Kit-Kit and m&m double-layered cake

Ingredients

1 cup butter (unsalted)

1 & 1/2 cups white sugar

3 eggs

3/4 cup milk

1 & 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups cake flour (I used all-purpose flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt
1-2 containers of vanilla frosting (depends on how much is needed)
2 bags of individual Kitkat bars
1 bag of m&ms

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans.

3. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.

4. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.Beat in the eggs one at time and then stir in the vanilla extract. 

5. Pour in milk and mix together with flour mixture just until the batter comes together.

6. Pour half of the batter into each of the 9-inch round pans.

7. Bake for 25-30 mins. 

8. Let cool for 10 to 15 minutes in the pan.
9. Use vanilla frosting to cover the top and sides of one cake, and then stack the other on top of it.
10. Cover the whole double-layered cake in vanilla frosting.
11. Stand Kitkat bars vertically lining the edges around the cake. Cover the top of the cake with m&m's and enjoy.

A traditional birthday in my house usually ends with a delicious ice cream cake celebration from Dairy Queen. However, I decided to make my dad a cake when it was his birthday. I saw this really interesting cake on pinterest and wanted to try to make it. Surprisingly,  it turned out very well for my first time making a homemade cake. I was going to use chocolate frosting because I figured that the cake would be too chocolately and rich for people's desires, so I used vanilla instead. It was still very rich and sugary, but it tasted very delicious and was gone the next day! The recipe called for cake flour, but I had to settle for AP flour. As a result, the cake was very dry instead of moist and delicious and didn't hold together as well as I thought it should have. It was extremely crumbly, but thick at the same time. However, it tasted delicious. The cake was perfect to satisfy a sweet tooth with just a few rich bites of a light and fluffy cake, creamy vanilla frosting, and sweet taste of chocolate and crunchy Kitkats.

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Sweet and Simple Lemon Tart

Makes servings USMetricAdjust Recipe (Help)

1/2 cupbutter, softened

1/4 cupsifted confectioners' sugar

1 cupsifted all-purpose flour

1 cupwhite sugar

2eggs

2 tablespoonsall-purpose flour

3 tablespoonsfresh lemon juice, or more to taste

2 teaspoonsgrated lemon peel

1/4 teaspoonsalt

3 tablespoonsconfectioners' suga

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8x8-inch baking pan.
2. Combine butter with 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar in a bowl until smooth; stir in 1 cup flour. Press dough into prepared baking pan; pierce crust with fork in several places to prevent crust from puffing up during baking.
3. Bake crust in the preheated oven until slightly golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool.
4. Whisk white sugar and eggs in a bowl; stir 3 tablespoons flour into mixture and add lemon juice, lemon peel, and salt. Whisk until thoroughly combined. Pour mixture into baked tart crust.
5. Bake until filling is set, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool and dust with 3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar.

          In class we learned about tarts, when we first began I had no idea what a tart was. After we made mini tartlets I found them quite delicious and decided to make a big tart on my own time at home. To my surprise we already had a full sized tart pan at home. I began the recipe a little after 9 (after work) and ended up finish almost at 11! Speak of time consuming!
           After my tart finally finished baking in the oven, I topped it with raspberries in the center and sprinkled it with powdered sugar, my family was anxiously waiting while watching a movie. I let it cool for 10 mins before I sliced it up and gave each person a slice.
         When I tasted the tart, it was a lot more sour than it was at school (not much of a fan our sour) and it made sense after I thought about it because the tartlets at school were surrounded by dough and there was little filling where as at home, it was a lot of sour filling and not much dough/sweet crust because they were slice. Unfortunately, the crust is my favorite part of a tart or pie so I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Also when I was shopping for the ingredients I only bought one lemon so I could not get enough lemon juice squeezed out and ended up replacing it with the lemon juice that comes in the bottle which may have effected the strong lemon taste of the tart. Lastly, the next morning after it completely cooled it cracked, reading online and looking at other people's blogs online I noticed that many other had the same problem and a few people recommended to add more sugar or bake at a higher temperature.  Overall, if I were to bake at another tart I would make it something other than lemon.

Apple Bread!

• Cooking Spray
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups apples - peeled, cored, and chopped
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3 eggs beaten
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Prepare 2 loaf pans (8 1/2x4 1/2-inch loaf pans) with cooking spray.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, salt, walnuts, and apples in a large bowl. Whisk oil, sugar, eggs, and cinnamon together in a small bowl; add to flour mixture and mix until just moistened. Evenly divide mixture between prepared loaf pans.
3. Bake in preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 90 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

After attempting some homemade banana bread, I decided to spice things up by trying to create a chunky apple bread. As I was creating the recipe, it called for 3 cups of apples. I wasn’t sure what kind of apples so I used fuji apples. Also, I don’t know how much 3 cups of chopped apples is so I only bought 3 apples. I didn’t fully follow the recipe, like how I used yeast in the dough and made it a yeast bread. I prepped the dough as stated, but gave the dough 45 minutes to rise before reshaping. Also, we used a 12x12 pan so it was one giant loaf of bread. As we added the wet with the dry, it created a rich scent of apples. I felt that  the 3 apples was too much because there were mainly chunks in the bread. After some help with my brothers, we went quick making the bread and we were very efficient. We all were divided into different labors like, I would do all the mixing while another brother would do all the chopping, and another brother would mix the dry ingredients. The recipe actually went great and it was fun spending some bonding time with my family and making something common, bread.
Taste:
After tasting the bread, it wasn't what I expected. Throughout the bread, there were little pouches and bites of cinnamon. This just ruined the overall taste of the bread and parts of the bread had either too much cinnamon or none at all. Now lets move onto the apples. I did not enjoy the apples at all, there were chunks of apples in the bread! It was not enjoyable at all because I felt all the juices of the apples sapped out and disappeared. Then these little chunks turned into crunchy flavorless pieces. The bread was rich in flavor though, but each bite was a surprise. After some few investigations, I can conclude that the taste was from the poor mixing I did and that little thing turned the whole bread upside-down... Literally.
Texture:
The Texture of the bread was intriguing. Not letting the bread cool, we lifted it from the pan and onto the cooling rack, letting the bottom disassemble and crumble. The bottom was a soggy mess! The rest of the bread, actually felt like a refined, fresh, and crunchy bread feeling, but the bottom was this soggy mess and a chunk of the bottom fell off right before my eyes. It was a rather mushy texture, and it was not the right feeling.
Appearance:
The appearance of the bread looked great. Five minutes before the end of the baking, we dusted the top with a nice sugar top. It looked fabulous when it came out and even smelled rich. The bread rose and it reached a good consistency when we took it out. The bread looked even to be bread of quality to be sold in stores.
Aroma:
The smell of the rich apples and sweet cinnamon flowed through the room. It was like the smell of summer in the air when you opened that oven door. The flavors of the apples oozed out into the air and the cinnamon made it even nicer.
Conclusion:
To conclude, in the past week I made an Apple bread from Allrecipes.com and altered some of the recipe to what I have. The product turned out great, smelled great, but the taste of the bread told me otherwise. I enjoyed cooking this month with my bros and hope to see you on next month's blog of Culinary Adventures!

Banana Bread - April

     For this month, I decided to make some banana bread like I used to make during the summer. The first step was something I had lots of familiarity with because we had used it so much the past week: the creaming method. I made sure that the butter was at room temperature before I began, to ensure that it would turn out properly. The experience I got helped me to know that even though the recipe says to cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy, that just means for about a minute and thirty seconds. However, it also utilizes the muffin method, because the two mixture, the wet and dry, are separate until they meet in the end, and at that point in time, it's only for a little bit. The most fun part about making banana bread has to be mashing the bananas in a bowl. It's so much fun to mush something that's so squishy. Once my batter was done, I filled a jumbo muffin tin. My mom prefers them in muffin form instead of the bread kind, I don't know why.
     Once they came out of the oven, I let them rest on a cooling rack until they were cooled down. However, my mom ate one while they were still hot. Both my mom and I agree that they turned out pretty good. The smell was overpowering of bananas, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The crust was nice and golden brown, and it wasn't all lopsided looking at all. When I took a bite of it, the flavor of banana coexisted peacefully with the flavors of the bread. There were no tunnels whatsoever, and the texture was nice and moist like a good cake. Overall, I think I did a great job with identifying what mixing methods to use and executing them well to produce an overall good finished product. 

Ingredients
1 cup granulated sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
3 ripe bananas
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Directions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.
Cream the sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Mix in the milk and cinnamon. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Add the banana mixture to the creamed mixture and stir until combined. Add dry ingredients, mixing just until flour disappears.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set aside to cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove bread from pan, invert onto rack and cool completely before slicing.

Waffles

3 Tbsp butter
1 1/2 C. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 pinch salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 C. milk
2 eggs

Preheat waffle iron. Melt butter in microwave. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In another bowl, beast together milk and eggs. Whisk liquid mixture until just combined. Stir in melted butter. Brush hot waffle iron with butter. Spoon about 1/2 cup of batter onto waffle iron and close to cook. This first waffle will be the tester. Cook waffle until golden brown. Remove to plate and keep warm.



Hong Kong, Pandan, Belgium, and Flemish. What do all of these have in common? They are all types of waffles. Waffles are a classic breakfast in all parts of the world, but for this lab, I made classic American waffles, in the shapes of hearts.

My outside lab was a classic recipe that has been in my family for many years. The method I used was the muffin method which I had just learned in class.

Using the muffin method outside of class was new for me. I didn't exactly know what "beasting" was when I started, but I just went through the recipe using the muffin method, which ended very well.

I found all the ingredients and put them all together the way we learned in class, because I wanted to try to incorporate the methods I learned. the batter was lumpy, which was not how my dad has taught me to make waffles, pancakes, muffins, and cookies. The 1/2 cup was a perfect amount for each waffle, but I put a little extra in a couple, which made a drippy mess on the counter. Other than that, my waffles went according to the recipe very well.

The waffles ended up with a very thick texture, but not as rubbery as I have made them before. They tasted more flavorful than the toaster waffles I was used to, too. They tasted rich, but not sugary or salty. They were fantastic and classic, with a consistent flavor and texture all the way through.  They were golden-brown, except for the one I had made that leaked out; this one was very pale in comparison to the others. There was not a very pungent aroma at all. They tasted the same as the ones my dad had made before, though the mixing method was not as he had taught me. I think he probably taught me to mix it all thoroughly so there weren't pieces of flour and egg bits all throughout. The texture was also the same, and I was pleased with the results.

This was a fun recipe to make with what I had learned in class. I made it again a week later, with the same results. This is an easy recipe that was a perfect Friday night breakfast-for-supper, then a perfect Valentine's Day breakfast for my parents.

Candy Shop Pizza

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
10 Tbsp butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 pkg chocolate chips, divided
1/2 cup peanut butter
2-3 cups chopped candy bars (Heath, Butterfingers, Kit Kats, Reese's, and/or Twix)

In bowl combine flour, soda, salt. Set aside. Cream butter, sugar, and brown sugar until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla. Gradually add dry ingredients. Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips. Spread onto pizza pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-24 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven, sprinkle remaining chocolate chips over hot baked cookie. Drop peanut butter by spoonfuls over chips. Let melt, then spread. Sprinkle chopped candy bars on top. Let harden. Cut up into "slices" or squares and serve warm.

Home-baked cookies. The smell of a chocolate chip cookie is enough to make anyone's mouth water. When this is combined with peanut-butter and chocolate spread and candy bars, it certainly is a triple threat. This was the smell that filled my home a few weeks ago when I decided to make candy shop pizza for my family.

For this project, I used the creaming method to make an enormous cookie. It was similar to what we learned in class, but I did this lab before that. The recipe was very easy for me to follow, and went off without a hitch. I started by collecting all of the ingredients. The recipe was similar to the muffin method, in that the ingredients had to be separated. The recipe is fairly self-explanatory, and it was interesting to see it all come together. The most shocking part was watching the chocolate chips melt and combine with the peanut butter on top of the pizza. The types of candy bars I used were Butterfingers, Twix, Crunch and Milky Ways.

This recipe had a very rich and sweet final product. My family and I enjoyed it warm, and the savory tastes of chocolate, caramel and peanut butter were very nice together. The intensely flavored cookie-type dessert was one of the best I had ever had. It smelled very sweet and satisfying. The texture was crisp on the sides and tender in the center, just the way a cookie should be. The cookie had a caramelized and glowing appearance and all the colors were tones of brown and tan that were appetizing-looking when all put together. This dessert was absolutely amazing, and I would make it many times over if I could. Not only was this recipe very good-tasting, but it was also fun for me to make, using many different methods I hadn't ever had to use before.

April Cooking Assignment: Chocolate Chip Cookies

For the month of April, I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I used the creaming method. The creaming method is when you beat the butter and sugar together until the mixture is fluffy and then you add in the dry ingredients mixture. I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I did change a few things. First, the recipe called for light brown sugar, which I didn't have. I used dark brown sugar instead. The recipe also called for room temperature butter and the butter I ended up using wasn’t nearly room temperature. The final change I made was the amount of chocolate chips. I added a little bit extra chocolate chips because I like extra chocolate.

When the chocolate chip cookies came out of the oven they smelled perfect. My mom said the smell reminded her of when her grandma used to make cookies. They smelled warm and sweet, but looked even better. They were golden brown on the edges and the inside was filled with gooey chocolate chips. The color of the cookie was a darker brown because of the dark brown sugar I used. When I bit into it, it tasted sweet and chocolaty. The cookie was crispy on the edges and soft on the inside.

I would definitely make these cookies again. Not only did they taste amazing, but my entire family loved them. I did learn something from this experience, the type brown sugar you use doesn’t necessarily effect the taste, but it will effect the color.

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1½ cups light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 12-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips (I like Ghirardelli)
• 1 12-ounce package milk chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325°.
2. Spray large baking sheet with nonstick vegetable oil spray.
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl to blend.
4. Using electric or stand mixer, beat butter in large bowl until light and fluffy.
5. Add white sugar and brown sugar and beat until well blended.
6. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until mixture is creamy and well blended.
7. Gradually add flour mixture, stirring just until blended.
8. Pour half of chocolate chips into the bottom of a large bowl and then add half the dough on top of the chips.
9. Stir dough and chips together, then add more chips and more dough until all is mixed together.
10. Cover and place dough in refrigerator for 24-36 hours.
11. Scoop heaping tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball and place on cookie sheet, giving each cookie plenty of room.
12. Bake for 14-15 minutes until brown around the edges and pale brown in the middle.
13. Cool slightly on cookie sheet.
14. Transfer cookies to racks; cool completely.