The Carrot Cake that Broke my Heart

I found a recipe. I read the reviews. And I didn't listen.

Zested carrots do not equal grated carrots. But my zester, silly zester, also calls itself a grater. Why would an amateur baker think it wouldn't work? Surely my carrots would work with me. I handled them delicately, placed them in paper towels to dry them, and though they ended up a wet pile of mush, I refused to give up on them. I made my batter and lovingly folded the carrots in at the end. Then I placed them in my 350 degree pre-heated oven and hoped for the best.

After about 15 minutes, the familiar smell of carrot cake with a hint of cinammon wafted through the apartment. My carrots did not fail me! At 20 minutes, another smell began wafting. Something a little less carrot cake-like and little more scorched. I hesitantly turned on the oven light and peaked in. One cake was beginning to sink and the other was already a horrible brown. This was not the scent of a good carrot cake. At 30 minutes, the smell was unbearable, and I took them out.

Too much moisture + mushy carrots = foul-smelling apartment + broken heart

Pumpkin and spice and all things nice...

That's what fall is made of.

While it may officially be fall, one is hardpressed to find the evidence in some parts of the west coast, so I decided to awaken my olefactory senses to the present season and make something warm and spicey. I searched far and wide for something with pumpkin as the star ingredient, and I happened upon a wonderful-sounding, cake-like, pumpkin spice cookie topped with icing. Could it get any better?

I have never made anything with pumpkin before, so the grocery shopping experience was somewhat new. I spent about 10 minutes browsing the canned vegetable isle looking for pureed pumpkin. To my dismay, it was not there. So on a whim, I decided to browse the baking section and buy the ingredients available there and search elsewhere for pumpkin. Lo and behold, I came across the pumpkin! It was in the baking isle, next to the pie crusts. I suppose this grocery store presumes that one only requires pumpkin for pumpkin pie. I will have to take this up with the manager at some point.

On to the cookies... http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Iced-Pumpkin-Cookies/Detail.aspx?prop31=6

With ingredients in hand, I began my first-ever pumpkin anything. The recipe is pretty easy to follow and similar to many others, except for the cup of pumpkin tossed into the wet ingredients, so I didn't have any difficulty with preparation. The resulting batter was more liquidy than expected for a cookie batter, but that results in the cake-like texture of the final product. I wasn't quite sure how to check for done-ness, so I kept the first batch in for closer to 20 minutes, and they began to brown slightly. The other batches stayed in for closer to 15 minutes. While the oven did it's thing, I made the simple icing recipe that accompanied the cookie recipe. I appreciate that you could add more/less depending on the type of consistency you prefer or if you add more than you should have and need to correct. All recipes should be as forgiving.

When the cookies cooled, I placed the cookie rack on top of a baking sheet (to catch the excess icing) and drizzled the icing on top. Quite fun.

And this is the final product:



They were spicey and cake-like as the recipe suggests. And my husband, an adamant pumpkin-disliker, took a fancy to the cookie. The icing was a necessary accompaniment, and the pumpkin, while definitely there, was not overly powerful. A definite fall must-do.

Halloweeeeeeen

Why get creative with costumes when you can get creative with cupcakes? :) Okay, I wasn't terribly creative as I took this idea from the Hello, Cupcake! book... but it was fun nonetheless.

I used the recipe for chocolate cupcakes from scratch in the same book, and I must say, they were not a winner. The texture was light, but it tasted nothing like chocolate. My husband likened it to sweetened wheat bread, which is pretty accurate. I used Ghirardhelli chocolate and cocoa powder and followed the recipe exactly. Perhaps another type of chocolate would make a difference, but in the future when I do spend more time decorating, I would probably just use box cupcakes.

The creepy crawlers were pretty simple to make but required an assortment of different candies. We bought every size of M&Ms we could find, and we bought much more than we actually needed. If you are going to try this project, definitely invest in the smaller bags, or you will be left with uneaten bags and bags of M&Ms (oh the horror!). As for the melting chocolate, we used the stuff you can find in the produce section... I can't recall the name brand, but it is used for making chocolate-covered fruits. It doesn't take long to melt in the microwave and is pretty easy to work with.

While making them was not difficult, it was the transferring to the cupcakes that did us in. We created all the crawlers on wax paper and let them set in the fridge for at least 5 minutes. When we tried to remove them, breakage was rampant. The trouble? We used less chocolate than recommended thinking it was more than enough... but those M&Ms are weighty and require support. So for future reference, use as much chocolate as recommended. Do not skimp on that part!

We also used a mix of orange, purple, and green sprinkles to decorate some... it looked quite Halloween-y if you ask me! And finally, I did a couple of web designs which looked pretty cute. I just made concentric chocolate circles and used a toothpick to create the design, pulling from the center of the cupcake straight down to the edges.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Restaurant Reviews and the Little Madfish

Because I have been behind on my baking endeavors, I have decided to begin adding restaurant reviews. Hey, it's my blog, I can make those decisions, right? Right... And I live in the suburbs and rarely go to 5-star, classy restaurants, so if you're expecting to have heard of any of these places or fancy the idea that you might ever visit them, you're probably out of luck (unless you live in my area), and these reviews will have absolute no relevance to your life.

With that said, the last restaurant the hubby and I visited was Little Madfish.* It's a tiny restaurant in the ticky tacky 'burbs of San Francisco. We went for lunch on a weekend day, and it was pretty packed. We weren't sure if it was really that good, or if it was just the opening-week, curious-crowd bunch, but we decided to find out for ourselves. I tried the California roll, the mark of a true sushi afficionado (!), as the $2.75 price tag was irresistable, and the curry chicken (which also came with miso soup and salad). The soup, which I skipped, and roll came out in minutes. The roll was decent, but I've had better, and there was a bit of a weird taste to the crab. The salad dressing was sweet (but not too sweet!) with a sesame kick to it. I need to know what goes in this dressing.

The curry was pretty tastey. I really like Japanese curry. It's not as spicy as Indian curries but still flavorful, and the sauce is usuallly thick.** Anyway, they were pretty light-handed with the veggies, which was a bummer, as the chicken was a bit dry and not flavorful (the curry sauce was just poured over the chicken). I won't be running back to the restaurant any time soon, but if you're ever in the burbs and feel like Japanese that is just a stoplight off the freeway, this place is decent.

*I don't understand this name. Is madfish a type of fish or is mad a description of the fish which are mad because they're being slaughtered and rolled up in rice and seaweed? If the latter, then madfish should be two words.

**I really know nothing about curries; this is all based on personal experience and may not bare any resemblance to actual curry tastes or consistencies.

C is for Cookie

I love chocolate chip cookies... but not just any chocolate chip cookie. I love the soft, chewy ones that just melt in your mouth. And I found a wonderful recipe on allrecipes.com (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Award-Winning-Soft-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies/Detail.aspx). I've made them a few times in the past, but this was the first time they actually came out perfect. Again, the butter-sugar-creaming part seemed to be key. These are the most delectable cookies ever and definitely a winner.

I used a gas oven, and although a lot of reviews said the minimum amount of time in the oven is sufficient, I actually kept mine in for at least 12 minutes. They still looked a bit undone at that point, but the edges were golden brown (I used that as my signal). After cooling, they were just right.

It's also much easier to work with the dough after chilling it for a bit... 1/2 hour to an hour was just fine for me. I also cut down on the suggested 4 cups of chocolate chips. I used less than 3 cups (it was all that I had on hand), and it turned out to be more than enough.

The recipe truly make 72+ cookies, so be prepared to share or cut the recipe down :)