. It still tasted AMAZING, but it wasn't very attractive. We let some of the other ones sit and they turned out better. I didn't get a picture of it, though, because we took it out, but decided we should wait for my sister to get home from soccer. Bad idea. It sort of collapsed. Oh well. It still tasted good and that's all that matters to me!

Enjoy your mini, Mexican-inspired, muffin pan, molten chocolate cakes! (What a mouthful!) I know I did!

Sweet and Salty = HEAVEN

In my last post, I promised that I would find a super yummy recipe for this week's post and I did! I was browsing my pins on Pinterest and found a recipe for Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel Cookie Bars. Does that sound scrumptious or what? Also, I just got my braces off after having them for two years and wasn't supposed to eat caramel while I had them (I did anyways), so it was perfect! They turned out to be WAY better than I thought they would, which is saying a lot. Seriously, they are like heaven in bar form. If I could marry them, I would.

Here's is how to make them so you can have some heaven of your own!

Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel Cookie Bars

You will need:

2 1/8 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

12 Tbsp butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups chocolate chips (1 bag)

10 oz caramel candy squares

3 Tbsp heavy cream

sea salt

This first step seems a little bit out of order, but trust me, it's the smart way to go. Measure your butter and put it in the microwave until it is completely melted. Take it out and let it cool to room temperature. While doing this, I had a Claire moment and forgot to cover the butter in the microwave. Let's just say a stick and a half of butter went to waste and the mess took me at least ten minutes to clean up. Good job Claire. To avoid this, MAKE SURE you don't forget to cover up the butter or it will pop all over the microwave. It's not fun. Trust me.

In a medium bowl (if using an electric mixer, don't use that bowl), combine the flour, salt and baking soda and set aside.

In a large bowl (this can be the mixer's bowl), combine the melted butter and both sugars and mix well. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. You should have one egg white and two yolks. Make sense? To separate the egg, crack it and over a bowl, switch the yolk in between the two halves of the egg shell until you no longer have any egg white.

Next, slowly add the dry ingredients and the chocolate chips to the mixture.

In a microwave-save bowl, combine the caramels (UNWRAPPED!) and heavy cream. Heat it in the microwave until it is melted. If you stir it every twenty seconds or so it works well and takes only around two minutes. 

Either before or while melting the caramel, take around half of the cookie dough and press it into the bottom of a greased 13x9 inch pan, just like you do with the sugar cookie bars. 

Once the caramel is smooth and melted, pour it over the cookie dough while it is hot and sprinkle it with sea salt. Press the remaining cookie dough on the top and sprinkle with sea salt again. I made little balls of dough and squished them for the top layer so I didn't get caramel everywhere. This ended up working well. 

Bake for about twenty-five minutes at 325ºF. Let them cool before cutting and then EAT THEM ALL UP!

Enjoy!

With Christmas, Comes Cookies!

To start things off, I hope you all are having a very merry holiday season so far! I know this last week before Christmas break is a little bit stressful, at least for me, but still, I hope it's fun.

Every year, when Christmas starts rolling around, my family and I always make our "famous" Christmas gifts- cookies! We started making these when we first moved to Park City, which if I am remembering right, was seven years ago. I guess you could say they have become our little tradition for the holidays. The good things about making these cookies as gifts is 1) They are AMAZING and 2) You can make tons!

The first few years, we didn't make as many, but as we've met more people, more people have been added to our gift list. These cookies are always a hit with everyone we make them for, so we have decided to make them every year. Even my cat likes when we make them, because again, she gets accidental samples! Maybe that's why she is so fat! I guess we should probably shoo her off instead of taking pictures, but hey, we tried!

I started making these for my friends last year and since so many people told me how yummy they were (some asked for the recipe too), I decided to make them again! So, this past weekend, I've been knocking out a ton of cookies. Since my last post, people have been asking me to make headbands too! Good thing they are easy! Hopefully I will be able to get those done before Christmas, but I'm not making any promises.

Now let's get to the good part.

Spicy Molasses Cookies

(Courtesy of Pioneer Woman)

1 cup sugar

3/4 Crisco (or other vegetable shortening)

1/4 cup molasses

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

First, preheat your oven. The original recipe says to set it at 350º, but I set mine on convection at 325º instead, to make sure they would cook evenly. 

Mix your wet ingredients together - otherwise known as sugar, shortening, molasses, and egg - in a large bowl until they are well combined. Once you can't see any more shortening, you should be good. At least that's how it went for me. 

Mix in your dry ingredients- flour, spices, etc. - while stirring slowly to avoid making a HUGE mess. 

Mix the dough until everything is thoroughly combined.

With your hands, roll the dough into "walnut-sized" balls. Honestly, I have no idea what size a whole walnut is because I never really buy them before they are cracked. This lead to dough balls that were about one to two inches in size, which worked completely fine. Pour a bowl or plate of sugar and roll the dough balls in it until they are evenly coated.

Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet and pop those suckers in the oven for eight to twelve minutes. 

HINT: Keep an eye on the cookies. Once they begin to crack, let them cook for another minute or so and then take them out. This will give you nice, soft cookies, which are always more delicious than burnt ones by far!

You can technically be done at this step, but why not make them even better? A fun and easy way to jazz these cookies up is to add some white chocolate. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that chocolate makes everything better. Period.

If you choose to be fun, allow your cookies to cool and while doing so, get ready to melt your white chocolate.

Last year was the first year I decided to try the chocolate route and it did not work...at all. Well, okay, maybe it worked, but it was a huge pain in the butt and I can not tell you that twice. This year, I did some searching and found a pain-free, easy way to melt the white chocolate on a blog called Craftsy.

I found on more than just this blog that using a double broiler is the way to go when melting any kind of chocolate, especially white chocolate because it has a lower burning point. Now, if you're like me, you probably don't have a double broiler, but don't worry! You can make your own with a pot and a bowl that fits over it. There is a picture of this on Craftsy. On there, it says to let the water boil first and then put the chocolate in, but of course, I didn't read carefully enough and had the chocolate in while it was boiling, which worked fine, so I ended up saving time in the end.

Once your white chocolate is completely melted, set your cookies out on pieces of wax paper. Don't make the pieces too long, unless you want to carry the hot bowl around...no thanks. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies with a fork or dip them in the bowl. Be creative! Putting the cookies on smaller pieces of wax paper allows you to drizzle or dip a few without making a mess, then set them aside while the chocolate hardens. I decided to be done with the cookies after that, but I'm sure it would be cute to put some holiday sprinkles on the cookies right after you drizzle them to make sure they stay on! Maybe I'll try that next year.

Because of the fact that we make so many, we usually make them in double-batch intervals, meaning if we were to make eight batches, we would only have to make the recipe four times. Make sense? Anyways, when I made these, it made a little over fifty cookies, give or take a few considering my dough balls were probably bigger than walnuts. I had a little over a hundred in the end, which was perfect for all of my gifts!


Happy Holidays!

A Sweeter Sugar Cookie

Everyone loves sugar cookies, but this recipe is a small twist on the original. Honestly, I've never made regular sugar cookies, but I found this idea for Sugar Cookie Bars on Pinterest and they were delicious!

I've made these a few times now and everyone seems to love them! One day at lunch last year, my friends and I decided that we wanted to have a "buffet" for lunch, where everyone brought something to share with everyone else. I made these bars for that, brought all of the bars I made to school, and we (about ten of us probably, plus a few stragglers that wanted food) ate the entire thing! I was glad that everyone liked them. 

Tomorrow is my mom's big 50th birthday, so I thought it would be perfect to make a treat, especially because we haven't gotten any gifts yet...oops! We will, though, don't worry.


Anyways, here you go!

PHASE 1 - THE COOKIE

You will need:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

2 cups granualted sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

1/2 tsp baking soda

5 cups flour

1 tsp salt

In a large bowl (I used the one that comes with my mixer), cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is fluffy.

Add the four eggs, one at a time, as well as the vanilla and almond extract.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda and add it to the wet ingredients gradually.

Spread the dough onto a GREASED baking sheet with raised edges. These are already a little bit hard to get out, so make sure you grease it! It will seem like you don't have enough dough to cover the entire thing, but you will if you get your hands dirty and put some muscle into it.

Bake the cookie in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes. I usually leave mine in for around twelve.

Let the cookie cool completely before spreading the frosting onto it. Since it was snowy the day I made these, I just covered it loosely and put it outside to cool. I made the frosting and ate lunch while it was out there and it was cool when I went out to get it. I guess you could say it takes a little while.

PHASE 2 - THE FROSTING

You will need:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
4 cups powdered sugar
5 Tbsp milk
1 pinch salt

In a large bowl (again, I used my mixer's bowl), beat the butter, vanilla, almond extract, and salt together.

Add the powdered sugar one cup at a time and mix well. If you are using an electric mixer like I did, DON'T make it too fast.

Add the milk and mix until the frosting is smooth.

Technically, the frosting is finished after the above steps, but I like to add some pizazz to my cookies by adding food coloring and sprinkles. This way, they are more fun to look at and you can relate them to the season, a birthday, etc.

So, if you want to, add in the food coloring and mix it in as well.

Once your cookie is completely cool, spread the frosting onto it and cut it into pieces. I usually wait a little bit for the frosting to harden so it doesn't get all messed up when I cut it. Make sure you use a sharp knife rather than something like a butter knife! I've tried both and the sharp one works much better, trust me.

And you're all done! Enjoy!

NOTE:
If you are storing these, stacking them on top of each other will make them stick together and take the frosting off of the bottom ones. It makes them look kind of messy, but they taste the same.




Oh, and happy birthday to my favorite mom! :)

Even my kitty likes my frosting!

One Fantastic Classic

Who doesn't love a warm, fresh chocolate chip cookie? But why not add a little bit of pizazz to them? Add some oatmeal! I have using this recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies for a while now and they are always a hit! Be careful, though. These are hard to stay away from, trust me. 

These are delicious on  any day of the year. I usually make them when I need a quick and easy recipe that will make a lot if I need it to. It's just as easy as the regular chocolate chip recipe, only with a few more ingredients. 

OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (✭✭✭✭✭)

You will need:

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 1/2 cups flour

1 Tbsp cocoa powder (optional- I like how they taste extra chocolatey!)

2 cups oats

2 cups chocolate chips (I just add the whole bag.)

An electric mixer makes the process a lot easier, by the way. It saves a good amount of time and effort.

Step 1

Just like every other baking recipe, you have to preheat your oven. I set mine on convection at 325º. If your oven does not have a convection setting, set the temperature to 350º.

Step 2

Soften the two sticks of butter. On my microwave it takes about 15 seconds. Don't melt it, just soften it. With liquid butter, the dough will not turn out to be its normal consistency. Cream the butter and two sugars together.

Step 3

Add the vanilla and eggs to the mixture. Make sure you mix well!

Step 4

Add the dry ingredients- salt, baking soda, baking powder, flour, and cocoa powder if you choose to do so. Again, mix well, but not too fast if you are using a mixer. The ingredients will get EVERYWHERE! It's not fun. 

Step 5

Stir in the oats and chocolate chips. Again, don't mix it too quickly. 

Step 6

Use a tablespoon to shape the dough and place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet. With the tablespoon, the cookies will be sure to stay the same size as you shape them. If you have a cookie dough scooper, you can use that as well.

Step 7

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes on convection or 10-12 minutes on a regular setting. I like my cookies on the softer side, so I usually cook them for only eight minutes. Setting your oven to convection will cook the cookies more evenly. That way, the bottoms won't burn as easily!

MMMMMM... There's nothing better than warm cookies with a cool glass of milk! Happy baking!

ANOTHER TIP FOR AWESOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES:

I learned that adding instant vanilla pudding to the recipe will make your chocolate chip cookies taste better and look better, too. I've tried this before and it definitely worked! I don't know what that pudding does exactly, but it works wonders. You can find the recipe for these cookies here. 

(Sorry about the quality of these photos. The lighting in our kitchen is a little bit weird. Don't worry, the cookies look a lot better in person.)

Inspire Me!

Handmade Charlotte is a great example of what I would love my blog to turn out like. The theme is very similar to mine as well. She includes a variety of do-it-yourself crafts, tasty recipes, and home decor ideas. Her blog includes fun things for kids as well some that are more sophisticated for adults, many of which I would try myself. The crafts and recipes have step-by-step instructions for the reader with visuals to provide extra demonstration. I hope I can incorporate the fun colors and simple layout of this blog, as well as some similar recipes and crafts that will be fun for many different ages.

Uncommon Designs is really similar to Handmade Charlotte, theme wise. They, too, blog a lot about treats and crafts. Their posts, though, relate to the season and the main holidays within those months. Therefore, for any last minute party planners who would like to get creative with their decorations have a place to look. This blog is more complicated than Homemade Charlotte, but includes a lot more variety. For example, their DIY projects are organized into subcategories like no-sew, mason jars, gifts, and so on. That way, you don't have to search through all of the crafts to find what you are looking for. I also like the fact that they have linked pictures at the top of the home page, making it easier to find posts that are for the specific season. I am going to relate my posts and ideas to the current season, as well, and if I get too many posts, I can organize them in a similar way.

Baking Bites is based entirely on cooking. However, the posts are not all recipes. This blog also includes helpful tips for bakers, new kitchen tools to make baking easier, interesting and uncommon ingredients that someone might use, cookbook recommendations, blog recommendations, and reviews on some of the things they have tried already. Baking Bites could be helpful to many people, from hardcore bakers who want to learn new skills or moms who are just looking for a new treat recipe. Again, the overall blog is simple, and fairly easy to navigate. I could use this blog to help improve my own baking skills and help me explain how to make different recipes.



I am very excited to work on this blog. Hopefully, it will end up turning out just as good as these three!