A DC Fourth of July

Moving to DC in July probably wasn't the best idea.... I mean, look at this 5 day forecast.

Source

Back in Vermont it is a cool 76 degrees - my ideal summer day. NOT 101 Degrees!!!!!!

My 6 mile run this morning was a scorcher as it was already 89 degrees at 9:30. Earlier morning runs are a must!

Yesterday, as you know, was the Fourth. Could there be a more perfect city to spend the fourth in? Tom and I decided not to unpack (bad choice because I'm stuck with more to do today) but decided to head downtown around 10:00 to catch the parade. When we found a place to sit we realized that we forgot two important things: Sunscreen and an umbrella/hat. Thank goodness for CVS pharmacies being open on a holiday. 

This was the first "big city" parade that I had been to, and our first parade with balloons. The only thing that the parade was lacking was the free candy!! 

We went to our friend Ara's house for dinner and to watch the fireworks. They were much more impressive than Burlington's, even from our lookout spot.

Now that the fourth is over it's back to unpacking. I have a feeling this process is going to take a while...

Guinness Cupcakes with Bailey's Buttercream

I had corn beef and cabbage on Saturday for the first time ever. Ever! It was quite enjoyable, and so far has been the only way I'll eat cabbage.

Tom and I were at our friends' house on Saint Patty's day for some March Madness and to celebrate the holiday of course! With our insanely warm weather (we may break into the 80s today?!) it felt like we should have been celebrating Memorial Day instead.

I'm sure you're going to fall out of your seat with shock when I tell you that we brought the dessert! Who would have thunk!

Since it was a holiday, our dessert needed to be something special. It needed to have some green. It also needed to have some beer. Irish beer. And Irish cream.

And that's when the chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Buttercream was born! I followed the recipe on Brown Eyed Baker, omitting the ganache portion of the cupcake.

These cupcakes were awesome. Like, really super delicious, and very rich. They will most certainly be reappearing at future St Patty's day celebrations!

Champagne Cupcakes

Happy New Year everyone! Tom and I went up to Winooski last night to welcome the new year with good friends of ours. It was a fun time and we even got to see a few old faces from high school and college.

We couldn't go to the party empty handed and I knew exactly what I wanted to bring: champagne cupcakes!

A year ago I discovered champagne cupcakes on some blog (I don't even remember which one at this point) and have waited patiently for the appropriate time to make them myself. I mean, you really need something to celebrate with these bite fulls of deliciousness. Actually, I just forgot to get a bottle of champagne every time I went out and that's definitely a key ingredient.

Since I couldn't remembered what blog I found the recipe on, guess where I headed? Pinterest.com (I need to get paid for the advertising I'm doing for them). I found a recipe from Culinary Serendipity and only made two modifications: I added 4 cups of sugar in the butter cream and 5 tablespoons of champagne instead of the 3. The frosting was too think with only 3 tablespoons of champagne and would have made piping difficult. Fortunately, I can't imagine anyone complaining about having more alcohol in the frosting. 

The verdict? They were a major hit! It was so hard to keep myself away from them before the party, and even harder to stay away this morning. Does anyone else eat dessert after breakfast? Oh dear, I do have a sugar addiction... The cake was drier than I'd like, but I think it actually worked with the amount of frosting that was on each cake.

I got this fabulous new apron from my college roomies, Meghan and Courtnay. I absolutely love it. And them!

Christmas Dessert: Whoopie Pies

I don't know if Tom would have ever asked me out (way back in high school) if it hadn't been for my mom. She won him over with her whoopie pies. I make her recipe at least once a year (to make sure Tom sticks around) but lately haven't been happy with the cake portion. They just weren't chocolaty enough for us, especially once I perfected my recipe for chocolate cakes.

My dad asked me to make whoopie pies for Christmas dessert so I decided to test out a new cake recipe. I headed over to epicurious.com and made a few changes to the recipe I found there. Epicicurious said the cakes are better on the second day and I have to agree with them. They immediately reminded me of Drake's Devil Dogs, only better.

I discovered how much easier (and cleaner) it is to fill a piping bag just by putting it in a tall glass. Why didn't I think of this sooner?!

Whoopie Pies

Adapted from Epicurious

Cakes

2 cups AP flour

2/3 cups Hershey's special dark cocoa powder (or Dutch-process)

1 teaspoon espresso powder

1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla 

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 egg

Filling

2 egg whites (use powdered egg whites with warm water)

1/2 cup Crisco

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cakes:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

1. In a non-mixer bowl whisk flour, cocoa, espresso powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix buttermilk and vanilla together in a separate bowl/measuring cup.

2. Beat butter and brown sugar on medium-high until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until combined. Turn the mixer onto low. Add flour and buttermilk alternating between the two, and starting and ending with the flour mixture. Scrape the sides of the bowl before adding each. Mix until well combined. 

3. Scoop batter onto baking sheet (use 1-2 tablespoons of batter per cake). Bake 11-13 minutes. Tops should pop up if slightly pressed at the end of baking. Cool completely on wire rack before frosting

Filling:

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add shortening, vanilla, and sugar until light and fluffy. Add to piping bag and frost cakes. Allow frosting to harden a few minutes before placing cake on top (otherwise cakes may slide). Store in an air tight container. 

Simons Christmas Fudge

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. It was wonderful to spend time with family (both mine and Tom's). It is a little sad that the Christmas carols aren't playing on the radio, and I feel like something is missing now that I no longer have something big to look forward to. However, I can finally take a breather now that my Christmas baking has come to a close. 

Christmas always brings back memories of my mom standing over the oven, making batch after batch of old fashioned fudge. Every now and then a batch would come out bad. Either it wouldn't harden, or it would be rock solid. However, most of the time it came out with a rich, chocolate creaminess and it was hard to keep my brother, Mike, and I away.

She made it for teachers, for co-workers, for Mike and I to give to friends, and she even sent it to family members living in Florida. It was quite popular and to this day I am unable to eat any other fudge (unless it's peanut butter). In my world, marshmallows would be banned from all fudge. Unless they were added on top of my mom's fudge, toasted, and sprinkled with graham crackers to make S'mores fudge. Hey! Maybe I will actually try that next year. 

This year I was a fudge-making factory, making six batches in total. I've posted the recipe below, for those adventurous bakers out there. I will warn you that it takes over an hour to make including the cooking, cooling, and beating process. And even though you get quite an arm workout during the beating process, just think of it as burning calories to make room for those that you're about to consume. 

Simons Christmas Fudge

The Old-Fashioned Hershey's Fudge Recipe

3 cups sugar

2/3 cups Hershey's unsweetened cocoa

1/8 tspn salt

1 1/2 cup whole milk (do not substitute w/ any other milk)

1/2 stick unsalted butter (1/4 cup)

1 tsp vanilla extract (do not use imitation vanilla)

Mix sugar, cocoa, salt, and milk in a 5 quart saucepan. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture begins to boil. Remove spoon and place candy thermometer into saucepan. Allow to boil until thermometer reads 234 degrees and remove immediately. 

Add the butter to the fudge and allow to melt for one minute. Add the vanilla onto the butter so it doesn't boil off. Do NOT stir the fudge! Let fudge cool to 110 degrees. In order to speed up the cooling process, fill kitchen sink with a few inches of cold water. Place saucepan in the water. Be careful not to get any drops of water into the fudge.

Line an 8x8 inch pan with foil and butter. Butter an additional spreader/knife, and metal spoon (to scrape the bowl).

Once fudge has reached 110 degrees, beat with a wooden spoon until fudge looses it's shine. This can take any where fro 5-20 minutes. Pour it immediately into the pan, spreading with the knife. There may be a lot of fudge remaining in the pan, which is where the metal spoon comes in handy. Scrape the sides of the pan. If fudge is still soft, add it to the final pan, otherwise, place left over fudge into a separate bowl (for you to test once hardened!) Allow to harden before cutting into it and serving. Should be stored in an air tight container. 

Merry Christmas

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas

Early Christmas Gifts

Yesterday was a great day for multiple reasons....

1. I finally finished the lace patter on a pair of mittens I'm knitting. I had to restart this one mitten 5 times.
2. I got to take TWO naps! (They're only 10 minutes each)
3. For the first time ever I made a batch of royal icing that correctly flooded the cookies I was frosting. 

I also got two early Christmas gifts....

Mother nature was super nice. She gave us a 43 degree sunny day. I got to run 10 miles without a hat or mittens. There's still green grass and I even saw a runner wearing shorts. I absolutely love being able to do a long run this time of the year. 

And speaking of long runs, that's where my other gift comes in. I run the same route for 90% of my runs since we moved here two years ago. A few weeks ago they decided to replace a water line that runs directly under a section of my running route. How dare they?! That meant I had to run around town and no matter where I went I was going to go up a monstrous hill.

I headed out on my run yesterday afternoon not knowing where I would go or for how long. I caught up with a girl that was heading toward the bike path and decided to follow her. I was thrilled to get to the construction zone only to find out that it was no longer under construction!! And from that point on I knew where I was going and for how long.

It was a pretty awesome run. Thank goodness I had eaten plenty of fudge before hand to keep me fueled during the surprise long run :)

Oh, and as a side note - I normally do not take pictures while running. I busted my running watch yesterday which means I needed my cell phone to keep track of time.

Cookie Season!

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'll just come out with it. I am obsessed with cookies.

I'm also bad at making decisions. Especially when there are many options.

Needless to say, it's always difficult for me to choose which recipes to bake this time of the year because there are just so many to choose from. Thankfully, Tom usually knows what he wants, and on Tuesday it was sugar cookies.

Problem was, I wanted cranberry-white chocolate cookies. Oh what was I to do?

Make both!

I prepared the sugar cookie dough first because it needs an hour to chill in the fridge. I used the same recipe from last year and made some slight changes with the extracts. I also made the cookies thicker and was very pleased with that decision. I really enjoyed the softer texture of the final product.

Do you see that ornament in the top left? That's our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It even plays music!

Sadly, the cranberry cookies didn't come out like I was hoping. I won't even bother to post the recipe.

However, it was very difficult to refrain from eating the entire batch of sugar cookies in one sitting. It's possible that a few were lost in the decorating process. The almond extract really makes these cookies pop!

I gave some to my mentor teacher, brought some in for the other interns at Montpelier, and Tom shared some with his co-workers. I definitely see another batch being baked in the near future.

What are your favorite cookies this time of the year?

Can you guess which cookie is my favorite? (pst....check out the little man in the center)

Sugar Cookies

Adapted from Homemade by Holman

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour, more for dusting surfaces

1. Cream butter in a mixing bowl on medium high speed until light (two minutes). Add the powdered sugar and beat until well mixed. Add the egg, extracts, and salt and mix until incorporated. Add the flour and beat on low until ingredients are just mixed.

2. Wrap ball of cookie dough well in plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator for one hour (or overnight).

3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie pan with parchment paper.

4. Flour working surface and rolling pin. Roll cookie dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut cookies with cookie cutters. The buttered rim of a drinking or wine glass also doubles as a cookie cutter. Place cookies on baking sheets and bake 8-10 minutes. Cookies should not brown.

Royal Icing

4 cups powdered sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons meringue powder (or Just Whites)
1/2 cup warm water

Combine sugar, meringue powder, and 6 tablespoons of water in mixing bowl. Beat on medium high for 7-10 minutes, adding water if mixture is too thick. You will want the mixture to be runny at the end in order to pipe the cookies with icing bag and tips. Otherwise, you can leave it thicker if you are using a knife to frost the cookies.

Chocolate Candy Cane Cupcakes

Today's the last day of classes for the semester. Instead of being a good student and making progress on my final projects last night I procrastinated and made Chocolate Candy Cane cupcakes to share with my class.

Chocolate cupcakes with peppermint buttercream frosting, sprinkled with crushed candy cane 

I also used up some of the salted caramel from the salted caramel brownie recipe to make salted caramel cupcakes. I feel bad for the people presenting lessons this afternoon. We are all going to be on quite the sugar high.

Happy Halloween!

So maybe we waited until tonight to carve our pumpkin. So what? Tom did a fantastic job! 

Can I just say that I was a little jealous to see all of the trick-or-treaters out on our street. What I would give to be 10 years old again! What were your favorite candies to get as a kid? I loved the tootsie rolls and dark chocolate Hershey's bars. Ironically I decided it would be a great idea to give up candy and anything with sugar for the day. I must be crazy.

While Tom was busy carving I kept myself busy by roasting the  pumpkin seeds. They were quite a tasty treat.

I hope you all are having a great Halloween!