Caramel Bars (With Money Shot)

baking sweets, cookies, Food, Kitchen, Recipes No Responses »
Apr 092012

I love to bake. I love to eat baked goods. I shouldn’t eat an abundance of baked goods. So, I take advantage of baking for others. We had a wrestling banquet a bit ago, and along with a big batch of cookies (I make them every year), I decided to try a new recipe. I went to one of my favorite recipe sites (AllRecipes.com) and found these: Caramel Bars. The bars had good reviews, easy enough to make, and sounded delicious. I dove into my day of baking with gusto. There’s nothing like warming the house with time spent creating deliciousness in the kitchen (this was back in February, so the days were still cool).

I took pictures.

The cookie dough I made the day before and let it marinate in its own goodness overnight, ready for baking the next day.

Talk to me about not eating raw cookie dough.

Ready for oven-lovin’…

A couple batches down (and many more to go).

Caramel bars. I doubled the recipe and made them on a large sheet pan.

Wheezy was playing outside, but came in hoping for a nibble.

And the Money Shot. See, I’m from a time when blogging was blogging (or journaling), and pictures were snapped, rarely edited; raw. Real. Sometimes you got lucky and your photo turned out pretty smooth, but mostly, it was just a simple picture. Now, visit (some of the most popular) blog sites and the pictures look professional, photo-shopped, glossed, and blurred. No child has faulty hair or skin, no food tainted by an unsightly scorch. I hate it. I prefer the ugly blog, the less-than-perfect pictures, the blog that feels like I fell upon an open journal, blemishes and all. I know, with the ease of digital dumping, and fancy cameras, it is almost impossible to take a bad shot. But I also know they are still out there.

This is semi-jokingly taken. It’s a decent shot, but the layers of mini waxed paper separating each bar is a copycat of the gazillion photos out there of sweet treats that just happen to be adorned with fancy papers, ribbons and glitter, all appearing to have fallen out of the oven along with the food. I wasn’t energetic enough to add colors, balloons, glitter and an adorable child with manicured hands, smiling in the background. But picture it in your head, mmmkay?

They didn’t really cut so well, so we had a few “rejects” to munch on. More than a few.

Recipe for Caramel Bars:

Continue reading »

Posted by Groovy Mom at 1:41 pm

Happy Birthday To Frank

baking sweets, Family Table, Food, Homemade, Meals, Mi Vida Loca, Recipes 3 Responses »
Oct 262011

Yesterday was Frank’s birthday. 42nd I think. I’m getting terrible with these things. Nevertheless, it was a birthday, and we celebrated it. In our house, the birthday boy (or girl) gets to choose a dinner (in or out). Being that I was working yesterday, I really tried to steer Frank in the direction of eating out. We started with the possibility of creating a menu, and I immediately grew exhausted. After a few emails back and forth, dinner out at Buffalo Wild Wings was the plan.

My husband likes chicken wings. Seems like every year we end up at some wing location for his day of celebration.

I did wonder about the cake. As I pondered this on the way home, I planned. I knew I had some cake flour at home. I’d whip up something. I thought about making one of Jack’s Chocolate Cakes. I had no mayonnaise. White cake? No… what to make, what to make? My mom usually makes Frank one of her apple spice cakes with cream cheese frosting. That’s it! I have a HUGE bag of carrots in the fridge. Mission Carrot Cake begins.

I checked out allrecipes.com and went out on a limb with the highest rated recipe for carrot cake called Best Carrot Cake Ever. I know. Risky rebel that I am. I saw the ingredient list and had mostly everything on hand. My mission began.

Some of the comments on the allrecipes.com website mentioned the cake being “pudding-like” which scared me, so I read a few responses just in case. If you decide to make this cake, do these two things:

1.) Soak the raisins. Bring water to a near boil on the stove, shut it off; add raisins.

2.) Drain most of the liquid from the carrot/brown sugar mix before using it. Drain the pineapple, too. Maybe that’s three things. Oh well. I put my pineapple in a colander and let it drain for a good 15 minutes during prep. time.

Other than that, this is a recipe that works. I didn’t even substitute anything. Well, I subbed the white sugar for granulated cane sugar, but that’s not a biggie.

As I said, I was on a mission. So much so that when the birthday boy came home from his hard day at work, I immediately sent him to the store for cream cheese and pineapple. Pathetic, no? I felt bad, actually, after he left. I realized I hadn’t even looked him in the eye, said hello, gave him a kiss or anything. I focused obsessively on my cake preparations and missed the whole point all-together. A habit that needs breaking.

You know those recipes that you make that totally fill the house with a smell better than any scented candle will give you? This was one of those. It. Smelled. Divine. I whipped up the frosting (1 stick butter, 16 oz. cream cheese, 1 tsp. vanilla, 2c. sugar) and put it in the fridge. After de-panning the cakes and putting them on racks to cool, we went to dinner. Dinner was good. Loud. that place is loud. But good. Our whole family was there, which is the best part. As they grow older it becomes more difficult to get everyone together in one place. Full and sassy, we came home to the yummy-smelling house and I frosted the cake.

Four candles for 4 decades.

So good. One of those instances where a thin slice is all you need.

This recipe was a definite keeper. Better than store-bought and totally tweakable. The only problem is that I have an entire half a cake left and very little willpower. Cake for breakfast. Cake for lunch. Seriously, this cake’s calorie count you don’t even want to know — especially with that frosting. Which is why, immediately after publishing this post, I’m going for a walk. See ya.

Posted by Groovy Mom at 2:21 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Pumpkin Bread Using Homemade Puree

baking sweets, Food, Kitchen, Recipes No Responses »
Nov 202010

More baking. Love to bake, need to learn how to avoid eating so much. Four boys and a husband should be able to do that deed for me.

Today I made this: Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread from AllRecipes.com.

Ingredients

* 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
* 4 eggs
* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 2/3 cup water
* 3 cups white sugar
* 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7×3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

I used my pumpkin puree from yesterday. Ooh-la-la. My plans were to make the bread and have Frank take it to Franny’s soccer party. Plan was good. The boys gobbled down slices of the bread before I could even get them arranged on the plate. I put the kabosh on that. And then Frank forgot the nicely (not really, but we’ll pretend) arranged platter behind when he left.

Whatever. I get an “E” for Effort.

Here’s the review I left of the bread. If I were feeling less lazy I would have taken a picture and wrote up a little more here, but… eh.

I make pumpkin bread every year, and wanted to try something new. So glad I tried this one. It is SUPER yummy. Here’s a couple things worth mentioning:

1.) I made mine using 2 loaf pans, 9×5 I believe.
2.) I added about 1.5 cups of milk chocolates at the end, after everything was mixed.
3.) My toothpick NEVER came out clean. Even after 60 minutes. I cooked them about 65 minutes then took them out, letting them cool on a wire rack in the pan. I removed them about 20 minutes later.

I was very fearful they would be a gooey mess, but they were not. Moist in the middle, and yummy.

The only thing I might do different is try to go a little lower on the sugar, but based on the raves from family, maybe I’ll leave well enough alone.

Tastes good with chili. And wine.

Rating:

Posted by Groovy Mom at 7:35 pm

Baked Apple Pancake

baking sweets, Food No Responses »
Dec 062009

Saturday morning, a nice day for having a “lazy” morning breakfast (not truly “lazy” since that would mean, like breakfast in bed, or breakfast out – but “lazy” in the way that I don’t have to rush to get to work and can make something homemade and delicious). Pancakes the traditional way were out, because I just wasn’t feeling the whole standing over the skillet thing. But something warm and sweet was definitely on the menu…

(Recipe over at the foodie blog: Fried Spaghetti: Oven Baked Pancake. I’m trying to keep them all together over there.)

Posted by Groovy Mom at 1:05 pm

Mulberry Blueberry Pie

baking sweets, Family Table, Food, Garden, Homemade, Recipes 6 Responses »
Jul 022009

We have a mulberry tree in our backyard. It has been growing now for a few years and bears a decent amount of fruit. The kids love to run out back and pick the berries at random times. The other day Franny was outside long after the others had tired of picking berries, and came in suggesting that I come out and pick berries to make a pie.

There was no bone in my body that felt like whipping up a pie on a warm summer day. But he was so enthusiastic and sweet, it felt completely wrong to give into my own lazy desire to play sloth. I examined the tree, as he washed out a container for our pickings. He was the holder, I was the picker. Slightly taller than Lootie, who had the farthest reach of the three boys that were picking earlier, I was able to get to spots that still had some nice, ripe berries on them.

Not enough for a whole pie, but I had a bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer to supplement, and was pleased to have the opportunity to put them to use in a pie. Frozen blueberries are a common staple at our house, but I’ve yet to have actually made a pie with them. I used this recipe from Crisco for a Bluebbery Pie as a base for the pie we were making. I say “base” because of my inability to stick directly to the recipe when baking. I did my best to stick close to this one, though.

I had about 2 cups mulberries and the rest blueberry.

Franny was in charge of stirring, but he got sidetracked by the guinea pigs. I picked up the scent of bubbly, boiling fruit on the verge of burning, and ran to the rescue. It had started to scorch on the bottom, but thankfully not enough to taint the flavor of the filling.

I used the double crust recipe, but it didn’t seem make enough for the bottom and the top. So I enlisted in my standard oatmeal topping (oats, sugar, molasses, butter, cinnamon, salt and a dash of vanilla).

Initially I started to roll the dough for the crust, but that didn’t last long and soon I was using my preferred method — my fingers to press the dough into the dish.

Franny helps with the filling.

Top me off!!!

Ready for the oven…

Franny holds up our creation.

It was fantastic, and I’m not a big fan of fruit-filled pies. Thank you Franny for suggesting we make pie. I’m so glad we did.

Posted by Groovy Mom at 8:00 am Tagged with: , , , ,

Making Old-Fashioned Doughnuts

baking sweets, Family Table, Food, Recipes 4 Responses »
May 282009

I found this recipe for doughnuts and we’re making some.

Quick Doughnuts
Ingredients:
4 cups sifted flour
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
2 tablespoons shortening
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour milk or buttermilk

Sift together flour, salt, soda, cream of tartar and spices. Cream shortening and sugar; add eggs and beat until light and fluffy. Add milk and then sifted dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly until smooth. With as little handling as possible, roll dough out on floured board 1/4 inch thick. Let stand for 20 minutes. Cut with 2 1/2 inch cutter or glass bottom, and use a small cutter for the middle. Fry as above. Makes about 3 dozen doughnuts.

Below are some pictures of our doughnut adventure; don’t expect perfection.

cutting the circles for doughnuts

frying doughnuts

sugared and finished doughnuts

They turned out pretty good, although I was a little nervous because some were a bit doughy in the center and the recipe involves eggs. They are darker, too, because I used a majority of whole wheat flour (a staple in this house), and a bit of cocoa powder. And I don’t have a picture of use eating because it was a regular old feeding frenzy.

I’d like to make these again at some point, but boy, my stomach feels like lead and I’m sure to have a heart attack within the hour.

(reposted from 2005)

Posted by Groovy Mom at 10:23 am Tagged with: , , ,
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