~Annie & Gee~

Coconut Rum Pineapple (plus other stuff) Cake

2011-09-25T23:08:00.000-04:00

Hi! I've been doing lots of baking, but not lots of posting (I blame The Sims 3). Anyway, here's my (more complete) entry for the fuckyeahdessert contest...

I had a lot of fun with this. While the list of possible ingredients included things that I was more used to using, I wanted to branch out and try something new. In this case, that meant making a dessert that didn't involve chocolate. In MY opinion, a food does not qualify as a proper dessert if it does not include chocolate.

Therefore I chose coconut, pineapple, and Oreos as my ingredients to play with, leaving behind the chocolate pudding, peanut butter, graham crackers, and ganache (all of which are more my style).


My ingredients.

Now, coconut and pineapple together are easy, so I wanted to come up with a way to use another of the ingredients. I decided on the Oreos, though I did not want to use the entire cookie. Somehow I got it in my mind that I wanted to do something with just the cream...


Took the centers out.	Added teensy bit of milk (to make it spreadable) and cinnamon.

(This Oreo cream center mixture is quite potent! The sugar content of a whole spoonful of this stuff is probably your entire week's worth of sugar. Just a small nibble of this stuff made my brain hum.)

The recipe that I used for the cake is from here: Heavenly White Cake.

I sifted the dry ingredients multiple times.

After I beat the egg whites for the cake batter.

Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar mixture alternately with the milk (which in this case is about 1/4 c skim milk and 3/4 c coconut rum).

Finally, add egg whites to batter

I know the recipe says to beat in the egg whites. I don't know what kind of crack they were on, but definitely FOLD the egg whites GENTLY into the batter.

It may take some practice to get the hang of folding. Pictures describing how to do it did nothing for me, but once I watched this video it made a lot more sense.

Finished cake batter with egg whites folded in.

I used two 8in rounds. I did have batter left over.

While the cake was baking, I made the pineapple sauce that I was going to pour over the the top of one of the layers. I sort of just adapted the pineapple sauce from here to make what I wanted. I didn't want the actual pieces of pineapple, and I didn't want the orange juice in there. I essentially just put sugar, a little cornstarch (which I had been nervous of at first because I had never used it, but I loved how this turned out!) and cinnamon.

Added about 6 oz (one of those baby cans) of pineapple juice. (In my practice run I just used the juice from a can of pineapple chunks and that worked really well, too.)

Brought it to a boil, let it simmer for a bit until it was the thickness I wanted, and it's done!

This pineapple sauce is so good! I could just drink it (?) by the spoonful. I will definitely be making this again (for many different purposes, I'm sure).

Once the cake came out of the oven, I poked holes in (mutilated) one of the layers and used a spoon to drizzle the pineapple sauce over it...

At this point I made the frosting. I used the recipe for Basic Cooked Buttercream Frosting. I made a half recipe, used egg whites, and added some white chocolate that I had laying around from when I made white chocolate macadamia nut cookies a few weeks ago. I could talk about the frosting, but cooked buttercream frosting is something that I just now am learning to make and the process is something that I think I should dedicate an entire entry on. So just know that I made white chocolate buttercream frosting. :)

Spreading the Oreo cream mixture on top of the half with pineapple sauce.

Bottom half

Top layer added and with its first layer (crumb coat) of frosting.

So, there's my cake. I'm really proud of how it came out, and I'm already thinking about how I'm going to do it differently next time (definitely put pineapple soaking sauce on top of both layers). Everybody (mom, dad, and boyfriend) really seemed to enjoy it. The only misgiving I have is that I didn't have time to come up with any way of decorating it, so it's just a plain white cake with nothing on it. I really wanted to keep the outside of the cake simple, since there's a couple of things going on inside and I didn't want too many flavors getting in the way of each other.

Thank you for looking. :) I will try to post more! XD

Coconut rum cake with pineapple soaking sauce, Oreo cream center, and white chocolate buttercream frosting.

~Annie

(G) THE BEST Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (aka PACKERS COOKIES)

2011-05-15T12:37:00.003-04:00

Hi friends!

Another cookie recipe, but this is one you'll want to keep in your recipe arsenal FOR SURE. The best soft chocolate chip cookies ever - plus, this kind of recipe is great to have on hand because it's super versatile - add nuts, don't add nuts, use M&M's instead of chocolate chips, chuck some dried fruit in there instead - whatever. The base dough itself is a sweet, soft sugar cookie so you can pretty much go nuts with fillings and such.

As with many of my recipes, this one is courtesy of Allrecipes, and I usually halve the batch (the original instructions list for 6 dozen, and 3 dozen is usually plenty for one go). I usually search Allrecipes by the ratings, which is pretty reliable and I've found some good stuff.

OH BY THE WAY YOU GUYS - did you know that you can GRATE butter if you decide to make cookies on a whim and don't have softened butter? And that it ends up looking like a MOUNTAIN OF CHEESE? And mixes in beautifully with other ingredients? Yeah. Stay tuned for THAT.

*~*

Ingredients:

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (your choice) chocolate chips

Okay, ready?

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

*~*

So, these are titled the Packers Cookies because I first made the recipe around the Super Bowl. I picked up some green and yellow M&M's and originally made these as celebration cookies.

This time, my sister's boyfriend was heading home to Wisconsin (HI AARON AND JASON) for his sister's confirmation (HI TIFFANY) and I wanted to send some over for everyone to share. I decided to do this the morning of his afternoon flight, though, so I didn't have enough time to soften butter for the recipe. I was just going to soften it quickly in the microwave, but searched Chowhound and saw that Martha Stewart says you can also grate butter if it's cold and you need to use it right away but don't want to fight to get your ingredients all mixed.

Here's what it looks like:

(Thanks Martha!)

After the butter-grating, sift 2 1/4 cups of flour in with 1 tsp baking powder and set aside (not pictured because I forgot - sorry).

So, after you have your butter in a bowl, go find your GIANT TUB 'O' SUGAR:

And add in 1/4 cup of white sugar:

Then, 3/4 cups of packed brown sugar:

Mix, mix, mix:

So easy! I'm using a pastry cutter/dough blender.

In goes the instant Jello mix - make sure it's instant. It's hard to tell in the store, but "Cook & Serve" is the one you DON'T want. It should say "Instant" in the bottom left corner (which my thumb is so helpfully covering).

Mix, mix again:

It looks very smooth and pretty at this point, and the texture is almost like frosting.

In go two eggs (Farmer's market eggs - ain't they pretty?):

Mix again, then add in the flour, in 3 parts:

At this point it's obviously a little tougher to mix, but it still smooths out nicely to a pretty looking batter.

Add the choco chips - I actually used milk chocolate morsels - 2 cups is pretty perfectly one of these bags:

Mix some more - I think this is a very pretty batter:

Then scoop by tablespoonfuls onto a parchment papered cookie sheet - I like using a very round tablespoon, almost like the kind you use to scoop honeydew and melon - then use a smaller spoon to place it on the baking sheet:

Big happy family:

Then, before putting them in the oven, put some water in another baking sheet (I used a mini-muffin sheet) and put that on the lower rack - then put the cookies in the middle rack.

TIP: This will actually help cookies stay soft, and it doesn't do anything weird like make the cookies soggy or anything - I promise. I recently discovered this trick and will use it forever.

*~*

Bake for ~ 13 minutes - the recipe says 10-12, but I find 13 works perfectly for me.

When they come out, they should look very soft, but slightly browned on the top.

Close-up:

They LOOK soft, don't they? They're also really, really, truly delicious.

I like to let them sit for 3 or 4 minutes before moving them anywhere to cool.

TIP: You can always do this if you're lazy or don't have a proper cooling rack:

Orrr maybe your sister will think that's dumb and put them on a proper cooling rack for you while you're not paying attention:

And that's it!

These cookies will change your life.

Okay. "BYE-LOVE YOU!"

(Glee? Anyone?)

(G) Molly's BEST Peanut Butter Cookies

2011-02-23T20:10:00.002-05:00

Hello again!

G here. Long time no talk! What better way to make a return after this kind of weather -

than a post about peanut butter and chocolate? Actually, those days were really pretty, but I'm just happy that NYC streets are jaywalkable once again.

So, today's cookie post is courtesy of my dear friend Molly. She first made them when we were roommates in Rome, and once I knew the recipe, my life was never the same. You don't really know the meaning of peanut butter and chocolate coming together until you've tasted these.

The recipe? Super simple:

MOLLY'S PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

1 cup peanut butter (Skippy or Jif for sure - I might be speaking from experience when I say that weird things happen if you use other kinds. Like natural peanut butter. Don't do that.)

1 cup sugar (Regular white - I might be speaking from experience again when I advise against using "whatever natural sugar is around to approximate 1 cup because I'm in a hurry sort of" because it's not the same.)

1 egg

1 giant block of milk chocolate that you can smash to bits (to taste) Trader Joe's has good giant one-pound blocks.

350 degrees. 18-20 minutes.

Multiply to your heart's content! I did a double batch here.

*~*

The ingredients - SUPER-SIZED!

I forget what this one's about. I guess I just like Nutella?

...Oh! I think it was to show the size difference, because I was impressed by the size of the peanut butter jar. Yup.

*~*

Okay! Step one: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Next! Get bowl. Pour sugar.

Next, add the peanut butter. (Glomp.)

Mix!

Eggs!

Smooth out:

Pick up:

Put down - rolling them out works nicely because the dough is very soft. And, if you make them small you can make lots at a time because they won't spread out too much. I do feel like mine spread out more than Molly's did in Rome, so I don't know what's up with that. They're still super delicious.

BAKING TIME: Into the oven, for 18-20 minutes.

*~*

Chocolate preparation:

While it's cooking, get your chocolate ready - you'll need small pieces to stick into the middle of the cookies once they're out of the oven:

I wish I could say I went nuts with the hammer and killed the bar, but I actually ended up walking around the kitchen knocking it against things trying to figure out what made the least amount of noise because hammering it was really loud and we have wood floors and I was nervous about being a disturbance to our neighbors. Also, this chocolate bar is really hard to break and the wrapping was starting to tear. It was still fun, though.

It ended up being easier to finish the job with a big knife. Cutting it up this way also created these shards that sunk into the cookies nicely.

*~*

Out of the oven!

They look crowded initially on tray when you have so many, but everybody has space, even when they're all done.

After they've cooled for a little bit ( just so they don't fall apart when you put the chocolate bits in ) - insert the chocolate pieces:

They melt quickly, but they don't dribble all over the place, which is nice. My favorite thing about these cookies is that the chocolate part stays soft - almost like a filling - even when the cookies are fully cooled and have been stored in tupperwear for a couple days.

Nom-nom. Easy-peasy, delicious. Enjoy!

(Thin) Mint Chocolate Cookies (G)

2010-11-22T21:58:00.002-05:00

Hello world!
G again. So, the other day I was wandering around on my lunch hour, looking for a cookie or treat somewhere near work when I saw this teeny bakery, Nana's Treats where I tried a really good mint chocolate chip cookie. It seemed like it was a chocolate cookie with the inside green part of Andes mints chopped up inside - I ate the cookie in three bites and decided I had to try making it for myself!

I decided to use a yummy-seeming chocolate-chocolate chip recipe and substitute the chocolate with Andes mints.

I also found some dark chocolate mint chips at Trader Joe's that I thought I would mix in with the Andes mints.

I didn't like them.

(G) Birthday Time Cupcakes (Magnolia Style)!

2010-11-21T12:09:00.002-05:00

Hello again! G here, with CUPCAKE TIME!
My sister Eugenie's favorite cupcakes are from Magnolia Bakery - as an accompaniment to the blackout birthday cake, I wanted to try making cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery's recipe, via The Food Network. If I had to try and describe Magnolia's (I keep trying to type Magnolica) cupcakes, I would say they are 'melty.' The frosting is very sweet, but since it's heavy on the confectioner's sugar, dissolves pretty quickly. The cake part is dense, but pretty light when you eat it. Does that even make sense? Maybe not. Anyway, I think my attempt to do famous bakery-style cupcakes at home was pretty successful, and came close to duplicating the real thing.
*~*
First! I lined my cupcake (really, a mini-muffin) tin with mini liners.

Then came the batter-making part. The recipe calls for cake flour, which for the life of me I can never find anywhere, so I just make it at home by using 1cup all-purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons plus 2 tablespoons of cornstarch each time a recipe calls for a cup (subbing instructions from Baking Bites). I try to sift the flour when I'm adding or making substitutions because it makes me feel like everything is mixed in a little better.

Pictured above is the flour being sifted, and the butter and sugar being mixed in a little food processor. The bottom left is just the butter and sugar, and the bottom right is after the butter, sugar, and eggs were all mixed up, so it's a bit smoother.
*~*
After the base part of the batter is finished, I mixed in the dry ingredients, alternating with milk, as listed in the recipe.

Mmm, Ronnybrook milk, nom nom nom.

Here are the last steps of the batter creation - mixing in the flour and milk

*~*
The finished batter is creamy and pretty thick - sometimes with cupcake batter, I use a batter dispenser to make sure the portions are pretty even, and also for the sake of easier clean-up, but this recipe really does call for spooning batter into the tins because it's thicker. I used just over a tablespoon for each. You can really see how fluffy the batter is even though it's pretty heavy, which all translates in the texture when it's baked and out of the oven.

Into the oven for 18-20 minutes (time cut down because the tin sizes are smaller)!
*~*
Frosting time! This portion calls for softened butter, so if you've had a stick of butter out for couple hours it should be the perfect texture. You place the butter in the bowl first, then sift confectioner's sugar on top. As long as you're careful not to put the speed too high and kick up sugar clouds everywhere, it's a pretty quick and easy process, alternating the sugar with milk and vanilla.
Parts of the sugar are weird and squiggly looking in the picture below because I was trying to drizzle the milk evenly across so there would be fewer clumps.

*~*
Out of the oven!

Batch 1:

Batch 2:
You can tell this is batch two because there's a lone giant at the top right, where I just spooned the last of the batter in that cup because there was an awkward amount of batter left.

*~*
Finished, frosted, and ready to go!

I'd say these turned out to be pretty close to the original bakery cupcakes, which I was happy about. Also, the best part about making cupcakes at home is being able to control the amount of frosting you use. These are frosted pretty thinly, but the frosting is sweet and flavorful (very vanilla-y) enough that you don't need too much at all.
Hope you enjoyed!
G

(G) CAKESTRAVAGANZA: (Chocolate Blackout Birthday Cake)

2010-10-21T23:03:00.003-04:00

Birthday time!
It was my sister's birthday a few days ago, and I decided I wanted to try making a delicious three-layer chocolate-y chocolate cake using the recipe from The Chocolate Room in Park Slope (via Oprah). We had recently tried a slice of their chocolate cake and really loved it, so I poked around for the recipe and gave it a whirl - it turned out to be a longer and more involved process than I've ever really tried in any of my baking adventures, but it was well worth the effort and time!
*~*
First, came the filling - mainly this part just involved melting cocoa powder, sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, and butter (with some cornstarch to thicken up the mixture) - these pictures show the before-and-after:

The "blackout" part of the cake definitely comes from the filling, and I was happy about how smooth the mixture was, and how easy it was to mix up. Also, it already seemed super chocolate-y and delicious, which is just what I was going for.
*~*
Next, came the frosting - this part was more complicated, and involved some weirdness with eggs, a candy thermometer, cooking-but-not-really-cooking the eggs, straining them into melted chocolate and butter and mixing it all together:

My excuse for the lack of documentation of the egg part is that I was intimidated by the fact that I had to use a candy thermometer (borrowed from my sister's boyfriend - shout out! :D - I also used his microwave, so shout out #2!) which I've never really done, but also the main extent of the directions for this part were to whisk eggs and sugar and bring them to 160 degrees "whisking constantly to prevent sticking, but creating as little foam as possible."

This only made me think, at various stages of stirring: "So are they supposed to be sort of cooking or not? Why is it taking so long to get to 160 degrees? These kind of seem like they're cooking. Is this too much foam? Is it 160 degrees yet?" Also, the straining part looked really ugly, so instead you get pictures of the eggs with the candy thermometer, the frosting pre-eggs, then post-eggs.
*~*
Now, the actual cake!
I actually like the set-up of the recipe, since it make you prepare the filling and the frosting in advance, so they can rest and cool off while you're making the cakes. This way, when the cakes are ready, you already have everything else on hand.

I used 3 farmer's market eggs and 1 regular supermarket egg, and was surprised at how much you could tell the difference between the two. The eggs from the farmer's market are colored much darker and are smaller in size. Some of the pictures don't capture it all that well, but it's interesting to see. The eggs in the picture directly below were just mixed up with vanilla in preparation for putting them in the sugar/butter mixture for the cake.

It looks pretty foamy at that end picture, but I did try not to over-mix the batter.

Mixing in the flour and cocoa:

Into the pan(s) it goes!

Once the cakes were finished, they had to rest for a half-hour in the pans, then cool off on wire racks, at which point they were ready to be leveled and layered!

I probably put a slightly thinner later on the bottom, just because I wanted to be sure I would have enough filling for the top part too.
*~*
Frosting time! You can tell mostly here that the frosting is lighter and less dark chocolate-y tasting than the filling. When I was frosting the cake here, the frosting was perfectly spreadable.

Definitely kind of crooked, but just as delicious on all sides.

Smiley cake!

YUM. It turned out really delicious tasting, and definitely pretty close to the original, I think.
Hope you enjoyed!
<3 G

(G) Strawberries + Chocolate Fondue

2010-10-07T07:56:00.003-04:00

Hello!

So, in our house, we're always looking for munchies after dinner. Sometimes we're stocked up on cookies and ice cream and other quick eats, which makes for easy decision making, but sometimes you want something a little more interesting. My sister, her boyfriend and I settled on strawberries with chocolate fondue - it's easy, but also not really something that's made at home a lot, at least I don't think.

Supplies:

The first step was to heat up some cream in a pot - not much at all really, because I was making a batch pretty much just for the strawberries we had on hand:

Then comes the good part - milk chocolate chips! I guess other kinds will work as well, but the extra creaminess of the milk chocolate I think works really well (ooh, chocolate chips are pretty):

All melted up (or on it's way, at least)! A quick note, the recipe I used (Allrecipes.com, of course) called for coffee and also bars of chocolate instead of chips so you can grate them - it was also scaled to make a giant bucket of fondue which I didn't want, so I scaled it down to just one cup, and used chips instead of grating a bar (who has time for that when you want dessert? I guess some people, but not me at the time).:

The finished product:

Mmm! Just to note, there were some teeny bits of chocolate in the fondue still, and I'm sure grating the chocolate would have eliminated that and made it more silky, but this worked for our purposes!

Close-ups:

Hope you enjoyed!
G

(A) Banana Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Waffles

2010-10-04T13:50:00.002-04:00

I can finally post about something tasty!

My boyfriend and I have been into waffles lately (and by "been into waffles lately," I mean we've made them twice now) and I, of course, have to make them from scratch. This has really been my first foray into waffle-making, though I have made pancakes a few times before.

We halved the recipe, which is good because we were down to one egg in the house (blasphemous! Only my house, right?) Even halved, we still needed two eggs. So in place of the second egg, I just used a banana (this is acceptable a great deal of the time, depending on what you're making, of course). This was a wonderful idea, because you could sort of taste the banana (which I hadn't intended originally). Well, it's a wonderful idea if you like banana.

Make a dent in the dry ingredients and pour wet ingredients into it. This ensures a more even incorporation and helps prevent over-mixing.

I also had to add cinnamon to the waffles because... why not? I love cinnamon. Boyfriend had the idea of chocolate chips, and I NEVER turn down chocolate chips, so I was happy to add those in as well.

Stir wet and dry ingredients gently. Do not over-mix!! First rule of waffles and pancakes (and biscuits and muffins and other things like that).

Here's the waffle recipe I used. Except I didn't do the whole "separating the eggs and beating the egg whites" thing (which is just to make it fluffier. Maybe sometime I'll do it, but only if I'm feeling particularly ambitious). I also think when I made the entire recipe I reduced the eggs to three instead of four. It doesn't call for cinnamon or banana, obviously, so just add the cinnamon with your dry ingredients. If you want banana, exchange it for an egg. For a more banana-y flavor (because it was very faint) I'd use two bananas instead of one, though I wouldn't exchange ALL the eggs for bananas. Also, the recipe doesn't call for vanilla. I added vanilla. Why wouldn't you add vanilla?

Turned out to be a pretty good dinner!

My family has ALWAYS used 100% pure maple syrup. A-MA-ZING. If you eat these with anything but that, don't tell me. I don't want to know. :P

(Except the waffle iron broke after the second one came out. Of course, I didn't know this until I had already put all the batter in for the third waffle and closed it. I wonder if mom cleaned that out?)

(A) Peanut Butter... Something?

2010-09-29T11:34:00.001-04:00

So, there's this peanut butter stuff in my fridge right now. I'm not quite sure what to call it. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I mean, I'm going to eat it, of course! But... how?

It all started while I was browsing through allrecipes.com (my source and inspiration for pretty much everything) and came across "Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting." For some reason that sounded really good to me, so I decided to attempt it. Of course, frosting needs something to go on, right? The recipe suggested spreading it on brownies, so I thought I'd give that a shot.

It was... interesting. I decided to halve the recipe, since I only wanted to try it. After a summer of making buttercream frosting, I thought that this would be easy. The instructions were super simple, and there were barely any ingredients (like most frosting). Perhaps I was a bit cocky.

When I first got the consistency I wanted (light and super fluffy), I decided it was too peanut-buttery. I wanted it to taste like peanut butter frosting, not peanut butter. So I added some more powdered sugar. Now it was too solid, so I added more milk. Then it became this sort of cookie dough consistency. That wasn't right. I added more peanut butter. Now it was WAY too liquid-y. I added more sugar. This went around and around for a while. I was feeling frustrated and sad because I couldn't get it right and now I'd wasted all those ingredients.

But bang! Somehow I finally (and accidentally, I'm sure) ended up with something resembling an icing consistency. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I could pipe it onto the brownies!

I wanted to practicing my piping, since I am an extreme beginner. I only had small tips, so I had to venture out to get a bigger one (I wanted it to look like the frosting on cupcakes. That requires a bigger tip). Well, I got one. I won't bore you with the details (except I think I've already done that) but it ended up that we didn't have the correct plastic thingies to keep the tip on the icing bag. I ended up doing something weird involving a hair tie and me just holding the tip to the end of the bag...

So, in other words, it was going great! I managed, incredibly, to squeeze some of this frosting-like stuff onto some of the brownies. The end result? Eh. It was okay. That's about it. Don't think I'll be attempting peanut butter frosting again any time soon.

Oh but anyway, I had way too much icing and now it's sitting in a plastic baggy in my fridge in a big semi-hard lump. It kind of tastes like peanut butter fudge...


It was SUPER fluffy from all that beating

(G) Black-Bottom Cupcakes

2010-09-24T20:26:00.003-04:00

DEAR READERS!

G here :)

Well, shoot. It's the very first post, and my lovely baking partner comes right out the gate with my FAVORITE baked good - my weakness - DONUTS. Mmm, really there's nothing like a good glazed donut (hole) - for breakfast, for dessert, for a snack, anytime!

For my inaugural post, I'm also going to be showing something of the chocolate variety: black-bottom cupcakes. The recipe comes from Allrecipes, which is where I find the inspiration for most of my baking/cooking adventures (Oh heck, fine - mostly baking). I wanted to find something that didn't need to be frosted, and was thinking of doing this cookie dough cupcake thing when I came across this recipe.

Here is the batter and the filling:

At first, the batter seemed a bit thin and I kept second-guessing myself because I though I didn't put enough flour in, but it should be a little runny. The topping I mainly made in the food processor, and I made sure to get mini chocolate chips too - very cute, and matched well with the mini size of the cupcakes.

Putting the batter in the cups was pretty easy because the batter was a little runny - just about 1/3 of each cup is batter, then a little over a teaspoon of the batter right on top. I think all the black and white makes the cupcakes look like they're dressed up and ready to go somewhere nice.

All finished! They don't rise too much above the baking cups, and are really great a couple of days later, too.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures - stay tuned, there's more to come from us both!
G

(A) Chocolate Glazed Non-Doughnut Holes

2010-09-19T18:02:00.001-04:00

Hello! I am the Annie half of Annie & Gee. I thought for my first post I'd write about my most recent baking adventure. Then I realized that my most recent baking adventure had been a bit of a let-down. But, I suppose, it at least gives me something to talk about (I promise, I DO make tasty things! But every baker knows that not everything always turns out perfectly). So, without further ado, I present to you my attempt at chocolate glazed doughnut holes.

Everybody has their preferred doughnut, and these are mine. I really don't eat doughnuts too often, but if someone offers me some, and chocolate glazed is available, then I sure as heck will take it! (Well, and you gotta have some cinnamon sugar ones with apple cider in the fall). And if they're doughnut holes ("Tim-Bits," I believe, to you Canadians) then even better. So when I happened across a recipe for them, I considered trying it. I really don't know why, since I am afraid of frying things. I don't know how to do it, and I've never really desired to learn. My boredom and ~~obsession~~ love for chocolate, however, got the better of me.

I really should have tried frying them. My nervousness won and I ended up just baking them. I don't even know if they count as doughnuts, to be honest, since they're not fried. When you bite into them, you can sort of tell they're supposed to be doughnuts from the consistency. They're chocolaty (which truthfully is good enough for me) but there's nothing special about them. They're a tiny bit dry. Maybe we should try dunking them in milk or something...

I, of course, added almond extract to the glaze.

The recipe is here from a blog called Smitten Kitchen (how cute!). It's a nice blog, I intend on poking around it a bit more.

-Annie

*~*Annie & Gee*~*