Tonight we are doing our first brew in the new house. I wanted to do something wintery and was super excited to find a recipe for a gingerbread beer called The Slow Escape, which is based on a gingerbread recipe from a bakery. It is a stout beer brewed with black pepper, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, whole cloves, and fresh ginger.
It smells just like a gingerbread cookie, and we still haven’t even added all the spices yet! I can’t wait to taste this in weeks!
Living in NYC the past few years, I’m not used to random acts of kindness from my neighbors. Hell, I never even knew WHO my neighbors were. It’s a total culture shock living in Long Island, now. So when I found out that my neighbor snow plowed our driveway without even telling us, I was overjoyed! To thank him, I made a plate of cookies. I’ve wanted to try a recipe from Cookies and Cups, a new blog I started following a few months back. I wanted something relatively simple since I didn’t have time to go shopping before the storm and wasn’t planning on baking. So I went with the coffee cake cookies, which looked like the perfect comfort food.
I call these “snowed in” cookies, because I had just enough ingredients to make them (literally). I had just enough brown sugar and not a drop more. As for cinnamon, I actually ran out of ground cinnamon and had to grind up a cinnamon stick using my Magic Bullet food processor. It actually worked really well, and the cinnamon smelled sooo fresh. I highly recommend it if you are making something with a lot of cinnamon, like cinnamon buns.
I made my cookies the size of golf balls, and used a cookie scoop to make an indent in the cookie to fill with the crumb mixture.
I put a lot in the indentation and then packed some more on top. I actually had quite a bit of crumble topping leftover, and now hubby is eating it over his ice cream. So if you have leftover topping, save it!
***Note, the original recipe calls for 10 TBSP butter and 1/3 cup shortening. Since I didn’t have shortening on hand, I used 2 sticks of butter and chilled the dough for 1 hour before baking to ensure the dough was stiff enough. I don’t know if the butter substitution affected the baking time, but I had to bake my cookies for 15 minutes before they were golden, compared to the 9-10 minutes in the original recipe. Just thought I would mention that in case you decide to go with shortening.
If you had a snowy day today, hope it was filled with yummy baked goods!
Usually, people ask me to make them cakes. They don’t usually ask me to help them in making cakes. But I was very excited when my friend Giselle asked me to help her make this ankylosaurus cake for her boyfriend. She found the cake, along with directions on how to make it here. Keep in mind, that the original cake design was intended for a grandson’s birthday, whereas here, we were making it for a 27-year old grown man! But honestly, he was as excited to see the cake as any kid would have been. It was actually the best response EVER! We named the cake “Fudgy the Dinosaur”, because Justin usually gets a Fudgy the Whale cake for his birthday (plus with all the chocolate frosting we used, this cake definitely was fudgy!).
We followed the directions almost exactly, except for using one less cupcake in the tail, and using the Wilton Sports Ball Pan Set for the head.
Here is what you will need to create your own Ankylosaurus:
3 cakes in graduated sizes (6, 8, and 10-inch diameter works well)
11 mini cupcakes
4 regular sized cupcakes
1 half of the Wilton sports ball pan
To shape the head and make it less round, we used a jack-o-lantern carving tool.
Once you lay the cake pieces in the correct configuration, place frosting on the bottom of each piece to glue it in place. Then start spreading frosting on the cake, especially filling in the spaces between the graduated cakes. You want there to be a smooth transition between the cakes. All in all, we made 12 cups of frosting for this cake.
Once all the spaces have been filled in, spread frosting over the entire cake to cover. He will start to look more like a dinosaur and less like an armadillo as you do this.
To smooth out the frosting, my favorite trick is to dip a spatula in HOT HOT water (you can actually boil it and it works great). Wipe the spatula dry and then gently spread across the frosting to smooth it. Repeat until the entire cake is smooth.
Then we added Hershey’s kisses and Milky Way minis for the scales, and he really took shape. Giselle found these great Wilton Candy Eyeballs that worked perfectly! Use a small bit of frosting to glue the candy to the cake.
Happy Birthday to Justin, and Happy New Year to all of you! May your New Year be filled with fun cakes and wonderful reasons to celebrate with cake!
I made this cake a few days ago for my sister-in-law’s birthday, and the cake and filling are probably my favorite of the cakes that I have made so far. The caramel frosting was also good, but very thick and almost fudgy in texture. I could see pairing the cake and filling with something lighter, especially if it is being served after a heavy meal.
For the writing, I used extra dulce de leche in a bag with a small round tip (I think #3). It was actually pretty easy to write with it. Around the cake I alternated frosting with a #21 tip (dotted with dulce de leche) and caramel-filled Hershey kisses.
The dulce de leche is so easy to make. For a 3-layer cake, I used 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk. Just pour both cans into an 8-inch square baking dish and cover with foil. Then place the baking dish in a Pyrex 9 x 13 pan. Pour hot water into the Pyrex pan until it comes to halfway up the square baking dish. Then place in the oven at 400 degrees F for an hour and a half, until the sweetened condensed milk is nice and caramelized.
Remove the dulce de leche from the oven and let cool. Once cooled, whisk until smooth. Then place in a covered jar in the fridge until you are ready to use it.
Here are the recipes for the cake and frosting:
To assemble the cake, take one cake, and spread the top of it with the dulce de leche. The best way to do this is to fill a decorating bag with some dulce de leche and use a large round tip to make a border around the top edge of the cake. This will serve as a wall to hold in the rest of the dulce de leche (which you can put on the cake using a spoon and smooth with a knife). Then add another cake. If you are making a 2-layer cake, you are done. If you are making a 3-layer cake, add more dulce de leche to the top of the second cake and then top with the final cake. Frost with the caramel frosting and decorate as you wish.
I like visiting famous restaurants and bakeries, but usually there is a huge line outside and they almost never live up to the hype. But it’s still cool to check them out and say that you have been there. So imagine my joy when a place that I’ve been to several times suddenly becomes famous and appears in People magazine!
Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a cute little pie and coffee shop in Brooklyn, right next to our favorite brew store (Brooklyn Homebrew). When we are in need of brewing supplies, we go on a Sunday afternoon, and then stop by next door for some coffee and a slice of pie. Our favorite pie is the Salty Honey. It is creamy, sweet, and salty all at the same time. The filling is soft inside with a nice caramelized sugar on the outside.
The shop was mentioned in People magazine because they just came out with a cookbook, The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book: Uncommon Recipes from the Celebrated Brooklyn Pie Shop. Of course, it is now on my Christmas list 🙂 People magazine mentioned the book, and listed the recipe for the Salty Honey pie. I figured Thanksgiving would be the perfect occasion to test it out.
***A word of advice: the pie is best when served at room temperature. If you don’t serve it right away, you may have to refrigerate. But make sure that you leave enough time for it to warm to room temperature. DO NOT heat it in the oven, as this will ruin the texture (trust me on this one!)
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! May your pies be plentiful and made with love.
