First I wanted to share a photo of some baking that a friend did. My co-worker brought in cupcakes for Halloween, which I thought looked great. She said that she'd put sprinkles on the cupcakes for a dirt effect but they melted into the frosting and created a Dalmatian-esque topping.
Okay, maybe more black mold than Dalmatian... but this is New Orleans after all, and black mold is kind of a thing here. The bones added a nice crunch and red velvet - how could you go wrong?
Where did red velvet cake come from anyways? I Googled it, hoping to find out the history, and found all sorts of urban legends including that it was a ploy by the food coloring company to get folks to buy more food coloring during the Great Depression, that its secret recipe was leaked via chain letter from the outraged housewife who didn't want to pay the chef's $350 bill for his secrets, and that the red color is caused by a chemical reaction between cocoa powder and baking soda (pretty sure that's not true). Sounds like an NPR Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! game! And because I love BuzzFeed, here's their take on the cake. I didn't know that Emma Stone ever talked about red velvet cake but I think I like her even more now.
So after my bike ride to Angola, which was an amazing experience that I didn't journal during (gasp!) because I was too damn tired after each day of riding (54, 73, and 30 miles respectively), I was left with a bag of peanuts, chocolate-covered raisins and raisins that I had eaten on the road. For some reason my stomach didn't react well to the trail mix so I was hesitant to continue eating it after I got home. One weekend before a potluck I was thinking about the trail mix and Googled "leftover trail mix." This is the recipe I came up with and decided to make.
This is what came out of my oven.
Luckily there were two dozen other brothers and sisters of these cookies, otherwise I would have been sorely put out. The cookies had so much butter in them that they just melted. When I tried to separate these, both from the cookie sheet and from each other, they just came apart so I wound up throwing them out. I regretted it after tasting the ones that came out all right. They were so crispy and so buttery and so amazing. I think I would like this recipe better with chocolate chips and not raisins and peanuts. I'm keeping you in mind for next time, Whisking Through Life!
The third botched baked thing in this installment is a baked macaroni and cheese that I made a little while ago. I had a butternut squash that literally sat on my countertop for almost a month, just patiently waiting until I got my shit together and cooked it. When I got my hair buzzed by my co-worker in September we made baked macaroni and cheese and left out the butternut squash, though I had wanted to add it even back then. Finally I was making the comfort food just for myself and could add whatever the heck I wanted. The result is below, not a great rendition but a picture.
I essentially made a box of Annie's shells and white cheddar (the only boxed macaroni and cheese I've ever eaten, even as a kid - thanks Mom!) and added a few extra ingredients.
- the butternut squash, which I roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper
- crushed up bran, minus the raisins from leftover Raisin Bran
- goat gouda cheese that I had in the fridge
- grated parmesan cheese that I had leftover from eating out
I whipped everything together and baked it at 450 for about 20 minutes and - here's the botched part - the bran never really crisped but just sort of got warm. The macaroni and cheese, which had been so gooey and cheesy and rich, dried out in the oven. When I reheated the dish for lunch the next day, the bran was soggy. So I'm not sure how I could fix any of those problems... but hey, it was still a success when I first baked it!
Now it's time to go cozy up under my four covers and dream about breakfast.
Oooooooatmeeeeal...
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