Cead Mile Failte!

       Happy belated Saint Patrick's Day to all the Irish folks out there! I myself am half Irish and that half is obvious (red hair, blue/green eyes and cough...a mild temper...cough). As with every year I either make the traditional Corned Beef and potatoes ( I leave out the cabbage to appease my olfactory peace of mind) and Soda Bread, or the Hubs, offspring and I are invited to a party where the fixings are made by someone else. This year was no exception. We had to skip the party this year due to the Hub's job so on St Pats we invited a couple of friends over for a low key evening of merry making. Good times were had by all and the offspring played like it was going out of style!

      This year I added something baked to the meal. i wouldn't be me if I hadn't. Along with the Corned Beef we had the Soda Bread. I've had this recipe for years and for the life of me I cannot remember where in the world I got it. Normally I tweak any recipe I find to make it my own somehow, but this particular one is great on its own. It can be made with or without raisins. As for me, I love raisins whether they reside in bread or are covered with chocolate or yogurt. Raisins and me are BFF!

photo by Amanda @Mandies Sugar Bowl

Irish Soda Bread  yields: 12 servings
5 C All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
5 tsp Baking Powder
1 stick (1/2 C) Butter, softened
1 1/4 c Raisins (optional)
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 c Granulated Sugar
1 1/2 to 2 C Buttermilk (you can do a buttermilk sub. but the taste of the bread is not the same)

     Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the flour, salt, soda and baking powder in a large bowl. Unwrap the butter and save the wrapper (to grease the cookie sheet). Mix butter in with a spoon.  Add the raisins, eggs, and sugar. Mix these together well. At some point your going to need your hands. (I nix the spoon altogether. Less dishes = a happy me!) Scoop the dry ingredients up from the bottom so that everything is mixed to an equal consistancy. Add the buttermilk a little at a time. Stop when the dough becomes sticky (For me it's usually after adding 1 1/2 c of the buttermilk). Take the dough out of the bowl and place on a floured surface. Knead the dough 10 times. More than that will change the texture of the dough. Cut into half to make two loaves. Using the butter wrapper, grease a cookie sheet (you can also use parchment paper sprayed with cooking spray. This technique has never changed the bread in any way for me.) Score the top of the bread with a cross an "x" for decoration and to help with make the top crusty. Place the bread in the oven for 45-60 minutes (45 mins. works for me.) or until the bread is a nutty brown. Test before removing by inserting a skewer or slim knife in the center. If it comes out clean, then the bread is done. Cool slightly before serving. Enjoy!!

photo by Amanda @Mandie's Sugar Bowl

        For dessert this year I added something new to the day. I made Chocolate Stout Cupcakes courtesy of Dave Lieberman at Food Network. I didn't change much as the recipe I used before Dave's was way too buttery. For this recipe I left out the salt with no repercussions. I also made a different butter-cream than Dave used. The result was sooooooo much better than my first attempt!! I also filled them with a chocolate ganache. The ganache part I have to tweak a bit more, but on the whole they came out fantastic! To top it all off I hand piped some chocolate Shamrocks for the occasion. All in all the evening was great. Everyone had a lot of laughs and a great time, which is the Irish way. I hope your St. Pats was great as well! Sláinte! (Cheers in Gaelic)

Crazy Holiday's

       I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Myself, we had a wonderful time with all our friends and family. I have a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. I love the anticipation of Christmas morning and seeing my kids faces at all the wonderful things that Santa and the family got for them. I love teaching them about the real meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate it. I love the holiday music (even though they start playing it the day after Halloween. That I can do without.), putting up all of our decorations, the sights around town, just everything about the holiday I enjoy. 

       

       The hate part comes along with the enjoyment, as it does with most things. While I love entertaining and making a great tasting meal for my family, I hate the frazzle that comes with it. The worry if the turkey is going to come put just right, if the ham will be juicy enough (I still can't figure out why mine burned a little on top when I set the oven for cooler than called for. Even my in laws and my dad couldn't figure it out. Stumped by the Christmas piggie.), if everyone is going to like what you've made. I don't know if I'm alone in my concerns as most people are not as anal retentive as I am. All i can say is that while Christmas is my favorite holiday, I am never sad to see the tail lights of it either. I remain non committal about New Year's eve. 

       In all my frenzy this year, I of course made desserts for Christmas, holiday treats for my husbands partner at work and cupcakes for my daughters holiday party at school. I sent Oreo Cupcakes to school the day before winter vacay and they were a huge hit (so I must be doing something right, right?). I misremember where I got the recipe, but it was delicious and will stay in my arsenal. Besides, who can go wrong with Oreo's?! That delectable cookie should be a food group. I'm starting a petition. 

Add caption

 These tasty little buggers had Oreo chunks at the bottom of the liner. When you pour the batter in, they float to the top. You can also place the whole cookie on the bottom and it floats to the middle. Kind of like a Surprise cupcake. Chocolate and Oreos. You just can't go wrong with the two!

The icing is the standard Wilton Butter Cream icing, except I added ground up Oreo cookies (filling and all) to it at the end. I used my Magic Bullet system to grind up the sinful little things, but if you don't have the Magic Bullet or a likeness and don't feel like lugging out a huge grinder/blender then  you can just put the whole cookie in a gallon sized zip lock bag and crush them that way with a rolling pin. Either way, you're going to get ground up goodness. I should probably apologize to all the parents in my daughters class, since they got a sugar high. I'm not going to, but I least I had the thought to ;^)! 

       As much as I crap and complain about all that I have to do during the holiday's, I wouldn't trade one second of it for the satisfaction I get from seeing someones "bliss" face after I've made something good. Maybe I'm masochistic for enjoying the irritation and desperation of getting everything done on time. That bliss face makes it all worth it. So if that is wrong, I've never been so happy to be wrong! Bring. It. On! 

       The hubs and his partner had to "divorce" as they call it after Christmas this year. His company's way of keeping complacency down I guess. Kinda dumb in my mind. Lazy workers will be complacent with whoever they are with. But that's just me. His company, while being a big energy supplier, isn't really fast on the uptake if you catch my drift. Anyway, I digress. As a farewell to their "marriage" I told the hubs partner that I would make them tons of goodies so that they could part on speaking terms. This pleased all parties involved and the separation commenced. So off I went to fill the divorce order as I call it. I made them my fan favorite Oatmeal-Raisin-Chocolate Chip cookies, the requested Peanut Butter Revel Bars and a new recipe that I wanted to try out-Eggnog Cookies (think sugar cookies but made out of Eggnog and other yummy stuff.) His partner also requested my homemade Peanut Butter Cups. These I made just enough of for him alone. The cookies went to his wifey and their kiddos. She wrote me an email New Years eve and said that he ate them all and she hopes he gets sick! Gotta love that kind of props! She also asked if I could make her daughters birthday cake, so I don't think she was too put out! 

Sorry about the dark photo. Photog I am NOT.

I wanted to show how they glitter like real snow.

The Eggnog cookies come out spectacularly! The hubs is not a fan of eggnog, yet he could NOT stop eating those cookies. This was my first attempt at brush embroidery as well. I don't think i did too bad, but definitely room for improvement. Try, try again until you get it right I always say.The technique is a little time consuming, but so worth it in the end. After the icing was put on, I sprinkled edible glitter before the icing dried to make it look a little more like snow. Hubs partner and his family were super happy with them.

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

I love making my peanut butter cups. The filling this time was a little more gooey than usual (don't know what happened there) but it worked for the general outcome of the product. Partner gobbled then up faster than you can say "mmmmmm" so I guess they were up to par!

        Much merry making was had this holiday season. Through all the spilled flour, cookies that were less than...well....they were less, all the smiles, my daughters stomach pyrotechnics from eating WAY too much, and the "Thanks. These were great," all the blood sweat and tears....OK well no blood was actually spilled during the making of this holiday, I still had a wonderful month with my family and friends. The good and the bad, I wouldn't have changed a minute of it, even when my daughter got sick. Hey what's a holiday without someone getting sick? I've never had one. There's was this one time, when my sister and I were little.....JUST kidding. she would do bodily harm to me if I went into that and I darn sure you don't want to read that. Let's just say our brother and I had a good laugh at her expense! Next year may be just as crazy, it may not. Crazy? I like crazy. We're real close, Crazy and I. It's the masochist in me. Happy New Year to you all!

Musical Puppy!!

I have always known that my youngest daughter Chelsea was a music lover because she would do a sort of dance in my belly whenever she heard music! My ribs knew she loved music as well. Her love of music has only grown since then. She will literally stop whatever she is doing and dance along when she hears a song or beat she likes. She is equally enamored of dogs. Big or small ones, it doesn’t matter. She starts out with “Mommy, its a DOG!!!” then takes a mad dash to go pet said quadruped. Being the parent I am I tell her to wait and ask the owner if she can pet the animal first, but even the furry set can’t resist an enthusiastic blonde haired sweetie with an ear to ear grin that literally oozes with happiness just because that animal exists.

    

     So when it came time to plan for her second birthday party, the theme was a no brainer…music and puppies. So I got to work on cutting out music notes and paw prints that were going to hang down with the balloons. I found a picture of a cute dog that I blew up and printed out for a rousing game of Pin The Paw on the Puppy and hand stitched a paw for a puppy version of Hot Potato. Then I hit the dilemma of what kind of cake was I going to do. I didn’t want to buy a special shaped pan in the event that she outgrows the four legged obsession. So while surfing the internet one day I came upon another blog one day by Bonobo Cakes. On there was this adorable shaped dog cake that she had done for a client and I thought that it would be perfect for my little girl!

  

    

         

     So I started building “Beethoven”. His flavors resemble a Cherry Cola Soda float. His cake is Coca Cola cake with a Cream Cheese filling and a Chocolate Cherry Buttercream Icing. His white musical notes spots and eyes are Cherry Buttercream.

 

 

 

     To say that my daughter was excited is a vast understatement! She saw the cake when it was all finished she jumped up and down saying dog over and over again. She didn’t quite understand that she couldn’t pet this particular dog or give his a kiss on the nose, but she loved it none the less! In the end I have to say that I was happy that I found this puppy that day. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of making him and making my daughter happy on her birthday. 

      The day of her party, she giggled and danced in her seat when she finally got to kiss Beethoven on the nose!

Cheeseburger cake for my Hubby!

           No one can accuse my husband of being a herbivore! Whenever we go out to eat there are 3 possibilities on any menu that he considers….Something Parmesan, Something BBQ and Cheeseburgers. Most times he gets the cheeseburger with fries.
 

            One day while perusing Food Network Magazine I saw a picture of a cake for the Cheeseburger lovers out there and naturally I thought of my husband. I was going to make it for his birthday but as with most things when I see something new I just HAVE to try it out right then and there. I am an unabashed instant gratification kind of girl when it comes to certain things! Luckily we were invited to a friends house for a BBQ so I decided to make it for them.
 

             I adapted the design a bit to match what my husband (or most people) likes to get on his burgers and added “tomatoes” and “pickles”. I then made “ketchup” and “mustard” bottles for our friend’s two kids. The result of all my hard work was better than I thought it would be and it was a HUGE hit. I have a few ideas for the next one I make which will make it the “deluxe” version.

with tomato, pickles, lettuce, mustard and Ketchup

Happily Ever After 6/10/11

     This past June, I had the opportunity to make my own wedding cake.  When I first set out to design and make the cake I was slightly apprehensive. A wedding cake is a daunting undertaking for someone who has never done one before. So I gathered all my materials and made the royal icing for the scroll work. When I started baking the cake, my confidence kicked in and I thought “I can do this” with a mental dance in my head that resembled the dance Rocky did when he reached the top of the steps. Anyone who has ever planned a wedding, whether is a small family affair such as mine or if it’s the big traditional wedding, knows the amount of stress that over comes the bride the week of the event.  So the mental Rocky dance was my way of calming down so to speak. When the whole cake was done I actually did a Rocky like dance in my kitchen, which amused my daughters and my husband to no end! In the end it was a lovely wedding with close family and friends accompanied by  a very tasty white and dark chocolate cake with a lemon curd and raspberry filling. The wedding cake did not defeat me after all, only made me stronger and excited to be able to do another one someday!

 

Hello!!!

Hello to one and all!!

        For over a decade now, I have nursed a love of all things cooking and baking. I knew from a young age that the kitchen is where I am most happy (when I can't get to a beach that is)! During high school, I went to a vocational school part time to hone my skills in the culinary arts. My teachers there opened my eyes and turned what was then just a hobby into a lifelong passion. 

         

         Now that I’m a mom I can pass down the love of cooking and baking to my daughters. There’s a certain magic that lights in a child’s eyes when they discover their own special talents.

          Cooking, especially baking, is like molding clay. You get your hands in there and shape your medium into a work of art. Whether it’s the David or a layer cake that you’ve worked so long and hard on, the end result is the same. You see the smiles and hears the sighs emitted when your client takes that first bite. You know that look….the smile and closed eyes as they taste something so delicious that it won’t soon be forgotten. That’s that look that keeps me going and feeds my passion. I enjoy working with new materials and making things that are not as common but still feels like a “made like mom makes” kind of meal or dessert.
     

          So here is where I will end. I hope you all enjoy my blog and follow me in my travels! I raise a glass of my favorite vino and say thanks for joining me!

 

Amanda