A Photo A Day [Days 279 & 280]

Now that my husband has a fancy car he's eager to take it out and show it off. On Saturday we went to a small car show at a local store. This was one of the cars on display.



Nothing says "I love you" like a pile of slop, eh?

My husband is impossible to shop for so for our fifth wedding anniversary I decided to bake him something special. Unfortunately my baking skills failed me when it came to making the cheesecake layer. This was supposed to be a wonderful banana cheesecake with white chocolate Toblerone that was to be sandwiched between two layers of banana cake. Instead I wound up with a pathetic pile of slop since the damn thing collapsed into a pancake-thin mess that wouldn't come out of the pan. It may taste good but it's useless as a cake layer. Happy anniversary? :(

Cupcake Hero Fail

Even though it's not quite the noon deadline I'm going to call this now since I'm getting ready to hit the road and return home from my Thanksgiving vacation. Looks like my little experiment in keeping Cupcake Hero alive and kicking failed miserably as I didn't get a single entry. I hope this doesn't mean the end of the competition for good because I personally like being challenged and given new cupcake ideas, but this doesn't bode well for the future of the competition. Oh well. At least this saves me the trouble of having to sew something for the winner when I should be making Christmas presents for my friends instead. Hopefully another worthy competition will crop up soon to take its place.

German Apple Cake

Ignore the evidence of my gluttony that couldn't wait until after I took a picture. Even if it's not up to snuff it's still cake!

In her prime, my grandmother was one heck of a baker and one of her baking standards was her Apfelkuchen (apple cake). She seemed to always have one in the fridge or one in the works, and I know I took it for granted that there would forever be a never-ending supply of apple cake in my life. Of course that has turned out to not be true and with the advent of fall and apple season I was craving one something fierce. Unfortunately, I don't have my grandmother's recipe so I hunted around online until I found one that looked similar from the picture. And while mine turned out more or less looking right – aside from the somewhat deformed apples – that's where the similarities ended.

I guess it's time to revoke my German heritage membership card after this weekend's abysmal attempt at making my own German apple cake. How is that my grandmother was always able to effortlessly whip one up while I stood there and struggled with coring and slicing the darn apples for what felt like forever? Only to wind up with deformed-looking hunks of apple. Even worse is that I either overbaked the cake or the recipe I found wasn't close enough to her version because it's much dryer and less flavorful than what I'm used to. Huge disappointment for my first attempt at recreating one of my childhood favorites. Maybe I should stick to a simple marble cake instead since that's hard to screw up and I've been baking those since I was eight.

If any of you happens to know of a better recipe I could try please help a wayward German girl out and point me in the right direction. I don't want to give up on my dream of having apple cake like Oma used to make!

German Apple Cake
Source

1 3/4 cup flour
2 teasp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/2 teasp. cinnamon
1 tip of a knife ground cloves
1 teasp. lemon zest
10 tablesp. butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teasp. vanilla extract
4 tablesp. rum or milk (rum is recommended)
2 or 3 apples

1) Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease baking pan. (The recipe didn't specify so I used a springform pan.)

2) In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon zest.

3) In a second bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla extract and mix. Stir in flour mixture, one tablespoon at a time. Add rum or milk and mix in. Pour batter into prepared baking pan.

4) Peel apples and cut them into quarters. Core apples and score the quarters lengthwise (see picture), cutting deeply. Place apple pieces cored side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar on top.

5) Bake cake for 40-55 min. until golden brown and toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack ten minutes, remove from pan and continue to cool on rack.

Sourkraut's Kitchen Nightmares

Ever have one of those kitchen catastrophes that makes you want to pack your bags and move out to avoid having to clean it up? Such was my first attempt at making dulce de leche from condensed milk. I'm seriously considering not using my oven again for the next ten years because by then it'll be old enough for us to justify buying a replacement. It's either that or buy stock in Easy Off since I imagine I'll need a couple of cases of the stuff to deal with the disaster area that is my kitchen.

I should say that the recipe I used is in no way to blame. It's all on me. The recipe said to pour a can of sweetened condensed milk into a pie pan and bake for an hour. I wound up using a casserole dish instead. Mistake #1, I suppose. I do own a pie pan but because I only use it maybe twice a year I loaned it to my mom, who lives three states away, to use while making quiche for her book club this week. I figure since I purloined half of her kitchen supplies when I moved away it was only fair. While I'm driving down to VA this weekend to supply her book club with desserts and to collect my pie pan, I couldn't wait that long to try Sweetest Kitchen's amazing-looking pumpkin dulce de leche cupcakes. I might have thought to combine pumpkin with caramel but it would have never occurred to me to take it a step further and go for dulce de leche instead. That woman is an evil genius, I tell ya!

To begin the disastrous day, at the last minute I decided to whip up a second batch of those cupcakes for the book club gals. It occurred to me that some might not be as addicted to sugar as I so they might require a more grownup cupcake than the Butterfinger cupcakes I made earlier in the day. I planned to cheat and buy canned dulce de leche at Wal-Mart because they have a huge international foods section and I'd bought some there before. Well, they've either discontinued it or that particular branch never stocked it because I couldn't find any there. As the cupcakes were already baked and I was so keen on the idea of using dulce de leche I decided to make my own.

So here's where I really went wrong: in addition to swapping in the casserole dish I also added a scant teaspoon of baking soda. In the comments section of the recipe someone mentioned that that's a good way to make sure the mixture gets nice and brown. I should have realized that it would also make the mixture bubble up like crazy. I do know better than to leave my baking unattended but it was late at night, I was pooped, and Dexter was on TV. Are those enough excuses to atone for my shameful sin? About 45 minutes into the one-hour baking process, I noticed the smell from upstairs. Ran downstairs to find a small plume of smoke coming out of the oven and a scene from Hell waiting for me inside. Seems the dish I used was not wide enough so the condensed milk bubbled up and over the edge of both that dish and the water-filled one I'd set it in. Both pans were covered with sticky, burnt brown sweetened milk and the bottom of the oven looks like I locked The Blob in there and cranked the heat on high.

Beware of The Blob, it creeps and leaps and glides and melts in the bottom of your oven

Oh, and did I mention the smell? Even my husband, who has no sense of smell to speak of, asked me when the odor would go away. Sometimes it smells quite pleasant, like caramalized sugar. But most of the time it smells like sour milk and burnt feet. Not that I know what burnt feet smell like but I can imagine.


In my defense, I did do a quick Google search to make sure the baking soda tip wasn't totally off the wall. I saw a few dulce de leche recipes used it to balance out the acidity of the milk to result in a smoother and browner dulce de leche. But those recipes seem to be for cooking on the stove top not in a sealed pan in the oven. So it's a good tip but not for this method. Next time I'll heat the condensed milk alone and maybe transfer it to a saucepan towards the end, add the baking soda at that point, and heat it long enough to turn nice and brown.

Miracle of miracles, I was able to salvage some unscathed dulce de leche from the bottom of the pan and it just so happened to be the exact right amount for the frosting. The rest was supposed to be used as filling so I simply skipped that step. As amazing as I'm sure they are with the dulce de leche filling and frosting combo double whammy, they are still utterly divine with just the moist pumpkin cake topped with creamy dulce de leche buttercream. That frosting is to die for. I know I've said that a few times already on this blog but this one really takes the cake.

Despite my troubles I will most certainly be making this recipe again. And again and again. Assuming my oven's ever clean enough to use again, of course. You should make them too. They're sure to be a crowd pleaser so whip some up when you have friends, relatives, or foreign dignitaries visiting. Just try to learn from my mistakes so you don't have to spend the next three years of your life scrubbing out the bottom of your poor oven.

Pumpkin Cupcakes w/Dulce De Leche Buttercream
Recipe from Sweetest Kitchen

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
7.5 ounces pureed pumpkin

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 cupcake wells with paper liners; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice; set aside.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together, brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, and eggs. Add dry ingredients, and whisk until smooth. Whisk in pumpkin puree.

4. Divide batter evenly among liners, filling each about halfway. Bake until tops spring back when touched, and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pans once if needed. Cool in pan on wire rack for ten minutes, then remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack. Let cool completely.

Dulce De Leche
Recipe from Sweetest Kitchen
Makes just enough to fill cupcakes and use in frosting

1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
Boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Open up the can and pour the sweetened-condensed milk into a pie pan. Cover tightly with foil. Place into a larger pan and pour boiling water in larger pan & around pie plate (level of water should be about halfway up the pie plate). Don’t let any water seep up and into the pie plate.

3. Place in oven and bake for one hour. At the one hour point, peel off foil and check for progress. If the mixture has thickened and turned a caramel color, it’s done. If it doesn’t quite look thick enough or dark enough, cover it up and bake it a little longer (might take up to 75 minutes or more).

4. When the mixture appears to have turned into a nice, thick caramel, remove from the oven. Let sit for a few minutes, and then beat with an electric mixer until smooth.

5. Measure out 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of dulce de leche and set aside for buttercream. Using the cone method, fill each cupcake with a small spoonful of the remaining dulce de leche and replace cake tops.

Dulce De Leche Buttercream
Recipe from Sweetest Kitchen
Makes enough to generously frost 12 cupcakes

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons prepared dulce de leche

1. Cream together softened butter and powdered sugar on low using an electric mixer. Add cream and vanilla and beat on medium speed until smooth and no lumps appear. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the prepared dulce de leche and beat to incorporate. Pipe generously onto cupcakes.

Bad Luck Streak in Baking School

As you may have noticed from my not-so-subtle whining in the past few posts, this has been a bad week all around for me, but most especially when it comes to baking. The vampire cupcakes I tried to decorate on Sunday looked more like demented and deformed ghosts had died (again) on top of my cupcakes. FAIL. The chili chocolate cupcakes I made for my book club were overfilled and baked over the tops of the pan in an unsightly manner. FAIL. And then there are the peach cupcakes I made last night as a last ditch effort to come up with a quality entry for Sweetest Kitchen's white chocolate Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge. I'm going to make the bold claim that this sort of thing would not have happened were I not sick. If I'd had more energy or a fully functioning brain I'd like to think that I would have noticed that the recipe I was preparing was an icky vegan one. You know, before I was halfway through putting the ingredients together.

Not that I have anything against the vegans out there, but I can't personally adopt a lifestyle that limits my food choices. I love food too much to give up anything, even though I do aim for a healthy, balanced diet and have been known to deny myself dessert if I'm feeling a little pudgy. I may rarely eat pasta because it's so high in calories and carbs but that doesn't mean I don't allow myself to order it if I'm at a restaurant that features great pasta dishes. I don't want to miss out on, say, devouring the most amazing rack of lamb at Fandango just because I can picture the critter it once was bleating in the field. By that same token, I don't want to miss out on the rich taste and texture that things like butter and eggs bring to baked goods. To me there's no substitute.

Aww, aren't you cute? Now get in my belly!

When I spotted Restless Chipotle's 50 Best Cupcake Recipes on the Internet I was overwhelmed by the number of delicious-looking recipes I need to add to my baking repertoire. I'd already been mulling over the idea of a peach cupcake for the white chocolate challenge so I was happy to see one on the list that was a little different than the peach cupcakes I'd made before. Since I wanted to add chopped peaches as a filling after baking I liked the idea of having the peaches in the batter pureed and blended in. While I did skim through the blog post to ensure she was actually recommending the recipe, I printed the recipe out without reading it (again, totally uncharacteristic for me). Once I got home I decided to use what little energy I had left to make cupcakes instead of dinner. It wasn't until I was nearing the last steps that I stopped and asked myself, "When do I add the eggs?" And then realized that eggs were not listed as an ingredient and that, suspiciously, the recipe called for water instead of the usual milk and vegetable oil instead of butter. It suddenly dawned on me that I was using a vegan recipe, which was a crushing disappointment for me because I knew I only had the energy to make that one batch so there would be no redos. Hoping that despite my fears the cupcakes would still turn out to be tasty and nearly indistinguishable from the "real" thing, I popped them in the oven and watched as they rose oddly. Mountainous peaks in the center of each one instead of the lovely, even dome I usually aim for. On top of that, I had my husband taste one before frosting and not only could he not detect the peach flavor, but he also found the texture to be off. More like a muffin than a cupcake and not even quite as good as that. They went straight into the freezer without being frosted until I can think of a better use for them, but if I run out of space in the freezer they will be the first to go in the bin.

Yes, 90% of this is my fault for not reading the recipe through before starting in on it. However, I can't help but be a little annoyed that the blogger who posted the recipe didn't think to mention it anywhere in her post and that the 50 Best Cupcake list didn't either. In fact, reading the original blogger's profile info reveals that she's a vegetarian, not vegan, so there were no hints that I needed to be on the lookout for funky vegan recipes.

Here's hoping that my and my oven's luck improves next week. And here's hoping that I ditch this crabby persona and go back to being my usual sweet and wonderful self once this ailment passes. One can dream...