March baking: Rocky road tart, sweet & salty cookies and chocolate creme pie

I understand that I've kind of fallen off the face of the earth lately. But March was an...interesting month. So, to recap (mostly) everything, I...

 • totaled my car.

• visited two best friends from college in Denver (more pictures from that later).

• had hundreds of dollars stolen from my bank account.

• watched KU make a run all the way to the National Championship game in a "rebuilding" year (I made cake pops for this event, about 150 total, but managed to take pictures every time. That picture of Mass Street counts for that, I guess.)

And that's just a snapshot. So, forgive the absence. 

This rocky road tart jumped out at me when I first looked through Martha Stewart's Pies and Tarts book. And lemme tell you, it's as rich (and awesome) as it looks. It's a graham crust filled with mini marshmallows, almonds and chocolate chunks with a chocolate ganache poured over the whole thing. So decadent.

I'm a big fan of salty-sweet, so when I saw these cookies with chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and pretzels in them, I knew I wanted to make them. There was a nice combo of flavors with both chips and the pretzels gave a nice crunch.

This is another favorite from Martha's book, the chocolate creme pie. I've made it a couple times on the blog, but it's just too good to pass up. Plus, I almost always have all the ingredients I need! It's pretty darn simple and cuts beautifully.

Comfort baking: Butterfinger cupcakes, homemade Oreos, red velvet cheesecake cake, stuffed bread and stuffed pretzels

Does anyone watch the show "American Pickers" on the History Channel? I think I'm hooked. Dad turned it on one day when we were visiting my grandma in the hospital after her vertigo spell during the holidays. My dad loves the History Channel, but I'd always seen him watching shows about the war and that sort of thing. This seems a slightly different take on history. What they "pick" is historical items found all over the country, mostly in those places you see on the side of road that have stuff just piled in the lots. They find some crazy stuff...in the episode I just watched, they bought a motorcycle motor from "Hobo Jack" that ended up being more than 100 years old. In case you haven't noticed, I'm fascinated by this sort of history and Americana, as evidenced by all I write about my family history on here. Also by the stories I like writing best, most recently about a local man who restores pinball machines. So cool!. I know what show is going to fill up my DVR for the next few months!


After all the stress of my holiday season, I needed some serious baking with Aunt Betty. I'm still not completely on my A-game, but I'm getting closer. This stuff helped. Like these Butterfinger cupcakes from my Food Network magazine. Unfortunately, there's no recipe online, and it's from my year-old magazine...I've been wanting to make them for a while. That being said, I'm going to make some serious changes next time I try them. The chocolate cake was good, but too light a crumb for a cupcake. The frosting was actually a ganache, and waaaay too thick for piping like I wanted to. Next time: a light peanut butter frosting. The killer was the brittle on top, which was just sugar, peanut butter and butterscotch chips and tasted exactly like the inside of a Butterfinger. I'm going to make just that sometime soon, dip it in chocolate and make homemade candy. All those went with my Uncle David for his retirement party.


Next on our list was something that reminded me of one of my favorite places to get dessert, the Cheesecake Factory (mainly because there are so many options). Who doesn't love red velvet cake? Who doesn't love cheesecake (besides Kelly)? Put them together, and you get red velvet cheesecake cake. Pretty tasty, although once again, I'd prefer a cake with heavier crumb. It's modeled on the coolest cake spatula thingy my stepmom Cathie got me. It's a high heel with a magnetic heel! Neato. I brought this cake to work and I'd say it was a hit. A few minutes after I brought it in, I told someone upstairs it was there. He said he already knew it was there because he saw a Twitpic. Ah, the joys of journalism and technology.


Our last project for the day was to make a bread I've been wanting to make for a while from Flour Girl. It's a stuffed braided bread, and actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. The dough was basic pizza dough made in the food processor and didn't even need to rise. The recipe called for bacon, but anyone who knows my eating habits knows that I don't eat any pork products, including bacon, and no, I'm not Jewish. I just don't eat it. So we used turkey bacon. Also inside was spinach we cooked down with some olive oil, provolone cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Dip it in marinara and it made a pretty tasty dinner.


When my newest Food Network Magazine magazine came, on the front it talked about pretzels, which is one of my favorite things to make. What caught my eye especially was pesto-stuffed pretzels. I loooove pesto, especially when it's extra garlicy and cheesy. I think I'm going to need some more practice stuffing pretzels, because you can't taste the flavor of the pesto and the cream cheese that's inside them too much. But the dip I made with the extra pesto and cream cheese is excellent. I will definitely make that again. Also, this was the christening voyage for my new food processor. Verdict: amazing.


Last, I wanted to make some sort of sweet for the night, and Kelly suggested homemade Oreos. I had all the stuff to make them, so I did it. The cookie dough looked like dirt, and was a really strange consistency. The middle is supposed to be white chocolate ganache, which I edited a bit to be more frosting-like. All-in-all, very tasty, especially when dipped in milk. Mmmmm. Next up? Tiramisu cake for a girls' dinner. I get to try out my new cake stand on that one!

Picnic baking: Root beer cupcakes, apple pie ice cream and bread x 2

Well, it's definitely summer in Kansas. Every winter it gets so friggin cold, and then I can't believe how hot it gets! It says it's 93 right now, but I bet the heat index is way up there. And the thunderstorms have been wild too, what with all the rain and wind and craziness. Saturday I was working and the power flickered before kicking to a generator, which killed the cable, our sites and eventually the internet. Lemme tell you, it's hard to web produce when there's no web. And I've been baking a lot of foods that seem like they'd fit in with a picnic...but it's too hot to picnic right now.


It's been a fairly low-key week for me, which is exactly what I needed. I worked weekend days this week, which meant I was actually around when a lot of other staffers were. Which for me, naturally, means baking. Kelly and I made root beer cupcakes, which I think are totally weird but were a big hit. Root beer concentrate is definitely not the easiest thing to find in Lawrence. The cupcakes have both the concentrate and root beer in them, so they make a really runny batter. We couldn't decide what flavor of icing to do, so I swirled root beer and vanilla together, and then put a straw in them. I think they were cute :) And they newsroom definitely ate them up!


Saturday the weather hit the newsroom, like I said, and Sunday was just plain hot. Monday, though, I went to Aunt Betty's and we did a baking extravaganza. I've been wanting to try out ice cream, which yes, I admit, isn't baking. But it's dessert, so it works. I found this really great recipe for apple pie ice cream, it just sounded perfect for summer! So I made it the night before. I'd never made custard before, which involves cooking a milk mixture to a certain temperature, adding in the eggs slowly, cooking that to a certain consistency and then cooling it down really fast. It made me nervous, but apparently I did it right, because the next day when we put it in the ice cream maker with the apple mixture, it turned into ice cream! And it was sooo yummy. Ice cream might be my new thing, and I don't even really like ice cream that much. But the homemade stuff just tastes so much better, you know? We made a quart, but between me, my aunt and uncle, we finished it off.


Also on the list of things to make was a yummy pesto bread that a friend at work posted a link to. I like making bread at Aunt Betty's because she makes it so often and it always turns out perfectly. We made the pesto from the basil in her garden, definitely tasty. I know I'm going to ask for a new food processor for my birthday, because hers is so much better than my crappy cheap one. Yes, I live dangerously, asking for a food processor. Anyway, the bread was made kind of like a jelly roll, spreading out the pesto inside and then rolling it up, which also meant some pesto squished out. In the end, though, it turned out looking very pretty. My coworkers Sarah and Whitney also made the bread, and Whitney wrote about it on one of our sites. Definitely a fun thing to try making.


When I was browsing the site the pesto bread was on, I also found a recipe for pretzel rolls. You never realize how much goes into making pretzels until you actually start. You make the dough, let it rise, cut it into separate rolls, let it rise again, boil it in a baking soda-water combination, egg wash it, salt it, cut it and then bake it. All of those steps are worth it, though, because these might have been my favorite of the day. They browned wonderfully and were soooo yummy right out of the oven. And they were yummy with peanut butter, too! I think I will make some into sandwiches later.


I wanted to take that ice cream I made earlier into the newsroom, so two nights ago I remade a giant batch. I took it by last night and it seemed well-received. I can already tell how much of a workout my ice cream machine is going to get this summer! In between ice cream-making, I've been doing some massive cleaning and painting. I even organized my baking cabinet so I can see all my cupcake papers for next time I want to bake. I'm a dork, yes.

No cleaning for me today, though. I definitely have the itch to bake again, but instead I'm going to make use of my new gym membership after I take a nap. :) I love summertime!

Back to school baking

Come tomorrow, it feels like school will really have started. We had classes on Thursday (and Friday, but I don't have Friday classes!), but it was really just a syllabus day. So I decided for most of the weekend that it was still winter break. Both a good and bad decision.

My classes on Thursday were POLS 600, Contemporary Feminist Political Theory and EECS: Concepts of computers or something stupid like that. I really like the politics teacher, so I'm super excited for that. The computer one, not so much. But I have to fill a spot to graduate, and that was the lucky winner. At least I'm taking it with Brianne so I won't go quite so crazy.

The wackiest thing about Thursday was that I got out of class at noon and got to go home! This may sound a bit ridiculous, but I haven't gotten to go home after classes since my first semester freshman year. Every other semester I've had to go to the newsroom after class and hang out. It was the weirdest feeling ever. So I got home....and decided to bake to fill my time. On the menu: red velvet cupcakes and Brenna brownies, as they've affectionately come to be known.

It seems I've gotten back on my cupcake kick, courtesy of Stephen asking me to. I go back and forth between loving making cupcakes, because you can be so creative, and making mostly cookies, because they take considerably less time (when you figure in the time needed to cool and ice the cupcakes). Anyway, the last time I made red velvet was for the fourth of July. I have a great relationship with red velvet; it became my favorite cake while working at Capers, a local coffee and pastry shop, in high school. And I'm a firm believer that cream cheese ice cream makes everything better. But when I made red velvet for the fourth of July, it wasn't in traditional form. It was a red velvet cookie sandwich, with the top red, the bottom blue and the cream cheese icing in the middle. The icing kind of sucked, which made me sad, but with these cupcakes, Martha knew her stuff. The cream cheese icing was perfect. In fact, it might be my favorite icing ever. The cupcakes were pretty tasty as well.

Along with the red velvet cupcakes, I made Martha's double chocolate brownies, which is one of my favorite things to make. I modify them a bit though and make them quadruple chocolate by adding in chocolate chips and white chocolate chips as well. They make a super chunky batter but I bake them just under the time you're supposed to and they are unbelievable. I don't mind that they're known as Brenna Brownies now. :)

So, after making 24 cupcakes and 16 brownies, I started handing them out. Some of the cupcakes went with Drew's roommate Eric to his newsroom. The rest I took to the Kansan, and they were gone really quick. But I bake for the fun, not the eating, otherwise I'd be the size of a hippo.

I made the brownies a second time this weekend, then took them to game night filled with Catchphrase and Apples to Apples. Then the next night, I felt antisocial and went for more. I made my favorite homemade pretzels, modeled after the Auntie Anne's pretzel places in the mall. They're super easy and made a really yummy (if not slightly unhealthy) dinner. You can put any kind of topping on them, but I usually do a mixture of grated Parmesan, garlic powder and this time added a pinch of cayenne.

Then, for dessert, I tried yet another Martha cupcake recipe, brown sugar pound cakes. They're pretty heavy, but I guess pound cake's supposed to be that way. Instead of doing the glaze, I decided to do cream cheese frosting again and went with her brown sugar cream cheese frosting. Also excellent. They're almost breakfast-y cupcakes.

So regular classes start tomorrow. My time will start filling up soon, but for now, guess I'll keep baking. Now I'm going to go make more brownies for just us to enjoy.

Two days of baking, seven Christmas treats

Ah the holidays. How....uncomfortable you can be.

I drove back to Salina yesterday to beat the weather....that still hasn't hit Salina. It's come to Lawrence though, so I suppose leaving early was actually a good idea. Coming back, though, I'm still not so sure about. For one, I had a completely full car, including seven varieties of baked goods (yup! I said seven), all my Christmas presents for family, two blankets and a pillow, clothes, and the ever-whiny cat. Couple that with rainy/foggy weather, and it's can be an interesting 2-hour drive.

The older I get, though, the more I realize I only like part of the holidays. I love the baking, decorating and gift purchasing. I hate the actual day. Last night I went out to a bar in Salina, and throughout the course of the night there were at least 100 people from my high school there. Some were people I hadn't seen in forever and was happy about, but others were people I sort of recognized but couldn't place their names. I also found out my ex-boyfriend got engaged, which is doubly weird. We dated for four years, and for a while thought we would get married. It could have been me getting that ring last night, although I'm glad it wasn't. There are so many people getting engaged right now that I feel like I should be; after all, Drew and I have been together for as long as my ex and his girlfriend have. But I know I'm not ready for that. Not for a while.

I had nothing to do a couple days ago, and decided to go on a baking extravaganza. Last Christmas I brought cookies home that Drew's mom had made, but I wanted to bring home my own this year. I started with chocolate chunk cookies that I found in the Food Network magazine. They were one of the most labor-intensive cookies I've ever made because the dough isn't very sticky. I had to form each individual cookie, because it was more chunk (chocolate, white chocolate, M&M and cashew) than cookie. They were yummy though.

The next day was my big baking day. First it was pizzelles again to take to my grandma. I had Drew put them on the iron, and I've found he has quite a talent for it. I think I know what his job will be from now on. :)

Then it was my mom's old no-bake butterscotch cookies (essentially these minus the peanuts). We used to make them when I was little. They're super easy and only four ingredients, but get really hard to stir. You melt butterscotch chips in a pan, then add peanut butter and later marshmallows. The marshmallows make it really tough to stir, and then you add chow mein noodles. They're soooo rich but so yummy.

Then came one of my favorite recipes: peanut butter brownies. This is easily one of my favorite recipes, one I found on another baking blog. They go pretty quick too once you set people on them. They're basically brownies with chocolate and peanut butter chips in them. You bake them in muffin tins, then let them fall and fill the void with peanut butter. Top them off with chocolate and peanut butter chips and you're set! I went for the more festive vibe and did Christmas M&Ms.

I made three things I never had before as well. As you can tell, I baked for like a solid five hours. First were pineapple cookies with pineapple glaze from my Golden Book of Cookies. They are super moist from the crushed pineapple in them. Then I made biscotti a la Bobby Flay. It has blue and yellow cornmeal and pistachios. It's supposed to have Sambuca, a licorice-flavored liqueur, but I didn't have any of that and wasn't about to buy it (yuck!) so did Triple Sec instead. Last, I made chocolate-dipped pretzels. Mmmm.

Now I just need to figure out who's going to eat all this food. I'm not sure I'll be here as long as was planned.