Pretty Girl Bakery

This week’s recipe Twofer Pie was chosen by Vibi of La casserole carrée, and can be found on page 321 of Baking:  From My Home to Yours. It’s the love child of pumpkin and pecan pie and I personally would rather call it Pumpcan Pie. I thought this was delicious.  I don’t think I’d substitute it in for pumpkin pie and you’d be hard pressed to find me making a pecan pie on my own accord, but this was snazzy. I made little tartlets using my cupcake pan.  And I’ll admit I just used a storebought crust.  Things here have been crazy and I just didn’t want to mess with crust. I used a three inch circle cutter to cut out the dough and then I pressed it in, filled and put them in the oven.  I did 10 minutes at 450 and then 20 at 300.  It could have used another 10 minutes at 300 because the filling is very wet and not firm but I don’t really think anyone can tell. hah! And now I am very tired from a long week so I’m calling it quits.  Enjoy the picture and I hope you enjoyed your pie!  HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

On page 21 of Baking: From my home to yours, Dorie has a recipe for a Basic Biscuit and how manipulate the recipe for buttermilk biscuits.  I had buttermilk left over from the Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes. These were amazing and smelled especially great while in the oven.  I did freeze most of them and when baked they didn’t puff up quite a bit as the fresh ones but still had a great taste and texture to them.

buttermilk biscuits

The holiday baking season is here, along with some November birthdays.  J went to LA for the weekend to take care of some business and my best friend is turning 25 on Saturday so I whipped up a batch of the Chocolate Chunkers.  I’ve been dying to make them since it was one of the first recipes I witnessed in the making when I was deciding if I should participate in the group or not.  I don’t have too much to say about making these.  I didn’t use nuts or fruit, just bittersweet chunks and white chocolate.  I think next time I’ll pull back on the white chocolate, or use peanut butter or butterscotch chips.  I ate one warm and it was delicious.  They’re also damn good straight from the freezer:-)

This week’s TWD is the Black and White Arborio Rice Puddings and it’s being hosted by Isabelle. I did not particpate this week.  I do love rice pudding, however, I don’t know anyone else in this city who likes it and while I certainly can eat it all by myself it’s not so good for the figure. At the moment my figure is described as sack of potatoes… certainly I don’t need to be sack of rice and potatoes.

Things around here have been crazy which is why I haven’t posted since the Rugelach.  I’ve definitely been in the kitchen and have stuff to post, but I haven’t been around on the weekends to get to it.  Last weekend J and I were in Florida for the Space Shuttle Launch which was really amazing, and then we went to the Magic Kingdom on Saturday.  We had an early early flight home on Sunday and I still feel exhausted from it all.  This weekend though I hope to spend the majority of it in the kitchen.  I’m definitely making next week’s recipe, and I need to start making cookie dough so I can freeze it and bring it out when Christmas gets closer.  I really want to do cookie baskets as gifts.  Speaking of on Serious Eats this morning I saw a discussion about Mailable Holiday Food Gifts.  I thought the list was pretty good.  Also someone suggested using marshmallows as padding for anything that’s not tightly packed and breakable.

This week’s TWD is hosted by Grace over at Piggy’s Cooking Journal. She picked rugelach and wow, this was just entirely delightful to make. After a little wikipedia search I found that this is a Jewish dessert usually made with pareve to make it kosher, instead of cream cheese and butter.  I certainly don’t have any pareve and I can attest that the rested raw dough was really yummy, especially if you accidentally dropped some of it in the cinnamon sugar repeatedly while putting the cookies together.  I have the tiniest food processor ever and it was a cheap-o purchase so I was a little concerned about the dough.  I don’t think I overworked it.  It rolled out smooth and tasty.  Much to my dismay Target did not have any apricot preserves and I’d already done my shopping at Publix so raspberry it was.  I spread the jam, chopped up some bittersweet chips and sprinkled chop pecans all over it. My pizza wheel was a real jem although a few times it got caught on a nut or a chip and ripped the dough slightly while I was trying to cut through it.  Then I rolled them up, put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and placed them in the freezer.  My apartment gets unbelievably warm when I turn my gas oven on.  And it was already 10pm last night and I was exhausted so they are in the freezer and I will bake up a few tonight, and save the rest for those nights when I’ve popped dinner in the oven and can add a little snack to go with.  I’m still timid about the pecans because I don’t really like nuts but the bits of ingredients I was getting on my fingers were delightful… and yes, I licked the pizza wheel.  I will definitely make these again.  These seem like such a good holiday cookie.  For Christmas I’m thinking about a nutella spread with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips. There are so many things you could do with this dough including using it as a base for meat or vegetable hors d’oeuvres.

ready for their close up!

I change my mind a lot.  I try not to but when I find a better idea I change. So even though I just started The Bake Box I decided to change my website to Pretty Girl Bakery.  I was having a hard time creating a feel for The Bake Box.  It sounded like such a good name, but it wasn’t really me and that what I’m paying for this space to be about.  I hope to have some time this weekend to put a new look on it although I think my IT guy might kill me

TWD:  This week was Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes picked by Clara over at iheartfood4thought. Anyway, I have not had time to find my usb cord for my camera.  J’s mom was in town and then his friends were in town (and we had way too much fun!) so I’ve been busy and barely home.  I walked into my apartment last night for the first time in about a week.  So I made the cupcakes before hand and at the moment they are being stored because I think we’re probably doing some sort of Halloween thing this weekend and I want to wait to fill and decorate them so they aren’t bad by the time we arrive.  And if plans don’t materialize well, I guess the guys where J works will be getting some yummy treats. Put I do promise pictures at some point in the next… year:-)

Hello all!  This was suppose to be my first week playing with all of the girls and boys over at TWD, but alas I failed at the recipe. What an introduction, right?  My problem was that I dont own a springform pan.  You’re asking how that’s possible and the answer is that I’m young and my kitchen equipment is growing and I just hadn’t gotten to the springform pan yet.  So I tried to make the brownies as cupcakes but they rose far beyond expectation and it was just an edible flop. Plus judging from what I could tell, I think this recipe needs it’s entirety to pull together… it seemed delicate? Maybe that was just me overfilling the cupcake tins and ruining the structure of the brownie. I thought about going ahead with the peanut caramel topping but after eating one or two flops I realized that I didn’t want to waste all of those perfectly good (and not cheap) ingredients on a disaster.  I will try to make this again with a springform pan.  Although trying to figure out a dinner to accompany the dessert has been taxing as well.

Edit: After reading some of the other TWD posts I just wanted to say that my biggest problem sounds like I overfilled my cups.  I do think the springform would be handy since the sides on other ones I’ve used in the past seem to  have taller sides than regular cake pans.