Diseased Cookies are the Best Kind of Cookies!!

No. Don't ever say that. That is a bad saying.

Yet, we post it anyway. We are bad bloggers.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! We promise to post something Thanksgiving-esque in the near future.

But for today we bring your late night chocolate fix: Midnight Jewels

It may look slightly diseased, but it's not, we promise!

These are basically chocolate chip cookie dough with the chocolate in the middle instead! Yum.


Midnight Jewels
adapted from Mrs. Fields Cookie Book


Ingredients (Cookies):

3/4 Cup Butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 dark brown sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Egg Yolks
1 1/2 cup All Purpose Flour

What to do:
1. Cream the butter with an electric mixer
2. Add both sugars and beat until it's smooth
3. Add flour until everything is combined
4. Put in the fridge for anywhere half an hour and an hour (or just cheat like us, and put it in the freezer for half the time or something...)
5. Form half the dough into very flat circles on a cookie sheet
6. Put a dollop of filling on each disk (filling recipe below)
5. Make more circles (slightly larger than the ones on the cookie sheet) to put on top of the ones on the cookie sheet to complete the sandwich and pinch them closed. if you want use a fork to make it look cool or whatever you want (comment if you do something awesome, or even email us picture)
6. Bake at 325 for 15-16 minutes (this will depend on the thickness of your cookie)
7. Eat or whatever

Yummers!

Ingredients (Filling):
1/2 cup Heavy Cream (or half and half if you prefer)
1/2 cup Milk Chocolate pieces
1/2 cup Dark Chocolate pieces

What to do
1. Heat the heavy cream in a sauce pan
2. Stir the chocolates in, a little bit at a time
3. Keep stirring, this is important so it will thicken
4. Let it cool while you make the first circles
5. Form cookies like we told you to before
6. If you have extra filling eat it. It's good. Here, we do not waste chocolate.


**Disclaimer: The title of this post does not reflect on the cookies themselves. it reflects on our level of sleep deprivation**

Birthday Carrot Cake

Hey y'all, It's Nutmeg!

Guess what day it is!
yes, November 22. But! It is also my father's birthday.

Of course, being a baker, I baked him a cake. He was also the one who taught me how to temper chocolate, so I also made him Rochers, which is for another day.

(Cinnamon would have joined me if she weren't at a voice lesson. )

My Dad loves Alton Brown, therefore I am using his recipe for carrot cake, father's favorite.

I got the recipe from The Food Network site, and it is as follows (in my own words)....

Ingredients
Unsalted butter, for the pan
12 ounces, approximately 2 1/2 cups, all-purpose flour, plus extra for pan
12 ounces grated carrots, medium grate, approximately 6 medium
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 ounces sugar, approximately 1 1/3 cups
2 ounces dark brown sugar, approximately 1/4 cup firmly packed
3 large eggs
6 ounces plain yogurt
6 ounces vegetable oil
Cream Cheese Frosting, recipe follows

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2) Butter and flour a 9-inch round and 3-inch (check the dimensions before you put the mix in the pan) deep cake pan. Set aside.
2) Grate your fresh carrots, put them in a large bowl and set it aside as well.
3) Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt in the bowl and mix together until it resembles a homogenous mixture (oh science class). Add this mixture to the carrots and mix until the carrots are coated in the mixture.
4) In the bowl, combine the sugar, brown sugar, eggs, and yogurt using an electric mixer, or whatever you personally enjoy using.
5) Pour in the vegetable oil. BUT! Please mix it in until just combined.
6) Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake on the middle rack of the oven for 45 minutes. Reduce the heat to 325 degrees F and bake for another 20 minutes or until the cake reaches 205 to 210 degrees F in the center.
7) Remove the pan from the oven and allow cake to cool 15 minutes in the pan. After 15 minutes, turn the cake out onto a rack and allow cake to cool completely.
8) Frost with cream cheese frosting after cake has cooled completely. This is super important to note. Especially to those of us who lack patience. Wait; it actually helps.
9) Serve and Enjoy!

Cream Cheese Frosting:
8 ounces cream cheese
2 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
9 ounces powdered sugar, sifted, approximately 2 cups
1) If you roll that way mix the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer, if not, use something that makes you happy.
2) Add the vanilla and beat until combined.
3) With the speed on low, add the powdered sugar in 4 batches and beat until smooth between each addition. (Also important and helpful: make sure you add the sugar in 4 batches)
1) Place the frosting in the refrigerator for 5 to 10 minutes before using.
Yield: approximately 2 cups

After baking this, I now understand why Alton Brown is the man.

Sorry we haven't posted in awhile; we had a show last weekend. Cinnamon and I will be baking together sometime within the next few days, so stay posted!

He's not actually fifteen, by the way...

This cake used the rest of my baby, Rosetta. I have now started using Athena.

HAPPY (late) HALLOWEEN!

We're sorry this took so long to get up. But its here now, and orange frosting could work for Thanksgiving too!
So, how did you celebrate your Halloween?
Nutmeg had a bunch of  people over to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We also went to several Halloween parties. For one of them we baked spoooooky cupcakes!

We have a shortage of good pictures...so this is all you get

We used a chocolate cake recipe and made the cupcakes mini, because, everybody knows, mini cupcakes are better for Halloween!

The frosting is a white chocolate cream cheese frosting, a recipe from the blog www.notsohumblepie.blogspot.com, and we dyed it orange and purple.

The final touch was piping melted chocolate into Halloween-y shapes--ghosts, witches hats, BOO, RIP, spiders, etc. We piped it onto wax paper on a baking sheet and stuck them into the freezer for 10 minutes to harden. After we frosted the cupcakes we stuck these shapes on top.

Dark Chocolate Mini Cupcakes
adapted from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book


Ingredients:
2 Sticks unsalted butter
4 oz bittersweet chocolate chips
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups All-Purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
4 eggs
1 cup vanilla flavored Greek yogurt (or 1 cup regular Greek yogurt and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)

What to Do:
1. Melt the butter, chocolate chips, and cocoa powder together in the microwave (do it in 30 second intervals stirring in between)
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and soda, and salt in a medium bowl
3. Whisk together eggs and vanilla in a large bowl.
4. Slowly whisk in sugar to the eggs and vanilla
5. Slowly whisk in chocolate mixture to the egg mixture
6. pour about 1/3 of the flour mixture into the eggs and whisk in
7. Whisk in the Greek yogurt to the egg mixture
8. Mix in the rest of the flour
9. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
10. Pour your batter into a prepared mini cupcake pan (or regular cupcake if your feeling boring. or regular cake pan if your feeling extra boring)
11. Bake for about half an hour, but check them often because mini cupcakes can burn quicker than regular cakes or cupcakes
12. Decorate them!
13. Bring them to a party! or whatever...

*for the White Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting, go visit Ms. Humble at www.notsohumblepie.blogspot.com