My favorite flavors: Rhubarb crumble bars, maple creme brulee and peanut butter cup cookies

The more blog posts I write, the more I realize I watch a lot of movies. And TV, but that happens in spurts. My latest TV obsession? Community. Seriously, if you haven't seen it, watch it now. Over the weekend, I watched the entire 25-episode first season in about 30 hours. The episodes are only 21 minutes or so, so that makes it a little less bad. The show is hysterical, and the second season just came out on DVD, so I wanted to rewatch the first. Also, Donald Glover, who plays Troy in the show, is coming to KU in a couple weeks and I've got tickets to go see him with my friend Jon. So that merits watching the whole season and being a lazy bum, right? I'm going with yes.

Trader Joe's came to town a couple months ago; I actually covered it for work. The last time I was there, I found these little tiny peanut butter cups, and I love my peanut butter. So I made some plain ol' cookies, brown sugar only, with the cups in it. I had to use them, you see, or I would have kept snacking on them!

I visited Grandma a couple weekends ago. We watched seven movies in three days, I believe. Lots of Jimmy Stewart and Humphrey Bogart. After all, she's 90 and is familiar with those movies, and I have some sort of love affair with old, innocent movies. I also try to bake something for her every time I go, even if she hasn't seen some of the desserts before. This time I went with maple creme brulee. In the process, I managed to shatter a glass bowl of hers. Go me! But the brulee ended up excellent. It's a Joy of Cooking recipe.

Oh hi, my name is Brenna, and I love rhubarb. But it's kind of an abusive relationship on my end. I am so happy to see it when it comes out in May-ish, but then after a few token desserts, I drop it. Like that. And don't appreciate it for the summer months it's around. I saw rhubarb in the store the other day and knew I had to make at least one more dessert before it was all gone again, so I made Martha Stewart's rhubarb crumb bars. I will definitely make these again — next year, when the rhubarb comes out again. Pretty soon it's out of season!

Lake baking: Scones, chocolate cream pie and rhubarb upside down cake

My first baking sign of spring: rhubarb! Other great things about this season include all the good stories I've got coming up, the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale (May 14, mark your calendars!), a few weddings, some shows at Starlight... I'm not sure there's anything not great about spring/summer. Except maybe allergies. Oh, yeah, and another great thing: the lake.

As you can see, Daisy enjoys a good jaunt on the boat at high speed. Despite some chilly weather, I went to the lake last weekend to spend time with dad, Cathie and grandma. I read a book, went out on the boat, watched some movies, fed my family desserts. Not sure it gets much better than that!

For breakfast, scones. I got this recipe from the public information officer for our local sheriff's, actually. It comes up fairly regularly that I like to bake a lot, and he gave me what he said was a foolproof recipe for scones. Turns out, it is perfect. I sometimes don't like scones, because they can be so heavy with all that butter, but these were made with cream and so much better. He also recommended cinnamon chips, which I'd never used before. One field trip to Checkers took care of that. These were great and easy. Definitely making again.

So, from reading this blog, you've probably gathered I love (most) Martha Stewart recipes. When her new pie cookbook was released, I bought it immediately. Chocolate cream pie was the first recipe in the book, and it looked like a darn good place to start. Lemme tell you, even as someone who's not a huge fan of chocolate, this was divine. I can't wait to make more recipes in there!

And last, but not least, rhubarb upside down cake. You know, that cake I set on fire last year? It was almost exactly a year ago! Well, no fire this time. The rhubarb was very red, so it made a beautiful cake. The cake itself has a hint of orange, and then there's a crumble base. I think rhubarb is kind of nature's sweet tart, and it makes awesome desserts. I've got some left over, so I might make strawberry-rhubarb ice cream, or something. All in all, I'd say my family was fed pretty well this weekend!

Summer cupcakes and pie

I've officially been a college graduate for a week and a half. Now I'm a working girl. It's taking a little bit of getting used to. On the bright side, it gives me more time to bake and try new things. On the down side, I'm experiencing the end of college — namely, people moving away. I have friends moving all over the country, which I guess has happened before, except now I'm not going back to school after it happens. I imagine that when fall semester comes, it will be even stranger. I always have this feeling at the beginning of a break, where I've been so stressed with schoolwork that when it's over, I still feel like I should be doing it. I bet I get over that though :)

I've been watching a lot of movies. Saw Cabaret for the first time...jury's still out on what I think of that. And the Fantastic Mr. Fox. Definitely a cute movie. I watched Kiss Me Kate too — any musical lovers should appreciate that because Howard Keel is in it and his voice is amazing. Then some old favorites too, like Grease and 10 Things I Hate About You. "My insurance doesn't cover PMS!"

I've had a lot of time to bake lately, which is always fun. I made pink lemonade cupcakes about a week ago, sort of following the recipe. The weather was crappy and rainy, and I thought something like that seemed spring-y. You put in pink lemonade concentrate, but I added some of the powdered kind too, which made it extra pink-flavored. Same with the icing, which I also modified. Overall, they were pretty tasty, but totally weird. I guess I'm used to chocolate cupcakes or vanilla or something like that. I liked them though.


Then Keane came to town for his final goodbye before moving all the way up to Minnesota. He's working in the industry he loves, but I'm still sad to see him go. On the plus side, I guess, friends moving away mean lots of fun little trips for me to take! Anyway, Keane and AC came, and I made key lime pie cupcakes, which I've made before but apparently not written about. They're so tasty! You make a graham crust for them, and then a lime cupcake. Then you put in a key lime-marscapone filling, and top it off with key lime frosting. I'm not so hot at filling cupcakes, and might try a different method soon if I can't get better at it. But, they taste wonderful! Even though they fall apart when eating them. I made them initially for the guys, but gave them out elsewhere as well. The night out was fun too, and involved three boys singing "Shoop" in my car, putting the child lock on the windows and doing the Safety Dance.


My next project was to make bundt cake. I got this awesome bundt pan for graduation from a family friend (lemme tell you, my graduation gifts definitely had a theme, and they were all about cooking and baking). I'd really been wanting to try it, and stumbled across a recipe for Jones soda bundt cake. I've never made bundt cake before, but I had to try it. Kelly came over and helped me make the cake, which is seriously like half butter half sugar. It was flavored with Jones soda cream soda and berry lemonade, conveniently my two favorite flavors. The recipe called for just a normal glaze over the top, but I made glazes of each of the sodas instead. It was an awesome cake and very moist.


On my day off this week, I went to my aunt's house to make rhubarb pie. I've kind of shied away from pies because I'm not real confident in my crust-making abilities, so she taught me how to do it. My first crust was definitely a disaster, but a tip — roll it out between two sheets of waxed paper. Definitely helps. We made three pies, three different crusts, all from Joy of Cooking. The first was the normal pastry crust with strawberry and rhubarbs. The second, the better crust with just rhubarb. And finally, the best crust with fresh strawberries and rhubarb. The third was definitely best, but I guess that's what you get for putting more butter in, right? They all ended up really great, so now I guess I'm at least semi-ready to make my own pie crust. Fourth of July calls, right? Apple pie? I think so. Maybe I'll even brave making a lattice top.

So now I settle into summer and working. I'll leave you on an entertaining note — or at least I thought it was funny. I hope everyone watched Looney Tunes at least a little bit (and I still do if I get the chance!). Remember the cat that Pepé Le Pew always chased after? We knew she was French because she said "Le meow, le purrrr." So, my dad's in the Czech Republic right now for an airshow and sent me an e-mail today with the subject line "Czech pussycats" (I seem to always get animal e-mails...wonder why). In the body it said "Czmeow......czprrrrr!" I thought it was hysterical...coulda just been me though :)

My most epic baking fail yet

I've been super excited to write about one of my latest baking experiences. Like, it was an epic failure. But first.

My giant project runs tomorrow. Eek! I've basically been working on it nonstop. I'm really excited about it but pretty nervous too. I kind of wish I would have kept track of how many hours I worked on it, from the reading and researching to the interviewing to the drafts to making a slideshow. I'd probably rather not know. I'll post a link on here after it runs. I'm also excited just because it will be done, and that's gonna be a great feeling. I'll be done with the class, too, so my first class finished this semester. So after tomorrow, I just will focus on my other major commitments this week. Good news is, once this week is over, I only have two tests and a paper between me and walking down the hill.

It's seemed like college has gone by so quickly, but I guess when I look back on my freshman and years, things were so different. There's been a different group of Kansan friends every year, most of whom I still talk to and love to see. I used to go to Manhattan all the time for the ex, and now I love spending all my time in Lawrence. I've traveled a whole lot to some new places, seen Elvis' mirrored-room and NYC for the first time, and hope to visit some more. I've taken a whole bunch of completely meaningless classes, a few interesting ones and just a couple really important ones. Right now, though, graduation seems SO far away.

I'm excited to see everyone coming for graduation, though. My mom's coming from Michigan (and gets here on her birthday!), I might have another few aunts or uncles coming, then Dad, Cathie and Grandma. It's going to be a great weekend, especially because I got it off from work! First weekend off since I started.

Anyway, about the food. For Valentine's Day, my mom got me a Martha Stewart Living magazine subscription, and on this issues first pages are rhubarb recipes. It's not something I'd ever really liked until just recently, but it's SO good in desserts. This was a recipe for rhubarb upside-down cake. Rhubarb is just coming into season, so we got it at the Merc. And then started my most epic baking fail ever.

The cake is assembled as such: rhubarb sliced thinly and soaked in sugar in the bottom of the pan, then a sour cream-orange pound cake on top, then a crumb mixture on top of that. When you turn it over the rhubarb's on top, obviously. Anyway, I read the recipe really carefully, except for the part about the pan. Normal cake pans are one inch deep, and this one needed a two inch one. I didn't feel like going out and getting one by the time I saw that, so I decided a springform pan would work. False. Rhubarb is kind of the texture of celery, but when you soak it in sugar and start baking it, it gets a lot softer and starts to make its own syrup. Some of that syrup started leaking out of the springform onto the bottom of the oven, which was pretty gross. So I put a baking pan underneath and wrapped the bottom of the pan with aluminum foil to try to stop it from leaking. The cake bakes for an hour, but about half an hour in I just decided to give up. It's a good thing I decided to then, because when I opened the oven door, the cake had some pretty awesome flames coming off it. Yup, that's right, I set a cake on fire. Took it out of the oven and they were like a foot tall. I guess if I'm going to fail, it might as well be with fire, right? Unfortunately, I wasn't in the mindset to take a picture for the blog, so you'll just have to imagine. So the next day, I tried again, with a normal pan. It turned out awesome and tasted great. It's not quite as red as the magazine's picture, but the rhubarb isn't that color yet. Too early. Also, it's the most interesting flavor if you haven't tried it. I think it's nature's Sweet Tart, especially with desserts. It's poisonous when raw though, FYI.

After this epic failure/redemption, I didn't have much time to bake, but I felt like making snack mix later in the week and went back to an old faithful recipe from a family friend. It makes a giant amount (check out the picture!) and takes forever, but is totally worth it. Eventually I should just give in and make my snack mix entirely with Chex. No matter what percentage of my snack mix is Chex, I always end up eating it all first and am left with a mish mosh of Cheerios and crumbs. Anyway, this takes two hours, stirring it every 15 minutes. It's totally worth it though. And I can actually post the recipe! Check it out at the bottom of the post.

Then a couple days ago my mind was so overloaded with stress I just took a break and made red velvet cupcakes for the LJ newsroom. Still a favorite and super pretty. It always freaks me out a bit when, at the end of mixing the cupcakes, you mix together baking soda and vinegar and put the fizzy mixture in. Whatever it does, it makes it yummy.

Tonight I hang out at the newsroom to work on my project, so I'm making cupcakes for that. And the number of things I'm baking for graduation is growing: ice cream cake for my mom's birthday, cupcakes for our cookout, cupcakes or cake for another lunch...I'm sure more will be added. And I'll love it :)

Anyway, here's the Chex mix recipe, courtesy of Marilyn Livingood.

2 lbs. mixed nuts
1 Tbl. seasoned salt
1 box wheat squares
2 c. salad oil
1 box rice squares
2 Tbl. Worcestershire sauce
1 box Cheerios
1 Tbl. garlic salt
1 package pretzel sticks
(I usually add a box of corn Chex too)

Mix all ingredients in a LARGE pan (two disposable turkey roasters work well). Bake in a 200˚ oven for 2 hours. Stir every 15 minutes.