DOUGHNUTS! (but healthy)

These doughnuts are super yummy, and relatively healthy because unlike regular doughnuts they are baked, not fried. For these you do need a doughnut pan, but if you don't have one never fear! You can make these in a muffin pan, but you won't have the fun doughnut shape! The pans are relatively cheap, though, Cinnamon's was only $10 and you can find them all over the internet or at your local kitchen supply store.

Baked Cake Doughnuts
Adapted from multiple sources

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg (optional)
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted 

What to do:
1. In a bowl, combine the melted butter, milk and beaten eggs.
2. In another large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, (nutmeg and cinnamon if using) and salt. Pour in the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
3. Spoon the batter into the wells of your prepared pan (roughly 2/3rds full). An easier/cleaner option is to pour the batter into a ziplock bag and snip the corner or use a piping bag and pipe the batter into the pan. But this is less fun, therefore not recommended
4. Bake for 7-9 minutes at 425 degrees
5. Allow to cool in the pan for a couple minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
6. After they have cooled, you can cover them with a chocolate glaze (recipe below), or powdered sugar, or a cinnamon-sugar mixture. For the sugar choices, put some in a plastic bag add in a doughnut and shake it around. it'll stick, but they won't keep as well.

Chocolate Glaze


Ingredients
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon corn syrup
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon water

What to do:
1. Put all the ingrediants in a microwave save bowl and microwave in 10 second bursts stirring in between until a uniform texture is reached
2.  Let it stand for a bit to thicken, then you can glaze your doughnuts. Add sprinkles if you want!


Enjoy!

 

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

Babycakes

The babies have been baked!

Say hello to Rosetta...in the form of cake balls!

These cake balls are for a bake sale to raise money for our school's drama club. Because plays cost a lot...

We're not going to give  you a specific recipe, because these treats are super flexible...

Heres how you make them:

1. Make your favorite cake/cupcake recipe (or use boxed if you feel like it)
2. Make (or buy) a frosting that goes well with your cake
3. Crumble your cake into a bowl
4. Add frosting and mix until you get a good consistency (the crumbs should stick together, but not be overpowered by the frosting)
5. Melt some chocolate (milk, white, dark, or colored...pretty much whatever you want)
6. Form them into balls with your hands (pretty much any size you want...just not overly huge)
7. One by one dip the balls into the chocolate, then either:
8a. Add garnishes (like the sprinkles we added) while the chocolate is still wet
8b. or put them in the fridge so that the chocolate will harden (after it's hardened, and if the color is light enough you can add a design in those edible pen things...)
9. Eat them! Or sell them! Or give them away! Or do whatever you planned on doing with them!

No babies were harmed in the making of this blog.

Baked Babies!

Rosetta-Thor and Athena-Zeus

Yes, that cliche assignment of "flour babies" has made its way to Adventures with Butter.
Meet Athena-Zeus and Rosetta-Thor, Nutmeg's children. Wondering about the middle names? We had been hoping that she would be assigned twin boys so that their names could be Zeus and Thor. Because, admit it, how epic would that be? Unfortunately, she got twin girls, so they just got masculine (awesome) middle names.
Now the assignment is over, which poses the question. What to do with the babies? Here at Adventures with Butter we do NOT waste flour! So stay tuned to see what has become of Athena and Rosetta...

Sugar Cookies

So something you should know about us: we love theatre. This past summer we participated in a group who put on a show and donated all proceeds to a local charity. Not only did the money from the ticket sales go to charity, we also did 2 car washes and a bunch of bakesales, which are, of course, our favorite fundraiser!
For the first bake sale, we baked together for the first time and we made simple sugar cookies, which sold like crazy!

Comedy Tragedy Masks & The flower represents the charity we donated to

The icing on the cookies is royal icing. But not really, its actually just powdered sugar and water and food coloring.
The great thing about these cookies is just by decorating them differently they can be for a bunch of different events:

Leaf cookies for the local community garden event

 or...

Balloons for a birthday

or...

Add sprinkles! (Great if you're babysitting...)

 Sugar Cookies
from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

Ingredients:
2 cups Sugar
2 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter (softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs 


What to Do:
1.  Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together
2. Beat butter and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar together with an electric mixer until fluffy 
3. Put vanilla and eggs into the butter mixture
4. Add flour mixture until combined
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare baking pan
6. Roll dough into balls 
7. If you don't plan on icing them, roll each ball in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, if you do plan on icing them you can skip this step
8.  Place on the baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes rotating half way
9. Let them cool for 10 minutes
10. EAT THEM! (but only if they are intended for you to eat, if they are a gift, do NOT eat them) 

for Royal Icing, just mix powdered sugar with water until you get the consistency you need (for outlining it should be thicker, filling in, thinner). Maybe when we get better at it we will do a post on how to ice your cookies, but for now experiment, that's the funnest way to learn!


Just as a side note, the bake sales this summer helped us make at least 100 dollars per sale and we had three (this is a lot for a bake sale) and in total we raised 16000 dollars for the local charity.