Happy Valentine's Day...And a New Blogging Venture!

Hey friends and happy Valentine's Day! I have a few recipes waiting in the wings to share with you, but I have been right out straight these past several days and literally haven't had any spare time to prepare the blog posts. But in the meantime, I wanted to wish you all a lovely Valentine's Day! Whether you have a significant other or not, I think Valentine's Day is a wonderful holiday to celebrate the people you love and let them know how much they mean to you. I feel so blessed to be celebrating Valentine's this year with my fiance, Mike. Next year on this holiday I will call him my husband. Wow!! ♥

I'm not going to bombard you with Valentine's ideas for sweet treats to make since it is the night before, after all...and if you're making a delectable dessert for the holiday, chances are you already have your recipe! But I bet there's a chance that some of you out there might be scrambling for last minute gift ideas, so I have a fun one for you.

Check out this link (which has several great ideas), and in particular, look at #10. That's my favorite! You can easily make up all sorts of cute phrases to tell someone how much you care about and love them using food! Candy, snacks, food, etc. etc., etc... I'm telling you, the possibilities are endless. You could...

1) Buy Riesen candies and tell the person all the riesens you love them.

2) Give them nuts because you're nuts about them.

3) Give them a pear and tell them that you make the perfect pear.

4) Or how about an orange...and say "orange you're glad you're my valentine?"

5) I'm bananas over you! (obviously give them a banana :))

These are just a few ideas. And they can work for significant others, family members, kids, coworkers, etc. Anyone would appreciate adorable (and edible!), cute little gifts like these! And I would imagine that if you go to the store and stand in front of any shelf of food or display of candy, you could come up with many more ideas than the few I've listed here. Plays on words like these are some of my favorite things!! Just ask anyone who knows me. I am constantly coming up with puns and plays on words. After writing about this cute gift idea, it's seeming so much fun to me. I am thinking that I may just have to put a last-minute basket of things like this together for Mike.... Hmmmm. Shhh, don't tell!!

And on a completely different note, I wanted to share with you my second blog I just started! It's a blog all about beer.

You likely know, if you're a regular reader, that I am a big fan of craft beer and that Mike and I homebrew together. Well, I thought it would be fun to chronicle our beer adventures together on a blog! So, last week I began "Craft Beer Loving Girl." I'd love for you to check it out! I will probably only post there once a week or so, but you should definitely head on over and let me know what you think. :) I just had a random thought, looking at this picture above. Should I name the blog "Will Run For Beer" instead of "Craft Beer Loving Girl"?? What do you think???

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day today! I'll be back soon with a delicious recipe for chocolate chunk toffee bars. ;)

Stout Gingerbread Cake with Citrus Sauce

I've been meaning to write this post all week but just haven't had the chance to get around to it until now! Aren't things supposed to be less busy after Christmas?? :)

As you may be able to tell from the picture above with the Christmas plate, this Stout Gingerbread Cake with Citrus Sauce is the dessert I made for our family's Christmas dinner (which we enjoyed on Christmas Eve). It was definitely a winner! The recipe comes from Cooking Light, and I found it online at My Recipes. If you click on that link, it'll bring you to the original recipe. And in the reviews, you might just see a review by someone you know. ;) My family and I liked this recipe so much that I thought it deserved a rating from me online!

Although the recipe calls for a stout beer, such as Guinness, I used the beer pictured here, Hibernator by Long Trail, that I picked up right at the awesome Long Trail Brewery in Vermont on my drive home to New York for the holiday. This beer is a Scottish ale, which is a style that's on the darker, maltier side. I figured this would work just fine in place of a stout. Basically, what I needed was a beer that wasn't overly hoppy and/or bitter. A Scottish ale fit the bill perfectly! And coincidentally, if you're a craft beer enthusiast, I'd recommend trying Hibernator if you haven't yet. It's quite a delicious beer and gets great ratings on beeradvocate.com. It's so delicious, in fact, that I had no problem drinking the beer that was remaining (around 10:30 AM on Christmas Eve morning) after I had added one cup of beer to the recipe. My sis took a picture of me to show I had finished the beer. Can't let a good beer go to waste now, can we? :)

Okay, back to the recipe at hand. Do forgive me for getting off tangent there. But when you're marrying a homebrewer and craft beer lover, and are a craft beer lover yourself, it's really hard not to discuss good beer. :)

Ingredients for Gingerbread:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-2 tsp. ground ginger

-1 and 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1 tsp. baking soda

-1/4 tsp. salt

-1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

-1/4 tsp. ground cloves

-3/4 cup sugar

-1/2 cup butter, unsalted and softened

-1 large egg

-1/4 cup molasses

-1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger (I did not add this; instead, I added another 1/4 tsp. of ground ginger)

-1 cup stout beer (or a dark, malty - non bitter or hoppy - beer)

Ingredients for Citrus Sauce:

-1/2 cup sugar

-1/2 cup water

-1 Tbsp. cornstarch

-1 Tbsp. butter

-1 Tbsp. grated lemon rind

-1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

-1/4 tsp. vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350. Coat a 9-inch round cake pan with cooking spray and sprinkle with flour. Or, coat it with cooking spray, line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, and coat paper with cooking spray. Combine flour and next 6 ingredients (through cloves) in a bowl, stirring with a whisk. Combine the sugar and butter in a large bowl, beating with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the egg, and beat until blended. Beat in the molasses and fresh ginger, if using. Add the flour mixture and beer alternately to the sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing from pan and cooling completely on wire rack.

To prepare the citrus sauce, combine the 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, and cornstarch in a medium saucepan; bring to a boil. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add 1 tablespoon of butter, stirring until smooth. Stir in rind, juice, and vanilla. Cool to room temperature and serve with gingerbread. 

As you can see, I didn't use a 9-inch round cake pan. Instead, I used my awesome Wilton mini snowflake pan. Isn't it so cute? It gets even cuter once you see the cakes themselves...

Love the four differently shaped snowflakes! The white spots you see on a few of the cakes is just flour from when I sprinkled the pan with flour before filling it with the cake batter.

I sprinkled the cakes with powdered sugar using my mom's sifter... It worked pretty well! I was going for the effect of snow...how'd I do?? I had intended to bring home a little shaker that I have with powdered sugar in it that makes sprinkling powdered sugar very easy but I forgot it. The sifter worked great though instead.

To serve the cakes, I cut them in both halves and thirds, to serve people both bigger and smaller pieces. I poured a generous spoonful of the citrus sauce over the cake, and then topped it off with a dollop of cool whip too. Delicious!

The flavors of the cake itself were wonderful, and the lemon sauce was an excellent compliment to the gingerbread. I highly recommend this combination. It was a perfect Christmas dessert, but I also think it would be awesome at Thanksgiving or throughout the colder weather months. :)

Friday Favorites, 9.30.11

TGIF to you! Did you know that during this past week, we had two very important "holidays"? Well, on Wednesday it was National Drink a Beer Day (which I did, don't worry!), and Thursday was National Coffee Day (yes, I had a cup in celebration!). Since two of my favorite types of beverages were honored this past week (don't worry; I enjoy each of them in moderation :)), I thought I'd share a few of my own Barbershop blog recipes that have featured or involved these two beverages.

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Kahlua Cream Cheese Frosting

You cannot go wrong with these cupcakes - I promise! The stout is what makes them great, I'm convinced. ;-)

Beer Onion Chive Cheese Bread

What a delicious savory bread! And it's super easy and quick to make.

Spent Grain Bread

Mike and I make this bread with the spent grains after we're done making our home-brewed beer. It's a hearty, tasty bread - and obviously a great way to not waste any grains!

Mocha Frosting

When searching through my blog, I realized I've only ever shared one recipe that used coffee as an ingredient! I've made other recipes with coffee in the past, but I guess I just haven't put them on the blog. This mocha frosting is amazing!! I made it for the darn good chocolate cupcakes I made for my grandmother's surprise 85th birthday party this past spring.

And I also wanted to share two recipes I recently found that involve coffee and beer (not together!!)... I haven't made these yet, but I hope to.

Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte from The Pastry Affair

(photo from The Pastry Affair)

Doesn't that look amazing? The pumpkin spice latte is probably my favorite specialty drink from Starbucks, so I can't wait to try making my own at home! I haven't had one from "the 'buck," as I like to call it, yet this year. Gotta get on that! Or, I just need to make my own at home apparently. :)

Lastly, through Pinterest, I recently found this beer cheese dip that looks deeelicious. It's from a fun blog, The Tidy Mom.

(photo from The Tidy Mom).

Woohoo, there you have it - some tasty treats made with beer or coffee in honor of this week's past "holidays." Have a fabulous weekend!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Kahlua Cream Cheese Frosting

Divine. Decadent. Heavenly. These are just a few words to describe the cupcakes I'm about to share with you... These aren't my own words but words of my coworkers who indulged in these cupcakes today at work as we celebrated a coworker's birthday. I have to agree with the adjectives they chose to describe these though; they are pretty amazingly delicious if I do say so myself!

As you can tell from the title, these cupcakes contain two kinds of booze...beer and kahlua. :) Good stuff, I tell ya. I really think that the stout beer enhances the chocolate flavor of the cupcakes in this recipe. The cupcakes themselves are very moist, rich, flavorful, and all around super tasty. Although I don't think the flavor of the kahlua came through in the frosting as much as I would have hoped, I have to imagine that it enhanced the deliciousness of the frosting too. Bottom line...booze in baking = a good thing.

I actually blogged about these cupcakes not far after my blog came into existence; you can read that post (it's brief!) here. I wanted to share them again though because I used a different frosting recipe this time AND because my blog has evolved quite a bit and I believe this recipe definitely deserves a lot more attention than I gave it the first time around!!

So, once again, the recipe I followed is one from Dave Lieberman of the Food Network. Read all about it here! Reviewers of this recipe on the Food Network site give it 5 stars, and I know that my coworkers and I wholeheartedly agree with that rating. The recipe says it makes 24 cupcakes, but I actually made 24 regular cupcakes, 12 mini ones, AND a small heart shaped cake (4" wide or so) with this batter. It makes a lot, folks!! You'll notice that the recipe calls for sour cream, but I chose to use light vanilla-flavored yogurt. Also, another small change I made was adding about 1 cup of mini chocolate chips to the batter. I mean, why the heck not?

Although the recipe recommends using Guinness as the stout beer, I used a milk stout made by the microbrewery, Left Hand. Hey look - I'm even holding the beer in my left hand! Ha. I'm a dork.

This milk stout is a verrry good beer. It was a little difficult to pour it into the bowl and not drink it!!

Mmmmm, extra chocolate. :)

All baked and ready to be frosted!

I read several frosting recipes before deciding on the one I finally made. I have a bit of a problem when it comes to reading recipes and deciding on one to make... I spend a great deal of time perusing my cookbooks (I have a TON of them) and recipes online. I really enjoy reading recipes, but sometimes I spend too much time doing it because I just can't decide on what to make! Thanks to inspiration from a few different cupcake-themed cookbooks I have, here are the final ingredients I used for the frosting:

-1 stick real unsalted butter, softened

-8 oz. cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat), softened

-2 to 2.5 cups powdered sugar, sifted

- approx. 2 to 3 Tbsp. vanilla flavored kahlua (I didn't measure it exactly; sorry!)

Beat butter and cream cheese with electric mixer; add in the powdered sugar and booze and continue to mix until everything is well-incorporated. Continue to add more powdered sugar, as needed, until the frosting reaches the desired consistency that you prefer! 

This frosting recipe made plenty to frost every last cupcake. And I still probably had 1/2 to 2/3 cup of frosting leftover. Looks like I'll have to find a use for that this weekend... Hmmmm, maybe use it as the filling for whoopie pies???

As you can see, I topped each cupcake off with a few mini chocolate chips as a "garnish." 

These cupcakes would actually be good for the upcoming holiday of St. Patrick's Day! The original recipe suggests using Guinness. If you used Guinness stout and tinted the frosting green with some food coloring, I think you'd be totally set for St. Patty's! ;-)

Here's a mini cupcake.... Delicious, I tell you!!

I actually had two other recipes I was intending to share with you in this post, but because these cupcakes got such rave reviews at work today, I decided to share this one sooner than later! Should you be curious, the current two recipes on deck are browned butter toffee bars and butternut squash mac n' cheese....  They'll be coming soon, I promise! Until then, go get yourself some stout beer and kahlua. Oh, and make these cupcakes with them. I suppose you could just drink them though. :-D

I also want to try a new St. Patty's recipe soon to share with you before the upcoming holiday. Maybe I can squeeze that in this weekend! In the meantime, you can read up on my traditional Irish soda bread from last year!

Homemade Beer Brittle

Beer brittle?? Do I hear you scratching your head over there?! :) I decided to try my hand at making brittle the other day...and not just any ordinary brittle, but beer brittle! I honestly don't remember what inspired me. Sometimes an idea just pops into your head and you go with it!

I have to say that this recipe was not necessarily difficult. It was really just a tad time consuming. It definitely took longer than I anticipated, but it was still fun. Check out the recipe I used here.

As you can see, there's just a teeny bit of sugar in this recipe. ;-) The most time consuming part was bringing the mixture to the temperature of 300 degrees fahrenheit. I thought it would never reach 300!! But I stuck with it, as did my candy thermometer. :) And speaking of "stuck with it," this is a sticky mixture! Once the mixture is ready, you have to pour it quickly into the prepared pan. It also sticks to your teeth a bit when you eat it, but don't worry, it's worth dealing with the sticky-ness, thanks to how yummy it is! And it actually doesn't stick to your teeth for long either, I promise.

Pictures!!

The recipe calls for peanuts, but I used sliced almonds because that's what I had. And I toasted them! I did it on the stove. Super easy! The toasting really brings out the flavor of the nut. Have you ever toasted or roasted nuts before? See how to do it here! You can toast them on the stove or in the oven.

Check out that roasty toasty brown color. ;-)

SUGAR!

I chose to use good ol' Sam Adams Cream Stout.

The recipe didn't call for the whole bottle, so I did my part to finish it....

Let the liquids cook!

So this is when I started to worry about whether I was doing this correctly. First of all, I kept having to adjust the gas on the stove. It kept wanting to boil over! So if you try this recipe, be sure to closely monitor it on the stove.

Woah, what's that?! After the mixture finally reached 300 degrees after taking a lot longer than I anticipated, it "blew up"! It was ready to go right over the edge of the pan...

So I quickly brought it over to the sink. Doesn't that look kinda cool though? :)

There, it calmed down. As soon as it did I poured the mixture into two prepared pans lined with foil and sprayed with cooking spray.

Look at that leftover sticky goodness!

Don't worry; as messy as this looks, it actually cleans up very easily. I just let the pan sit full of hot water for several minutes, and voila, the sticky-ness vanished!

The brittle hardened very quickly. I took this piece off the pan to give it a taste. Yum!!

This recipe made a LOT of brittle!!!

All in all, I was happy I tried making this unique treat. It's not in my typical repertoire, so it was fun!

The taste was a bit nutty, caramel-y, and even a bit spicy! As you can see, the recipe calls for chili powder. I actually had just run out of chili powder before making this brittle, so I added a touch of cayenne pepper instead. And I really think you could taste it! It added a fun kick to it. ;-)

Talk to you again soon, hopefully!