On a Crappy Budget

So what's worse than a recipe going wrong? How about not baking at all! I haven't been able to bake in 2 weeks! Being poor is horrible. That and I've had to real reason to bake except for the fact I'm twitching over here! My finances as of late are down the crapper. I've recently received very high very unexpected bills. All my money is going toward those. so while I'm paying those off my "To Try" list keeps getting longer. I've tried to subdue the twitching with a little experimenting(and failures) here and there but it's not really helping. Though I made some pretty tastey strawberry flavored cream cheese frosting the other night.

But good news, In two weeks i will be baking AND cooking (crock pot style) for an event at work so YAY!

well, back to the grind.

"To Try" List

All I can say as that this is just *PART* of my list. These are pretty much all the recipes i've found on the internet. The list is probably like 20 pages long if you include the recipes i want to try from cook books!!! I'll be adding those to my list if I have the patience.

To Try list

Cookies and cream ice cream
Flourless PB cookies
Chocolate Peanut Butter Torte
Louisiana Chicken Pasta
S’mores Cake
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Coffee Cake
Lemon Poppy Seed Cakes with Raspberry curd filling
Orange Chocolate Chunk Cakes
Butterscotch Brownie Cake
Pumpkin Cake with Butterscotch Filling
Strawberry Cake
Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies
Cookies And Cream Rice Krispy Treats
Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies
Peanut Butter Cookies
Chocolate Cake Cookie Sandwiches
Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn
Mississippi Mud Pie
Pumpkin Pie Bars
Pumpkin Blondies
Pumpkin Pie Fudge
Spiced Pumpkin Dip
Pumpkin Pie Cream Cheese
Lemon Cream Cheese Ball
Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes
Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies
Brazilian Shrimp Soup
Cinnamon Rolls
Cookie Monster Cupcakes Version 2
Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Nutter Butter Balls
Oreo Truffles
Chocolate Marshmallow Chow
Best Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats
Butterscotch Puppy Chow
Captain Crunch Puppy Chow
Sugar Free Chocolate Éclairs
Southern Buttermilk Biscuits
Black Bean and Salsa Soup
Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies
Ginger Snaps
Salty Sweet Butterscotch Cookies
Cinnamon Chocolate Cake
Pumpkin Filled Cake
Lemon Poke Cake
Sweet and Salty Cake
Pumpkin Peanut Butter Balls
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars
Peanut Butter Brownies
Lemon Cake

Say Caaake!

So here it is! My dad's birthday cake. I enslaved my brother to help a bit. He stirred frosting closers and did other little things. he aslo placed the lens part on the cake for me. I was too scared to do it! The cake came together really easily which is pretty odd. I'm usually up until all hours trying to finish it! It only took me total about 4 hours to do this cake...approx.


The sheet cake is French Vanilla.The lens part is a cookies and cream layercake (recipe at the bottom). To get black frosting was incredible easy! WOWSERS!

Pre decoration

Black Chocolate Buttercream

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
1 cup cocoa- Use Hershey's Dark Chocolate cocoa for best results
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
3-4 tablespoons milk
1/2 tsp black food coloring paste


In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add cocoa and vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. add food coloring and mix until well blended. Let set for up to 1 hour. It will make the frosting blacker. it will look black brown but once spread out it will appear black. And it takes nummy.

Finished Cake:

Cookies and Cream Cake
Ingredients:
For the cake:
2 cups sugar
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup cocoa powder
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

For the filling:
1 ¼ cups heavy cream
1/8 cup confectioners’ sugar
¼ tsp. pure vanilla extract
10 chocolate sandwich cookies, chopped


To make the cake, preheat the oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.

Stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

To make the filling, in the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the heavy cream, confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Beat on low speed until all sugar is incorporated; increase speed to high and whisk until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in chopped cookie pieces with a rubber spatula.

To make the frosting, melt the butter in a medium bowl. Stir in the cocoa. Alternately add confectioners’ sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla.

To assemble the cake, place one cake layer on a cardboard cake circle. Pipe a ring of the chocolate frosting around the outside edge of the cake. Fill the area inside the ring of frosting with a thick layer of the cookies and cream mixture. Place the second cake layer on top. Frost the sides of the cake layers with chocolate frosting.

Source: Annie's Eats



To keep the layer cake on the sheet cake without tumbling off i used bamboo skewers and snipped off the excess. Which was freakin hard for some reason. So yeah tadaa!

PS the Sheet cake was just two boxes of cake mix...nothing special :).

pudding, frosting and mad science oh my

ok who likes to experiment in the kitchen? Raise your hand! *raises both hands way up high*

I have found a new ingredient to play with: Pudding.

Oh pudding how do i love thee. I have found a way to make a sturdy icing that would be good for cupcakes or cookies.

mix together 1/2 c. powder sugar and about 1-2 tbsp. half and half or whipping cream

put mixture in Either in a double boiler or ina bowl over a pot of simmering water. add aboouuut 1/4 c. butter. whisk until butter is melted and mixture is thin. Add either 1/2 block or 1 block of unsweetened chocolate. constantly whisking until choclate is melted.

remove from heat carefuly as not to burn your hands (made that mistake WOHOO!) . add about 2 more cups of powdered sugar. It's going to be a bit thin SOOOO magic trick.

Take a box of chocolate pudding and begin to sprinkle it onto the mixture and continue to stir until desired thickness is reached. if its too....lost for the proper word but you'll know then add a little bit more half and half and stir. its pretty tastey and not suuuuper sweet. the pudding dulls it down a dash. I liked it anyway.

Rice Krispy Tip

So if you decide to make rice krispy treats, use the JUMBO rice krispy's with the fiber. the ones with the touch of honey. Two reasons: 1) They are bigger and for some reason come out less sticky. 2) they are delisious. yeah you would think "man, honey and marshmallows? Too sweet!" NO NOT AT ALL! Seriously they are very yummy. And with the fiber they are slightly healthier. Plus with the jumbo, they are just a little more fun and different. DOn't believe me? Give it a try. Really!

Cheats aren't all bad

Even a baker has to cheat now and then. Bought a frozen pastry crust and made a lemon cream pie with two layers. OMG it was so good i wanted to eat the whole pie! Made the lemon pudding as per instructions on package. Poured about 3/4ths into the baked crust. took half a small container of cool whip(thawed) and mixed it with the remaining 1/4th pudding. poured it onto the pie...omg.. the cool whip pudding was so creamy and smooth. and the whole thing just came together so well just YUUMMMAAAY! also made a chocolate cream pie. yum but not as much.

anyway, went ot the skating rink...in a dress...a nice dressy dress. HAPPY NEW YEAR.