Operation "Clean Out the Pantry" in full swing

One month from today we will be unpacking boxes at our new house in Freeport.   In the meantime, we are working on cleaning out the pantry, fridge and freezer so that we aren't moving too many boxes of food and we aren't throwing things away before we go.   The trick to this is that we have a lot of items in both pantry and freezer for dessert making which is fun for me but not so healthy to have sitting around on the kitchen counter.   So I've needed to time my dessert making for days when I can distribute the leftovers to various locations soon after.  I'm also trying to continue making the new recipes from my cookie cookbook (see post from 12/2/2010).

The first dessert from this week's round were the Frosted Cherry Nut Bars that I made on Tuesday.   I had some maraschino cherries that I needed to use that were in the fridge (leftover from the Cherry Coconut Bars that I made the previous week.  Since I only had half of the cherries needed I made a half batch and put them in an 8x8 pan instead of a 15x10 pan.    I think that the consensus on these were that the best part was the icing.   I thought that the bars turned out a little dry and too much like cake.   Caleb thought that they would be better without chocolate (I'm not sure he's actually my son!)  

Frosted Cherry Nut Bars (as I made them)
1/4 C butter
1/4 C sugar
1/4 C brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 C flour
3/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/2 C milk
1/2 C pecans
1/2 C quartered maraschino cherries
1/2 C semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugars.   Add egg and vanilla.   Mix in baking powder and salt.    Add flour to creamed mixture alternately with milk.   Stir in nuts, cherries and chocolate chips.   Spread into a greased 8x8 pan and bake at 325 for 15 to 20 minutes.  

Frosting
2 T butter
1 T milk
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 C powdered sugar

In a saucepan melt butter until golden brown.   Add milk and vanilla and remove from heat.   Beat in powdered sugar until smooth and spread over warm bars.   Cool and then cut.

The leftovers here went to the Tennis Center on Wednesday when Caleb had his class.

On Thursday I discovered a half bag of toffee pieces that needed to be used and I still have more chocolate chips to use as well as dried cranberries so Thursday I mixed up a batch of Toffee Cranberry Crisps.   I had previously made this recipe in December of 2008 (with no notes in my book so I'm not sure what I though of them at that time).    I modified this a bit because this recipe called for them to be shaped into rolls and placed in the fridge for a couple of hours and then cut into slices.   I also had some bran that needed to be used but not enough oatmeal so I substituted bran for some of the oatmeal and used whole wheat flour and regular flour in the recipe.    Caleb also doesn't like dried cranberries, so I mixed up the batch and then baked 2 dozen of them and then added the cranberries to the rest.  Here is the recipe I used for these:

Toffee Cranberry Crisps
1 C butter
3/4 C sugar
3/4 C brown sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract
1 C flour
1/2 C whole wheat flour
1 1/4 C quick-cooking oats
1/4 C bran
1 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1/2 C dried cranberries
1 C miniature semisweet chocolate chips
1 C toffee bits

Cream butter and sguars.   Beat in egg and vanilla.   Add baking soda and salt and then mix in flours.   Stir in oats and bran, chocolate chips and toffee bits.   Shape into balls and bake at 350 for 8 to 10 minutes.   After you've made a couple dozen cranberry free cookies add the cranberries and bake the rest as you did the first.   (You could also just add 1 C cranberries from the beginning).

After eating a few of these the rest went to work with Mark as he traveled north so they didn't get photographed.

Finally, tonight I found some white chocolate chips and dried apricots so I finished these off (less to pack up!!) and made Apricot Almond Blondies, but since I substituted pecans for the almonds (because that was what was in the freezer) I guess I need to just change the name to Apricot Blondies!

Apricot Blondies
1/2 C margarine, softened
1/2 C brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 C flour
1/3 C whole wheat flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 C vanilla chips
1/2 C pecans
1/2 C chopped dried apricots

Cream butter and sguar.   Beat in egg and vanilla.    Add baking soda and salt.   Mix in flours.    Stir in vanilla chips, pecans and chopped dried apricots.   Bake at 350 for 7 to 9 minutes and remove to wire racks to cool. 

Reviews from here - I am a big fan of cookies with vanilla chips in them, but the apricots are a little too chewy for me to be a big fan.   Mark likes them because they are bite-sized (so he says) but Caleb hasn't tried them yet.

So far these don't have a home besides my kitchen counter, but I'm sure they'll be accompanying us to our football watching with friends tomorrow!

There are still plenty of dessert baking items in my pantry and freezer and am looking for ways to use more chocolate chips, pecans, cranberries, butter, margarine, sugar, flour and other random pantry and freezer items.   Stay tuned ....

From the brink of disaster ....

Today I am wondering if I need to re-title my blog.   I think this might need to be called "Salvaging Dessert" or "How to Hide Your Dessert Mistakes."

For Christmas Caleb got me a "Big Top Cupcake Pan."   Yes, it is what it sounds like - a pan that lets you make a giant cupcake.   It also has a piece that you can put onto the top of the bottom section of the pan which will let you put a filling into the cake.   I'd describe it more, but if you can't picture it and don't know what I'm talking about you can check out their website .... https://www.bigtopcupcake.com/?MID=626698

Anyway, Caleb has been asking me to make one since he gave it to me on Christmas so today I decided to make one.   According to the instructions you should be able to make one with just one cake mix, so I decided that I would make one with a white cake mix, fill it with chocolate pudding and then frost it with a homemade whipped frosing.    So I mixed up the white cake mix and filled the bottom pan and the top pan, and placed them into the oven to "bake as directed".    After about 20 or 25 minutes I checked on them and as the directions indicated it appeared that the top part had finished baking even though the bottom part was not yet done.   I put a toothpick in it and it came out clean so I took it out of the oven.   So far, so good.

After another 15 or 20 minutes I checked on the bottom part, put a toothpick in it, found it was done and took it out of the oven.    While I was waiting for this part to cool I thought I should get the top part out of the pan onto a wire rack to cool.   When I turned it over to dump it out it came out of the pan beautifully, however, the top part (which had been the bottom of the pan) was still completely runny.   It was as if I had created a "cake bowl" with cake soup in it.   Very tasty, but there was no way that I was going to be able to put it on top of the bottom part of the cupcake.    So into the trash it went.

Since I didn't have another white cake mix I had to figure out how to salvage this giant cupcake and my son's image of his mother as dessert-maker.   I decided that I would change the plan and have a white bottom half and chocolate top half as I had a chocolate cake mix in the pantry.   However, I knew that there was no way that I needed the entire cake mix just for the top of this cupcake and I hated the idea of throwing away cake mix or cake batter.   This led to the next step in the salvaging dessert plan.   I measured the cake mix (there are 3 cups of cake mix in a box) and used just 2/3 of the cake mix, with just 2/3 of the eggs, oil and water called for.   I poured it into the top part of the cupcake pan and put it in the oven to bake -- this time with the oven set at 325 instead of 350 so that it could hopefully cook all the way through this time.  

I mixed up the whipped frosting and then took out about a cup of this frosting and mixed it with the remaining cake batter and used this as the filling instead of the chocolate pudding.  The filling was delicious.   Unfortunately the temperature of my kitchen appliances got the better of me again in my frosting.   The frosting recipe calls for margarine and shortening to be mixed together.   I needed to soften the margarine and my super powerful microwave melted most of it.   I mixed the shortening and margarine for a bit and then put them in the freezer for a few minutes, but should have done it a little bit longer to keep the frosting cooler.   It tasted delicious but was a bit to soft and runny for frosting the side of the cake.

Lessons learned .... the cake, however, was delicious and requests have been made by Caleb for another one soon!  

Reviews from the family ....
Mark and I loved the frosting, but Caleb was not a fan.   Caleb, however, really liked the cake parts and loved the filling (even after we told him it was made from the same ingredients as the frosting.)

Whipped Frosting Recipe:

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup butter-flavor shortening
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, mix milk into flour gradually to prevent lumps. Cook, stirring constantly over low heat until thick. Remove from heat and stir until cooled.
2. In mixer bowl, combine shortening and slightly softened (not melted!) margarine, beat 4 minutes. Add sugar; beat 4 minutes. Add cooled paste and vanilla and beat well.

A New Kitchen

We've moved to a temporary home until the end of February.   It's a home with a much smaller kitchen and so I had to make some decisions while packing up about what items needed to go into storage.   I kept only a couple of cookie sheets and a couple of mixing bowls and send the rest to storage.   I also sent my springform pans, my bundt pans, my mini loaf pans, my mini muffin tins and a few other specialty pans to storage.   I think I might miss them.

In the meantime, I have a lot of ingredients for cookies and cakes and other desserts that I need to use rather than moving them again.    So my goal is to continue working my way through the cookie book making new recipes (and some old ones) while using up ingredients in my freezer and pantry so I don't have to move them.   On Sunday I decided we needed some cookies, but I didn't have any eggs.    I did have peanut butter and chocolate chips and found a recipe for Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies that only called for peanut butter, sugar, evaporated milk, cornstarch and chocolate chips.    But when I went to bake them the first ones started to brown after only being in the oven for about 8 minutes (the recipe said to bake them for 12 to 15 mintues) but when I took them out they were still kind of gooey.    I turned the temp down on the oven (it had been set at 350) and tried again.   This time I left them in for 10 minutes, but then they were crispy on the outside but gooey in the middle.   I think this is how they are supposed to be, but they don't look pretty at all so I didn't take any pictures.    However, Mark swears they are delicious.

Today I went to the kitchen againdetermined to have better success than on Sunday.   (After all, today I had eggs!).    I started with Cherry Coconut Bars because I had maraschino cherries and coconut that I would like to use rather than moving.     I thought things were going fine, until I took them out of the oven after the recommended time and they were dark brown on top -- not quite burnt but not very pretty at all.   Grrr!    Oh well, I sprinkled some powdered sugar on top of them to camoflauge the dark brown tops and they seemed to taste pretty good.    And lesson learned -- the oven temperature is hotter than the dial says that it is.   

So for my next attempt I had a 1/2 bag of caramels that I needed to use so I found a recipe for chocolate caramel cookies and even though it said to bake them at 350 I turned the oven down to 325.   The cookies turned out beautiful until it was time to melt the chocolate chips for the chocolate portion of the cookie.   And that is when I discovered that the microwave here is hotter than my old microwave too.    Know what happens when you try to melt chocolate chips but get them too hot -- they kind of turn into a play dough type substance (tasty, but not spreadable with a knife).   Since Foster isn't old enough to play with an edible play dough, I decided to use it anyway on top of the coookies.   So on top of the shortbread cookies I placed a caramel and then used my fingers to shape the chocolate topping on the cookies.   Again, not pretty, but tasty, although I think the chocolate overwhelms the caramel in this cookie so I'll need to tweak this recipe for the future.  

So now I know that both the microwave and oven are hotter than I expected.   Hopefully my next attempt at dessert will turn out better -- and prettier so that I can post pictures!