On Sunday, Curt and I had dinner with our friends Billy and Monika.  Monika made a DELICIOUS dinner of salmon, mashed cauliflower, and asparagus!  I couldn't let her make everything, so I attempted a pretty much paleo dessert.  I read the blog Health Bent on an almost daily basis.  I actually posted one of their recipes before : Rosemary Cashews.  Anyway, one of the recipes that I'd been wanting to try was for carrot cupcakes.  I decided to give it a go, but with my own little twists.

Pretty Much Paleo Carrot Cake

* 1 c almond butter

* 1/2 can full fat coconut milk

* 2 eggs

* 1 tsp baking powder

* 1 tsp baking soda

* 1/2 cup raisins

* 1/2 cup crushed pineapple

* 1/2 cup shredded coconut

* 1/4 cup sugar

* 3 carrots, shredded

* 1 Tbs vanilla extract

* 2 Tbs cinnamon

* 1 tsp nutmeg

* 1 tsp ginger

* 1/4 tsp ground cloves

* pinch salt

* 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

This is a pretty easy cake to make.  I didn't have whole carrots, but I did have a bunch of baby carrots, so I shredded those in my food processor and let them sit.  In a large bowl, I mixed pretty much all of the ingredients, except the carrots.  I mixed everything together with just a wire whisk.  It was pretty easy to make sure that everything was mixed well.  I love lots of "stuff" in my carrot cakes, so I added some coconut and pineapple to the original recipe.  Since the cake doesn't call for much sugar at all, I thought that adding the pineapple would give the cake a bit of moisture as well as some natural sweetness

Once the batter was mixed, I added in the shredded carrot and mixed again.  By this time, my arm was getting a pretty good workout!  I've never made a cake without flour before, so I wasn't sure how/if the cake would rise or if it would even taste good without much sugar.  Many people put more sugar into their coffee than I put into the entire cake!

Next, I greased 2 8-inch cake pans and split the batter between the two pans.  I wanted to make a 2 layer cake since this was for a nice dinner with friends.  Curt could eat a cake that didn't look like it came from a bakery, but I like my sweets looking really pretty!  So... 2 frosted layers it was!  I stuck the pans in the oven at 350 and waited.  It took about 30 minutes for the cakes to bake all the way through.  I did the traditional "toothpick test" to make sure the cakes were completely cooked.  The toothpick came out clean, so I pulled the cakes out to let them cool on wire racks.  

While the cakes cooled, I whipped up a quick cream cheese frosting.  I mixed a package of cream cheese, 3 tbs butter, 3 tbs sugar, 2 tsp vanilla, and a teeny pinch of salt.  I would have used powdered sugar in the frosting, except my fat little beagle got into the sideboard a few weekends ago and ate half the bag of powdered sugar, along with a stick of crisco.  (Nope, she didn't get sick at all- she's got a stomach of steel).  Anyway... I played with the proportions of ingredients until I got a nice fluffy frosting.  For this, I did use my hand mixer... my arm muscles had gotten enough of a workout for the night!

Once the cakes were completely cooled, I set one layer on my pretty snowman plate.  I then took some of the frosting and put it on top.  

Then, because I had extra, and because I wanted to add a little pizzaz, I spread some crushed pineapple on top.  Then, I set the next layer on top and frosted the whole dang thing. 

It looked really pretty to me.  I didn't have any fancy marzipan carrots or anything, but I thought it looked pretty cute.  I did add some shredded coconut on top, just to make give it a little something extra.

So the big question is: "How did it taste?!"  Well, it may have been the few glasses of wine, but, I think that the cake was a success!  Everyone had a nice sized slice after dinner and I got some good reviews.  (They could have been lying to make me feel better though haha).  But I thought it tasted yummy!  I tend to have a sweet tooth and love sweets, but this is a nice alternative!  Just because it's pretty much paleo doesn't mean that I can eat them all day every day for my meals.  However, it's just like a regular dessert.  It's good for a treat every once in a while, but it's a heck of a lot better for you than most carrot cakes!

I even brought the leftovers to school the next day (I'm a teacher) and the teachers I work with all ate some and said it was good.  I was even asked for a copy of the recipe! 

So the verdit on Paleo carrot cake?  The recipe's definitely a keeper!

Pumpkin Donuts

Yeah, yeah, I know... donuts are NOT Paleo approved (don't shoot me, Anders)... however, I am a Daring Baker!  This means that each month, I, along with many other bloggers are given a challenge each month.  Then, we create the challenge recipe and then we post our successes or failures!  This month, we were asked to make donuts!  Now, normally, I don't even eat donuts, even before I started this whole Paleo thing.  However, the Jobies were having a bake sale, so I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to complete the challenge, then get the donuts as far away from me as humanly possible!  I invited my friend Caroline from Cee in the Kitchen, who is also a Daring Baker, to make donuts with me!  So, we made the dough and heated up a big old pot of oil, and then made a TON of donuts... I must say, that for dinner, we did have a very healthy and Paleo friendly dinner of steamed and spiced shrimp!

Pumpkin Donuts

* 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

* 4 teaspoons baking powder

* 1 teaspoon salt

* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

* 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

* 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

* 1 cup sugar

* 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

*1 large egg

* 2 large egg yolks

* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk

* 1 cup canned pure pumpkin

* Canola oil (for deep-frying)

Apple Cider Glaze

* 2 cups powdered sugar

*Apple Cider

First, I threw the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, ginger, and cloves in my stand mixer.  I sifted everything together to make sure that there weren't any lumps.  Now, I didn't read the recipe very well at all, because the original recipe called for me to do this in a totally different order.  I was supposed to mix the butter, sugar, eggs, etc, then add in the dry ingredients last, but hey, they all ended up being mixed together anyway, right?

 So anyway, once the dry ingredients were mixed, I added in the butter and sugar and started blending.  It didn't seem like a good consistency, but it was too late to turn back!  I added in the egg and the egg yolks as well as the vanilla, pumpkin, and buttermilk.  Then, I let the stand mixer do it's thing!  Unfortunately, the batter seemed REALLY runny, not at all like how I would imagine donut dough looking.

Alas, I had to move on.  The next step required the dough to be covered and chilled for 2 hours.  I stuck some saran wrap on the top of the dough, threw it in the fridge, and prayed that some miracle would happen and my donuts would magically turn into delicious donut dough.

When Caroline came over with her yeast raised donut dough, I started to get nervous.  Granted, mine didn't have yeast in it, but it looked TOTALLY different from her beautifully raised donut batter.  When she rolled out her donuts and placed them, ever so gently in the oil, they floated and turned a pretty shade of tan.  They looked exactly like you would picture a delicate little donut to look, see:

Now, Caroline claims that she was worried that her donut dough didn't look right, however, these crispy, yet airy little donuts turned out perfectly.  With that in mind, I had some hope that mine would make a comeback and be delicious!  I said a little prayer and pulled my dough out of the fridge so I could start rolling it out.

My dough still looked super sticky.  I didn't want it to stick to the counter, so I added a TON more flour.  I added a handful and kneaded, then another handful and kneaded, then another handful...  finally, the dough got to a point where it didn't stick to the counter anymore.  I rolled the dough out to a thickness of about a half inch and started in on the cutting.



I tried to take a picture that would convey how thick the dough was ha!



  Luckily, Caroline had brought over a round cookie cutter, thus saving me from using a drinking glass!

So, I cut and cut and cut, then I rolled the dough back together and kept on cutting until I had used up pretty much all of the dough.  I didn't want any to go to waste, so when I didn't have enough left to make too many round donuts, I just cut them into litte strips that would have been perfect for dunking in coffee.



Then, when the oil in my giant pasta pot had reached the temperature of 365. I started frying!  I was expecting my cute little donuts to delicately float in the oil like Caroline's did...

however, mine sunk... yep, they hit the oil and sunk straight to the bottom.  Did all of this happen because I messed up the order of my ingredients?  Would my donuts burn at the bottom of the pan?  Would all those hours of making donuts be a waste of time?  Would my first Daring Baker's Challenge be a flop? I held my breath and waited...

There's the one donut on the right that started to float, but there's one on the left that had sunk to the bottom!

After about a minute, my donuts started floating!  I guess they had cooked enough and they were ready to come to the surface! Phew!

Once the donuts started floating, I flipped them and let them cook until they reached a nice brownish color.  Then I repeated the process a TON of times...

Once they donuts were cooked, I set them on a cooling rack to drain the excess oil and cool.  It was tough not to just rip them off the cooling racks and tear into them... they smelled amazing with all of the spices.

I guess I rolled the dough thicker than normal, because some of the donuts were HUGE.  That's not something I'm really going to complain about though, who would do that? Complain about big donuts? Nah!  As they were beginning to cool, I started in on the icing.  I don't really like that thick cake like frosting on my donuts like some people do.  I prefer a light glaze with a little bit of flavor to just accent and enhance the taste.  Therefore, I made an apple cider glaze!   What better way to mix the flavors of fall, right?

I mixed the powdered sugar and a tiny little bit of apple cider in a dish and stirred away until it went from a lumpy mess to a smooth, pretty glaze.  Then, I tried dipping the donuts in the glaze, but found it was MUCH easier to just spoon the glaze over the top, then put it back on the cooling rack and let the extra glaze drip off.  The important thing to remember when making the glaze is to make it thick enough that it sticks to the donut and doesn't just run off the sides, then you waste it, and that would be a shame :(

So, here, we have the results of my first Daring Baker's Challenge! Beautiful Pumpkin Donuts!  Now, although I wanted to eat all of them, I didn't.  It's not really good for me at all to do that, and I wanted to sell as many as possible at the Jobie bake sale.  I did have one or two though. 

I mean, look how perfect that looks!

Here's what they looked like on the inside!

Delish!

So, bright and early on Saturday morning, (Caroline and I were up until a bit after 11 frying and glazing these suckers!) I got up, threw the donuts on a cute little plate then drove to the Bethel to get started on the bake sale.  Here's my beatiful plate of donuts:

Holy Cupcake!

HOLY CUPCAKE!

Cupcakes are all the rage now.  Everywhere you look, there are cupcake shops, cupcake wars on TV, and even Cinnabon cupcakes, yes, Cinnabon cupcakes!  Who could even wonder why cupcakes are so popular?  Perfectly portioned bites of sweetness!  Not only that, they come in a HUGE variety of flavors and looks.  You can find your traditional chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting, or you can find a really funky flavor, like maple syrup and bacon (which I am planning on trying at some point!)

Last week, I decided to try my hand at making some of these yummy little treats.  Aside from being a teacher, I also work at a restaurant called Dogfish Head Alehouse.  One of the hostesses had to work on her birthday, so we decided to make her some cupcakes!  I wanted to make sure there was enough for everyone, and I like variety, so I made a few different flavors.

Normally, I like baking sweets from scratch, but this time, I decided to cheat.  I didn't have too much time to bake all of the cupcakes because I wanted them to be fresh, so I opted for a twist on the simple.

Safeway was having a sale on pre-packaged cake mixes and frostings - PERFECT!  In my own typical way, I just prepared the different cake mixes and added my own twist.  It was difficult to decide which flavors I wanted to try, so I definitely had to narrow it down a bit.  I had thought about a pina colada cupcake, a smore cupcake, a banana nut maple cupcake, and a rocky road cupcake, just to name a few.  I decided on a banana pineapple cupcake with coconut frosting, a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter chips and peanut butter frosting, and an espresso cupcake with hazelnut frosting. 

Again, I don't have any recipes, I just eyeballed everything.  For the Banana Pineapple cupcakes, I used the yellow cake mix.  To give it that real banana flavor (I loathe almost anything that's made with artificial banana, except for those Banana Runt Candies!) I added 2 mushed up, super ripe bananas.  I also added some pineapple juice, instead of using all of the water the recipe called for.  I think I used about half pineapple juice and half water.  This gave them just a hint of pineapple flavor.

I also decided to use those mini-cupcake pans.  I love variety and wanted everyone to be able to taste a few different flavors, rather than just 1.  Here's one of the cupcake tins, ready to go with the Banana Pineapple cupcakes.  You can also see my peanut butter chip cupcakes cooling on the racks.

For the Espresso Hazelnut cupcakes, I used Devil's Food chocolate cake mix, but added in some instant espresso powder.  I thought I added a lot to the mix, but when they were baked, they didn't have that rich coffee flavor that I wanted.  So I added a bit of flair! I made a cream filling with mascarpone cheese, some sugar, and some Kahlua :) I mixed it all together in the stand mixer, filled a pastry bag, and just piped it in!  It worked pretty well, but some of the cupcakes came pretty close to exploding with all of the yummy stuff inside.

The first picture is what they looked like after the hazelnut chocolate frosting and the second picture is what they looked like when they were stuffed, but sans frosting.  I just used a plain white frosting and added yummy gobs of nutella.  I love the combination of hazelnt and coffee... there's just something warm and comforting about it.  So here they are!  I had messed up a couple of them, so I just covered them in sprinkles so you couldn't see the mess ups!

Here's my setup for the Banana Pineapple Cupcakes.  I used white frosting and added coconut milk to it.  I couldn't add too much without making the frosting too runny, so to give it extra coconut taste, I dipped them in sweetened, flaked coconut too.  This was a delicious trick I had used before!  It makes the cupcakes look pretty and it's easy!

Here I am, dipping the cupcakes in frosting and then covering them in coconut!  They were so delicious and reminded me of little snowy hills.

For the Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcakes, I used chocolate cake mix and just added in some peanut butter chips... pretty simple, huh?  To make the frosting, I added peanut butter to the pre-made white frosting.  They tasted absolutely fantastic!  The combination really worked well together.  Also, the peanut butter was really rich, so making them in the small size worked well.  If something is too rich, I always have to take small bites.

(Hazelnut Latte Cupcakes!)

Overall, the cupcakes turned out really well.  They didn't look like Georgetown Cupcake, but they tasted delicious and they were cute!  Everyone from work seemed to like them, and they disappeared pretty quickly.

( Banana Pineapple Cupcakes with Coconut Frosting)

I only prepared 3 boxes worth of cupcakes, but look how many it made!  That's after I had tasted number of "samples" too :)

 

Cupcakes, cupcakes everywhere!  These attempts have inspired me to create more cupcakes at some point! Keep on the lookout for some smores cupcakes!

Here's the trifecta! 

 I managed to snap one more shot before completely devouring them!

Cream Cheese Cookies!

Here in Virginia, we've been having crazy heat!   The entire house has been so hot, I haven't had much motivation to heat up the house even more by turning on the oven.  Curt and I are going to Boston and Maine to visit some friends, so I decided to bake some cookies to bring them.  Since we were going out of town, I didn't have much in the fridge.  I had a block of cream cheese and some butter, but no eggs, so I set out to find a recipe without eggs. 

After perusing my favorite website Allrecipes.com, I found a good recipe for Cream Cheese Snowball Cookies.  Here we go!

CREAM CHEESE COOKIES

* 1 cup confectioners' sugar

* 1/2 cup finely-chopped walnuts (optional)

* 1/2 cup vegetable shortening (such as Crisco®)

* 1/2 cup butter, softened

* 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened

* 1/2 cup white sugar

*1/2 teaspoon almond extract

* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

*1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

So, first things first.  I decided to double the recipe since I needed to make a bunch of cookies.  Plus, if I had just made 1 batch, I would have half a brick of cream cheese left and half a stick of shortening and would just be a big mess and that just wouldn't do!  

I threw the cream cheese, butter, and shortening in the stand mixer and let it whirl while I got the rest of the ingredients together. 

I added in the flour, sugar, vanilla, and almond extract.  The dough seemed too runny, so I wanted to thicken it up a bit.  Rather than just add more flour, I decided to get creative.

The original recipe called for the finished cookies to be rolled in powdered sugar and walnuts.  I thought that was a good idea, but it seemed too Christmasy... since it's July, I made a little change.

  I swapped almonds for the walnuts and toasted then in a dry pan.  When you toast any nut, the heat activates the oils, which gives the nuts a great flavor. 

Once the almonds were all nice and brown, I ground them up in my little mini food processor.  It just took a few minutes to turn the tan slivers into fine little almond crumbs.  YUM!

I added in the ground almonds to thicken up the dough a bit.  Luckily, it seemed to do the trick.  I then covered a cookie sheet with some aluminum foil and sprayed it with cooking spray. 

 Next, I rolled the dough into little cookie balls.  I wanted to make the cookies pretty small and bite sized, so the dough balls were pretty small.  I just rolled it between my hands and plopped them down on the cookie sheet about an  1 1/2 inch apart.

I stuck the cookies in the oven for about 8 minutes per batch.  The cookies looked adorable.  They had spread out a bit, and were slightly browned at the edges which is just the way I like them. 

The original recipe said that you should roll the cookies in a mixture of the ground walnuts and the powdered sugar.  I didn't really think it through when I started the cookies, so I tried making a chocolate mixture to roll the cookies in. 

They turned out to be pretty tasty, but they didn't look all that cute.  I decided to try them plain.

They were ok plain too.  I had a TON of cookies, so I took a few and brought them into the restaurant where I work.  They only lasted a few minutes before they were gobbled up.  I did decide to jazz the rest of them up with some frosting and sprinkles!

 

So these final little cookie bites were delicious!  The cookies themselves weren't all that sweet, so the icing added a nice bit of sugar and fun.  I think that I will definitely have to make these again!  Our friends loved them too!