Frozen Treats

I know it's February and it's been 1 degree out (literally...), but Dave got me an ice cream maker for Christmas. I plan to embark on numerous, exciting ice cream adventures, hence the Ice Cream Adventures set in Flickr.

I've made frozen desserts before without an ice cream maker, so it can be done, but it's painstaking, as chronicled in my successes with triple berry sorbet and ginger ice cream.

First I tried some honey vanilla frozen yogurt.



It was semi-successful. Dave seems to want "healthy" desserts so I tried making it with less sugar. Which I know now is important to the freezing process. This one was a little too frozen... At the end I swirled in some honey so it was honey vanilla frozen yogurt! :oD A good idea, but should of made it with all the sugar. ;o) It's shown here with some caramel sauce drizzled over it

For Sunday dinner one night with my fam, my mom decided to have pumpkin pie, so I made this buttered pecan ice cream to go with it. :oD



I didn't know it would take almost 3 times as long as the frozen yogurt to simmer and whatnot so it was more like soft serve than ice cream, but here it is in its fully frozen state. Again, it was a bit hard to scoop but it tasted AMAZING. It was my first time using a real vanilla bean for anything and it smelled heavenly while cooking.

Look at the sexy vanilla seeds, it's delicious.



Keep your eye on the flickr set for more to come!

Sexy Cinnamon Rolls

Plus they're ridiculously easy, smell amazing, and the payoff is huge...you have FRESH CINNAMON ROLLS! Incredible. :o)



I was feeling cinnamon rolls, and I had this recipe for cinnamon rolls tagged for awhile, but I needed something quick and dirty. I had some puff pastry hanging out in my freezer and a quick search turned up this recipe.

I wasn't sure what adding the pecans on top of the butter/cinnamon in the bottom of the cups would do...so I spread them inside the roll instead of raisins and rolled them up in there.

They were delicious and we ate them all week long. We'd heat them up in the toaster oven for a minute or two to warm them. Make them, they're amazing.

Jumping on the Ebelskiver bandwagon

Like my last post, I'm making use of another Christmas gift.

I got an Ebelskiver pan! :o) Also got some mix and recipe book to go with it.

I was a little disheartened by the recipes in the book since it advises they should all be served immediately, and I really wanted to be able to take some of these to parties and whatnot. But after making them a few times I believe they'll also travel well, as long as it's the same day or very next day. :o)

I started with the basic recipe then slightly branched out, there will be much more Ebelskiving to come! Here are a few so far!

1) Original Ebelskivers with strawberry jam filling - the first try


2) Original Ebelskivers with peach filling - practicing my Ebelskiver flipping skills


See peachy filling?



3) French toast Ebelskivers with peach jam filling - getting fancy, my own creation
Use the Ebelskiver mix and tossed in some vanilla extract and a bunch of cinnamon. Instantly tastier, then dusted with powdered sugar



See peachy filling? And cinnamon? mmmmm....



They do take a little longer to make and make more dishes to clean since you have to make the batter separately then whip the egg whites, but they're great for weekend breakfast. When you're making them, they cook fast! Be careful not to let them burn! Flipping with the skewers is easier than I thought, I can only get seem to get them flipped 3/4 of the way but I just stuff it back in the little Ebelskiver well and they come out pretty good, and the filling stays enclosed. Good stuff!

Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes

For Christmas I received 500 Cupcakes. This is one down, 499 to go!



I made these for dessert for one of our girls nights. Plus a birthday dinner the next night and brought some to share with my family for Sunday dinner. :oD

The recipe in 500 Cupcakes is for any standard fruit topped cheesecake with graham cracker crust, but I modified. That's a whole Oreo cookie popped in the bottom of the wrapper for the crust. :oD I wish I could say it was my idea, but I stole it from a friend. It is a good idea, cuts down on baking time when you don't have to mix a crust and press it in the bottom of 24 little cupcakes!



Centers always sink a bit on cheesecakes I think, is that just part of baking a cheesecake? Anyway, I topped these with more crumbled Oreo cookie crumbs and the cheesecake was delicious.

They were a success all around! I'll definitely make them again.

Mini Cocoa Madeleine

I finally got to use my mini madeleine pan! Mini baked things are awesome. I made these one snowy afternoon before heading out for girls night.


The recipe came from a random desserts magazine I picked up around Christmas in line in the supermarket. They're REALLY hard not to eat straight out of the oven, especially because they're so mini, I just want to keep snacking on them by the handfuls. Thankfully the recipe made almost 4 pans worth!

I dusted them with powdered sugar before transporting them to the party, they were pretty darn good.

I wish they had more of the shell definition though. My batter had some rather large bubbles in it, I'll have to google what to do about that... hm...


Until then, please check out the new additions to my flickr baking set AND my new adventures in ice cream set!

Pomegranate Christmas Cake!

The day after Chirstmas I was heading to my moms for a Christmas dinner with the other half of the fam, and I wanted to bring this pomegranate Christmas cake.

Although they were calling for a snow storm in the afternoon, dinner was still on so I woke up early in the morning to get my baking on.

The recipe I used frosted the cake with creamcheese frosting but since most people have a love/hate relationship with creamcheese frosting, I used what I had on hand to make whipped cream frosting.


Here's my notes from delicious:

line pans with parchment! used 7 1/2 inch round pans, baked 25 min. used 3 whole eggs instead of 6 egg whites (sub 1 whole egg for 2 egg whites) tasted fine, not as white. made 5 "pomegranate wells". Would add 2 more next time.

Pomegranate syrup never really "syruped," let simmer extra 10 min. did thicken slightly as it cooled. Just enough for between 2 layers and top layer, and 5 wells.

Frosted with whipped cream frosting. sprinkled with granulated sugar for snow effect but had melted into frosting by the time it was ready to serve, sprinkle right before serving next time.

While mine isn't as pretty as miss sprinkle bakes, it tasted fabulous, would definitely make it again.

Christmas Mini Cupcake Trio

My blog sort of lives in the past, that's not very attractive, but here it's still Christmas apparently! :oD

Dave and I had 3 stops to make on Christmas, so since I'm crazy I baked up 3 different mini cupcakes to cart around to each Christmas party with me! And they all came out incredible!


Mini one: Hot cocoa cupcake
Chocolate cupcake with marshmallow frosting


This site has some amazing cupcakes. No recipes have failed me yet from it! Marshmallow frosting was good, but not as sturdy as I would of hoped. I just didn't see marshmallow cream at the store, so I used the substitution below for marshmallow cream:

For 1 cup marshmallow cream heat 16 large or 160 miniature marshmallows + 2 tsp corn syrup in the top of a double boiler.

Seemed to work out fine? But it never formed hard peaks when I added my whites to the marshmallow cream, perhaps I didn't whip the egg whites enough? I'll try again with more patience.

Mini Two: Gingerbread
Gingerbread cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting


This was delicious, it might of been my favorite out of the trio. I should of spent more time with the frosting and added more powdered sugar, but had places to go, dammit. I always forget to sprinkle the cupcakes as soon as I frost them! Otherwise the sprinkles just roll off!

Mini Three: Red Velvet Peppermint
Red velvet cupcake with peppermint buttercream frosting


This is the second time I've made these red velvet cupcakes and they turned out great this time around as well. (Here was the first try.) I think they were everyone's favorite out of the trio.