Key Lime Pie Bars

The last few posts have been horribly out of order chronologically, but this marks the point at which things start running the right way along the timeline again. Sorry for any confusion!

So this post's recipe, Key Lime Pie Bars, was made for a Fourth of July party, that was in fact held on the third. The recipe comes from a blog called My Baking Addiction, another blog I recently discovered and fell in love with.

Let me begin by telling you this recipe turned out BEAUTIFULLY. My favorite part of it was the crust, which was awesomely simple but some of the best I've ever had. Only four ingredients in the crust:  graham crackers, sugar, butter, and - surprise - coconut. I usually hate coconut, but this crust made me realize I'd better rethink that.

Now, the recipe calls for key lime juice, three fourths of a cup. It recommends using pre-squeezed juice, but I couldn't find any, so I bought a bag of key limes instead. I asked my mother how many I would need. She said probably three or four. So when I bought the bag of key limes, and it contained about twenty, I thought, "Damn - what the hell am I going to do with all these limes?!" Ha.

It took every last lime to reach that three-fourths line on my measuring cup. I had also used a few of them for the key lime zest, and this is when I realized that I had forgotten to buy a new grater since I loathe the one we have.

The recipe says the bars should be in the oven only 5 to 8 minutes, but mine were in there quite a bit longer and turned out fine. I was waiting for the pinhole bubbles and it took much longer than 8  minutes for them to appear.

The key lime zest did not throw off the smoothness of the bars at all, as I suspected it might. The tart key lime bar perfectly balanced out the sweet graham cracker and coconut crust. Instead of garnishing mine with coconut, I topped some with strawberry halves, others with blueberries, and each one got a dollop of Cool Whip.

I made a pretty little sign for the party.

I can't stop drooling over that crust.

Festive, aren't they? They were a hit. :)

Easter Basket Cookies

Anti-chronologically, we have gone from Father's Day to Mother's Day, and now to Easter. I had no idea I was so out of order. Wow.

This recipe is one of Betty Crocker's. It's simple, but the finished product is awesome - and everyone who saw them complimented them.

The first problem I ran into while preparing these cookies was after they came out of the oven. I must not have let them cool long enough - either that, or I didn't spray enough PAM into the pan. Either way, the bottoms became separated from the top. Some, we were able to "glue" together with icing. Others I was forced to abandon and eat myself - it's a painful job, but somebody had to do it. ;)

The orange one here is one of the ones we were able to save.



I pretty much followed the rest of the recipe exactly, except for one bit - instead of using small ribbons for the basket handles, I used pieces of Twizzlers that I had untwined. I filled each basket with a bit of dyed-green coconut for the "grass", then gave each a few mini chocolate Cadbury eggs. The result was adorable.

Aren't they cute?

A single cookie, for your viewing pleasure.

I couldn't conclude this post without mention of my other Easter creation. They are devilled eggs, made to look like chicks. I did not follow any recipe for these, but I did get the idea from a Google search. I don't remember the website to give credit, though I do know they were featured on Rachael Ray's show. 

Mini Cheesecakes Topped with Fruit

Since the last couple of posts and the next few are me playing catch-up, I'm kind of falling out of chronological order. Example:  Last post was what I made for Father's Day, and this post is going to be about what I made for Mother's Day. I know, I fail.

For Mother's Day, I made mini-cheesecakes with chocolate crust, topped with fruit. I had a lot of batter left over, though, so I also made a regular cheesecake. That one had a pre-made graham cracker crust and was glazed with chocolate, then topped with fruit. The recipe I used for the cheesecake is the one on the side of Philadelphia cream cheese, which I can't find the recipe for online to provide a link, but if I do in the future, I'll definitely post it.

My last experience with cheesecake bore the same results as this one. My cheesecake cracked on top. I know that means it's been overcooked. I'll just have to stare through the oven window the last few minutes, I suppose.

That damn crack.

My mini cheesecakes also cracked. UGH. At least the crack in the big one could be hidden by chocolate.

My awesome mini cheesecake pan.

A close-up of the crackage.

After cooling, I glazed the large cheesecake with Duncan Hines' Amazing Glaze. If you click on the link and look at the picture, I can promise you that is NOT what it looked like. It did not flow out; it did not harden into a lovely, smooth surface. No, it had to be smoothed manually with a spatula. But that could have been forgiven, if the glaze tasted amazing. It didn't. It tasted more like sugar than chocolate. I regretted using it. My last visit to the grocery store, while perusing the baking supplies aisle, I saw that Kroger had it on clearance. No wonder.

Again, I apologize for the unsightly yellow hue. I have no idea why my camera does that.

Still, the large cheesecake ended up looking nice.

My mini cheesecakes turned out perfect - other than the cracked tops, of course. They did not taste overcooked at all, let me assure you. Their chocolate crust was a nice accompaniment to the tart fruit they were topped with.

The ones in the back topped with just chocolate were for my grandmother, who's allergic to anything with seeds.







This recipe is definitely a make-again. If you are unable to find the Philadelphia recipe for original cheesecake, any similar recipe will do.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

This post features what I made for Father's Day - carrot cake cupcakes. They weren't from scratch, though. They were made from a Duncan Hines mix. This post is more to highlight my decorating skills, or lack thereof.

My carrots look more like peppers.

The mix was alright, I thought - not the best I'd ever had. I'm not a fan of raisins, for one thing. However, I did enjoy the real bits of carrot in it.

Now, my icing job. I'm happy with it, I suppose, but it's clear to me that I need practice. I used Betty Crocker's Easy Flow icing in orange and green. You almost have to be a body-builder in order to get the icing to come out. It requires a lot of pressure pushing down on the nozzle for the icing to flow. I think that was a large part of my problem, but I know I can't blame it all on that. 

Lemon Cake

It's been a while since I've had time to post anything new - my son recently learned to crawl and I've been chasing him constantly. But he's asleep now (THANK GOD) so I'm going to try to catch up tonight.

I've baked quite a few things since I last wrote. We'll start with the oldest, and go from there.

This first post is going to be Lemon Cake. I made it in two loaf pans, so we kept one and sent the other to his boss. The blog from which I pulled this recipe from is one I discovered recently and promptly fell in love with. Go pay her a visit at the Smitten Kitchen. The recipe is adapted from one by Ina Garten, whom I had never heard of before this instance, but I can say with assurance that woman definitely knows what's up. I am not generally a fan of lemon anything, but this cake was AWESOME.

The recipe gives the options of baking two loaves or one bundt, and as I mentioned previously, I chose the former. The plan was to decorate my husband's boss's cake with sliced lemons, to make it pretty. Except I forgot to do that. Next time...

I squeezed all my lemon juice myself and grated the peels with a horrible grater that I have. I made a mental note to buy a new one, but I forgot and was reminded when I made key lime pie bars for a Fourth of July party - that recipe will be up soon. :)

I did not have parchment paper, so I merely sprayed the bottom of the loaf pan generously with PAM. I should also mention that I do not have two loaf pans, so I split the batter in two and used the same pan twice.

Sifting together the dry ingredients took time, but it was definitely worth it. The cake turned out very light and fluffy.

Now, after the cake comes out, the recipe instructs you to wait ten minutes before pouring on the lemon syrup. However, I had the foresight to read the blog's comments, and several of them suggested pouring it on immediately, which I did. It soaked up the syrup very nicely and left no soggy areas. After letting it cool, I then poured on the glaze.

So lovely.

The glaze was an excellent complement to the cake. The cake was sweet, while the glaze brought in the tart lemony flavor often left desired in citrus desserts. And as I said earlier, the cake itself was light, so you could eat more than one piece and not feel like a fat pile of lard. I mean, if you wanted to. I wouldn't know anything about that. ;)



Smitten kitchen, indeed.

Irish Cream Pie

In my last post, S'mores Cheesecake, I told you that for a family get-together, I made two desserts. Well, S'mores Cheesecake was one of them. The other is today's topic:  Irish Cream Pie, courtesy of good ol' Betty Crocker.

The ingredients say you can use pecans or walnuts. I used pecans, because they're my husband's favorite. Regarding the Irish liqueur, I used Bailey's.

Usually, when I prepare a recipe, I deviate from the recipe at least once. I pretty much stuck with Betty on this one the whole way through, until the very end. In the recipe, it says to top the pie with grated chocolate. I did this, but I also sprinkled pecan bits on top. Trust me, it didn't take anything away from the recipe.

I don't know why so many of my pictures turn out yellow.

Personally, I didn't care for the pie. It wasn't that I did anything wrong making it, I just didn't like the flavor of the Irish liqueur. My husband's opinion was that I had put too much liqueur in, and that it was just a little too strong. But everyone else at the party said it was perfect. So it would be up to you, if you choose to try this one, whether to put less or the same amount of Irish liqueur in.

It turned out lovely, regardless.

In conclusion, I suppose this goes down as a Success. Just because I didn't like it personally doesn't mean it didn't go over well collectively. If I decide to make this recipe again, I'll probably put less Bailey's in.

S'mores Cheesecake

My family decided to have a chili dinner, all the relatives on my dad's side getting together. I was pronounced the Dessert Maker. I decided to make two things, but I will only talk about one in this post. We'll save the other for next time. :D

The dessert I will discuss today is Pillsbury's delectable S'mores Cheesecake. How could it not be good? S'mores are everything delicious. Made into a cheesecake, it becomes pretty much the epitome of perfection.

Now, the reason I chose to make this and the other dessert I made for the family get-together is because my dad told me I needed to make things that used up the giant bag of marshmallows in the pantry. I chose this one because it has marshmallow creme in it. Lo and behold...marshmallow creme does NOT contain marshmallows! I did find ONE recipe for marshmallow creme that you could make with marshmallows but it was on a site I'd never been to before and had no reviews, so since I was making the dessert for a party, I wanted to be sure it would be good. So I was forced to use store-bought. Of course, I used Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme, in its new shatterproof jar! (Still seven ounces.)

If you've read any of my blogs, then you know that it's impossible for me to get through a recipe without messing up at least one thing. With this one, I decided to go ahead and get it out of the way in the beginning. The recipe calls for the crust to be pressed into the bottom of the pan, but I guess I didn't read that, because I pressed it into the bottom, but also around the edge of the pan. Then I was wondering why the crust was so thin. Once I realized what I had done, which was - of course - after it had begun to bake, and was too late, I felt very stupid. It didn't end up affecting the taste at all, but I still felt stupid.

Despite the recipe saying that the cheesecake needed 55 minutes in the oven, I found that it was done after only twenty or so minutes. Actually, it was a little over-done...

Yikes.

It wasn't drastic, but it was enough to make me say, "Damn." I know the picture makes it look like hell but it wasn't really burnt at all. Everything was fine because even though the cheesecake looked ugly, it got covered by a delicious chocolatey coating!

In my post entitled Cheesecake Brownies, I lamented my inability to properly melt chocolate. Well, I finally succeeded! I didn't use a double boiler; I used a plain old saucepan. I put in the chocolate chips and the whipping cream, and I stirred constantly. I don't know if it was the constant stirring or the whipping cream that did the trick, but my chocolate melted nice and evenly, rather than turning into the chunky, carmelized nastiness that it had been in the past.

Voila!

In the recipe picture, you'll note that the chocolate coating had a perfect, flat surface. Mine definitely looks homemade, but let me tell you this:  it was good as hell!

Not as beautiful as Pillsbury's, but just as tasty.

The cheesecake tasted great. In my opinion, it didn't have much of a distinct "s'mores" flavor, but it was delicious nonetheless. Maybe in the future I would put a little more marshmallow creme in? Just an idea.

In conclusion, this definitely goes on the list of Successes. A make-again? You bet.