Monkey Bread

I was introduced to this culinary confection by my coworker Zack a few months ago. It's basically the Pillsbury biscuit dough you find in the refrigerated section at the store baked into a big bundt cake form with some sugar and cinnamon. And you pull it apart to eat it. Sound trashy, no? But no matter, it's very good and simple to make. The origins of this cake are unclear, some say it's a Texas invention, others point to LA where the recipe first appeared in the LA Times in 1946. And the recipe on the Pillsbury website calls for using the Buttermilk dough and adding in nuts and raisins and anybody who knows me how I feel about these things in baked goods (no, thank you). Zack and his mother cautioned against using this, they warned that these would not be tasty and I trust them.

I baked one earlier this week with Christine over with a variation. Instead of all white sugar that Zack's mamma's recipe calls for, I mixed in some brown sugar. And I'm currently got one in the oven for a birthday in the office tomorrow and I think I've got it down. Also, very important, TAKE NOTE! Just like how there are all kinds of boys out there, there are all kinds of Pillsbury biscuit dough. I was careful to not get the Buttermilk kind. But then when I pop opened all three tubes of it, I noticed that the dough for two of them were yellowy-orange in color and the other was white. Of course, I freaked out and grabbed the wrapping from the rubbish and carefully inspected them to find that the orangey ones were thankfully not Buttermilk but the regular kind but in the "Butter Tastin'" variety, whereas the white colored one was the "Original". I just went over to the product website and yes, indeed, there are many kinds of these biscuits. There's "Grands!" and there's "Flaky Layers" and then each kind have different flavors. So inspect those tubes carefully, never get anything that says Buttermilk, and try to get the same kind so it's consistent. It's confusing, I say!

Ingredients:

• 3 cans/tubes of refrigerated biscuit dough (just don’t get Buttermilk)
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar (not packed)
  
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
• 1 stick of butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Open packages of dough and cut each biscuit into quarters. Mix sugar and cinnamon together. Roll the dough pieces in the mixture. Set aside the leftover sugar and cinnamon mixture. Grease bundt pan. Place dough pieces inside pan to fill. Melt butter and mix with leftover sugar and cinnamon mixture. Drizzle over dough. Bake for 30 minutes. Recommended: This cake will poof out so put a baking tray directly underneath the bundt cake pan or on the rack under it to catch anything that falls over and out. Remove from oven and cool for a few minutes. Remove cake from pan.

Red Velvet

I haven't been baking for very long. Maybe a couple of years and my signature item is Red Velvet Cupcakes. The Paula Deen recipe from the Food Network is the only recipe I've known and loved and perfected, or so I thought. I carted my dogs over to my dear friend and partner in crime, Christine's, and we baked our very first red velvet in her kitchen one weekend afternoon. I thought it was an impossible feat (How do you get it so red? What exactly is that taste?) and actually had it on a list of goals for the year (I know, such paltry goals I have). It was a success and every time I made it, it seemed to get better. It was even the exact same recipe found on the Philosophy Red Velvet Cake shampoo/shower gel sitting in my bathroom. I found that you had to use the fakey red food coloring from the supermarket (none of that natural dye from Whole Foods) to get it just right. I also made it a point try to out red velvet in any form whenever I visited different bakeries in Los Angeles and while traveling. In my opinion, the best red velvet cupcake you can buy is from Auntie Em's. I don't care what Oprah said, the one from Doughboys is just obscenely moist. Sprinkles is pretty decent. Crumbs, no. Cake Man Raven from Brooklyn was almost perfect.

Doughboys' too moist red velvet

Auntie Em's

Victor's perfect Red Velvet Cake

Until I was at a birthday party not very long ago and Victor brought this gorgeous red velvet birthday cake topped with raspberries. It was by far the most amazing red velvet cake I've ever tasted. I demanded to know his secrets and he sent me the recipe from Epicurious on his magic phone. I made the Epicurious recipe, version 2.0, when I was visiting friends in Denver over New Years. It uses a quarter of the red food dye stuff but the cake turns out deliciously red as a red velvet cake should be. It calls for basically the same ingredients as v 1.0 but the method is slightly different. Red Velvet 2.0 was fabulous and even better. And the icing was a bit too cream-cheesy since it's intended for a cake so I added a little more powdered sugar than it called for and it was very good.

My friend Erin recently e-mailed me yet another recipe from Amy Butler, which I will call 3.0 This calls for butter and margarine! This one is yet to be baked but when I do, there will surely be an evaluation of it.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookie

Last week, my deskmate and colleague Zack and I were faced with the need for some freshly baked cookies when we reached our afternoon slump. We settled for microwaving a paltry bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies we found in the vending machines for $.65 accompanied by a half pint of milk. Needless to say, they were not very good. So tonight (as I typed out my very first post), I baked some chocolate peanut butter chip cookies. I actually don’t have very much cookie making experience and wasn’t sure where to start. So I took the recipe straight from the back of the sack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips. I only adjusted the time a bit because they weren’t quite baked all the way through. They smelled fantastic and turned out very delicious, chewy, and really lovely with a glass of soy milk. The recipe certainly does not need improvement.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• 1-1/4 cups (2-1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
  
• 2 cups sugar
  
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 1-2/3 cups (10-oz. pkg.) Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips
  

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; set aside.

2. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with mixer until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Gradually add flour mixture, beating well. Stir in peanut butter chips. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet (I put these on parchment paper and they turned out fine).

3. Bake 10-12 minutes. (I found that after the 8-9 minutes as per the directions, the cookies were definitely not done all the way through. Do not overbake; cookies will be soft. They will puff while baking and flatten while cooling.) Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Inauguration

Hi. This is my new online outlet (or blog, as they are commonly called - but I just hate that word) for recipes, reviews, ideas, crafts, things that strike my fancy, and all sorts of general tidbits of wonderfulness. This all sounds very vague, I know, but I’m usually pretty vague, not because I’m some mysterious unicorn, but because I’m just not quite sure (plus, I’d rather not make any promises I can’t keep) and I’m sure this will evolve as we go along. But I have a pretty good idea of what I’ll be posting, so don’t worry, I’ll try to be useful and somewhat interesting. I created this mostly because I started posting up recipes on my personal online journal and it just doesn’t seem like an appropriate place for them. So this will be their new home, where they will try to outlive my tendency to be forgetful. So let’s hope I don’t forget to update this site from time to time.

I’d like to point out that I am never usually the original source of recipes, crafty things, or very good ideas. These are mostly all lifted from other persons, sites, or books where they know what they are doing. Perhaps I’ll experiment and make some adjustments, find an easier way to do something, or put my own twist on it. But I’m definitely not trained in the kitchen or any other place for that matter (I hold a somewhat impractical BA in Communication Studies). But I will always try to cite and link to the original source when I can (remember).