This post is full of Irish

St Patrick's day happens to be my FAVORITE holiday! I have the best memories of spending the whole day (which always comes around during spring break) with my friends, cooking Irish food, listening to Irish music, watching Irish movies, wearing the colors of the Irish flag, and of course drinking Irish drinks.

It was my first st. paddy's day as a 21 year old, but I'm avoiding alcohol (and all its empty calories) at the moment so I was a bit unsure of how I would celebrate this year. I was also scheduled to work from 4-CL, which was a good reason for me to not join the masses at the bar but also left me with very little time to do anything celebratory. And lord knows I can't just let a holiday (let alone my favorite holiday) go un-celebrated.

SO, I did what I could with the time and restrictions that I had... I donned the attire, I ate the food, and I even bought the booze... I just mixed it up with massive quantities of sugar and fat and flour and fed it to my coworkers :) I didn't get drunk, I didn't overeat, I didn't attempt a game on the Devil's Dancefloor, and I spent an insanely long and busy 7 hours asking progressively drunker people the same questions (what can I get for you? any toppings? anything else? what's your name? for here or to go? would you like a copy of your receipt?)... but I still feel like I sufficiently celebrated and enjoyed St Patrick's Day :)

In the morning, I put on my favorite new mint green lace dress. That wasn't quite Irish enough for me so I also tied green and orange ribbon around my wrist and my hair.

Colton and I went out to breakfast, which we do every Sunday. We went to Mother Hubbards, one of our very favorites that specializes in homemade Native American/Mexican influenced breakfast and lunch. So good. Yesterday I had to opt for the St Paddy's Special though... "Irish Rarebit". It was basically a cross between Welsh Rarebit and Eggs Benedict with a whole lot of Irish thrown in there. 4 triangles of 12 grain bread covered with dragoon stout cheddar cheese sauce, chopped corned beef, spinach, and two poached eggs. It was sooooo gooood.

I decided I wanted to do some Irish cooking of my own so we stopped at the store on the way home. I bought ingredients to make homemade Irish cream (to make it a little lighter calorie-wise, not as thick and sweet, and to avoid having multiple open bottles of liquor sitting around the house), Irish car bomb cupcakes, and Irish cream pudding shots.

I used this recipe for the Irish cream, and it turned out amazing. Tasted just like baileys!

I then mixed one cup of homemade Irish cream with one small package of instant vanilla pudding and one cup 1% milk. I poured this into 10 dixie cups to make pudding shots! There's hardly any alcohol in them but they were pretty tasty. I took them to work so everyone could have one after we closed.

The biggest cooking project I tackled was these Irish Car-Bomb Cupcakes! I've wanted to make this recipe for years... I talked about it within the first month that I had this blog 3 years ago when I did my first St Paddy's day countdown. Even though I only had about 3 hours until I had to go to work by the time I was done with errands and at home ready to cook, I decided to attempt to whip these up. I broke out my beloved kitchenaid mixer (which works like a dream but weighs a million tons and is a bitch to store/clean in my teensy little house), used every pot and bowl in the house, and in the end produced 24 pretty little filled and frosted cupcakes. Which tasted AMAZING, by the way.

I used the above linked Smitten Kitchen recipe exactly, except I used greek yogurt in place of sour cream in the batter (I never have sour cream in the house anymore and greek yogurt tastes/works the same but is way healthier) and used quite a bit more whiskey in the ganache filling and Irish cream in the buttercream. I wanted each part of the cupcake to taste distinctly like the Irish Car-Bomb role it was representing and I found that with the measly teaspoons and tablespoons Deb suggested the flavor was lost under the sugar, butter, and chocolate. I just drizzled, tasted, and repeated until I got the intensity I wanted.

Chocolate Guinness cake filled with Jameson chocolate ganache and topped with Irish Cream buttercream. Dusted with green and gold sugar!

I made 24 and brought 12 to work. I broke them out after the aforementioned loooong and busy shift while everyone was closing and I think they (hopefully!) raised everyone's spirits a bit.

After work I promptly went home, got into my pjs, got into bed, and fell asleep. I think the rest of the world partied hard enough without me, based on the debauchery I witnessed on fourth avenue last night.

I hope you all had a nice holiday and spring break! It's back to school at 3 for me today :)

Love,
Em

Happy First Birthday...

  ... to me! Well, to this blog, technically. Yep, one year ago today I sat down at my little dorm room desk and decided to start a blog. Actually, I'm almost surprised it was only a year ago! Even though I didn't start regularly posting until around last October, I still fee like I've been blogging FOREVER.

In honor of this very special day, I decided to bake a cake! And since I'm so very selfless ;) and because today happens to be the day we are celebrating my Grandpa's bday, I decided to give the cake to him! I get to bake a cake, you guys get a recipe, and my grandpa gets a cake. Everyone wins!

Also, here is a list of a few of my favorite posts over the past year. Check them out if you haven't already!

The very first post on this blog- aside from the "i'm starting a blog now!" post- talks about how to stock a good vegan kitchen.

This is one of the few recipes that I made up all by myself. It is seriously SO DELICIOUS.

I think some really awesome things came from my Halloween food post. The savory cheesecake is soooo good and can be made any time of the year!

It was really fun to put together this list of family traditions. If you have a blog, you should do one too! And then send my the link so I can check it out!

I hope you guys are as excited as I am about the new feature I started just a couple weeks ago :)

These are just a few of the 150 posts from the past 365 days :) and now... an uber chocolate cake recipe!

My gpa loves chocolate, and I love chocolate, so I went with a hershey's chocolate cake recipe and chocolate buttercream. yummy!

Start by preheating the over to 350 and greasing and flour-dusting two 9 inch cake pans.

Then mix together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Now add a couple eggs, some milk, oil, and vanilla and beat it at medium speed for two minutes.

Now stir in 1 cup boiling water. Then pour the batter into the two pans and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a knife comes out clean when stuck in the center. Cool the cakes, remove then from their pans, and then wrap and freeze then until you are ready to frost.

Now for the frosting, which I failed to take pics of while making.

Start by creaming 6 tbsp of butter. Then begin adding powder sugar a cup of a time, pouring in a bit of milk when it gets too dry. Once all the powdered sugar has been added, stir in some vanilla and then remove about 2 tbsp of frosting so that you can pipe on writing later.

Then add the cocoa powder and the last of the milk, if there's any left. you should have a nice, soft, thick buttercream.

I made a mini-cake since my gpa lives alone and probably wouldn't need a whole cake. I used a tupperware to measure a 6 in circle in both cake layers. The rest of the cake can be saved for cake pops/balls :)

Now it's time to frost! Line your serving plate with parchment paper to keep it clean, and then frost away :) frosting cakes is seriously like the bane of my existence- I hate doing it and I suck at it. I also suck at removing cakes from cake pans. Both of these problems can be attributed to the fact that when it comes to baking I'm very impatient. I never let my cakes cool nearly long enough before trying to take them out of their pans, and I hardly ever fully freeze my cakes before frosting them (which would make life so much easier). I also rarely chill cookie dough. It's a problem.

Anyways, because I suck at frosting cakes I'm not going to try and tell you how to do it. It's pretty basic anyhow.

Now decorate! You can do whatever you want, but I decided to just pipe on happy bday and some decorative dots in simple white frosting.

Here's the full recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa or HERSHEY'S SPECIAL DARK Cocoa
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water
• ONE-BOWL BUTTERCREAM FROSTING (recipe follows)

Directions

1. 1 Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round pans or one 13x9x2-inch baking pan.
   
2. 2 Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of electric mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.
   
3. 3 Bake 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. (Cake may be left in rectangular pan, if desired.) Frost with ONE-BOWL BUTTERCREAM FROSTING. 8 to 10 servings.
   
   
   ONE-BOWL BUTTERCREAM FROSTING
   6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
   2-2/3 cups powdered sugar
   1/2 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa or HERSHEY'S SPECIAL DARK Cocoa
   1/3 cup milk
   1 teaspoon vanilla extract
   
   Beat butter in medium bowl. Add powdered sugar and cocoa alternately with milk, beating to spreading consistency (additional milk may be needed). Stir in vanilla. About 2 cups frosting.

You can find the copy of the recipe here, as well as high altitude conversions.

Happy birthday to Girl of a Thousand Faces! And to my wonderful grandpa! Have a great saturday :)

<3
Em

12th Day of Christmas

During the holidays it's always important to have some snacks set out for people to munch on. Here are a couple sweet little things I made for my parents and sister as gifts but could also just be set out to tide people over while they wait for a big holiday feast :)

The first is chocolate espresso bean bark. My family is a big fan of chocolate covered espresso beans, but it's tough to get individual coated beans when you are making them at home. Bark, on the other hand, is super simple, and the taste is the same.

Start by greasing a large (but small enough to fit in your freezer) cookie sheet with vegetable or canola oil. Then spread about 1.5 cups of espresso or coffee beans in a single layer on the cookie sheet.

Melt a bag of dark chocolate chips with 1.5 tbsp canola or vegetable oil in the microwave. Use nice chocolate chips for this, like ghiradelli.

Let the melted chocolate cool a bit so that you can touch it without burning yourself but it is still very liquidy. Then drizzle it over the espresso beans, trying to cover as much as you can.

Use your hands to smear the chocolate around so the all the beans are coated and you have a large rectangle of chocolatey-coffee bean goodness. Use a spatula to flatten the beans out into pretty much a single layer again.

Stick the cookie sheet into the freezer for about 30 minutes to harden the chocolate. When it is completely hardened, remove from the freezer and pry up the bark with a knife or your fingers. I found it came up very easily.

Use your hands to break the bark up into small pieces. Bag it for a gift or put it in a bowl and set it out for people to snack on.

The second little treat is something called Sparkling Cranberries. Basically I had a bunch of cranberries leftover from making the cran-apple spiced vodka and I didn't want to waste them so I looked up simple cranberry recipes and this was my favorite. It's very simple and very delicious.

Start by making a simple syrup out of 2 cups water and 2 cups sugar. Boil them together on the stove until the sugar is fully dissolved. Let cool to about room temperature.

Put 2 cups cranberries in a large tupperware. Pour the simple syrup over the cranberries, cover, and store in the fridge overnight.

The next day, drain the cranberries and toss with some granulated sugar. Let the cranberries air dry for several hours.

When the cranberries are mostly dry, toss again with granulated sugar. Repeat the tossing until the cranberries are coated.

That's all there is to it! The cranberries are slightly tart but also sweet- so yummy!

Thanks for reading my 12 Days of Christmas posts! They were fun to write. I'll be back in the next day or two with my regular posts :)

Happy holidays!
<3

Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate

I just finished watching Julie and Julia. I adore that movie. The first time I saw it was last summer, when S worked at a little movie theatre and we spent a whole afternoon and evening watching movies for free, taking a break only to go out to dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant. I hadn't seen it in it's entirety since then because, although everyone admits it is a good movie, most people don't want to rent it for a movie night or spend the money to buy it. But me, being a foodie, cooking blog geek, and new blogger myself- imagine my delight when I discovered it had been added to Netflix's list of instant movies!

Julie and Julia is a great movie for aspiring food bloggers and chefs alike, because that's exactly what it's about- two women who love to cook and are able to fill a void in their lives with food. Isn't that what a lot of bloggers and casual cooks are doing? We want a hobby, something that makes us happy and brings new dimensions to our lives. Plus, it gives me hope. If Julia Child didn't know how to boil an egg when she got married and Julie Powell didn't get readers until 60 days in, just imagine how far I can go. At least I'd like to hope ;)

Microwave Brownies

I said before that my "kitchen" consists of nothing more than a mini fridge and a microwave in a dorm room. This isn't entirely true- my residence hall has one small kitchen on the first floor that anyone can use. I've used it twice, and both times vowed never to use it again. The first time was the first weekend of the fall semester, when my roommate K and I made vegan ginger-molasses cookies. Many months passed before the second time I ventured back down there, which was this year's Superbowl Sunday. It wasn't to make vegan hot wings or pizza (although those are both awesome), but to make Smitten Kitchen's Homemade Oreos to send to my boyfriend S in Arizona for Valentine's Day. It was out of pure fondness for this hallmark holiday and adoration for S that I sucked it up and carried my heaping pile of ingredients, mixing bowl, and single cookie sheet down into that dingy kitchen for the afternoon. The experience could only be described as catastrophic.