Boo! I'm a cookie.

Welcome to October. The month of spooky and scary things. Why should things that are sweet and sugar filled be any different?

 

I cannot take credit for this fabulous and funny (wow, there are so many adjectives in this post already) cookie. Let me be the first, if not second to introduce you to Pinterest. Pinterest is like Facebook with fun photos of DIY projects, food, drinks, quotes, clothes, dream kitchens, and anything you can think of! And it is pretty much boy free, which is kind of fun. I am obsessed and have logged a zillion hours on the site so far and I encourage you to do the same. Here is one of the easy (yet BRILLIANT) home projects I did that I found on Pinterest. Common sense but, man! That is sweet. I got the hooks/pull tabs from Target and hung 2 - 3 cups/spoons on each. Perfect and saves so much room. Love it.

 

 

Onto the haunting goodness. This recipe is crazy easy because well I gave myself a break. No homemade dough, icing or marshmallows. If you've got that kind of time on your hands, I tip my hat to you and will be calling you later to help me do laundry, sweep, mop, dust, redecorate my living room (which I'm at a loss - really if anyone has time and a good eye I could use some help), make the bed, organize my cabinets...you get the point.

 

 

Things you'll need to have to make the goodness -

• Sugar Cookie mix (Betty Crocker, eat your heart out)
• Vanilla Icing
• Marshmallows
• An egg
• 1/3 cup of butter
• Black icing
• For rolling purposes

 

So make the sugar cookie mix and roll the dough out on a floured surface - about 1/4 of an inch thick. You don't need a perfect circle (you'll see why in a minute...hold your horses) but I like a nice juice glass to make circles for these cookies.

 

 

Preheat the oven to 375.

 

Okay, so no one's perfect, right? And since this is such a soul bearing blog I thought I'd throw these out there. Ashamed? No. Annoyed? Yes. Tried to eat them anyway? Hell, yeah. Ew.

A few reasons I think this happened -

1.  I rushed. I tried having to pans of cookies in the oven at once and maaaaay have left the cookies on the bottom rack on a bit to long. Patience is a big part of baking I'm finding out.
2. I sprayed the aluminum foil with cooking spray that is 'Butter' based...that can't be helpful, right?
3. Listen to the timer. It beeped and I was rolling out dough for the next round. "Eh, a bit more time never hurts," continues to roll dough like a fool. A FOOL!

Moving on! So once the cookies (non-burnt and delicious) are cooled spoon some icing into a dish and microwave it for about 8 seconds. Using the back of a spoon spread the icing on the cookie and again I like that this wasn't smooth and in a shape. Have you ever seen a ghost who is a perfect circle...bet not. Also, taken the marshmallows and pinch them in half. Before you stick the marshmallow on paint the face on with a toothpick. It is was easier than trying to paint a face on something with a body.

 

 

Oh. My. Gosh. How stinkin' cute is that?! Oh. I mean terrifying. Very scary....and adorable! I got board with ghosts after awhile and tried my hand at cobwebs. The cobwebs on the right were first attempts, cookies on the left are better. The trick was to do the circles first and then the lines from the middle sweeping out. Fun. Fun. Fun.

 

 

I have a few other Halloween inspired desserts in the calendar. Also, I get to visit some of my lovely friends new babies this week and next and you know I'm not going empty handed - I have to win love some way and it might as well be with sugar, flour and butter. A lot more to come.

 

Yum...er Boo!,

Laura

Beer. It is not just for breakfast anymore.

Greetings all! Busy, busy summer days since the last post but I'm sure this will make up for it. Beer. That's it. That was the post. Beer.

I kid. I kid. But this does involve baking with brewskies.

As all, if not 99 percent, of you know, I co-own a bar with Ryan and another Ryan. We have a wide variety of beer styles so finding the perfect brews to make Stout Cupcakes and Lambic frosting was not a challenge.

On Saturday, we took the staff of Global Brew to the Cardinals v. Cubs game to thank them for all the great work they've done over the last six-months. My how time flies. The Ryan's handled the loud mouth soup in a keg and I was inspired to cook with it.

Here is the stout cupcake and cream cheese icing recipe I found on FoodNetwork.com.

Stout Cupcakes:

• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (I used Hershey's because it just seemed American)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 bottle of stout beer - which is about 2 - 2 1/2 cups (I used Young's Double Chocolate Stout on tap)
• 1 stick of butter melted (the melted part is actually important...you'll see why)
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup sour cream

Alright. So now that you have your giggle water and all your other randomness...let's make some magic. In a large bowl mix cocoa, sugar, flour, baking soda and salt.

Here's how it looked and I need to add in, just really quick, how much I love and am an advocate for sifting your dry ingredients. I don't know about you but I don't make my own flour or sugar - and packages, although lovely in the store on the shelf, you don't know what could be stuck (or living - I'm just sayin') in that powdery goodness peeps.



Gross. For now.

  

Now I'd recommend preheating your oven - 350 to be exact.

In a second bowl mix your stout of choice (I would avoid oyster stouts, just sayin'), melted butter and sour cream. Here's how mine looked. Gross, right? Because I am impatient and didn't melt the butter all the way.

Once you've moved past how nasty the photo to the right looks I'll continue.

Are we past it yet? Cool.

Now mix the sifted dry ingredients with the unfortunate looking stout mix. You'll find this is muuuuuuch better.

I chose not to use paper cups and just sprayed the hell out of the pans and poured the batter straight in. Rebal. I know. Now filling cup cake pans is an skill. I used a cup sized measuring cup to fill each. The cup size worked well and ended up yielding 24ish cup cakes by the end of the process. They didn't overflow and they weren't dinky. Good size for your snacking delight.



Before



After

Bake for 10 mins, rotate the pan and bake for another 10-12 mins. I find the 'stick a tooth pick in the center to see if they are done' technique is effective.







I don't have an exact science in getting the cup cakes out of the pan. I do know that letting them cool for awhile helps...otherwise you'll have half out/half in cupcakes. I've tried a smooth twisting method...that works sometimes. Flipping the pan over really fast and the tapping (hitting really hard) helps too. That's all I've got for that...from there, you're on your own peeps.

While those are baking (and you will wish everyone you know could smell how great your kitchen smells), it is icing time. I need to note before you get waist deep in these icing recipes they make a lot of sugary delight - like way more than you'll need for 24 cup cakes...more like for 60 - 80. So unless you're having a party (which I better be invited to), you could probably half either or both of these.

Cream Cheese Icing:

• 1 (8-oz) package cream cheese (I used reduce fat to watch my girlish figure)
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1-pound of confectioners' sugar (I Googled it - this is powdered sugar and 1-pound is around 4 cups)

Use a mixer and beat cream cheese and heavy cream. Then slowly add powdered sugar. Done. YAY!

Stick this lovely, sugary mix in the fridge for awhile. It will make it easier to pipe or spread on the cup cakes later.

I also made another variety of icing using a raspberry lambic brewskie. I altered and used this recipe from Examiner.com.

Here are the ingredients I used:

• 1/4 lb softened butter (don't freak, that's just one stick of butter)
• 3 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup fruit infused cerveza of choice - I used a very sweet, lady-beer called Lindmans Framboise, a raspberry lambic

Cream butter with half of the powdered sugar. Add cocoa, salt and some of the brew-ha-ha. Beat until smooth and then continue adding powdered sugar and enough lovely brew until is spreads consistently.

Now that I started this blog I decided to take a quick field trip to a wonderful place in Edwardsville called the Chef's Shoppe. I love this store for many reasons but one of them includes an entire wall of different cookie cutters. I have a feeling you're not grasping what I'm saying. An entire wall of cookie cutters. Can you imagine? Well you could if you go there. It is in the same shopping center as Target.

Moving beyond the Great Wall of Cookie Cutters are other baking, cooking, chef-ing items that are great. I purchased a piping bag with six tips. You know, to make roses, vines, stars, a hippo, light bulbs, a 1989 Pontiac Firebird and you know items like that made of frosting **rolls eyes**. I used one tip for icing my liquid courage cupcakes and failed miserably. Eh, another day, another post.

I also had some left over chocolate discs from another culinary adventure so I decided to melt them in a small crock pot (we'll get into this some other day too), filled the piping bag, and made fun shapes, squiggles and/or designs on a cookie sheet with wax paper. I stuck the pan in the fridge for a bit and came back with hard chocolate in squiggles. Fancy looking but idiot proof. YAY!

Here is how the cup cakes turned out -

 (Cream Cheese on the left, Lindemans Framboise on the right)



I believe the cup cakes were enjoyed by all of the folks at Global Brew and it was fun to bake with something other than milk, oil or water.

And just in case you're wondering there are eight different nicknames for beer mentioned in this post. Here are a few more: redneck wine, 12 oz. curl, chugger’s delight, liquid wrecking ball, hops scotch, un-water, cold one, libation, oat soda, barley pop, puke fuel, boredom-be-gone, real man’s Zima, Homer Juice, keg guts, pre-pee, rocketsauce, varsity Shirley Temple, time travel in a bottle, suds, soldier, Gutterade, barley legal, bitter batter, liquid bread, silly seltzer, brew dog, giggle water, pre-spiked punch, bubbly muscles, hard O’Douls, social lubricant, secret ingredient X, tummy buster, brain hammer, elbow benders

Yum,

Laura