Recipes

Thank you SO much, all of you for all the birdy quilt love.  You’re the BEST imaginary friends ever!   In return, I’ve made you a chocolate cake.

Ok, not really, but I would make you a chocolate cake if you lived nearby and we could sit and visit and have cake and coffee or your drink of choice. (With Chocolate Cake? It’s milk for me!) I must confess, MeMum made me this yummy cake last weekend. For several of us in the family, it’s our very favorite MeMum special cake.

We were talking the other day and MeMum said she’d just received a magazine that had this same cake recipe in it, except that they used whipping cream in between the layers. That’s weird, I thought, because Brigette just posted a recipe for a cake that uses whipping cream in between the layers when she was trying to save me from the microwave chocolate cake in a cup incident.  (Speaking of which, Molly also posted a great chocolate cake recipe during the same incident.  I forgot to mention that I tried her cake a few weeks ago and LOVED it — it has oatmeal in it and I’ll eat anything with oatmeal!  It’s a great cake for grab-and-go munching – speaking of which (again!), Randi is hosting Lunchtime Favorites for her Recipe Swap today and Molly’s cake would be perfect in a lunchbox too.)

There’s probably some rule about the number of times you can change course in one conversation, so I’ll get back to MeMum’s cake. Er, Brigette’s cake. I looked at Brigette’s recipe, and sure enough, it’s almost the exact same recipe, except for that whipping cream. Frosting between the layers works better for us because our gang isn’t big enough to devour this cake in a day or two (no matter how much we love it!) Anyway, that tears it. If MeMum and Brigette have the same recipe, you know it has to be good!

Three Layer Chocolate Cake

1 c. unsifted unsweetened cocoa
2 c. boiling water
2 3/4 c. sifted all-purpose flour
2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking powder
1 c. butter, softened
2 1/2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1/2 t. vanilla
1 c. walnuts

In medium bowl, gradually add boiling water to cocoa. Mix with wire whisk until smooth. Cool completely. (Do this several hours before actually making cake — at same time, set eggs out to bring to room temperature.) Sift flour with soda, salt, and baking powder. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease well and lightly flour three 9-inch cake pans. (Put wax paper in the bottom of the pans.)

In mixer, at high speed, cream butter and then add sugar gradually. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat for 5 minutes until light. At low speed, beat in flour mixture in 1/4ths, alternately with cocoa mixture in 1/3rds. (Do not overbeat.) Divide into pans — bake 25 – 30 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in pans, then put on cooling racks.

Easy Chocolate Frosting

3/4 stick (6 Tbsp.) butter
5 Tbsp cocoa
1 lb. box confectioner’s sugar (which is approx. 3 3/4 c.)
5 Tbsp. milk
1/2 t. vanilla

Cream butter. Mix cocoa and powdered sugar together. Add alternately with milk to the butter. Then add vanilla. Spread on three layer chocolate cake. Garnish with chopped walnuts.  (This cake is just as good without the walnuts, so if you don’t like them, leave them out.  I have to have it with the walnuts though!)

And while we’re on the subject of chocolate, it’s really cooled off here this week, so I think I’ll go make a cup of hot chocolate, put on my fuzzy slippers and snuggle in for the V.P. debates. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

Back in July, Tartelette had a fantastic giveaway.  She was giving away this really cool Brigitte-Keks “Ausstecher-Set” which is a tool to “write” on cookies.  I seriously wanted this new little gadget, so I left a comment and  I won!

Ok, I didn’t really.  Are you kidding?  I’ve won a few giveaways lately, but there were 493 comments in Tartelette’s contest!  I’m not that lucky!  I searched all over the place to find one and they seemed to only be available here, on Amazon Germany.  I decided shipping would probably be too much so I gave up.  About a month later, I got an e-mail from an enterprising person selling them on e-bay.  I can only assume this seller contacted all of Tartelette’s losing commenters.

Anyway, I ordered one and I’ve been having fun playing with it.  I made a batch of shortbread (using Ina’s recipe) and “wrote” on some cookies.  It’s really fun and it really works!  (Of course it works better if you actually know how to make shortbread.  Since I didn’t have my Baking Buddy Extraordinaire here to advise me, I rolled my shortbread too thin and many of the words disappeared by the time the cookies came out of the oven.)

My next batch of shortbread should be perfect though, ’cause “third time’s the charm”. The first time I made shortbread I cooked it too long and subjected the quilty peeps to really cute snowflakes that were as hard as rocks. I’ll be ready for that recipe next time — I’m even thinking about getting something like these rings to help me roll the shortbread out to the proper thickness.

Just think of all of the possibilities for this little gadget.  I think they’d make great stocking stuffers or gifts for friends.  You could make cookies that say “Welcome Baby” or “Hello” or even individual names that could be used as place cards the next time you have your peeps over.  How ’bout insults?  Or Jokes?  The sky’s the limit!  I even had fun making a cookie for that darling little boy who belongs to Dear Fii.

I just wish he lived closer so that I could give it to him!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S.  I was going to provide the link to the ebay store where you could buy one of these gadgets, but the link appears to be empty.  I’m guessing the seller has sold out.  Hopefully, it’s just temporary.  His/her name is tesa999 in case he/she gets them in and you want to check later.

Unlike those of you who were moving, notcamping, and road trippin’, we had a nice quiet weekend here in ThimbleannaLand.  The weekend was spent doing fun, oddball things around the house.  There was much weeding (finally!) in our PERFECT Saturday weather, along with some sewing (working on the cupcake swap, so I can’t show you), sock knitting, and reading (I’ve started a fun new book, Three Bags Full, recommended by Kristy).

And a bit of cooking was thrown into the mix.  I managed to finally try the famous No-Knead Bread recipe.

I Loved it!  The crust was crispy as promised — my favorite kind of bread.  The only problem I had is that it doesn’t seem to me like the bread rose very high.  Could be one of two reasons:  1) even though the recipe said to use a6 to 8 qt pan, my 5 1/2 qt pan seemed awfully big, or 2) the recipe called for instant yeast which we couldn’t find, so we got rapid rise yeast.  Have any of you tried this recipe?  Does anyone know the difference between instant yeast and rapid-rise yeast?  (I could probably google that, but I’m having a case of the lazies.)  Anyway, volume or not, I loved it — it was easy and I’ll definitely be making it again.  I’ve heard there are variations to this recipe too, has anyone tried one they’d recommend?

I hope you’re off to a good start to your week.  Mine will be busy — BigDaddy had a knee replacement today (everything is going great — he’s amazing!) and I’ll be in some goofy training until 8 o’clock tomorrow evening.  So, have a nice relaxing cup o’ tea (er, diet pepsi?) tomorrow for me!

XOXO,
Anna

When my aunt was here (haha, not funny anymore?  Ok, I’ll try for this to be the last time!) all the girls in the family wanted her to show us how she makes her fabulous sweet rolls.  She makes the best sweet rolls on this side of the Mississippi.  No wait….she doesn’t live on this side of the Mississippi.  Well, they’re just darn good (really, they’re way better than darn good, but we’re trying to be humble on Auntie’s behalf) and worth every bit of the work involved in making them.

So, here’s how you make them (with a few pictures thrown in for good measure):

Put 3 pkgs of rapid rise yeast into 1 cup of lukewarm water and let the yeast rise a bit — for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt 1/2 c. shortening and let it cool a bit.

Mix 2 cups very warm water, 2 tsp. salt, 1/2 c. sugar, 4 eggs and 3 1/2 cups of sifted flour in a mixing bowl with a dough hook.  (If you don’t have a mixer with a dough hook, you can mix and knead the ingredients by hand.)

Mix in the melted shortening and 1 cup of sifted flour, scrape sides and continue to mix.

Add yeast/water mixture and mix for a few minutes more.

Add 1 cup of sifted flour, mix; add another 1 cup of sifted flour and continue to mix and scrape sides of bowl.  (For those of you keeping count, we’re now up to 6 1/2 cups of sifted flour.)  Total mixing/kneading time should be 10 to 15 minutes.

The dough will be REALLY sticky so you might want to add another cup of flour (maybe even two if needed, but I think we only added one.)

Put (or pour LOL) the dough into a large greased bowl and cover with a piece of saran wrap sprayed with a cooking spray.  Put in a relatively warm place and allow the dough to rise until it’s at least double.  (We let ours rise a bit too long — I should have taken a picture — it was oozing out over the edges of the bowl.)

Divide the dough in half and roll the first half out until it’s about 1/2″ thick.  Spread some melted butter all over the top, almost up to the edges of the dough.  Then sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar (try 2 tsp. cinnamon + 1/2 c. sugar to start — you can make it as cinnamon-y as you like) on the melted butter.

Now sprinkle raisins on the cinnamon sugar mixture.  We have several non-raisin lovers, so we left the raisins out of the other half of the dough.

Starting on the long edge, roll the dough up and pinch the edges together to seal.

Slice the cinnamon roll into fairly thick slices using either a very sharp knife or a string (in this case we used dental floss, just to insure that there will be no cavities resulting from these rolls LOL.)  Repeat all the rolling steps for the second half of the dough.

Place the sweet rolls on cookie sheets and let them rise in a warm place until they’re all squished together — 30 minutes to an hour.  And see that parchment paper on those cookie sheets?  Don’t do that.  We tried it, but it made the roll bottoms just a tad bit soggy and there’s nothing worse than having a soggy bottom, if you know what I mean.  Just grease your cookie sheet instead.

Bake the sweet rolls at 375 degrees for approximately 12 minutes.

While they’re baking, make some frosting.  None of us goofballs wrote down the frosting recipe!  I’d try 1/2 cup soft butter, 2 cups powdered sugar,1 tsp vanilla and a bit of milk until you get it to a little runnier than spreading consistency.  (Aunt Annie didn’t make that much frosting but she goes light on the frosting — I go heavy — the more the better!)  And throw in 1/2 to 3/4 cup walnuts if you have nut lovers in your family.  (When we were growing up, Aunt Annie always rolled the nuts up in the dough with the raisins, but we all like them better in the frosting now.)

After you remove the rolls from the oven, you can let them cool for just a minute or two, but frost them while they’re still warm.  (There are missing rolls in the picture above because they were grabbed as fast as she was frosting them!)

If everyone didn’t scarf them up immediately, place the extras in a cake plate where they’ll look pretty!

Usually, homemade sweet rolls aren’t that great after the day they’re made — they’re at they’re very best fresh out of the oven.  If you must eat them after the first day (or, rather, if there are any left) they’re best heated in the microwave.  Two days after my aunt made these rolls, I had this conversation with a good friend of my sons’:

McDonald’s Boy:  Mrs. Thimbleanna, is your aunt still here?

Me:  Yes, why do you ask?

McDonald’s Boy:  Well, this morning I came over and I couldn’t get TheSecondChild to wake up so I turned the hose on his window…

At which point my ears started ringing….

Me:  You WHAT???  I just cleaned those windows!!!!

McDonald’s Boy:  Oops.

Pregnant Pause.

Anyway…

McDonald’s Boy:  After he let me in, I ate that last half of a sweet roll that was in your cake plate and really, they’re the best sweet rolls I’ve EVER had!!!  I was wondering if she could make any more?

Which goes to show that a) he’s had a deprived childhood if a two day old sweet roll is the best one he’s ever had, and b) these are really great sweet rolls!!!  I’d love to know if you try these.  They do take a bit of time, but after you get the hang of it, you can just whip them out while you’re doing other things LOL!

Have a great weekend!

XOXO,
Anna