Funfetti and Indian

Hi Guys!!

I'm so sorry I haven't updated in so long, but it was midterm week and spring break, during which I traveled to the happiest place on earth, Disney World.  Now I am back and looking forward to updating all of you regarding my recent cooking adventures. 

Sprinkle Cake with Mixed Berry filling and Sour Cream Fudge Frosting
(Makes approximately 16 cupcakes)

As I mentioned in my previous post, my friends in Genetics with me are usually my test subjects for my baked goods.  Now they have started to put in requests for cupcakes.  To make them all happy, I combined a bunch of requests into a hot mess, and really delicious, cupcake. 

CUPCAKES
My friend, John, has challenged me with a Sprinkle cake (Funfetti).  I love to make cakes from scratch and Funfetti always comes in a box.  John had the gall to ask me to bake him Funfetti.  So I made one from scratch.  Ha.

2 1/3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup salted butter, room temperature
3 egg whites
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup long rainbow sprinkles (my grandmother informed me that these are called jimmies and that the short ones are called sprinkles..the "jimmies" are necessary for this recipe)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  Blend the butter and the sugar together until the mixture is smooth and creamy.  Add the 3 egg whites, one at a time, while beating; this is the wet mixture.  In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt; this is the dry mixture.  Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture slowly.  Then add the milk in slowly, all while having the mixture on.  Then add the vanilla extract.  At this point, I like to scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula and then turn back on the mixture, just to make sure I get all of those delicious ingredients that got stuck to the bottom of your mixing bowl.  Add in the sprinkles.

Your mixture should look something like this:

Pour the mixture into a baking tin that is lined with foil cupcake liners.  You really should fill this up 3/4 of the way, but I did it like 7/8 of the way because I only wanted to make 12 cupcakes.  NOTE: This was a mistake, which I will tell you about in just a moment.

Bake the cupcakes for about 25 minutes, or until the outside is nice and golden and when a toothpick is inserted into the cake, only a few crumbs are seen when the tooth pick is removed. 

My cupcakes blew up into monstrous cupcake deliciousness.

To fix this problem, I just cut off the extra bits around the side, which meant that I ate some wonderful cupcake scraps.

MIXED BERRY FILLING

My good friend (and future roommate), Alisa, loves berries.  She brings fresh berries into class almost every day.  So, I figured that I would make a berry filling for these colorful cupcakes to make it prettier, and even better tasting.

1 bag of frozen mixed berries
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Mush the berries and the sugar up in a bowl with a fork until they look like this:

Then heat this mixture in a small saucepan on medium heat.  Mix the cornstarch with water and add this to the berries.  Heat until the mixture is thick enough to spoon into a cupcake.  You can add more sugar to your taste.  I, personally, am not a big sweets person so my fillings and frosting tend to not be on the sweeter side.  Your mixture should look like this:

Allow this mixture to cool.  Cut some holes into the cupcakes with a pearing knife (you can use any knife, obviously, but I find that this is really easy to use).  A lot of people use apple corers to cut holes into the cupcakes.  If you have one of these (I don't) then totally use it instead.  Fill your cupcakes to just below the top with the berry mixture.

That last cupcake to the right was for my sister, Katie.  She doesn't like berries so I filled hers with a vanilla frosting.

SOUR CREAM FUDGE FROSTING

I found this recipe a while ago in Bon Appetit and I made it for a chocolate Valentine's Day cupcake.  My friend, Kris, absolutely loves this frosting and I figured that it would be a nice topper to this cupcake that I have already designed.

8 ounces milk chocolate
1/2 stick salted butter
2/3 cup sour cream
4 teaspoons light corn syrup

To melt the chocolate, you will need to make a double-boiler.  Heat up a saucepan with a little bit of water in it on high heat.  Place a glass or metal bowl on top of the saucepan so that the water does not touch the bowl.  Put the chocolate into the bowl and constantly stir the chocolate until it is completely melted.  Take the chocolate off of the heat and stir in the butter.  Then beat in the sour cream and light corn syrup.  Let the mixture cool to room temperature for about an hour.  Frost your cupcakes.  Mine looked like this:

I covered mine with little ball sprinkles and couldn't wait to eat that bottom left one.  It was wonderful.  The tangy frosting versus the sweet cake was just a very tasty blend of flavors.  My friends really liked them too!

QUESO FRESCO TIKKA MASALA (serves 4)

This vegetarian Indian dish is typically called "Paneer Tikka Masala."  I can NEVER find paneer for some reason so I substitute paneer with queso fresco, which is similar but a little more solid.  I made this dish yesterday for my friends, Dana and Alisa.  Dana is not a huge fan of Indian food, so I thought I would introduce her to Indian food with this very mild dish.  They both do not like spicy food so I couldn't make the dish painfully spicy, but if you like spice then I would recommend adding red pepper flakes.

FOR THE CHEESE

1 8 oz. package of queso fresco
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red chili powder
1 tablespoon grated ginger, with juices
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
1 tablespoon plain yogurt (I like to use Greek yogurt because it is thicker)
1 tablespoon oil

Cut the queso fresco into bite-sized cubes and place them into a bowl.  Mix together the other ingredients in a separate bowl and then pour it over the cheese.  Gently toss the cheese until all the cheese is coated with the marinade.  Cover the bowl and marinade this mixture in the fridge for about an hour.  The cheese should look like this:

FOR THE SAUCE

1/2 cup pureed tomatoes
1 green pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

Blend together the tomato puree and the green pepper.  Heat the oil in a large frying pan on medium-high heat.  Throw the cheese into the pan until it is browned, which will take about 4 minutes.  Remove the cheese and place it in another bowl.  Heat more oil in the same pan and then add the cumin seeds until they start cracking.  Then add the bay leaves.  Add the tomato and green pepper mixture to the pan along with the coriander powder, paprika, and turmeric.  Bring this mixture to a simmer and then add the sugar.  Dissolve the cornstarch in a teaspoon of water and then add that to the tomato mixture.  Then add the cheese to the mixture and cook until the cheese is heated.  Take the mixture off of the heat and add the garam masala and garlic salt.  It should look like this:

It may look gross, but it was really a very tasty version of Indian food.  I would recommend eating this dish with garlic naan, which is what we did.

That's all I have for now!  I will be baking more and cooking more today, so hopefully I will have more delicious updates for you in the near future!

Stacey

The Beginning

I have always loved cooking. I watch the Food Network religiously. Eventually I got to a stage where I would see recipes and think, "I can totally make that." So, I would prep and cook. As it turns out, I am pretty good at cooking. There are two things that I love most about cooking: it is therapeutic and it makes people happy when you cook for them. I developed a deep love for cooking. Eventually, I became tired of just watching the Food Network and started reading Bon Appetit magazine and would try to mimic their beautiful, gourmet meals. As I became better and better at cooking I began to daydream about, in my opinion, one of the hardest parts about cooking: baking. Cooking is more of an art. You get to decide what and how much you want to omit from or add to a recipe. However, baking is a science. The timing needs to be perfect and the measurements exact. As a science major, I find baking natural.

I have been baking and cooking for a couple years now and my friends and family have always seemed to enjoy my goods. I have also practiced enough that I have learned how to incorporate my own ideas into already published recipes. So I figured it was about time to see what all this blogging was about. So I will post what I make. I use my friends in the Genetics major at Rutgers University as my guinea pigs.

Banana Butterscotch Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Butter Frosting (Makes 12 cupcakes)

This cupcake was very, very easy to make! The original inspiration was from the book cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans.

CUPCAKES
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter (I use salted butter because I think that it adds more flavor, but the author calls for unsalted butter)
1 cup sugar
2 medium over-ripe bananas, mashed together in a separate bowl
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup butterscotch chips (The author called for a full cup, but add as many as you would like)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line the muffin tin with cupcake liners.  I find that the foil liners keep in the moisture in the cupcake. Mix together the butter, sugar, and bananas.  Add the eggs one at a time.  In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Mix in the flour mixture slowly to the banana mixture.  Add the buttermilk to the mixture.  Then add in the vanilla extract.  I find that it is necessary to add the vanilla extract last because if you add it too early the flavor will not be as strong by the end.  Mix in your desired amount of butterscotch chips.

The mixture should look something like this:

Then you pour this mixture into the cupcake liners, about 3/4 way up.

You bake them at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes, until you can poke a toothpick into the cupcake and it will come out with dry crumbs on it.  Mine took about 18 minutes.  If you are new to baking then I would set your timer to 10 minutes and then check the cupcakes every 2 minutes after the 10 minutes until you see that they are done.

The final product should look something like this:

 

I then cut a hole into the middle of the cupcakes in order to fill them.

BROWN SUGAR BUTTER FROSTING
1/4 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 butter, at room temperature (This is IMPORTANT!  The butter should be very very soft)
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract


Put the half-and-half and light brown sugar into a medium saucepan and heat until the brown sugar melts.  Increase the heat and boil the mixture for about a minute.  It is important to stir this constantly.  You know you are doing this right when your mixture looks like this:

Let this mixture cool in the fridge for about 45 minutes.

After the mixture is cool, mix together the butter and powdered sugar, adding the powdered sugar to the butter about 1/4 cup at a time, until the mixture is fluffy.  While the mixer is still on, slowly add the brown sugar mixture to the butter mixture.  Finally, add the vanilla extract.  The frosting should look like this:

Then frost your cupcakes however you want them to look!

My friends and family found these cupcakes to be delicious!  So you should definitely try them.  I think the best part of these cupcakes is the frosting and I will definitely be using this frosting to put on anything.  Seriously.  I can easily make a batch and eat it straight.


The Devil's Tears Vegetarian Lentil Chili (Makes 8 servings)

I figured I would close off this blog with a meal that I cook a lot.  Being a vegetarian, I find myself missing a lot of foods that I used to eat that contained meat.  One of those things is chili.  I found a great recipe in Bon Appetit magazine a few years ago and I make this chili  all the time.  The great thing about chili is that you can add whatever vegetables you want to it and it will just get more delicious (and nutritious).  My brother named this The Devil's Tears Chili because I like my chili like I like my hell--as hot as can come.  So if you want to change up the heat level, and make it more suitable for a little baby, then I would recommend decreasing the amount of cayenne pepper, mustard, and sriracha that I use.

4 teaspoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup chopped carrots (Not in the original recipe)
4 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I add about a teaspoon because I like it fiery hot)
8 cups of water
2 cups lentils
1 cup tomato puree
1 cup corn (Not in the original recipe)
Chopped scallions
Shredded cheese of choice

Of course, you can make a smaller chili than this but I was feeding 6 people so I figured I would make enough for left-overs.  Heat the oil in a very large saucepan on medium-high.  Add the onions, carrots, and garlic and sautee for a couple minutes.  Then add the chili powder, cumin, oregano and cayenne pepper.  Cook this for about 1 minute.  Add the water, lentils, and tomato puree.  Bring this mixture to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a medium-low and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until the lentils are fully cooked.  Add the corn and cook for another 5 minutes.  It should look something like this:

Put it into serving bowls and sprinkle some scallions and cheese on top.  I only had mozzarella!

It's really delicious and very easy to make.  Who needs meat, right!?  (But you can add meat too if you want..whatever.)

I am making some other cupcakes and some cookies today..so hopefully they will be just as good!  I'll tell you ALL about it later!

Stacey