Dino-rawr Tasted the Rainbow

As any cook/baker can tell you, sometimes your projects just fail. It may not be something you did wrong, it may just be the recipe, or in this case, the design. One of my best friends celebrated her 18th birthday this month, and I decided I wanted to go all out and build her one fantastically awesome rainbow birthday cake. Mishap number one? Putting me in charge of building something structurally sound...

I had this awesome idea in mind. Build a 3D rainbow cake that could be viewed from all sides. Now I'm sure people much more experienced than me would be able to do this no problem. I however, cannot. I am not a cake person. I am a cookie, cupcake, pie type person. I have no artistic ability. Anyways, I decided to make her a cool 3D cake out of mini cupcakes. It was a brilliant idea in my head. There would be a layer of mini cupcakes dyed each color of the rainbow, with white butter cream icing on either side for clouds (thanks for Maggie for helping with the somewhat hopeful design plan). In my head, it looked amazing. I had everything planned out. Sort of. I had no idea how I was going to make the rainbow 3D. That's where my awesome on-call buddy Christina helped. She realized that we could take aluminum foil and fold it multiple times to make a really sturdy base rainbow shape. It actually worked out quite well. I also needed a base. That part was simple. I took a foam-core poster and painted it green with a powered sugar/cornstarch mixture dyed green. The resulting base was quite awesome.

With the structure built and my anticipation growing, I tackle the Rainbow of Awesome.

I started out simple. I made double the amount of a basic white cake mix. So far, so good. Then I portioned out the mix. The mini cupcake pans holds about a tablespoon of batter in each well. This amount makes the perfect sized cupcake. So I started ladling out tablespoons of batter into each of the colored coffee cups I had set out to hold the different colors. I started with 12 tablespoons of purple (the smallest layer) and ended with about 28 tablespoons of red (the biggest layer). Needless to say, I had to repeat the whole basic white cake batter thing more than once but when I finished, the dyed batter looked pretty cool. I definitely recommend the gel food coloring. The colors were very vibrant and the gel didn't change the chemistry or taste of the cake batter.

Once the cake batter was all set, I started baking up some cupcakes. Honestly, this was the simple part. It was just a methodical step by step process. Grease pan, pour batter, bake for ten minutes, let cool for five, repeat process. It took about two hours to bake all the cupcakes I needed (almost 140). The baked cupcakes were very colorful and the perfect size.

Once all the cupcakes were baked and cooled I began tackling the tough part: putting the cake together. This was seriously a headache. I succeeded in putting the bottom two layers on the aluminum foil structure before the whole thing started falling. The generic sticky frosting mixture that I was using to glue the cupcakes together wasn't holding up to the weight very well. I was still determined to make it work though, so I pulled out the handy wooden skewers. These bad boys were stuck into the foam-core poster to keep the tower of cupcakes from falling left or right. This actually worked till the last layer. Everything fell again. I was frustrated at this point, and almost decided to make the 3D rainbow cake 2D, but my roommate, Megan, helped me put the whole thing back together. After I put the last red cupcake on the top layer of the rainbow, I piped the butter cream icing on both sides of the rainbow, hoping this would help stabilize the structure (it did). Then I started piping every hole I found in the layers with the sticky icing, hoping that this would keep them together. It did....for an hour.

Even with the wooden skewers, the butter cream (which is actually tinted yellow and not white, thanks to me messing up...), and the sticky icing this cake never had a chance. You see the right side of the rainbow? That one little part that's starting to cave? Yeah...not even an hour later, this is what happened.

Ten minutes after I snapped this picture, the entire right side crumbled.

Amazingly, the left side was sound. It didn't move at all. Weird right? Once the cake crumbled, I cried. Literally. I had been working on this cake for at least four hours, and an entire side crumbled. I had given up, when my awesome roommate (did I mention she is frickin' amazing) decided that it was fixable. Sure enough, we managed to fix it. Somewhat. Now, me and Taylor share a love of all things kid. There's a reason a 21 year old and an 18 year old are best friends. It's cause we are both kids at heart. Megan had the brilliant idea that we could turn the right side into a dinosaur. Seriously this girl is fantastic. So we tore apart the right side, and Megan built a dinosaur out of the remaining butter cream. She sculpted this really cool dino and took a skewer and food coloring to bring it to life. Seriously cool.

While Megan was sculpting away, Dani (she was visiting and just happened to witness the great meltdown of rainbow cake stress-dom) helped me crumble some cake to put behind the dino and make another small tower of each color to put in front of him to make it look like he is destroying the rainbow. The end result was this hilarious mistake of a cake that turned out pretty epic. I wrote "Happy Birthday Taylor!" on the board in edible marker, and we took plenty of pictures just in case it managed to fall (it didn't :D). Taylor came over right after we finished, and had a happy giggly fit over it. I'm pretty sure she was more interested in the fact that the green "grass" was edible than the fact that there was a dino on her cake. She kept licking the board (wish I would've taken pictures of that). After she took pictures and ogled over it, I took it all apart and put it in a neat little Tupperware container.

In the end, what turned out to be a brilliant idea epically failed, and I was left with the ingeniousness of my roommate and her dino. I think I actually prefer the dino cake with all it's mistakes and quirkiness over the original idea anyways. :D Moral of the story? Even if your original idea completely fails, something good always comes out of it. I spent five hours making a 3D rainbow cake and ended up with a fabulous design that we lovingly titled "Dino-rawr Tasted The Rainbow".

Nobody Loves You Like Family

Everyone gets homesick. It may be a case of "I miss my hometown" or a case of "I miss my mommy", but nevertheless, it's a case of homesickness. A few weeks ago I went home for a four day weekend, and I absolutely positively needed it. I got to visit with family, go to Emily's, my niece, 6th birthday party, and bake bread for various family members. I even got to spend a whole day with Emily. Hence the new blog post.

She helped me make my recipe for cinnamon raisin bread and two different types of muffins with her own twist. Emily had never been around bread dough before and apparently it can entertain 6 year olds for hours. She helped me roll it out, and even got her hands dirty with the milk, sugar, cinnamon filling. She kept putting her little hand prints into the dough every time I turned my back (I wish I would have thought to take a picture).

After some awesome bread making, she wanted to make some of those quick and easy muffin packages you buy in the baking isle at stores. She picked out banana nut and blueberry. My step-dad is allergic to blueberry so Emily decided to dye the mixes different colors so Papa wouldn't eat the wrong muffin (because the blueberries in the mix obviously weren't noticeable enough). She decided that the banana nut muffins would be blue, and the blueberry muffins would be pink. She also decided to try straight up food coloring. Needless to say a hilarious face came out of that idea. :D

No new recipes or anything for this blog post. I just wanted to update and share some adorable pictures of my niece with you guys. I guess the lesson behind this blog post is to always go home when you first get that feeling of homesickness. Never let months pass and then spend four days at home. Yes it's fun, but it's also four whole days at home with your family. Just sayin'.....

For The Love of Bread

I like to share my love of baking with others in the form of presents consisting of baked goods. Last year for Christmas I gave all the married members of my massive family a "Cookies in a Jar" set. It was fun to make and I didn't break the bank trying to think of presents for all 12+ of them. My parents and Joseph's parents got a really cute Christmas tin filled with homemade cookies and tons of little candies. They were cute and once again, played to my best assets: baking.

This year, I decided to give baked goods as birthday presents as well. Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like a nice cake or a dozen cookies. One of my boss' birthday was yesterday, and last week I decided to make her something out of the ordinary. I didn't want to bake my usual cake or cookie ensemble. I wanted to challenge myself, but I lacked the ideas. My other boss (I have like four...) is moving off campus this summer (bummer) and was giving away tons of baking supplies. Net gain in my opinion. I laid claim to a brand new cheesecake pan and an assortment of baking necessities. Now most of you are probably thinking, "Why is the title of this post about bread if she just received a cheesecake pan??" Wrong! I am terrified of making a cheesecake. It's hard, and I really don't like failure. My goal is to successfully make one this summer, but that's a different post. Among the baking necessities I gained from Gena was a single packet of yeast (long expired btw). Thus the inspiration for Rikki's birthday present was born.

I immediately ran up to KK's office and asked what kind of bread to make. Unfortunately, she chose cinnamon raisin. Not really my favorite, but I decided to roll with it. After work, I started looking for cinnamon raisin bread recipes. I've never made bread, and was actually shocked to see that nowadays most people use a bread machine. I don't believe in nonsense like that. I wanted to make the bread from scratch, not mix all the ingredients and let the bread machine do all the work. I finally decided on one from allrecipes.com (quite possibly one of my favorite websites) and went to the store for all the ingredients. This recipe was really quite cheap (less than $10) and made three loaves of bread. I didn't really need three loaves of bread, but decided to do the whole recipe anyways just in case I missed something if I scaled it down.

Fast forward to my kitchen. All the ingredients are out, computer set up with the recipe, and I realize it's 8 at night. This recipe says it takes three and a half hours and I have work at 8am, but I really want to get Rikki her birthday present so I just start following directions. FIVE hours, a flour-filled kitchen, and tons of dirty dishes later I have this:

Three perfectly shaped beautiful loaves of cinnamon raisin bread waiting to be baked. Let's go back to that capitalized five hour statement. Yeah....apparently 3.5 actually means 5. Granted that's probably because A) I had never made bread before and B) my kitchen was cold as ice and the dough took *forever* to rise. Despite the slight problems regarding time (going to bed at 1:30 am just to get up at 7 kinda sucks), I still absolutely fell in love with making bread. That being said, I will probably lay off the cookie and cake recipes for a while and experiment with breads and possibly cheesecakes.

The three loaves of bread managed to disappear fast. One went to Rikki for her birthday, one was split between various Housing staff, and the other was all mine (and Joseph's, and whoever else stopped by my room). I actually took the last of the bread yesterday morning and made cinnamon raisin french toast. I think it tasted even better than the plain bread when it first came out of the oven, but maybe I'm biased towards french toast.

And now that my rantings are over, I present the awesome recipe that produced those beautiful loaves of bread.

Cinnamon-Raisin Bread

adapted from allrecipes.com

Supplies Needed

3 loaf pans

an instant read thermometer

one large mixing bowl

Ingredients

1 1/2 c. milk

1 c. warm water (must be between 110-115 degrees)

2 (1/4 ounce) packages of active dry yeast

3 eggs

1/2 c. white sugar

1 tsp. salt

1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cup raisins

8 c. all-purpose flour

2 tbs. milk

1 c. white sugar

4 tbs. ground cinnamon

2 tbs. melted butter

Directions

1. Warm the milk in a small sauce pan on the stove until it just starts to bubble, stir occasionally.

2. Remove the milk from heat and let cool to about 120-125 degrees.

3. Dissolve the yeast in the cup of warm water and set aside until yeast is frothy, about 10 min. (Make sure the water is at the correct temperature or the yeast won't activate.)

4. Mix yeast, eggs, sugar, butter, salt, and raisins in a large mixing bowl. Slowly add the cooled milk (you don't want to cook the eggs).

5. Add the flour to the mixture gradually to make a stiff dough.

6. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes till smooth.

7. Place the dough in a large, buttered, mixing bowl and turn to grease the surface of the dough.

8. Cover with a warm, damp cloth and let rise in a warm, non-drafty place until doubled, usually 1 1/2 hours.

9. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface until the surface is a large rectangle about 1/2 inch thick.

10. Moisten the surface of the dough with 2 tbs. of milk.

11. Mix together 1 c. of sugar and 4 tbs. of cinnamon and sprinkle mixture evenly over the surface of the dough.

12. Roll dough up tightly (the long way). The roll should be about 3 inches in diameter.

13. Cut roll into thirds, tuck under ends, and pinch bottom together.

14. Place loaves into well greased (I used Crisco shortening) loaf pans and lightly grease tops of loaves.

15. Let rise in a warm place, uncovered, for about 1 hour.

16. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes (mine took 40 minutes) or until loaves are lightly browned and sound hollow when tapped.

17. Remove from oven and spread melted butter over tops of loaves.

18. After 20 minutes, lay loaf pans on their sides and remove loaves.

19. Let cool before slicing (if you have the willpower).

20. Wrap extra bread in aluminum foil.

New and Improved

For those who read my blog when I (occasionally) updated, and for those who are complete newbies to my crazy antics, I think I've found a niche that I can continually write about without boring you (or me for that matter). Now I'm not new to the blogging world, this is attempt number three. The first two tries obviously ended in months of no updates. I even tried writing about my life (I do have some crazy stories) but inevitably, I got bored. Shows how interesting my life is right? This is attempt number three, and I've decided to blog about something I truly care about: Cooking. Well, baking mostly.

For going on four years now my entire life has taken place on my college campus. I live, learn, and work here. This means that the entirety of the Housing complex serves as my taste testers. Every time I test a new recipe, either my staff, the residents on my floor, or my fiancée (poor boy gets to try everything, even that which goes terribly wrong) gets to evaluate what I've whipped up. Generally it tastes amazing (my chocolate chip cookies), but sometimes I wouldn't serve what popped out of my oven to a single soul (the time I made cupcakes and accidentally added twice the amount of baking powder...). To put it simply, I'm a baking-fanatic. The easiest way to make me a happy camper is to genuinely love (and compliment) what I'm feeding you.

Through this love and passion, a new blog is born. My new goal for the Internet world is to regularly update this blog with my favorite recipes, new recipes I hope to try, and the general antics that go on in my kitchen. All I can say is I hope those around me have quite an appetite.

Today I'll leave you guys with an amazing picture of the banana bread I just took out of the oven and the recipe that goes with it.

Banana Nut Bread

based on a recipe from www.vintagevictuals.com

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

1 1/2 cup mashed banana (about 4 bananas)

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (which ever is your favorite)

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan and set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Add the butter, eggs, mashed bananas, and vanilla to a large mixing bowl and combine.

Slowly add the flour mixture to the banana mixture until just combined and stir in the chopped nuts.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 50-55 minutes or until a knife inserted into the crest of the bread comes out clean.

Cool loaf in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Tips and Tricks

1) Keep the loaf wrapped in aluminum foil. This will keep the moisture in the bread.

2) Refrigerate the bread for about 2 hours before serving. (Unless you're like me and can't wait ten minutes before cutting into it)

3) Do not lick the bowl. Just trust me.