Chinese Fighting Cupcakes

First post from the new kitchen! Before anything else, let’s all just gaze upon a photo of my beautiful baking cabinet:

I have so much counter space and I have space to store all my ingredients! It’s mind boggling! FYI, this does not make me any better at baking. During the unpacking process, I was flipping through the Cake Boss cookbook and I decided that it was time and I really wanted to try my hand at a piping bag. Buddy recommends starting with cupcakes to get some of the piping techniques down before advancing to cakes and that seemed fair to me. So begins a multistage process that leaves me with a mess and Chinese Fighting Cupcakes (a cupcake to anyone who understands this reference by the end of the post).

To start with, I (obviously) had to make some cupcakes. Now, I fully intended to be lazy here. I was working from home last week because Mother Nature decided it would be delightful to dump a heap of snow on us and I knew I had some box cake mix so I figured “the point of this is piping, not to make fancy cupcakes from scratch. Box cupcakes it is!” Unfortunately, the box cake I thought I had was actually brownie mix. And it was snowing. So I wasn't about to go out and buy some. No big deal though, I can make cupcakes like a pro from scratch. Here was my critical mistake though: I got lazy and didn't want to search for a recipe I knew worked well and just took the first recipe for chocolate cupcakes that popped up on the internets. BIG MISTAKE. Even though I’m a million percent sure I followed the recipe perfectly, these cupcakes did not turn out well. They were hard as rocks. Dense. Awful. Sadness. Now, I didn't actually find this out until we ate them but it was sad nonetheless. And before you even suggest it, I did not overcook the cupcakes. They were underbaked the first time I checked them and they were perfect 1 minute later when I took them out. It was just a bad recipe.

Ok, so enough ranting about the miserable cupcakes. More importantly, we’re talking about piping flowers. Turns out, I’m also bad at that. But we’ll get there in a minute. First I had to actually make some buttercream. I’m going to choose not to tell you how much butter and Crisco is in buttercream because it’ll only make you sad. I did love the 7.5 cups of powdered sugar that went into my mixer though. No matter what, that was always going to end in an explosion of white the second I turned the mixer on. So at approximately 7:30 in the morning, I mixed up my buttercream. This was largely uneventful besides the sugar volcano. Now, to make the flowers, I needed three colors. I decided to go with green grass and pink flowers with orange centers. Because that’s what the picture in the book did! So, first I mixed up my green. No matter what I tried and how much color gel I added, the buttercream wouldn't get any darker than a pastel green. After a while I gave up trying and just decided a light green would be fine. So I went in search of the decorating tip that Buddy recommended. Looking…looking…looking…nope. Don’t have it. Not cool people. So I picked one that looked flat-ish so I could make the flat circle of “grass” that was in the picture.

To do things properly, I even pulled out my cheap turntable/cake carrier that I bought ages ago so I could get used to using a turntable in conjunction with a piping bag. Let’s just say it took some time to get the hang of it. Getting the speed right was challenging and remembering not to move my hand was hard to do but eventually I was able to understand the mechanics of the process. There will be many pictures in this post of my triumphs and failures so here’s the first set with my range of green grass-layers:

Not great but not too bad, right? Passable? Oh, you just wait. Now I have to actually make flowers. That was just green circles, people! Child’s play! And that was already a challenge! For the flowers, I was supposed to use another tip that I absolutely did not have. No problem, I can improvise. However, none of the tips that I tried worked very well. They all made wavy patterns and none of them really looked like flower petals no matter how I tried. Oh yeah, and I had the same pastel pink issue as I did with the green except the pink looked even worse and was not at all vibrant. Anyway, I tried three different “types” of flowers but my conclusion is that they generally look like octopi, nonapi, jellyfish, or squished jellyfish. It was so sad.

On the bright side though, even though my creative piping skills leave something to be desired, I was able to consistently pipe things that were the same size, shape, and design. So I guess that’s something? Mechanically, I suppose I’m doing something right. I just may not have the creative eye. This should not surprise me at all. It probably shouldn't surprise you either at this point.

Last step was to add the orange centers. I know that the centers of flowers aren't typically orange but they’re whimsical so it’s ok. Or so I keep telling myself. And that’s what the picture had! Since I only have two piping bags, I had to wash one of them. Let me tell you something: buttercream is ridiculously hard to clean off hands, piping bags, utensils, or pretty much anything else. Cleaning a piping bag isn't easy in the best of situations and this was just crazy. It took me forever and then, as I’m looking at a still soaking wet piping bag, I decided that I could just use a Ziploc bag with the tip cut off. (Obviously, I had to clean all my stuff anyway but it was so annoying to have to do it in the middle of what I was working on.) Super annoyed at this point and thoroughly depressed by my ugly flowers, I piped in the middles. Which made them look worse. Seriously. I mean, you can see the pictures and decide but I think they look much worse with the orange. Mostly because the orange was barely orange. I really need to get this color mixing thing down better. Anyway, here’s the finished product:

So sad. And then to make everything worse, by the time I ate them, I discovered that they were dense and icky cupcakes. And to make everything worser, I had brought them over to my aunt’s for her birthday and they weren't good and I never like bringing something not good and inflicting it on other people. The only good part was the taste of the buttercream. Which was actually really good. My sister just ate that and decided to forgo the actual cupcake. Smart girl.

Well, first baking adventure out of the gate in a new kitchen and it’s basically a disaster. Sound familiar to anyone? Reminds me of the good ol’ days making cookie dough bites and pinwheel cookies. I think the key is that this was a recipe that really challenged me. And I need to keep challenging myself because well, it just makes for better stories. So until next time…

P.S. If you think of any baking challenges that you’d like to see me try, feel free to comment! There will most likely be a Tardis cake in my future sometime in August but I’m open to other ideas before then!

A Disney Moment: Dinosaur

This movie is THE WORST. Dinosaur is Black Cauldron bad. It’s Saludos Amigos bad. I can’t even explain how bad it is but it may in fact be the worst (so far). From the very first moment, it looked weird. A quick IMDB search informed us that the backgrounds are actually superimposed photos of tropical locations. Ok then. It’s not bad in theory but the technology wasn't quite there, I think. Or maybe it just looks bad because they superimposed the most detestable characters on the lovely backgrounds. The plot is basically Land Before Time (which is an excellent movie) but everything about this rendition falls flat. Aladar is a stupid name for a protagonist. Just sayin. And there are lemurs. For no reason that I understand. Let me explain the plot to you: there’s an asteroid and we have to go to the nesting grounds and we have to go there quickly or we’ll die. There’s a meaningless love story, an antagonist who was TOTALLY right, and a wandering aimlessness to the whole story. As far as the antagonist goes (and I will not refer to him as a villain), he saw a threat to his herd. He was the leader. It was a choice of either slow down for the old and sickly dinos and have everyone die or move on and wish the slow ones the best of luck. I’m sorry but if you’re talking about the survival of your species, you should probably just keep moving. Aladar and friends got lucky and found a cave to hide out in. A CAVE WITH STAIRS. Seriously, that cave has stone stairs. Few things have ever annoyed me so much in a movie. I was literally yelling at the screen. Ask my sister. And then Aladar is a really obnoxious know-it-all when he finally does catch up to the herd so why would anyone be listening to this guy they just met? The whole movie is fraught with implausibility. Worst. Worst. WORST. 5/5. If I could give it a negative score, I would. 

This One Knocked the Stuffing Out of Me...

Welcome back! Stupid productivity getting in the way of blogging. The semester is back in full swing which means that I'm back teaching and doing research and studying for my general exam (October 3!) and trying to find time to do a billion things. So I figured I'd jump start my productivity with catching up on my blogging. I guess I'll start with the adventure that was trying to bake two things at once. Commence chaos!

Oh wait, before I start: apparently the tarelles weren't bad. In fact, people thought they were really good. Maybe my taste buds were scrambled that day or maybe I just don't like them but in any case, I am officially removing the assessment that they are the world's worst cookie. My apologies to the Cake Boss. Except not really because as one of the projects I was making on this occasion, I made his Eclairs. Sort of.

Let me explain. I planned to make eclairs. I figured that it was time to get away from the cookie recipes in the Cake Boss book before completely writing off the cookbook. So the next section is pastries. And the first recipe for pastries is eclairs. Step 1: make the pastry shells. Ok, cool. That was pretty easy. Mix up the dough and put it in a piping bag and pipe out eclair shapes. Easy. I'm getting to be pretty good at piping now. I baked them up and they puffed nicely. Success! Well, short lived success. It was at this point that I noticed that the pastry cream has to be refrigerated overnight. Oops. However, the shells can be frozen and defrosted for use whenever. Awesome! Problem solved. Oh, I should also mention that the way to test if these were done was if they come off the pan easily when picked up with a thumb and index finger. Super scientific. May have ended up with some very hot fingers.

It was about this point that I got a text from a friend informing me that she finally got a job. Yay for jobs! And how should one celebrate a new job? With stuffed cupcakes, of course! So while the pastry shells were baking, I perused my cookbooks for a recipe for stuffed cupcakes. I didn't have one. But hey, I bake a lot. I have the knowledge and the power to mix and match recipes! So I decided to use the dark chocolate cupcakes that I've made previously from America's Test Kitchen and stuff and frost them with cream cheese frosting. Did I mention that I was baking all this late at night with the added pressure that I was going to be headed home to Jersey the next day? No? Well, I was. I may have been a little crazy.

So, the most logical course of action to me was to whip up the cream cheese frosting in Connecticut and bring it to New Jersey where I would bake and stuff the cupcakes. Completely logical, right? Sure. I whipped up the cream cheese frosting quickly enough (though it was actually a huge pain because I kept having to wash all of my materials) and stuck it in the fridge. Oh yeah, and I was simultaneously cooking dinner. Is the imagery of my kitchen mess clear enough for you by now? Yes? Good.

Ok, so where am I? Dinner's done, frosting's done, pastry shells done. Last thing tonight is the pastry cream! Did you know that custard is hard to make? I didn't. If I had, I wouldn't have tried to do this late at night after having baked for hours already. So, for those of you who don't know, custard is a tricky thing. Also, choosing what size pots and bowls to use is a tricky thing. And when I say tricky, I mean "I'm bad at it." I started with my egg yolks, flour, and sugar in a small bowl. Bad idea. I could see immediately that that would be a problem. So I moved everything to the medium bowl. I had to whisk those ingredients together until "they lighten in color." The ingredients didn't seem to combine well. I kinda had lumpy crumbly egg yolk messes. But I figured it would all even out when I combined it with the milk. (It didn't.)

This is where things get dangerous with custard. You have to be extremely careful to not cook the eggs with the hot milk. To avoid that, you first temper your mixture with one cup of the hot milk and then add the whole mixture to the pot with the milk. It was at this point that I realized that I really could've used a bigger pot. It was also when I realized that the medium bowl wasn't going to be big enough and the big bowl was dirty. Ahhh! Plus at this point, you have to very carefully blend with a hand mixer while moving the pot on and off the heat so that the mixture boils but doesn't cook the yolks. So much multitasking! With one hand, I was mixing and with the other hand I was washing a bowl and at some point I had to add the butter as my "thickening agent" and it was a mess. I was supposed to end up with a mixture that was very thick but was instead pretty thin. Also, the bottom of my mixture totally just cooked. Like, egg yolk omelet on the bottom of the pan. But whatever, I'll just take the non-cooked part and use that and I'll just have a bit less than I wanted, right? Sigh. I think you can all see where this is going.

So, I covered my thin mixture and put it in the fridge overnight hoping that it would thicken up overnight. Apparently that's not how custards work. The next morning I got all excited to fill my eclairs. I sliced my pastry shells and I went to fill my pastry bag with the filling. Not happening. It was a thin drizzle of messy. So I started Googling quick fixes for custards. There really aren't any. They all say to start over except for one which said I could fold in some whipped cream. Hmm. I don't have whipped cream but I'm sad enough about my custard right now to go buy some. So I did. Don't use this quick fix. It doesn't work. Here's a picture of my sad sad attempt to fill eclairs:

It's not attractive. But there are bright sides. The first is that the pastry shells looked good so they went right back into the freezer to be used another day. The second is that the custard actually tasted pretty good so barring my inability to make custard, this recipe probably would've turned out well. So the pastry shells are awaiting a second attempt at custard which will happen sometime in the future when I am not in a delicate mental state.

So with this failure hanging over me, I headed home to make the cupcakes. Baking cupcakes is easy. I had no problem here. Stuffing cupcakes is a different story. I found one thing online that recommended just putting your filling in a pastry bag with a long tip, jabbing it into the cupcake and squeezing. Theoretically, the cupcakes will puff up with the filling and it will be wonderful. There was even a video demonstrating this phenomenon! All that happened for me was getting a very narrow tube of filling into the cupcake. No puffing up or anything. So I tried a different approach. I used a small knife to cut a cone out of the middle of the cupcake, filled the cupcake, cut off the tip of the cone, and returned the rest of the cupcake cone to its rightful place. I referred to that last step as "putting the hat back on" because I was a little slap happy at this point. In hindsight, since I was frosting these cupcakes with the same filling anyway, I really didn't have to put the hat back on. Regardless, these cupcakes were freakin' delicious. The cream cheese with the dark chocolate complemented each other perfectly and when you sliced the cupcake in half, it looked beautiful. See for yourself:

Pretty good, right? They were so yummy. So, one success and one fail and one very very tired baker.

A Disney Moment: Hercules

Ah, the final member of this group of five (finally). Hercules scores a 2/5 and let me just say that I really love it. The villain is fun and sharp. The references to Greek mythology are at times blatant but at other times subtle. I recommend suspending all your knowledge of Greek mythology before watching because otherwise, nothing will make sense and it will only make you angry. I love love love the music (with the notable exception of "Go the Distance") and the Greek chorus narrators and the sassy heroine and Danny Devito as Phil and the cameo of Scar and yay! I just really like this movie. It's quick but it doesn't feel too quick to me and the comic relief characters have pretty minimal screen time (they should have even less but I'm willing to let that go). Overall, I like it. Whew, it took a long time to finish those 5 movies.

World's Worst Cookies

Well, for those of you getting frustrated with my competency in the kitchen, here's a treat for you. As an aside, is there an opposite to "ineptitude"? I'm pretty sure "eptitude" isn't a word. Just wondering if there's a positive root word for ineptitude. Ok, moving on...

So, the Cake Boss is failing me. I know it's been a while since I've baked from the Cake Boss cookbook because I got distracted by the really yummy recipes in Martha and America's Test Kitchen. So I decided that it was time to get back to this book. This is the only cookbook that I am cooking through in order so that meant that the next cookies in the book were Tarelles (i.e. vanilla cookies). Ok, vanilla cookies. Not terribly interesting but I've had good vanilla cookies before so why not? I had a slight problem with these because the recipe calls for pastry flour and I couldn't find pastry flour in any of my supermarkets. However, the recipe does say that all-purpose flour can be substituted so I didn't think too much of it.

First step was to mix together sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Easy. Made a bit of a mess with the vanilla but no big deal there. Next step was to add shortening. This was almost a big problem because I was almost 1/2 a cup short! I say almost because I finished off my container of Crisco and thought I had another but did not. Eventually I found Crisco sticks in my cabinet though. Success! By the way, I'm not a Crisco diva that I need to have the sticks but I had a coupon for them so I bought them.

Then I had to paddle in some milk until "thoroughly absorbed". I disagree with that "thoroughly absorbed" assessment. I was mixing it like crazy but it still looked like watery cottage cheese for several minutes. It wasn't very attractive. But fine, eventually, I managed to get it combined-ish. Add flour and baking powder and I'm all done with the actual combining of ingredients.

Now comes the super fun part. I had to roll out these cookies into rings. There were very specific directions about rolling half the dough into a 30 inch rope and then cutting pieces based on another measurement and then rolling those out and initially, I sort of followed that. It was pretty unnecessary though, as long as you're confident that you can form uniform-sized cookies. So the measurements weren't my problem. My problem was the dough itself. Rolling ropes of dough can be really awful if you've got a super sticky dough or a very crumbly dough (both of which I've dealt with and documented here) but this dough was neither of those things. It's hard to describe though. It didn't stick to the surface and it didn't stick to my hands. It also did not stick to itself which made forming complete rings basically impossible. The other problem is that it kept falling apart as I rolled it. I don't mean that it crumbled. I mean that, as I rolled a rope of dough, if I rolled any piece too thinly, it became two ropes. This made the concept of making a "Twisty Tarelle" completely impossible. To do that, I had to fold the dough rope in half and then roll it against the work surface so it would make a spiral. It did not. It just broke. A lot. After trying this for several minutes, I just gave up and stuck to the regular tarelles.

So eventually, I delicately rolled out two cookie trays' worth of these cookies. And realized that I had barely used half the dough. Awesome. I baked them for the appropriate amount of time and until the bottoms were slightly browned as specified. Pretty sure they were baked perfectly. I put them on the racks to cool while I rolled the rest of the cookies. No big problems there besides those already mentioned. At this point though, I had the sneaking suspicion that these cookies might be a bit bland so I decided to add some sprinkles. The picture shows some of the cookies with sprinkles so why not? I'll tell you why not. Because sprinkles don't stick to the cookies. I tried. The only way to get the sprinkles to stick was to really press them into the dough which destroyed the shape of the cookie so after attempting this with three cookies, I gave up. Here's a picture of the finished product before I give you a taste assessment though:

These cookies taste bad. I had my boyfriend taste one at the same time as me and we looked at each other and he said, "they're not bad..." which usually means they're not good. I was a half step away from spitting mine out. They are so DRY. There's no moisture to them so it's like trying to eat seven saltines or a mouthful of flour or something. I've only had this type of texture once before when I tasted a cookie and it crumbled to dust in my mouth and I almost choked on the cookie dust. At least I didn't make those cookies though. Those may be worse. These are really bad too though. I don't even know how I should have made them better.

So at this point, I'm pretty displeased with Cake Boss. His cookies are very hit or miss. I'm thinking that I'll try to make one of his pastries next to see if he's better with those. These cookies though...thumbs down. So, anyone want some terrible cookies? I have about 40 of them and nobody to eat them! Seriously, suggestions of what to do with these are welcome. I don't know if I want to subject anyone I like to them though. Sigh. What a disappointment.

Oh, and let me just put in a plug for the contest I've entered. I am competing in phdcomics.com's 2 minute thesis contest. If I get enough votes, I will get my thesis turned into a comic which would be totally cool. Voting ends on August 20 so if you would please vote and share with your friends to extend my network of voters, that'd be terrific. Thanks in advance and I promise, if I win, there will be cookie sharing. Here's the link to vote: http://www.phdcomics.com/tv/2minute/#133. The title of my audio clip is "[Intentionally Left Missing]"

A Disney Moment: Hunchback of Notre Dame

There's no way to sum up this movie besides this statement: My sister and I rented this movie from the library FIVE times. That's right. For about a month and a half, we would rent Hunchback and then stare at it and not want to watch it. We really really didn't want to watch this movie. Finally, we settled down to get it over with (I think we may have rewarded ourselves with fast food first) and well, I guess I didn't hate it quite as much as I thought I would. Which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

I don't really know what bothers me about this film. The villain isn't exactly scary. That's not to say that he isn't evil. He's probably the most evil Disney villain what with all the fire and brimstone and wanting to burn gypsies. But unless you're an adult and thinking "he's one amoral SOB" then he doesn't particularly inspire fear. I will always argue that Ursula is a better villain than Frollo is.

I think the movie tries to cram too many plot lines in and I don't really care for the other male protagonist (you know, the one that isn't Quasimodo that I can't remember the name of). The music is ok and the animation is fine but it just never grabbed me. Also, the gargoyles. Are they just Quasimodo's subconscious speaking or are they really alive? This bugged me. I don't mind if we have talking statues but the ambiguity of it made me uneasy. So, in this grouping, it's a 5/5. But at least we're done with it and the librarians can stop thinking that we're unhealthily obsessed with Hunchback.

Half the Cost, Twice the Thinking

And with barely enough time for my mixing bowl to dry, we're back! In fact, we're back to the Cake Boss cookbook. The reason I ended up baking practically back-to-back is because these cookies needed to rest overnight. And what are these cookies, you ask? Why, Pignoli cookies, of course! For those of you who are significantly less Italian, pignoli cookies are pine nut cookies. I honestly don't think I've ever had one before so I've been looking forward to these for a while now.

To start with, I decided to halve the recipe. Here's why: the recipe calls for 1 pound and 9 ounces of almond paste and 1 1/2 POUNDS of pine nuts. Now, almond paste isn't really easy to find and it's not cheap. And pine nuts are really not cheap. And remember, I'm a broke grad student. As it was, making 24 cookies instead of 48 was stretching my wallet. I don't say this to complain. It's just a caution to those who want to follow in my footsteps and make these cookies. The ingredient cost is high.

That all said, halving the recipe was not without its hurdles. The almond paste part went fine (think of it as a substitute for butter in cookies). The powdered sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon halved just fine. But the recipe called for 1 1/4 cups sugar. I don't have a 1/8 cup measure. So I eyeballed it. What else was I supposed to do? Convert 1/8 cup to tablespoons? Not happening. Similarly, the recipe called for 1 tablespoon of honey and I don't have a 1/2 tablespoon measure. Do they even make those? In any case, I eyeballed that too. Don't look at me like that! I'm lazy, remember?

After adding all of that (in one single step), I had to "paddle until smooth with no lumps remaining". No lumps, you say? How is that even possible? There's nothing wet except 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tbsp honey! I paddled much longer than specified (in fact, I probably over-mixed the ingredients) and eventually, there were very small, equal-sized lumps. It was basically a crumbly dough so I don't know how else it should have looked. Anyway, the last thing to add was the egg whites. The recipe called for 5 extra-large egg whites. So halve that. Hmm. Half an egg white? Really? That one you actually do have to eyeball and there's definitely nothing I could have done about that. Dividing by two is stressful.

Now comes my favorite part: a pastry bag. Who here remembers the last time I had to deal with a pastry bag and how stressful it was? I do! As a result, I took this whole step as slowly and as carefully as possible. First, I cut two pieces of parchment paper on which I had to pipe the cookies. They kept rolling up in an obnoxious manner so I had to weigh the corners down with various kitchen knickknacks (including, but not limited to, a steak knife). Then, I had to fit my pastry bag with a #6 plain tip. Fun story about my pastry bag. It's a lovely canvas bag and it came in a little kit with a bunch of decorating tips and for the first 3 months that I had it, I couldn't figure out how to properly affix the tips. I tried a lot and the directions didn't make any sense to me. My mommy had to show me how and then I felt stupid. Dark times.

Aside over, back to the #6 plain tip. Looking for the #6, looking for the #6, why, oh why, don't I have a #6? I have a dozen decorating tips. I have #2 and #4 plain tips. I have fancy flower tips. I have no #6 plain tips. Perfect. Deducing that the hole for the #6 was probably larger than that of the #4, I picked a shaped tip that had what I considered to be a large enough hole to squeeze the dough out of. I ended up going with the #96 tip. Who knew that a person could ramble for a whole paragraph about decorating tips?

After stressing out over decorating tips, I filled the pastry bag (which was surprisingly not the worst) and was instructed to pipe the dough into circles 2 inches in diameter and 1 1/2 inches high. I had some trouble making circles at first. They turned out kind of squiggly. Then I realized that I had to a) take it slow and b) not hold the pastry bag so high. But the 1 1/2 inch height made me nervous. My cookies definitely looked too thin. So I ended up piping a second layer on top of my cookies. Piping is a pain. It hurts my hands. In the end though, it didn't end up being so bad. I was one cookie short of my intended goal of 24 cookies but that's still much closer than usual for me.

Wow, long blog post, so many steps. For those of you paying attention, you'll realize that we still need to add some pine nuts! I was instructed to spread the pine nuts out on a baking sheet and then pick up the cookie-covered parchment paper and invert it over the nuts. Press down into the nuts and lift up and put aside. I really wish I had another pair of hands helping me. I was very afraid that the cookies would fall off the parchment paper and it was hard to control where the cookies went on the pan. And, in fact, I should have spread out the pine nuts better because on the second flip, some of the cookies landed on the pan instead of on the pine nuts. As a result, I made a mess (as usual) and ended up pressing several pine nuts into cookies by hand.

Let rest overnight. Whew.

I baked the cookies and they had a really interesting aroma. Not as good as the oatmeal applesauce cookies but definitely interesting. It was probably the cinnamon and pine nuts. They looked nice, they smelled nice but sadly, I don't like them. I tried one and I practically spat it out. Maybe it's just me though. So the jury's still out on the Pignoli cookies. Here's a picture:

Oh, and by the way, I'm not the only one who can't divide by two. At the end of the recipe, there's a note that says that since you won't use all the pine nuts, you could use half as much and press the nuts in by hand. So, instead of using the 5 cups (about 1 1/2 lbs), you could use 2.5 cups (about 1 1/4 lbs). Yup. 1 1/4 is obviously half of 1 1/2. If the baker and an editor can't divide by two, I shouldn't be expected to either. So there.

A Disney Moment: Robin Hood
I LOVE Robin Hood! 1/5! Possibly first out of all so far! Well, more like it's a three-way tie between Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, and Robin Hood at this point. Still, what an awesome movie! I suppose I should at least explain why I love this movie so much. First off, the opening credits. It's hamster dance, people! The song is great, seeing all of the characters during the credits is great, and the whole thing is just a fun way to set the tone. I especially love the minstrel rooster as the narrator.

The whole movie has good pace. We establish the characters early and quickly. The driving conflict is obvious and we even get a love story that doesn't completely halt the progress of the plot and instead incorporates the love story as part of the conflict (i.e. using Maid Marian as bait to catch Robin Hood).

The animation throughout is pretty solid. Not quite the works of art that say, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty were but definitely solid. I especially love the effect of the waterfall during the love song. And speaking of songs, I loved all of them. From the humorous "Phony King of England" to the lazy but jaunty "Oo-de-lally" to the sweet but thankfully brief "Love" to the absolutely heartbreaking "Not in Nottingham" it's just perfection. Honestly, as a kid, I remember getting restless during Not in Nottingham but as an adult, it almost made me cry Pixar-style. It was just a really heart wrenching scene that I hadn't paid much attention to before.

Aside from all that, there are small things that really put the movie over the top like Richard the Lionheart being a lion. The snide remarks by Hiss, the snake. Archery! (I love archery.) I honestly loved every second of the movie and really want to watch it again right now. A+ to Robin Hood.

Meringue...Brownies?

Aaaaaand we're back! Back to the Cake Boss cookbook. I'm just powering through this thing. Next on the list was Chocolate Brownie Clusters. I was pretty excited about these because I wanted to try something that was less cookie and more brownie for a change. And, even more fun, this recipe only has five ingredients! Exciting, right?

The other exciting thing about this recipe is that I actually get to use some real techniques other than creaming or stirring. In fact, I had the opportunity to use the whisk attachment on my brand new, totally awesome KitchenAid Mixer. The reason for that is because the bulk of the body of this "dough" is whipped egg whites. That was step one. Whip egg whites and a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice (yes, I did buy a lemon and yes, I did get lemon juice in a cut on my finger) until the egg whites form stiff peaks. I actually have some experience in this area. Fun fact: don't try whipping refrigerated egg whites from a carton if trying to form stiff peaks. I didn't do that this time but I've tried before and it just doesn't work. Just a note for anyone out there who reads this and feels inspired to bake. Anyone? Anyone?

While the egg whites were being whipped into a frenzy, I was instructed to sift powdered sugar and cocoa into a bowl together. For once, I actually did this. Let me explain why. At this point, I realized that these were going to be more meringue than brownie so I decided that everything had to be rather delicately done so as to not ruin my lovely whipped egg whites. So I sifted. And that went fine, although I'm not sure I know how to properly clean my sifter. After that, I had to fold the dry ingredients into the egg whites. My mommy taught me how to fold ingredients many, many years ago and has reinforced the idea many times since so I was a pro at folding the ingredients. Then I just had to fold in a bunch of walnuts and voila! Done! I was actually supposed to use walnut halves but all I had were chopped walnuts so hopefully that won't make too big a difference.

At this point, the batter looked...well, for lack of a better term, weird. It was all combined but it was kind of loose and thin and I started to worry that I did something wrong. After consulting the book, I found this passage "The batter looks like an unholy, goopy-gooey mess." Hmm. Well, I guess that means I'm on the right track? I continued reading to find "When you make these, you might even think you did something wrong." It's like Buddy knows me! However, then he goes on to talk about these cookies turning from ugly ducklings to perfect swans and he lost me a little bit there by sounding slightly crazy.

Sorry this is so uneventful and boring. Maybe I'm actually getting good at this sort of stuff! (Don't worry, some crazy looking recipes are coming up soon in this book.) Anyway, I had to drop "heaping tablespoons" of batter onto the pan, making sure to include about the same number of walnuts in each one. I didn't check the number of walnuts in each cookie at all. I am just not that meticulous. From there, I just had to bake until the outside had crisped and the bottom started to pull away from the parchment paper. Straightforward. And for once, the cooking time seemed right. Maybe it's because this time I just baked one pan at a time instead of two. Perhaps that makes a difference.

Anyway, when the cookies came out, they were in fact crispy on the top. One of the ones that I poked to test actually sort of collapsed in on itself. But the description is correct; these cookies really are more meringue than brownie but they still have the distinct taste of brownie. It's a very odd cookie. Good though. I would probably use fewer walnuts in the future but without the walnuts, I'm not sure if the cookies would have much flavor. Overall, success! Take a look:

By the way, YEAH GIANTS! SUPER BOWL CHAMPS!

A Disney Moment: Jungle Book
Ah, Jungle Book. A classic for sure. I was really looking forward to watching this one because I remember loving it as a kid. I mean, you've got "Bare Necessities", Baloo, the quartet of vultures! But sadly, it didn't hold up to my expectations. I find myself talking a lot about flow when it comes to these movies (and that is honestly unplanned but apparently is crucial to a good film) and Jungle Book had bad flow. Nothing really dragged you into the plot or the characters and the whole movie seemed to meander a bit. Considering the movie is based on a collection of short stories, I suppose this shouldn't surprise me but I would have liked more of a driving force in the film.

There are some scenes I love. The aforementioned "Bare Necessities", for one. I also love the idea of King Louie and his scat-inspired song "I Wanna Be Like You". I adore Phil Harris's voice as Baloo (and then later as Thomas O'Malley and as Little John). But overall, the film didn't hold my attention well. I thought Sher Khan (the tiger) was a really interesting character that I wanted to see develop more but alas, it was not to be. As a result, a 3/5. Which, by the way, should probably tell you something about this group of five that this one was good enough for a three.

Peanuuuuuts...(I'm Quoting Duck Soup Here)

Ok, well, not really peanuts. Peanut butter. I was just thinking about the scene with the peanut vendor in Duck Soup (that's the Marx Brothers for anyone who has not yet experienced the glory of that film). That's right, I've returned to the Cake Boss cookbook and resumed baking with Peanut Butter cookies. Recall, I have made peanut butter cookies in the past. They were good. They even had chocolate drizzle on them. These cookies, however, do not have a million tiny Reese's cups that I have to unwrap and chop up. These have milk chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's backtrack.

We start the baking with some peanut butter and Crisco. Last time that I worked with sticky stuff, I lined the measuring cup with wax paper. Now, while this was effective, I was too lazy to do that this time. Instead, I just used two spoons: one to scoop and one to scrape. This worked pretty well, with one exception. I almost ran out of peanut butter! Who runs out of peanut butter? It's a staple in every household! And I certainly was not going to go out to the store and buy more. Ludicrous. So, it took a good deal of scraping the sides of the jar but I ended up getting juuuuuuust enough peanut butter. Next, I had to scoop in some Crisco using the same method. Not a problem. Here we run into another small problem though. I had been using the 1/4 cup measure for the peanut butter and the Crisco. The third ingredient to be mixed in was 1/4 cup of brown sugar. I didn't want to clean the 1/4 cup. I know, I know, I'm super lazy. You're right. So what did I do? Why, I filled a 1/2 cup halfway, of course! Specific measurements be damned, I was not cleaning that 1/4 cup.

After that, I had to add in one [extra large] egg. Easy. The book recommends periodically scraping the sides of the bowl during mixing and even specifies when scraping should be performed. And it's good advice. Scraping the bowl revealed all sorts of non-combined stuff. Good call, Cake Boss. My praise of the Cake Boss ends there though. You'll see why in a minute.

But first, a story about opening a can of sweetened, condensed milk. I got out my church key can opener and poked two holes into the can. This caused the condensed milk to ooze aggressively out of those two holes in the process. Ok, not the end of the world. But then I tried pouring. It's like trying to pour honey. It's slow and I'm impatient. So, I got out the real can opener. After carving off the top of the can (and of course, making a mess), I poured the contents into the bowl and scraped it with my spatula. And made a mess. Why am I always making messes out of simple tasks?

After adding the rest of the ingredients (flour, baking powder, chocolate chips and peanut butter chips), I had to divide the dough into cookies. Hmm, I just noticed that there wasn't any salt in this recipe. How unusual. Anyway, I was instructed to flour a work surface (which is never a good sign), divide the dough in half, and roll half the dough into a 20 inch long cylinder with a 1 inch diameter. Sure. Because I'm so good at that. Oh, and did I mention that the dough is sticky? Because, you know, it's peanut butter? Good stuff. To make things even more complicated, these cookies have a very high chip to dough ratio. Meaning, once I started to roll the dough, it would break apart and chocolate or peanut butter chips would come tumbling out of the middle of the cylinder. I legitimately don't know how I could have avoided this. There were just too many chips. I shudder to think what would have happened if I added the optional 1/2 cup of peanuts!

Anyway, eventually, I got a cylinder-like shape that may or may not have been the dimensions specified. As we know, I am not a good judge of lengths. From there, I had to slice the cylinder into 1 inch slices (like slice and bake cookies). Then I had to roll the slices in my hands to make a ball, press down to flatten to half inch thickness and put on the baking pans that had been previously prepared with parchment paper. Wow, tongue twister. Say it three times fast: previously prepared with parchment paper. I wonder if any of you just tried.

Bake cookies for approximately 8 minutes until edges are a light golden brown. I'm sorry but I think the cooktimes in this cookbook are way off. I ended up baking the cookies for 12 minutes and not only did the edges never brown but the bottoms were only slightly brown. Recall, I ran into this same problem with the double chocolate chip cookies. I know that the Cake Boss is used to baking in bulk but I'm starting to suspect that the conversions are not quite working out for home baking. I'll stick with it a little while longer but be it known: I'm wary of these recipes.

On the bright side of life, the cookies ended up tasting pretty good (for peanut butter cookies, which I'm not overly fond of) but they weren't as good as the other peanut butter cookies I made. Also, for once, the recipe made cookies that were not gigantic! Admittedly, I made them a little smaller than the recipe suggested but they're very cute bite-size cookies. See for yourself:

A Disney Moment: Sword in the Stone
Ugh. 5/5, 5/5, 5/5. I wish I could rate it lower. It was awful. I honestly can't find any redeeming qualities. People talk about the battle being a triumph in animation and maybe it was, but by then I felt like I was trapped in some sort of animation torture chamber. Every time the kid turned into another animal, my sister and I audibly groaned. We started inventing new directions the story could have gone in. I think it would've been better if he pulled the sword out of the stone about halfway through the movie and we got to see his attempt to rule a kingdom as a child with Merlin's help. But he didn't. Instead we got an hour of "education is important! You should be educated!" which was a lesson that had sunk in for the kid after the first iteration. This movie is actually in the running for my least favorite Disney film of all time (though, I'm sure that title will be challenged when we get to the more recent stuff). Awful.

Double Chocolate Chip Showdown

Welcome back! Today I continued powering through the Baking with the Cake Boss cookbook. The second recipe in the book is for Double Chocolate Chip cookies. I was excited to try these and compare them to the Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies in the Death By Chocolate cookbook. Those cookies were basically magic so I was having trouble imagining a cookie being any better than those. So let's begin and find out, shall we? 

Step one was the usual creaming of butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the smell of brown sugar? Seriously, the second I open the bag, I start to smile. It's pretty much like crack to me. Happy happy brown sugar. Yes, I know I'm crazy, moving on. Step two was adding the cocoa, extra-large egg, and vanilla extract. Buddy mentions the importance of using good cocoa in recipes. He specifies a couple brands I've never heard of but said that it's really where you should spend your money to get good quality. So, I decided to splurge and get Ghirardelli cocoa (which was the only option in the store besides Hershey's). I also now have extra-large eggs so I didn't even need to substitute for those. So far so good.  There was a slight glitch with the vanilla today. I used up the last of one of those tiny bottles of vanilla extract so I had to open up the big bottle that I have. I'm not sure why but it didn't pour nicely. I was holding it upside down and it was barely drizzling out. It was very odd. And yes, I did remove the protective paper stuff from the top of the bottle. This may continue to be a mystery to be explored further at a later date. 

Oh! I totally forgot to mention something super important! Santa brought me a KitchenAid mixer for Christmas!!! So this was my first chance to use my brand new, super shiny, totally awesome KitchenAid mixer. The MixMaster has been retired to the basement. It served me admirably these past few months but it was time for something more advanced for some more advanced baking. I was especially excited that the KitchenAid has a big whisk for whipping egg whites and a dough hook. The possibilities are endless! 

Ok, geekout over. The next step was to add two tablespoons of whole milk. Yeah, I definitely don't have whole milk. I'm more of a skim milk sort of person. However, here is what Buddy has to say on the subject: "If you have a preference for low- or reduced-fat milk, I respect that, but I encourage you to use whole milk in your baking if at all possible. The final product will taste better, and that fat helps bind the ingredients." Duly noted. That does make some sense so maybe in the future I'll consider buying some whole milk for my baking. Any thoughts from my readers on that one? Is it like the difference between salted and unsalted butter where I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter? 

Next step was adding the flour and baking powder which was uneventful. Finally, just added some semisweet chocolate chips and was ready to go with the baking. I was instructed to break the dough into small pieces and roll them in my hands to make meatball-size balls. Really? Meatball size? Big meatballs or little meatballs? What are non-Italians supposed to do with such a direction? Additionally, is it really necessary to roll them into balls so that my hands are a mess? Couldn't I have just used a spoon to measure out the cookies? So many questions! Now, the recipe was supposed to yield 24 cookies. I strongly disagreed with that assessment. I made 37 cookies instead. If I had made 24 cookies, they would have been gigantic and that would have been silly. 

Bake until flat and hot. Wait, really? Bake until HOT? That is perhaps one of the stupidest directions I've ever read in a cookbook besides "Do not overbake." Of course they're going to be hot, they're in an oven! Also, the cookies did not entirely flatten out. Which makes me wonder how they would have cooked if I had them made them the prescribed size. Plus, I was instructed to "not leave in the oven for more than 15 minutes, no matter what." Cake Boss is a little bossy. Anywho, I tried one and I think they were actually a little bit underbaked (so I left the second batch in more than 15 minutes and screw the directions!). I'm going to declare that they're not quite as good as the Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies. They're a bit more cakey and are pretty sweet whereas the Deep Dark cookies were more, well, deep and dark in flavor. As far as looks go, they look like Double Chocolate Chip cookies. See for yourself: 

Critical Reception: 

I haven't gotten a lot of feedback on the butter cookies. I still think they're delicious. Not that many people ate them. One person said that these were good but the butterscotch cookies were still the best cookies he has ever had. Ever. Which I consider to be a high compliment so happy!

A Disney Moment: Sleeping Beauty

Onward to the next group of 5 films! This grouping includes Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats. In a somewhat controversial decision, I will be ranking Sleeping Beauty as a 2/5. However, I will say that Sleeping Beauty ranks a 1/5 in beauty of animation. It really is a beautiful film. Here's some of my other random thoughts: 

The fairies are not the brightest. Seriously, hide the princess through all of her birthday! Lie about when her birthday is so that you don't have to use magic to make a birthday cake! Don't let her wander off alone on her birthday! Anything! Yes, yes, I know that without these poor choices, we wouldn't have a movie but it still bugged me. My sister and I (but mostly my sister) were also bothered by the prince's disproportionate hands. Otherwise, the prince was much better animated than other princes but his hands were way too big for his tiny arms. I also didn't really care for the time that was spent on the kings of the two kingdoms chatting. Ok, those were the negatives. 

There were many positives though. I like the personalities of the faires. I think that for the brief times that we see Aurora and the prince, they are good characters. The music is awesome. I like Once Upon a Dream, the other choral pieces were kind of forgettable, and the adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty score fits well and is beautiful. Tchaikovsky is the shit. I could listen to his music all day. Let's see, what else? Oh, Maleficient is absolutely fantastic. She is terrifying to an epic proportion, and not just when she's a dragon either. I love her character design. She puts the evil queen in Snow White to shame in terms of pure evil. So overall, an excellent movie and very very close to a number one ranking but the couple of negatives brought it down just a hair. 

There's a New Boss in Town

Here I am, back again, as promised. In a fit of insanity, the day after finishing the turtle cookies, I decided that I needed to bake again. One of my Christmas gifts this year was a cookbook called Baking with the Cake Boss written by, of course, TLC's Cake Boss. Another example of bad tv I watch pretty religiously. Despite never having been to Carlo's Bakery, I've heard good things from people who have gone and watching the show is like magic to me because of the artistry that comes out of completely edible materials. I aspire to create one of those crazy looking, beautiful cakes. However, I'm not nearly there. It'll be a while.

This book is a pretty good read actually. It's written with a sense of humor and practicality and a lot of really helpful hints. Including how to tell if your eggs have gone bad! (You put them in a cup of water. If they float, they're bad.) As a result, I was really looking forward to starting through this cookbook. In the introduction, Buddy recommends cooking straight through this cookbook in order because the recipes at the beginning help you develop techniques used in the later recipes. Alright, Buddy. First stop: Butter Cookies.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I just made butter cookies very recently and made the fun shapes like Christmas trees and camels etc etc and they were delicious so what can be gained from baking this recipe? Well, you'll see. The recipe is completely different from the Joy of Cooking recipe for butter cookies. First off, some of the ingredients are very specific. For example, Buddy only uses extra-large eggs in his recipes. Hmm. Now, I wasn't about to buy extra-large eggs for one recipe so I consulted a handy dandy conversion table in the back of one of my other new cookbooks and discovered that 4 extra-large eggs=5 large eggs. In the future though, I will have extra-large eggs so as not to make that substitution. I really can't believe I'm going to buy extra-large eggs for use in recipes from only one cookbook. Cake Boss is really gonna cost me some serious money by the end. (No, seriously, he calls for a lot of ingredients and tools that I just don't have.) The second very specific ingredient is for cake flour. I wasn't inclined to substitute this one with all-purpose flour because the recipe specifically said NOT to. Ok, fine. I went out and bought cake flour. I also bought almond paste. I have no idea what almond paste is. I hear it's kind of like marzipan but marzipan is one of the other great mysteries of my life so that's not really a useful reference point.

Ok, enough of all that, let's get to the baking already! First step was (as usual) creaming. But this time, I had to cream butter, sugar, AND almond paste! I had to use 3/4 cup of almond paste. I had bought what I thought was a large tube of almond paste. It was actually rolled up kind of like a stick of butter and was exactly 3/4 cup. Happy! Also, the recipe called for 4 sticks of unsalted butter. There was a stick and slightly less than a stick of unsalted butter in my fridge and I was too lazy to look for any more. So I substituted 1 and 7/8 sticks of unsalted butter and 2 and 1/8 stick of salted butter for the 4 sticks of unsalted. I'm pretty sure that one won't matter. The combining of ingredients went fine. Nothing too exciting to report. But here comes the hard part. Buddy doesn't want me to simply spoon the cookies out of the dough. He wants me to pipe them into fun shapes with a piping bag.

Disaster. We only had a polyurethane piping bag in the house. And butter cookie dough is notoriously greasy. I think you can see where I'm going with this. The recipe suggested piping 2 and a half inch circles of dough but didn't specify the thickness. I measured out my first cookie and decided that 2 and a half inches was too big for one cookie. From there I just eyeballed it. However, piping is hard. The dough was too cold so it was only manageable by the time I got to the end of the bag. It hurt my hands. My hands kept sliding off the bag because, inevitably, my hands got covered in the dough. It was just a disheartening mess. Really, I should have been using a canvas bag with a dough that thick but live and learn, right? Anyway, after much hand cramping and cursing, I finished two trays of circle cookies. And had only used about a third of the dough.

After baking (and deciding that the future cookies should be a bit thicker), I decided to get creative with the later batches. I made some hearts, some straight line cookies, and some Christmas tree cookies. Then I discovered the most awesome shape of all to pipe: Mickey Mouse heads. It's so easy! It's just two small circles and one big circle! And, in my frustrated state, I was excited to not have to maneuver the piping bag much. I just had to point and squeeze until the circle was the right size. So, as a result, most of my cookies are Mickey Mouse and that makes me quite happy. Here they are, to bring a smile to your day:

The taste is interesting. You can definitely tell it's a butter cookie but the almond flavor is much more prevalent. I think I would probably cut the almond paste just a little bit if I ever make these again. They're definitely still yummy though and I departed from my usual tradition of just having one cookie and ate about five. The consensus in my family was that they weren't as good as the green cookie press cookies but they were better than the red and plain colored cookie press cookies. Don't look at me like that. They taste different, I swear! Next time, I'm dyeing the whole batch green. So there.

Critical Reception: 
Besides thinking that the pecan turtles were cute, people really thought they were yummy. In a head to head comparison with the white chocolate macadamia cookies, the turtles won as far as taste went. That said, I don't really think I'd make them again. Too annoying to make, even if they are cute.

A Disney Moment: Lady and the Tramp
And here we are folks, at the winner for this group of five: Lady and the Tramp. I'll be honest, this was a surprise for me. I remembered liking the movie as a kid but it never garnered the same enthusiasm as Alice or Peter. Plus, I'm not wild about the "He's a Tramp" song. But wow, here's a movie that just got it right.

The animation is beautiful. I really thought it was an animation leap from Peter Pan to Lady and the Tramp. Now, I'm not a dog person (at all) but when I saw Lady as a little puppy and their heartwarming attempts to discipline her into staying in her bed, I just melted. I know exactly what kind of dog I want now. An animated puppy. My sudden love of animated puppies aside, the movie is well paced, the characterization of all the dogs we encounter is charming, and we get to see a really delightful romance develop. For a "kid's movie", there's a lot of adult themes as far as the relationship goes, particularly when Lady hears about all the other dogs that Tramp has been with.

The horror elements were back in the film as well, particularly with the rat in the baby's bedroom. The tension really builds well to that scene. And how about when the one dog in the pound goes to take "the long walk"? Aaaaah! That was pretty messed up. But of course, it all comes back to Bella Notte. That scene affected me more than I thought it would (because it's so famous and I knew it was coming) but it still had charm and romance and it made me smile. The whole movie from start to finish was engaging to me and it really took the cake as the best movie in this group. In fact, it may even be a close tie with Dumbo. It even ended with many adorable little cartoon puppies! So cute! 1/5!