Baby Gender Cupcakes

A few months ago, I blogged the news that my husband and I are expecting a baby later this summer. I mentioned that I wanted to make some sort of gender cake to announce if it was a boy or girl when the time came for us to be able to find out.

The time to find out came on Tuesday. We had our ultrasound and were told that we have a healthy baby girl on the way. Everything looks great with her development and growth, and despite the fact that she was stubborn when it came time to get measurements and get close looks at her organs, she cooperated beautifully when it came time to find out her gender. We are very excited, despite the fact that my husband claims he has no idea what to do with a baby girl. I maintain that he really has no idea what to do with a baby, but we'll figure it out together :)

Here's a 3D image of our little girl smiling:

We spent the day calling our family and some close friends to tell them the news. But I knew I still wanted to bake something to tell my coworkers the news the next day. Instead of a full-blown cake, I made vanilla cupcakes and tinted them with red food food coloring. Since the pink wasn't completely hidden by the cupcake wrapper or frosting and it wasn't like they had to bit in to the cupcake to know what color it was, I put a little pink chocolate candy on top. And as I was making the cupcakes, I realized that I could daydream - for the first time, with certainty - of baking someday with my little daughter.

My coworkers knew this day was coming, and they kept watching for me to walk in to the office. When I finally did, they rushed the cupcakes to see if they were pink or blue. As one coworker told me, announcing the gender through cupcakes was totally my mark.

Out with the old...

Well, we did it. We said goodbye to our trusty old oven and welcomed a new member of the family:


It was just like when you buy a new car and have to leave the old one on the lot, all alone and seemingly sad, as you drive away in your shiny new toy. It was sad to see her go. She was such a hard-working, reliable oven. Until the very end, anyway.

But alas. Change is good! Our new oven is pretty and has officially been broken in. The first day we got her, Mike made a fantastic batch of baked ziti, and I whipped up some Coconut Cloud Macaroons.

I will admit that I was nervous. It's hard to get used to how a new oven bakes. But this one has a light that I can turn on to peek in on the cookies without letting all the heat escape!! I know, this is a basic feature that practically everyone has. But I had never had it, so it's pretty exciting for me.

Banana-Zucchini Bread

I faced the age-old aged banana dilemma a few weeks ago. I set out to searching allrecipes.com for a recipe to use with other ingredients I had - some shredded zucchini in the freezer and some cranberries in the cupboard. This just seemed like the perfect thing to bake. I sent a loaf to work with my husband and took a loaf to work with me. I omitted the nuts but made the rest of the recipe as directed.

As I've been gaining back my appetite, this was the perfect thing for me - moist, flavorful, somewhat healthy and easy to snack on. And trust me, as I speak from experience - it's good warm or cold, fresh or a couple of days old.


Ingredients

3 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup grated zucchini
2 bananas, mashed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8x4 inch bread loaf pans.


2. In a large bowl, beat eggs until light yellow and frothy. Add oil, brown sugar, white sugar, grated zucchini, bananas, and vanilla; blend together until well combined. Stir in the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix in the cranberries and nuts. Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared loaf pans.


3. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Allow to cool in the loaf pans on a wire rack before removing and serving.


Source: allrecipes.com

Hello Dolly Bars

Here's another delicious recipe from my friend Darla (thanks, Darla!) She says these can be made in lots of different ways- with raspbery jam, butterscotch or peanut butter or white chocolate chips. She prefers them simple, with straight-up chocolate chips.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups crushed cinnamon graham crackers (about 8 graham crackers)
2 cups of chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups of chopped pecans
1 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup of butter

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Pour melted butter into an 11x7 or 8x8 cake pan.
Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs into pan, and mix well with melted
butter to form a crust.
Layer on top of graham-cracker crust chocolate chips, coconut and pecans.
Evenly pour sweetened condensed milk over everything.
Bake in oven for 25 to 30 minutes, top should be light brown.
Let cool in pan for at least half an hour, cut into bars and serve.

Source: Darla via this blog

M&M pretzels

After my oven debacle on Super Bowl Sunday, I had to come up with a recipe on the fly that I could make quickly and easily (and without the use of an oven) for the Super Bowl party we were headed to.

Mike offered to run up to the grocery store to get me whatever I needed, bless his heart. Three ingredients are all this old standby requires. They are fast, easy, and they are always a huge crowd pleaser. One former co-worker once nicknamed them "crack." And although I like to tell people that they're great because they're small (therefore not too sinful), I also know it's hard, if not impossible, to eat just one.

Ingredients

Mini pretzel knots
White chocolate (I use the same baking bark coating stuff when I make the mini chocolate covered pretzel sticks)
Plain M&Ms

Directions

Melt the chocolate in a microwave (one bar at a time), being careful not to overheat it and burn it. Lay the pretzels out flat on wax paper. Drizzle a spoonful of chocolate onto each pretzel. Before the chocolate sets, push 2 M&Ms into each pretzel.


These are great because you can do them with regular colored M&Ms for a birthday or "just because," and it's a colorful treat. Or you can get the holiday M&Ms at Christmas time for a quick, festive addition to your snack platters. I've even been known to buy a bag or two of regular M&Ms and pick out the red and blue ones for the fourth of July and orange and brown for Halloween.

Since Valentine's Day was fast approaching, I opted for the fun pink and red bag.

Aren't they adorable?


And Mike wasn't just running around, helping me. He was also whipping up his own awesome treat for the game: jalapeno poppers. Uh, yum!

Some throwbacks and a requiem

I haven't posted in several days, but that doesn't mean I haven't been baking! I just haven't made anything "new," per se.

At work, we had a chili cookoff last week. We had 17 different pots of chili. That's a LOT of chili. I thought my co-workers might need something sweet after all that meat and spice, so I brought in Schmoopie Pies. They were gone very quickly, so I think it was a good choice.

I also made some Blueberry Muffins last week just because I felt like baking, and they sounded good. I'd forgotten how yummy that crumb topping is. This recipe is a great standard blueberry muffin recipe to keep around.

But over the weekend, something horrible happened. I was attempting to make these yummy Chocolate Chip Cake Bars to take to a Super Bowl party, and my oven officially went on the fritz. I am well acquainted with how long my oven usually takes to bake things, and these just kept getting browner and browner on the outside, yet refused to bake on the inside. This also happened when I tried to make some Classic Brownies a week or two ago. I tried to give my poor, old oven the benefit of the doubt after the brownie debacle. Maybe the brownies were a fluke, I thought. Maybe I didn't mix something properly.

But, alas. It wasn't me. It wasn't the brownies. My oven simply can't work hard enough to bake through a whole batch of bars/brownies/cakes anymore.

On the one hand, it's good. We've really needed a new oven for a while. I just have a hard time parting with appliances until they really and truly bite the dust. This little oven kept chugging along, so who was I to decide she was too old to do the job?

Plus, we can get a WHITE one, so it will finally match our refrigerator and dishwasher. How modern of us.

But still. I'm sort of sad. This oven has given me countless hours of great service. It has baked desserts for soldiers, work potlucks, holidays, and birthdays, as well as endless "just because" sweets.

It will be hard to say goodbye.

By the way: I couldn't go to my Super Bowl party without something sweet in tow, so I did improvise. Check back for a future post on that.

Lemon-Vanilla Tart

Bob, a coworker of mine, has a lemon tree in his yard and raved about the huge, fresh lemons it was producing. I had just seen the recipe for this tart in a magazine, and when he brought some lemons in to work and offered them up, I quickly took a few. Another friend had given me some homemade vanilla in December (thanks, Lisa!), and I loved the fact that I was using ingredients from so many others to make this dessert.

As I was making the tart, I remembered all of the lemon recipes Meg and I made during Lemon Week.

I admit that when it came time to make this, I was tired and overwhelmed at the thought of making the tart pastry from scratch. I also don't have a tart pan. Conveniently, I had a frozen pie crust in the freezer and figured I could use it for a slightly less homemade product. I baked the pie crust as directed and it turned out great. I sampled a small piece before handing it over to Bob the Lemon Man, and I loved the tart-but-not-too-tart lemon flavor that was shining through the hint of vanilla flavor. This wasn't a pure lemon tart, and I liked that - the vanilla really gave it a richer tone.

I didn't eat or really care for the idea of the candied lemon slices, but they *did* look pretty and were super easy to make.


Ingredients:

1 recipe Tart Pastry (recipe below)
2 lemons
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 recipe Oven-Candied Lemon Slices (recipe below)

Directions

1. Prepare Tart Pastry. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Wrap the rolled-out pastry around a rolling pin. Using pin, ease pastry into a 9-inch tart pan with removable bottom, taking care not to stretch the pastry. Press pastry into fluted sides of tart pan. Trim edges even with the pan. Line pastry with a double thickness of foil. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove foil. Bake 5 to 6 minutes more or until crust is golden. Cool on wire rack. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F.

2. Meanwhile, finely shred 4 teaspoons peel from lemons. Set aside. Squeeze enough juice from lemons to measure 6 tablespoons; set aside.


3. In medium bowl combine sugar and flour. Add eggs. Beat with electric mixer on medium to high speed for 3 minutes or until mixture is light in color and slightly thickened. Stir in lemon peel, lemon juice, butter, and vanilla. Pour into pastry shell. Place tart pan on a baking sheet.


4. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until filling is set and lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.


5. To serve, remove sides of pan, and top tart with Oven-Candied Lemon Slices. Makes 8 servings.

Tart Pastry
In medium bowl cut 1/2 cup cold butter into 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour until pieces are the size of small peas. In a small mixing bowl combine 1 beaten egg yolk, and 1 tablespoon ice water. Gradually stir the egg yolk mixture into the flour mixture. Add 2 to 4 tablespoons more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all the dough is moistened. Shape into a ball. If necessary, cover dough with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for 30 to 60 minutes or until dough is easy to handle. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough on an 11-inch circle. Use to prepare Lemon-Vanilla Tart.

Oven-Candied Lemon Slices
Line a 15x10x1-inch baking pan with parchment paper. Cut 2 small lemons crosswise into 1/8-to 1/4-inch-thick slices. Arrange in a single layer on pan. Sprinkle lemon slices with 1/4 cup sugar. Bake in preheated 275 degree F oven 45 to 50 minutes or until lemons are almost dry and covered with sugary glaze. While still warm, loosen slices from paper to prevent sticking.

Source: Better Homes and Gardens