Category Archives: General Sweets

Mar 20 2012

Farófias: A Traditional Portuguese Dessert {Guest Post}

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I haven’t blogged about international desserts before, so I welcome this recipe from Inês Simão who wanted to share with you a traditional Portuguese dessert called Farófias.

Hello! Guest poster, Inês, here. Most traditional Portuguese deserts are based on four main ingredients: milk, eggs, sugar and cinnamon. Farófias is no exception, and it’s a quick and easy recipe to make when you feel like having something sweet and don’t want to waste a lot of time. Here is what you will need:

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Farófias

Ingredients

  • 4 cups milk
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon corn starch
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • Powdered cinnamon

Instructions

  1. Separate the eggs and beat the whites into stiff peaks. Add a tablespoon of sugar and beat the whites again to incorporate the sugar.
  2. Add 3 cups of milk into a pan together with the cinnamon sticks and some lemon peel.
  3. When the milk reaches boiling point, lower the heat. Drop tablespoons of whites into the milk and let them cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Carefully for the whites not to fall apart, turn them and let them cook on the other side. Move them into a bowl with a slotted spoon.
  4. Mix the remaining sugar with a teaspoon of corn starch. Add a cup of cold milk and stir the mixture until it has a uniform texture.
  5. Add this mixture to the milk used to cook the whites and stir till it thickens up, but don't let it reach a boiling point.
  6. When ready, pour some of the mix carefully over the whites with a spoon. The remainder of the mix, pour it gently at the edge of the bowl, so the whites don't fall apart. Sprinkle with powdered cinnamon.
  7. Let it cool and enjoy :)
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{About the Guest Author: Inês Simão}

Inês Simão is an online copywriter for Auto Europe UK, a cat enthusiast, and a sometimes cook. In her free time she enjoys reading obscure books with long words and cooking things that don’t always come out as intended. Check out her Twitter or Facebook.

 

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Mar 10 2012

Crazy for Cake Pops Review and Giveaway

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I received a copy of Crazy for Cake Pops: 50 All-New Delicious and Adorable Creations by Molly Bakes for review from Ulysses Press recently and decided to make something from the book. There are many great decoration ideas in this book with lots of photographs of each cake pop.

Besides the cake pop decorations, there are also many other sections of the book. It starts out with descriptions of all the equipment you’ll need for the projects, as well as recipes for chocolate, red velvet, vanilla, peanut butter, toffee, and lemon cakes and the frostings that go with them. There is also a section in the back that shows some techniques for making the cake pops.

Never made cake pops before? Don’t worry. There are detailed explanations of how to make cake pops and plenty of colorful photos to show you the process. I’ve made cake pops once before, so I was familiar with the instructions, but it was nice to refresh my memory.

As I flipped through the book I came across a ton of designs I wanted to try, but I settled on the Moustache Cake Pops. I thought these looked great and simple.

Unfortunately, I had a few issues with making these. One thing I’ve realized from making cake pops is they always end up more complicated to make than they look. I used the recipe for the chocolate cake and chocolate frosting from the book (recipes below). The cake turned out pretty good although I may have overcooked it. This didn’t matter too much though, because I mixed it with the frosting and it became moist again.

The frosting was a little weird though. I followed the instructions exactly, but the mixture was less like frosting and more like a truffle mixture. It tasted great but wasn’t fluffy like the instructions said it would be. Not sure what happened. I mixed a little half and half in to soften it, but it was still really hard. It did mix into the cake crumbles well though and the mixture seemed right, so I guess this “frosting” didn’t mess it up, but I wouldn’t use the recipe for actual frosting.

Another problem I had was that my cake mixture wasn’t holding together well enough to form the moustache. It kept falling apart. I don’t think I mixed enough of the frosting into the cake.  Oops! I was able to make regular cake pops though so this is what I ended up with:

Not too bad, although I was bummed that the moustaches didn’t work out. I’ll try them again sometime. If you think you could do better, the recipes and instructions for the Moustache Cake Pops are below. Post a picture on my facebook page if you give these ones a shot. I’d love to see them!

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Chocolate Cake

Yield: Makes enough for approx. 20 medium cake balls

Ingredients

  • 55 grams (8 tablespoons) cocoa powder
  • 250 milliliters (1 cup) boiling water
  • 120 grams (½ cup) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing
  • 200 grams (1 cup) granulated sugar
  • 200 grams (1-2/3 cups) self-rising flour*, plus more for the tin
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 eggs, at room temperature

Instructions

  1. Put the cocoa into a heatproof bowl, pour in the boiling water and stir until combined. Set aside to cool. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Lightly grease and flour a 10-inch (25-centimeter) round cake tin. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Mix in the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Pour in the dry ingredients and gently beat until combined. Fold in the cooled cocoa until the color of the mixture is even. Pour into the tin and bake for 45–60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Once baked, leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Notes

*I didn't have self-rising flour so I made some using this recipe: 1 cup flour, ½ tsp. salt, 1½ tsp. baking powder sifted together.

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Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

  • 120 grams (½ cup) unsalted butter, softened
  • 200 grams (2 cups) powdered sugar, sifted
  • 100 grams (1-2/3 cups) chocolate, melted and cooled

Instructions

  1. Cream the butter. Gradually add the powdered sugar and then the chocolate. Continue to cream until light and fluffy. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before using.
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Moustache Pops

Ingredients

  • 20 medium cake balls, chilled
  • 1 (14-ounce) bag black candy melts

Instructions

  1. Roll each cake ball into a log shape with your hands. Use a lollipop stick to make an indentation in the top center and bottom center of each “log.” Squeeze and pinch the center of the “log” to shape the middle of the moustache. Now squeeze and pinch the ends, curling each one upwards to create a handlebar moustache shape.
  2. Melt the candy. Dip the end of each lollipop stick ¾ inch into the candy and insert a stick into the center of each moustache. Leave to set. Dip each pop into the candy, dipping from left to right to get an even coating. Insert into a polystyrene block to dry.
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{Overall Opinion}

Overall, I love this book. I personally need to practice making cake pops more often so I can make some of the more complicated cake pops in the book. For those of you that are cake pop newbies like myself, there are some easier designs to make in the book too. The great thing about cake pops is there are many ways they can be decorated, and even the easiest ones (like mine above) still look nice. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in making cake pops.

{Buy It}

Crazy for Cake Pops is available on several websites such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble in paperback and e-book form.

{Win It}

Ulysses Press has graciously offered to send one of my readers a copy of Crazy for Cake Pops: 50 All-New Delicious and Adorable Creations! To enter fill out the Rafflecopter form below. If you’ve never filled one out before, sign in with either Facebook or log in with your name and email address. Then fill out the first three entries. You don’t have to complete the first three entries but you can’t get to the other entries without finishing them. Once completed, all of the extra entries will become available for completion. Let me know if you have any problems filling out the form.

I WILL BE VERIFYING ENTRIES! So please leave any requested info for the entries. If any requested info is missing from the form, I will not be able to verify your entry and will choose another winner.

The giveaway will end at 11:59pm EST on March 17, 2012. US entries only, please. Terms and Conditions are located at the bottom of the Rafflecopter widget.

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Feb 14 2012

Chocolate-Dipped Brownie Bars

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These are so easy to make and turned out very tasty. I went the easy way out and used Betty Crocker’s Dark Chocolate Premium Brownie Mix for this because I was too lazy to find a recipe. Sue me.

All you need for these are brownies (either from mix or your favorite recipe), melted chocolate (I used Baker’s semi-sweet baking chocolate), and Valentine sprinkles. That’s it!

Cool surprise: My pink sanding sugar looked like iridescent sparkles on the chocolate!

Make the brownies according to the box or your recipe, let them cool completely, and then cut them into bar shapes. Melt some chocolate in a mug so that you don’t have to melt too much but still have enough depth to dip the bars in. Then dip them and place the brownies on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper. Add sprinkles and colored sugars to the chocolate and chill in the fridge until the chocolate sets up.

Now they are ready to be scarfed down!

What are your favorite Valentine desserts? Do you like easy recipes or ones you have to put a lot of effort into?

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Feb 12 2012

Valentine Pancakes {Recipe}

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This pancake recipe has been passed down in my family since my great grandmother, Bubba, and over time has changed a little bit. This weekend my Mom and I decided to try modifying them for Valentine’s Day by coloring them pink and red and shaping them into hearts on the griddle. They turned out ok, but I’d probably just keep them regular next time, you’ll see why.

After making the batter, my first attempt to heart shaping was using heart cookie cutters. I sprayed them with cooking spray and put the batter in. Even still, the pancakes stuck to the cookie cutters a bit and so I scrapped that idea, even though the pancakes themselves didn’t look too bad.

Then I tried to shape them myself by pouring the batter out in heart shapes. They started to look a little wonky, but I liked their unusual character. Eventually, I just gave up on odd shapes and made round pancakes. As you can see, I like chocolate chips in my pancakes. It’s a requirement when I eat them but this is just an option.

The end result was pretty cute. Of course they got a little darker after being cooked but the colors on the inside were still pretty vibrant. Here are the directions for the pancakes. To make them regular, don’t add the food coloring.

{Recipe}

Bubba’s Pancakes

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 lrg. egg
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 2 tbs. sugar
  • 2 tbs. vegetable oil
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • just shy of a 1/2 tsp. of baking soda

(Optional)

  • 2 tbs. wheat bran
  • 1 tbs. wheat germ
  • chocolate chips
  • powdered sugar
  • butter
  • (For Valentine Pancakes: pink and red food coloring)

DIRECTIONS:

  1. I’m not sure what to tell you to turn your griddle or stove top to for heating the pancakes. On our griddle we set it to med.-high heat and that seems to work, but it’s up to you to figure out the right temperature for your personal stove and skillet or griddle.
  2. Whisk together the egg, buttermilk, sugar, and oil in a bowl and set aside.
  3. Then sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in another bowl. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. If you want heartier pancakes sprinkle the bran and wheat germ on top of everything at this point.
  4. Stir the batter gently until all ingredients are combined but make sure the batter is still lumpy. If it becomes too thin, the pancakes will not rise when they cook. For the pink and red pancakes, I split the batter into two bowls and put a few drops of coloring in each. If you’re going to color them, make sure not to stir them too much before you put the food coloring in because you will have to stir them more to get the color you want. It’s a little tricky. For simplicity, just make them regular and skip the coloring on your first try at these.
  5. Once the batter is mixed but still lumpy, let it sit for about 5 minutes.
  6. Pour 1/3 cup of the batter onto your griddle or skillet for each pancake. If you like chocolate like I do, drop a few chocolate chips on to the pancake before you flip it over. You can also add other things at this point, such at nuts or apple slices, for example.
  7. When the batter starts to have little bubbles start popping up in it, it’s about time to flip it. The pancake is done cooking if you poke the middle and it bounces back fairly quickly.
  8. Butter the pancakes as soon as they are done and sift some powdered sugar on top. Or instead put some syrup on top. The garnishes and toppings are up to you.

Makes about 10-12 pancakes.

 

Come join #DairyBreakfastClub recipe party at TidyMom along with The California Milk Advisory Board and RealCaliforniaMilk.com

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Dec 7 2011

My Little Cupcake Cake Pop Molds + Giveaway!

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UPDATED WITH WINNER!

Congratulations to Abby Norton! You were chosen by Rafflecopter’s random selection process via random.org.

I have emailed the winner and waiting upon reply. If I haven’t heard back from Abby by the end of Saturday (12/17), I will chose another winner.

I’ve only made cake pops once and found them to be a little difficult to shape and decorate but the folks at My Little Cupcake have created a set of molds that help in the production of cake pops. It all started with the cupcake cake pop mold:

This little mold forms the cutest cupcake shaped pops ever allowing for unique cake pops that are not just sphere shaped. Recently they added three other mold shapes to their shop: cone (perfect for Christmas trees), sphere (if you want to make perfectly formed traditional cake pops), and heart (great for heart shapes, but I’ve seen it used for Reindeer as well!).

For the cake pop filling, My Little Cupcake uses a non-bake method using Oreos and cream cheese (also known as Oreo truffles) but you can also use the Bakerella method of baking a cake and crumbling it up with frosting for the moist cake filling. Either way will work.

My Little Cupcake has offered this How To video for making the filling and using the cake pop molds.

{Giveaway}

Now that you know how to use the molds, here’s the fun part! My Little Cupcake has graciously offered to give away a variety 4-pack of their molds to one of my readers (ARV $22.95)! I don’t even have a set of these yet (It’s definitely on my wish list though!)

TO ENTER (Required): Use the Rafflecopter entry form on my Facebook* page to enter the contest. Click here to go to the Rafflecopter entry form.

Make sure to leave a valid email address in the required entry space because that is how I will contact the winner.

Besides the required entry, you may also get up to three extra optional entries by doing any of the below:

If you do any of the above, make sure to enter for each action on the Rafflecopter form or it won’t count toward the giveaway.

Remember, you must go to the Giveaway tab on my Facebook page to enter and follow the instructions there. No entries in the comment section of this blog will count.

The giveaway will end December 14th, 2011 at 9:01 pm PST (12/15 12:01am EST).

The winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter’s random selection process powered by random.org and notified by email within 24 hours of the end of the giveaway. Winner will have 72 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen. The prize will be shipped directly from My Little Cupcake to the winner’s address.

Must be at least 18 years of age and a resident of the U.S. to enter.

Please read the Official Rules before you enter.

This giveaway is sponsored by My Little Cupcake. I was not compensated for hosting this giveaway and any opinions about this product are my own.

*This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. I hereby release Facebook of any liability.

Nov 10 2011

You Might Not Want to Eat These Sweets

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These donuts look yummy, right? Don’t take a bite just yet. They’re made out of foam. That’s right, when I’m not making fun real sweets at home, I’m making these delicious food props at work. I work at a theater and make props for the plays and musicals in production there. This particular batch of donuts was crafted for a production of Sunsets and Margaritas by José Cruz González.

A couple of seasons ago we put on a production of The Baker’s Wife, a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and the book by Joseph Stein, in which we had to create an entire bakery of pastries, bread, and other delectable treats. Unfortunately I didn’t get very many great pictures of the food props we made for that show, but here’s a picture of a strawberry and cherry tart that didn’t turn out too terrible.

Not too long ago I made a chocolate chip cookie for a lunch tray that was used in a production of Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Bert V. Royal. If I were to make this one again, I’d do something more pronounced for the chunks of chocolate because it looks a little flat, but it worked for its purpose.

Believe it or not, making real treats is soooo much easier than making ones that have to hold up on stage. Sometimes we use real food, but it’s not as practical since it can attract ants, spoil, and be a mess to clean up. It is gratifying to make a prop replica of food and fool the actors with it, though.
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