...and real pain for my sham friends. Or something like that. I mentioned before (I think) how my resolution was to be more social. Well, I'm keeping up with this new behavior. It could even be a new pattern. My good friend (he of Real Good Food fame) Devin had a house party this past weekend. The theme? Mardi Gras. And to keep things cosmopolitan the hosts included a bit of French culture by having crepes at the party. What goes well with crepes? Champagne my friends. So of course I had to take it to the next level and pull out the ice cream maker... That's right. I made champagne flavored ice cream. Did I just blow your mind? I hope so. The recipe was super easy!

CHAMPAGNE ICE CREAM
1 1/2 c heavy cream
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c champagne/sparkling wine
2 TBS corn starch
2 pieces of lemon zest

Technically I guess what I made was sparkling wine ice cream b/c the stuff I bought at Trader Joe's was not from the Champagne region of France. My bad for misleading you. But Neo Griot, you ask, how did you get it to freeze?! Well, I added the booze to the cream mixture and let it come to a boil. Then I took the heat down to low added the sugar, let it dissolve... then I added a bit of cornstarch slurry to thicken it up. Ta-Da! I passed the mixture through some cheese cloth and put it into the ice cream machine. Less than 20min. later I had a nice sized batch of ice cream.

Unfortunately there are no pictures of the dynamic duo of crepe and ice cream together. I'd hard to take pictures of food in the middle of a house party post midnight. But, it was good. At least that's what I heard through the wine grape vine. Picture it in your head...

The day after the party just happened to be my birthday so my friends and I celebrated by going to brunch. Why? Because that's what classy adult types do on a Sunday afternoon. As you know I'm all about tokens of appreciation and sentiment that take the form of food. So I HAD to make a lil' something to give my friends. Luckily, the week before my birthday is Valentine's day. I made some whoopie pies for the occasion but I didn't plan to post about them b/c I was leaving on a plane the next day and had to pack. I didn't have time to take pictures of the process. I DID end up with some leftover cake scraps though and you know what? Cake freezes pretty well. Upon my return home I pulled those scraps outta the freezer and got to work on some cake pops. Food on a stick is always a viable option b/c its portable! The original vision was a chocolate cake pop, dipped in caramel, and then dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt. So here's a mini tutorial in pictures on how to make cake pops if you don't already know.


Step 1.) Know your flavor profile. Mine was caramel, dark chocolate and sea salt.


Step 2.) Crumble up some cake. When it's nice an crumbly add in some frosting, mix well. I bought some caramel frosting to go w/ the flavor profile. (I was too lazy/cheap to use butter to make my own butter cream. There would be some left over and frosting does not keep as well as cake in the freezer.)


Step 3.) Have a ball... mine were chocolaty. Take the frosting/cake mixture and roll it into balls. I used a cookie scoop for uniform sizes. Afterwards set them in the fridge to firm up for a bit so you can more easily manhandle them later.


Step 4.) Remove balls from the fridge and make them into pops. I used shorted lolly sticks b/c that's what I had in stock. For a bit of extra security you can dip the sticks into some melted chocolate/candy coating before sticking them into the cake balls.


Step 5.) Dip, baby, dip. This is a shot of me attempting to put on the first coat of caramel. In the end I had to ditch it b/c the caramel was so heavy the cake balls kept falling off the sticks:( So I back tracked and just dipped them in the melted dark chocolate instead. As the chocolate shell dried I gave the pop a little spin and sprinkled a bit of sea salt on it.


Step 6.) Make it pretty! A little scrap paper, a stamp, some ink, and curling ribbon was all it took!

Hey yo! So I got myself a couple new pipping tips this month. I've been wondering why my #10 tip wasn't swirling the way I see on cupcakes in the bake shops. A little internet research enlightened my I've been using the wrong size pipping tip! A #10 isn't BIG enough. So I went out and bought myself a 1M star tip and a 2D tip.I got to practice my pipping skills on a set of cupcakes for my friend Sarah's birthday.

I decided to keep things pretty simple. I made a plain yellow cupcake that I stuffed with cookie butter and topped with a white chocolate ice cream. Whoa..... What's cookie butter you ask? It's awesomeness in a jar. It's this European treat kinda like Nutella but not. I think the brand name is Speculoos but because Trader Joe's doesn't really carry brand names they call it cookie butter. It's the taste of a spiced cookie (here in Michigan we have Windmill cookies) in a jar. So delicious... so evil. I wonder if there's an oxymoron that described that oppositional relationship?

Ta-Da!!!! I brought a few of these along with some bourbon I'd infused (with ginger, cinnamon and vanilla) to Sarah's house and we had a little mini-party full of food and laughter. It was good times.

14 Karats? Ummm I made a carrot cake for Christmas. It's got a bit of a twist because it's spiced with ginger AND has crystallized ginger folded into the batter. Because much like Ike & Tina I never, ever do nothin' nice and easy... My mind's big wheels keep on turnin' and hopefully my cakes are never burnin'. Hahaha! Sometimes (all the time) I crack myself up. Does anyone else's brain run on pop culture references? I truly believe we're almost to the point of over saturation much like in the book "Super Sad True Love Story." Has anyone else noticed how dated most jokes in movies/tv are these days? You've got to be up on the latest gossip in order for anything to be funny. Help those who don't know what twitter is... Or who Yeezey is.

This is why when I bake/cook for family (i.e. my gramps) I like to start with something familiar and tweak it a bit. Thus, the ginger spiced carrot cake. A golden idea if I dare say so myself. I used this recipe for the cake but use good ol' cream cheese frosting to top it off. I also learned during some googling that cold cream cheese makes for a better frosting. That's a new baking tip to put in the hard drive/memory bank. All this time I've been letting mine soften on the counter and wondering why it wouldn't hold the firm consistency I wanted.

I send holiday cards... and edible gifts. It's something I've done for a few years now and it's a practice that makes me feel distinctly "adult." Each year I like to send my friends a small token of appreciation to show that I care. Also, I can make stuff. I tend to be known in my social circle as someone relatively crafty. So I do what I can to say, "hey, you're cool and I appreciate that you think I'm kinda cool too." Aside from the postage it is also relatively cheap. My mom likes to tell me, "You can pay with time. Or you can pay with money..." I choose to pay with time.

This year I made tea and cookie packets. I found a nice, stable (i.e. dried spices that keep and not rot) masala chai recipe in a book at the library. First I worked on making teabags.

MASALA CHAI SPICE MIX
2 Tbs cardamon
2 Tbs ground clove
2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbs ginger
1 Tbs pepper

CHAI TEABAG
2 tsp quality loose leaf black tea
1/8 tsp Masala chai spice mix







What kind of cookie goes well with tea? ANY KIND OF COOKIE! (That was a trick question.) I made brown sugar pecan shortbread cookies to go with my masala chai. I thought the warmth of the spices would go well with the carmel-esque undertones of the brown sugar. Also, who doesn't like pecans? It was pretty basic. Brown sugar, butter, pecans, and flour. Add cookie cutters and I had myself a decorative cookie!





Lastly, I crafted my own holiday cards. I made them using a 3-D effect (b/c 3-D is the new thing) and some twine for texture.

You scream... I scream... We ALL scream... for ice cream. Gimme s'mores! (I said that last bit in my my ODB voice). I pulled out my beloved but rarely used ice cream maker recently and did a bit of a mish mash. I had some leftover cooking/baking ingredients that were taking up too much space in the kitschen. So I decided to use them up in an ice cream mash-up.

Because I made those s'more pops for my nephew's birthday I had 3/4 of a bag of marshmallows I was trying to use up and a box of graham cracker crumbs. This easily meant s'more flavored ice cream HAD to be made. Initial research showed that googling "s'more ice cream" lead to a lot of recipes with marshmallow base flavored ice creams. I like marshmallows but not that much. I prefer all ice creams to have a chocolate base! As a result I poked around a bit more and decided to do a chocolate ice cream and then add in the rest of the s'more flavors as mix-ins. The chocolate ice cream recipe I settled on came from this book. The recipe basically calls for making two mixtures and then adding them together.

I tweeked the recipe a little bit because I have a phobia of tempering eggs. So instead I used cornstarch as a thickener. I nixed the eggs and added 3 TBS of cornstarch with a bit of the milk to make a slurry.




Some s'more ice cream recipes just had you chuck in the mini marshmallows but I didn't have mini marshmallows. So I did another google search and found out you could make fluff by melting down marshmallows and adding in a bit of butter (mmm butter) and corn syrup. I know you're thinking "isn't that bad for you?" And to that I reply: It's ice cream! Who cares?!





Seriously folks... the chocolate ice cream was amazing. Such a great chocolate flavor. I will make a plain batch of chocolate ice cream any day with that recipe. So good. I liked the spatula clean and would have liked the urn too but I was afraid my tongue would stick. You can't tell from the picture but during the last 5 min. of churning I crumbled up the graham cracker crust and dropped it in there to mix throughout. While the ice cream finished I loaded up a disposable icing bag (using this method) with my homemade fluff. The final step was to transfer the churned ice cream into a freezer safe container and layering the fluff throughout. I couldn't take pictured during this process because my hands were covered in chocolate and/or fluff.

Does anyone else remember that show from Nickalodean? I loved that show... I wanted to work at a camp/ranch as a teen because of that show. Well, Hey Dude and Camp Anawanna. Now when I think about it they were both totally not PC probably. What does all this have to do with my kitschen adventures? My nephew recently turned 8 and he had a cowboy/cowgirl theme birthday party coordinated by moi!

Here's a pic of a draft of the invite...

I also made homemade trail mix to go into the swag bags.





I made some s'more pops too and wanted to used them to close up the bags someway...







For dessert I used the book Baking: New Frontiers recipe for chocolate rootbeer float bundt cake. I want this book so bad... but for now I am settling for this one recipe.

Hey ya'll... It's fall one, of my favorite times of the year. Being from the Midwest I find fall to be a beautiful time with all the colors of the trees and the bounty of apples available. Add in a nice crisp autumnal breeze and I'm ready to snuggle up with a book and cup of warm cider in a hot second. I have been able to do that a few times this season already! I also love the flavors of fall... with them in mind I decided to break out the donut pan I bought months ago and put it to use. I borrowed a recipe from my favorite TV cook Rachael Ray (Ray Ray as I love to call her) and made some donuts with fresh apples! I used honey crisps because they're my favorite after granny smith.

Or alternatively you could make a glaze with powdered sugar, milk, and caramel flavoring. But the caramels were on special for $1/bag and I don't own any imitation caramel flavoring so I went the cheap and easy route.







Some of the donuts I also added a bit of chocolate to as well. I just melted some chocolate chips put them in a boughetto piping bag (i.e. a sandwich bag with the corner snipped off) and drizzled away. They were all so pretty I had to share. I boxed up four and took them through airport security to hand deliver them to a friend in D.C. She was graciously allowing my to crash on her couch and I just couldn't come empty handed.