1-2-3-4 Pound Cake

My work as a pet sitter has some great perks.  Being my own boss and being around the cutest, most adorable pets in the entire universe.  Yes, those are great perks.  But every once in awhile, I get a job that has a few more perks than most. One of those I had not too long ago.  I have a pet sitting job on a farm, complete with large garden, cute dog, and chickens.  Lots of chickens.  In fact, this was my haul when I was there over the summer:

So what do you do when you have WAY more eggs than you know what to do with?  You make a nice, big pound cake.  Nothing says "southern" like a good ol' fashioned pound cake.  I have a very special bundt pan that I use for my large pound cakes.  This thing is older than I am and it's almost as old as my father.  I mean, just LOOK at the color and style of the box!

It belonged to my great-grandmother and I inherited it from her after she passed away many, many years ago.  My grandmother held it for me so that when I moved into my own home, I would have my very first bundt pan to use.  It is perfection itself.  Although Nordic Ware has come out with many different kinds of bundt pans over the years (roses, anyone?), nothing beats the original style that is still so easily recognizable today.  It has been well-loved over the years and I am looking forward to using it for the rest of my days.  (Because it outlasted my great-grandmother and will probably outlast me!)

1-2-3-4 Pound Cake
recipe from The Blue Willow Inn Cookbook

1 c. Unsalted Butter, softened (2 sticks)
2 c. Sugar
4 Eggs
3 c. All Purpose Flour
1 Tbsp. Baking Powder
1/4 tsp. Salt
1 c. Milk
1 tsp. Vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350.
Spray your bundt pan with cooking spray with flour or coat the sides well with butter.
Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy.
One at a time, add in the egg, beating well after each addition.
In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together until well combined.
Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture alternately with the milk, ending with the flour, mixing until combined.
Mix in your vanilla.
Pour into your prepared bundt pan.
Bake for ONE HOUR or until the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan (a cake tester will come out clean).
Allow to cool on a rack for fifteen minutes.
Hold your breath and pray as you flip cake out of the pan to cool on the rack completely.

Gooey Butter Cookies

One of my biggest things lately is limiting preservatives and trying to make as much as possible from scratch.  Which usually always works out well unless I have a migraine and develop a sudden need for chocolate.  In that case, making it into the kitchen just doesn't happen.  Or when I'm really busy and I promised my husband that I'd make him muffins and.... yeah, sometimes it doesn't always work.  And then there are times like these.  Where using a simple, basic cake mix will make my life a million times easier and produce a cookie that is almost too good to be true.  And this cookie is.

My pumpkin gooey butter cake is a staple at my Thanksgiving table.  I've been told that if I show up without it, I will be turned away at the door.  But I don't like too many pumpkin things.  I know that it can be made without the pumpkin but the cake itself is so rich and decadent that Ryan and I couldn't possibly make just one for us.  Then I came across this recipe for a COOKIE version of this cake.  It was like the angels sang and the heavens opened... or that could've just been the clouds moving out of the way.  We're going to pretend that it was a mystical experience and that the entire universe wanted me to make these cookies.  So I did.  And they are some of the quickest and easiest cookies in the world to make - certainly pretty enough to be served to guests or when you sneak in a midnight glass of milk and a cookie.

Note:  This recipe calls for UNSALTED butter.  I have made this recipe twice, once with salted and once with unsalted butter.  And it does make a difference. When you make this with the salted butter, all you taste is salt.  When I made it with the unsalted butter, all you tasted was sweet perfection.

Gooey Butter Cookies
modified from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

1 box Vanilla Cake Mix
1 - 8 oz. block Cream Cheese, room temp
1/2 c. Butter, UNSALTED, softened
1 Egg
Powdered Sugar

In a stand mixer, combine your butter and cream cheese.
Add in your egg and mix together.
Slowly add in you cake mix and mix thoroughly.  (Your batter will be THICK.)
Place in the fridge for around 30 minutes, just to firm up the batter.
Preheat oven to 350.
Put some powdered sugar in a bowl.
Using a tablespoon, scoop out some batter and roll it into a circle and then roll it in your powdered sugar.
Place on a cookie sheet, around an inch apart.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until the cookies are set (they're going to seem underdone and that's okay).
Cool on a wire rack.
Eat and enjoy!!

Strawberry Muffins

You may have noticed on here that I love strawberries.  (From this post perhaps?) They are one of my favorite things about summer.  Whenever I get strawberries from the farmer's market, I have to fight from eating them on the way home.  I mean, who can resist that yummy, sweet strawberry-y goodness?  You want to talk about cruel and unusual punishment?  Tie me up and put a strawberry just out of my reach.  I'll crack in a second just to get at it.

Now, these muffins are topped with a special item - Spiced Vanilla Bean Sugar. I'm very lucky to have a phenomenal spice story really close to me called Savory Spice Shop.  They make their own spice blends to sell and always carry fresh spices. You can get as little as half an ounce if you don't need a lot which is wonderful if you just need a spice for one recipe.  Did I mention they'll let you taste their spices in the store?  I tried this spice blend in their store and just KNEW it would be amazing on these muffins!  It is a combination of sugar, vanilla bean, vanilla extract, cinnamon, allspice, mace, and cardamom.  Doesn't that just SOUND delicious??  Even if you don't have a Savory Spice Shop near you, you can order it online!  Isn't the internet great?  (Online ordering)  For this recipe, I've made the topping Sugar in the Raw since that's available at any grocery store.

Let me tell you a story.  Many of you know that I have a dog.  She's a beautiful eleven year old black Lab mix named Liz.  I tell everyone that my husband fell in love with her long before he fell in love with me.  And she owned my heart when she was only two weeks old.  So, one morning after I had made these muffins, Ryan had gotten two to have as his breakfast.  He got the muffins, set them on our coffee table, and stepped out of the room for a few minutes.  When he returned, the muffins were gone.  There wasn't even a crumb left on the table.  Liz was laying quietly on the couch, acting like nothing was amiss.  Ryan looked around for the muffins, thinking he'd left them in the kitchen or put them in another room.  No.  Liz ate them.  Both of them.  Muffin wrapper and all.  I wasn't sure who to be mad at - him for leaving them within her reach or her for eating them in the first place!  I will say that my years of training her to "clean up her mess" paid off.  She certainly left no trace of them!

Strawberry Muffins
modified from Best Recipes from American Country Inns and Bed and Breakfasts

2 c. All Purpose Flour
1/2 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Brown Sugar
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 Egg
1 c. Milk
1/3 c. Canola Oil
1 c. Fresh Strawberries, chopped
3 Packets of Sugar in the Raw

Preheat oven to 375.
Line a muffin tin with liners; spray with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt.
In another bowl, beat together the egg, milk, and oil.
Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir until moistened, making sure not to overmix!
Fold in your strawberries.
Pour the batter in your muffin tin, dividing the batter equally amongst the muffin cups.
Sprinkle the muffins with the Sugar in the Raw.
Bake for 28 minutes or until the tops become slightly golden and a cake tester comes out clean.
Allow to cool for a few minutes on a rack before removing them from the pan to finish cooling.  (You can also tilt the muffins to let them finish cooling.  See this post.)

NOTE:  Muffins made with fresh fruit like this only last for two or three days.  Please don't feed the leftover to the dog, either.

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap - Black and White Biscotti

This was my entry into The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap!

In order to participate, the blogger has to use a recipe they haven't posted on their blog before.  They could've made it a hundred times but as long as it wasn't on the blog, it was fair game.  Yeah, I have some cookies that I haven't posted yet but I wanted to do something new and different.  A brand new recipe!  Yay!  I do cookies all the time but I rarely make biscotti, which technically fall under the umbrella term of "cookie".  I've only made them a couple of times before and they have always turned out great.  And they are especially good cookies to ship, which I had to do with three people.  Biscotti in Italian literally means "twice baked".  Twice baking the biscotti dries it out which makes it a great cookie to dip into your morning coffee (or in my case, mug after mug of milk).  I'll be posting pictures of the cookies I received along with links to their blogs in a future post.

So why black and white?  Well, like I said.  I wanted to do something a little different.  Making cookies is pretty simple and I wanted to do something not-so-simple yet memorable.  I had thougth and thought about what to make.  Do I simply alter an existing recipe which I know works or do I think out of the box?  When I came across this recipe on the KAF website, I knew that was the recipe.   The world was suddenly right.  Birds chirped on my fingertips while deer and rabbits hopped around me.  Okay, well, maybe not quite that dramatic ;)  But I knew that this was the recipe I was meant to post.  Yes, that recipe was created just for me (completely disregard the fact that this recipe was developed back in 2009 and lots of other people have made it). 

I hope that the folks who received these cookies all enjoyed them.  And if any of you out there decide to take on this recipe, I hope you enjoy them too :) 

(My family and friends know I am a huge Seinfeld fan, so every time I mentioned these cookies, my husband and best friend would say, "Look to the cookie.")

 
Black and White Biscotti
adapted slightly from King Arthur Flour

6 Tbsp. Butter, salted
2/3 c. Sugar
1 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
2 tsp. Vanilla
2 Eggs
2 c. All-Purpose Flour
2 Tbsp. Cocoa Powder
1/4 c. Mini Chocolate Chips
1 Packet of Sugar in the Raw (or 1 Tbsp.)

1.  Preheat oven to 350.
2.  Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper.
3.  In a large bowl, combine the butter, sugar, baking powder, and vanilla.
4.  Add in the eggs (it may look a little funky - that's okay.).
5.  Stir in the flour and mix well.  The dough will be sticky.
6.  Divide the dough in half, placing one half on the cookie sheet and leaving the other in the bowl.
7.  Now for the the first fun part - you need to spread the dough into a log of about 14" x 2 1/2".  You'll need to wet your fingers with cold water in order to help this process otherwise you'll end up with sticky fingers (which is all well and good if you're five-years-old.)
8.  Put the pan into the freezer.
9.  In the remaining dough, mix in the cocoa powder.
10. Fold in the mini chocolate chips.
11. Remove the vanilla dough from the freezer and repeat Step 7 (the second fun part!).
12. Gently press the Sugar in the Raw onto the biscotti dough.
13. Bake for 25 minutes.
14. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 to 25 minutes.  (Or however long - it doesn't really matter.)
15. Using a serrated knife, slice the biscotti to about 3/4" thick.
16. Stand the biscotti on the pan and bake for another 30 to 40 minutes.  They'll feel a little soft in the center but will continue to dry out as they cool.
17. Enjoy!

Sour Cream Pound Cake

Today was National Pound Cake Day!  Didn't know?  Me neither.  Til I went to MSN and they had a whole article about pound cake and recipes for them.  Today's random bit of knowledge for you - pound cake is named as such because it used to have a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, and a pound of flour in the recipe.  And did I mention a pound of eggs, too?  Certainly made it easy to remember the ingredients, that's for sure!  Good for the waistline (or the heart, for that matter)?  Oh no.  But we've come a long way baby!  You can find numerous pound cake recipes all over the place for any taste palate or diet restrictions (honestly, five years ago, could you have made a gluten free pound cake?).

I've loved pound cake since I was a child.  My mother has a recipe (which I'm currently searching for) of my grandmother's pound cake.  My dad and I used to fight over who would eat the top of the pound cake!  Sound strange?  You've never had that pound cake.  The top has this wonderful crunch to it that I've never found in another pound cake.  Once mom finds and gets that recipe to me, I'll have to make it and post it here because everyone must try that pound cake.  And if a fight breaks out, I wanna know that too ;)  Anyhoo, since I did not have my favorite pound cake recipe on hand, I decided I would need to make a new one!  I could not let this "holiday" pass me by without making a pound cake.  So I went to my plethora of cookbooks (one day, I'll post pictures of my bookshelf so you can see all my cookbooks) and found a pound cake that seemed simple enough and one I had all the ingredients for.  So all the way from Savannah, Paula Deen's Grandmother Paul's Sour Cream Pound Cake!

Grandmother Paul's Sour Cream Pound Cake
(from The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook)

1 stick of Butter
1 1/2 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Sour Cream (Daisy Light)
1 1/2 c. All-Purpose Flour (King Arthur Flour)
1/4 tsp. Baking Soda
1 Egg
1/2 c. Egg Beater (I used this because of the calorie count of eggs.  No Egg Beaters?  Substitute 2 large eggs.)
1/2 tsp. Vanilla (Nielson-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste)
Cooking Spray with Flour (I use Pillsbury Baking Joy with Flour)

Preheat oven to 325.
Using a mixer, cream together butter and sugar.
Add sour cream.
In a different bowl, sift flour and baking soda togehter.
Add mixture to creamed mixture, alternating with eggs, beating well after each.  (This is important to ensure you have a light cake.)
Add vanilla.
Pour into a 9x5 pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Calories - 283 for 1 serving (serves 10)

Side Note:  Want a different dessert?  Slice pound cake and throw onto a heated grill pan.  You'll get these nice looking grill marks and serve with vanilla ice cream and a yummy ice cream topping (strawberry is yummy!).

Peach Cobbler and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Has all this weird, warm weather got you wishing for summer?  Or at least, the desserts of summer?  Me too.  I decided that the best/quickest/easiest way to satisfy my cravings for summer-y desserts was to make my quick and easy Paula Deen peach cobbler.  I saw her make this on Food Network awhile back and all I thought was, "I can do that!"  It used frozen peaches and I already had some on hand at the time so I figured, "Why not?"  The original recipe was for a 3 quart baking dish (she used a 9x13 pan on the show) and I knew I didn't want that much so I halved the recipe and made it in an 8x8 pan.  The first time I made it, it had too much butter!  The outside of the cobbler was just saturated with butter so the next time I made it, I used half of the butter and it was juuuust right.  I added some pumpkin pie spice to my cobbler for that little extra spice.  Now, what goes with peach cobbler (or cobbler of any kind)?  Vanilla ice cream!  So I pulled out the ice cream maker I received as a wedding gift from my co-workers and whipped up a batch of my easy ice cream.  My vanilla ice cream is one of the best ways to show off my vanilla bean paste because you can see all the pretty vanilla bean flecks all throughout the ice cream!  Ryan says this is his number two favorite vanilla ice cream.  His #1 favorite?  Blue Bell - it's a TX ice cream.  I may be married to him but sometimes, a wife just can't beat out a childhood favorite.... but that won't keep me from trying ;)  (Okay, I admit... Blue Bell is really, really good.)

Peach Cobbler
(from Paula's Home Cooking tv show)

3/4 c. Self-Rising Flour (Market Pantry)
1/4 stick (or 2 Tbsp.) of Butter
1/4 c. Water
1 c. Sugar, divided
2 c. Peaches (fresh or frozen - if you're using frozen, do not thaw first!)
3/4 c. Milk (I use Skim)
3/4 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Seasoning

Preheat oven to 350.
Combine peaches, 1/2 c. sugar, and water in a saucepan, mix well.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes (the mixture will not be thick).
Remove from heat.
Put the butter into your 8x8 pan and place in the oven to melt.
Mix remaining 1/2 c. sugar, flour, milk, and pumpkin pie spice with a whisk until smooth.
Pour mixture over melted butter.  DO NOT STIR!
Spoon peaches on top of the batter and pour in the syrup.  (Batter will rise to the top during baking.)
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes (30 is perfect for me).
Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Calories - 240 per serving (and that's serving 4!)

Vanilla Ice Cream
from Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

2 c. Milk (I use Skim)
3/4 c. Sugar
1/2 Tbsp. Vanilla Bean Paste
1 c. Whipping Cream

In a bowl, combine milk, sugar, and vanilla bean paste and stir until sugar is dissolved.
Add whipping cream, stir.
Pour into ice cream maker and freeze ice cream according to manufacturer's instructions.

Calories - 190 (for 1/2 c.)

How yummy does that look??