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Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

Posted on June 30, 2013 by auburnchick

Yesterday, Chicky and went to the bookstore where I picked up this book…

The book has a lot of helpful information, including the why’s of using certain ingredients, the how-to-fix-boo-boos tips and tricks, and lots of other helpful suggestions.

I couldn’t wait to begin!

Now, you do know that I do not cook very often.  In fact, I avoid it like the plague; however, I’ve gotten tired of not getting dessert.  Chicky has been cooking quite a bit and indulging her sweet tooth…making delicious yummies for the guys.  I decided to take matters into my own hands!

For my first recipe, I went all out and made Chocolate Mint Cupcakes.  Chicky and I visited the grocery store and picked up a few items…

I began by making the basic chocolate cupcakes that are found near the front of the book.  We didn’t have toothpicks, so we used a fork to test for doneness.

While these cooled, I made the mint icing.  It turned out too thin, but I think that I can fix this by adding less milk next time.  You’ll see, in the picture below, that the icing ran all over the tops of the cupcakes.  No worries.  I’ll work on presentation later.

😀

The final step in this recipe was making the chocolate ganache.

Oh word, but I’d heard this word before on The Food Network, but I’d never actually eaten it, not to mention cooked it.

It was soooo easy…just soy milk and chocolate chips!  Seriously!

I put a dollop of ganache on the top of each mint-iced cupcake.

Then, it was time to try one.

Have you ever watched Cupcake Wars?  I have.  Plenty of times.  Which is how I learned about vegan cupcakes.

I felt a little like Florian as I sniffed my cupcake before carefully peeling the liner off.

I did not, however, eat the cupcake with a fork.

I am a redneck; hence, I am not quite that refined.

I did notice that the texture looked good.

And then the first bite.

Oh.

My.

Golly.

It was everything I’d hoped for and then some.

I had worried about the cupcakes being completely cooked.  Chicky had assured me, in her all-cooking-know-how-way that they would continue to cook a bit in the muffin pan.

It was cooked perfectly!

And the taste?

I’d also worried about the mint being too overpowering; however, it was perfectly balanced with the taste of the chocolate.

The ganache on top made for that extra umph that my mouth had been craving for so long.

Lord have mercy!

I do not think that anyone would be able to distinguish these cupcakes from non-vegan ones.

Who says you need eggs and regular milk?

Being vegan doesn’t mean you have to be deprived from tasty food…even if you do have to make it yourself sometimes.

Filed under: Vegan | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Blow Your Mind Tomato Basil Pasta

Posted on June 28, 2013 by auburnchick

I saw the following recipe posted by a friend on Facebook and knew I had to give it a try.

It is completely vegan-friendly and super easy for non-cooks like myself.

The recipe turned out DELICIOUS!!!  Things I would change:

  • Add two cans of petite diced tomatoes with extra seasonings like chilis or something else (all I had was the plain kind)
  • Only add a dash of red pepper flakes.  I went too heavy because I like spicy food.  Oops.
  • Make sure I stir frequently to prevent the pasta from clumping together.

Photo from http://comfortspringstation.tumblr.com

Here’s the recipe (copied and pasted from http://comfortspringstation.tumblr.com/post/53664534559/blow-your-mind-tomato-basil-pasta-no) but originally from TexasOnlineCookbooks.com:

Blow your MIND” Tomato Basil Pasta! – No Straining, just Stirring
Throw it all in the pot, INCLUDING the uncooked Pasta, and cook! – Bring it to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. The starch leaches out of the pasta and makes a rich, warm sauce for the noodles. The other ingredients cook right along with the pasta

Ingredients:
12 ounces pasta (Shown  Linguine)
1 can (15 ounces) diced tomatoes with liquid ( I used zesty red pepper flavor)
1 large sweet onion, cut in julienne strips
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
2 large sprigs basil, chopped
4 1/2 cups vegetable broth (regular broth and NOT low sodium)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Directions:
Place pasta, tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, in a large stock pot. Pour in vegetable broth. Sprinkle on top the pepper flakes and oregano. Drizzle top with oil.
Cover pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a low simmer and keep covered and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes or so. Cook until almost all liquid has evaporated – I left about an inch of liquid in the bottom of the pot – but you can reduce as desired.

Season to taste with salt and pepper, stirring pasta several times to distribute the liquid in the bottom of the pot.

Filed under: Vegan | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Vegan Chocolate Cake!

Posted on April 7, 2013 by auburnchick

A couple of weeks ago, Christina posted a link on my Facebook wall.

The link took me to a recipe for a Vegan Chocolate Cake.

The recipe didn’t call for many ingredients.  The only thing I was lacking was the time to make it.

I found that time today.

After sending the Mr. after the ingredients I didn’t already have in the house, I got busy.

Prep time was about ten minutes, tops.

I poured the batter into a 9″ round pan, adding parchment paper and a sprinkling of flour to prevent sticking.

Per a comment I had read below the recipe, I set the timer for 35 minutes.

Here’s what it looked like when I pulled it out of the oven…

The Mr. came in for a taste.

He’s a picky sort of fellow.  Cake is important to him.

Even he had to agree that the cake was moist.

He also agreed that nobody would EVER guess that this cake could be given the “vegan” label, which typically makes people turn their noses up at things.

Oh word, but this cake is tres delicious!

I’m ecstatic because I can FINALLY eat dessert!!!

I highly recommend this recipe!

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Results of Guilt

Posted on October 10, 2011 by auburnchick

What happens when you blog about being unbalanced and not keeping up with your domestic duties?

You guilt yourself into planning meals…

going shopping…at two different stores…

Breaking apart large meat packages and freezing everything in single-serve packages…

And even cooking…perhaps quadrupling a favorite Black Bean Soup recipe so a friend can be repaid for a kindness, or two, or three over the last couple of years…


Dag nab it for personal reflections!

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

A Whole Lotta Dough

Posted on June 12, 2011 by auburnchick

Apparently, I must think my life is not filled with enough activities.

Take, for instance, my newest adventure…bread baking.

It all started out when my friend, Christina, casually mentioned, during more than one conversation, that she was baking bread.

Finally, I asked her for the recipe.

She gave me this website.

I decided, upon first glance, that it was too complicated, but she assured me that it really wasn’t.  So, I decided to hunt for a video.

I found this one…

Well, by that time, I was intrigued…enough to hunt for coupons and go out shopping.  First, I bought the book…

Then, I bought the other stuff…

FYI, the authors of the book suggest using an oven thermometer to calibrate your oven.  I discovered that although my oven temperature might read 400 degrees, it’s actually 350.  So, my oven is off by fifty degrees.  This is good knowledge to have and may be why some of my food doesn’t cook according to the time suggested in recipes.

The whole premise of the book is that you can have a loaf of bread with about five minutes of preparation.

This is sort-of true.  First, though, you have to make the dough.  The recipes, in general, require very few ingredients and no kneading at all.  The first time I made a batch of dough, I put it in a small bucket type of bowl.  The instructions clearly say to use something that will hold five quarts.  I learned the hard way to follow instructions…especially when my bucket overflowed as the dough started rising.  I moved that first batch of dough to a long, rectangular Rubbermaid container (a pain in the rear, let me tell you, and it took up a LOT of space in my refrigerator).

Because you use the same batch of dough to make several loaves, I had a few days to find a larger container.  I wound up buying this (with a coupon, of course) from Bed Bath & Beyond…

FYI, I purchased the tallest container.  Another FYI, I’d like to buy the whole set.  That’s how much I like the one I purchased.  BTW, you need something BIG because the dough GROWS…a lot!  I like the fact that my container is TALL because I can put it in the door of my refrigerator, freeing up much-needed shelf space.

On the day you want to bake the bread, you do have to allow 45 minutes from start to finish.  It’s a fairly easy process.  My first loaf came out looking okay…

It had a lot more flour on the top than it should have.  I’ve since quit sprinkling so much on the top.

Apparently, the flour did not affect the taste.

Oh.  My.  Word.

It was delicious!  Everyone in the family agreed.  The bread tasted as good as Panera’s, and I am not exaggerating.  The texture was “normal,” something I worried about because I am not known to be a great cook.  The crust was crunchy, thanks to my new pizza stone.  I don’t know how I’ve lived my entire adult life without this gadget!

The book has a lot of delicious recipes.  I recently tried the roasted garlic potato bread.  The next time I make it, I’m going to add a lot more garlic.  I couldn’t even taste it in the the bread.

My family loves this bread so much that I have found myself making a lot of it…almost a loaf a day.  Each loaf does not last long, let me tell you.  I have a feeling that if I ever got a loaf made in the morning, I’d be making a loaf again in the evening.

So, I seem to have found an easy way to indulge in my up-to-now-hidden-kitchen-alter-ego.  I guess if I’m not going to make a lotta dough in my teacher paycheck, I might as well make it at home!

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Chocolate Chip Cake

Posted on November 9, 2010 by auburnchick

After seeing the picture of my delicious cake, someone requested the recipe.

So, I figured I would share it.  Credit goes to Sunshine’s Mom, who originally posted this on KnittingHelp.com.

Chocolate Chip Cake

Duncan Heinz Butter cake mix
1 small package Jello instant vanilla pudding
1/2 bar grated chocolate (I usually use German chocolate – it’s in a green package)
chocolate chips
1 cup oil
1 cup milk
4 eggs
A bundt pan

(Let me just say to start – grating the chocolate is the most time consuming part of this cake. I’ve found that using a zester instead of a grater works so much better. In any event, grate your chocolate first before doing anything else and you’ll be happy you did.)

With mixer, beat together cake mix, vanilla pudding, oil and eggs. Fold in grated chocolate. Put half of mixture into bundt pan, add enough chocolate chips to your liking, put rest of mixture on top (and maybe a few more chocolate chips?) Make sure chocolate chips are pushed into the top layer of cake mix. Lick the spoon, bowl and detach and lick the mixer blades, seriously. It’s that good.)

Bake at 350 deg. for an hour or until inserted knife or toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool in the bundt pan (I can’t stress this enough!). Once cool, tip over onto plate and cover with powered sugar if you wish.

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Diary of a Cake

Posted on November 8, 2010 by auburnchick

Dear Chicky,

Mama tried her best to get me prepared before you went back to college, but Pele ruined that for everyone.

I wanted to let you know that after you left and the smell cleared out, she did a good job.

The ingredients were ready…

All she had to do was throw them into the mixer.

In the middle of mixing, the mixer went haywire and started spewing forth smoke.

Still, Mama persevered, slowing the machine down enough to finish the task at hand.

She carefully baked me, and I cooperated by coming out of the pan in one piece…

I saw her reach for her camera, along with a knife…

She mercilessly dug her fork in, stopping for another picture…

She even, not-so-kindly, managed to send you this picture, proving that she had, indeed, eaten that bite afore-photographed…

As of this writing, there’s less than half of me left.  Your daddy has been sneaking pieces all day.  I fear that the end is near.

But, we will meet again…at Thanksgiving.

I’ll be counting down the minutes.

Love,

Your Favorite Chocolate Chip Not-in-a-Bundt-Pan Cake

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Cluck Cluck

Posted on September 20, 2010 by auburnchick

Oy, but one of these days, I am fairly certain that the AuburnChick family will begin to cluck like chickens.

Why, you may wonder?

Because we eat so doggone much of the stuff!

See, I am a lowly-paid private school teacher.

Chicken is cheap – especially when you get it at Sam’s Club – and especially when you get lucky and shop on a Monday, and the store has the meat marked down even more than usual.

Every night, Rooster asks the same question, “What’s for dinner, Mama?”

My answer?  “Chicken-something.”

I’ve fixed BBQ chicken every which way…fried, oven-baked, and crock-potted (yeah, this isn’t a word, but I had to make it have a “d” on the end, so don’t go riding the English teacher – it’s all about parallelism).

We’ve eaten Chinese Chicken, Chicken Parmesan, and French-Fried Chicken until we are blue in the face.

And let’s not forget about Chicken Marsala (a favorite, by the way) and some sort of chicken that has capers on it (the name escapes me just now).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled out boxes of rice and pasta and found recipes to fix.

What?  You’ve never done this?  Go look in your pantry.  You’d be surprised at what you can find right there on your labels.

The biggest problem in the AuburnChick household is that we cannot use Cream of Anything because the Mr. and I are both lactose-intolerant.  So, you can scratch any sort of casseroles from our menus.

Grrr…

And so it was tonight, when I was trying to decide on a quick and easy meal, that I went to my old standby…Chicken Fingers.

Because I wanted to attend a band booster’s meeting, I only had 20 minutes to prepare dinner.  Rooster was mighty glad that I had a deadline, because he knew that he would be getting a hot meal, for a change.

I whipped up those bad boys in week-old cooking oil in no time flat.  And don’t be hating my old oil.  You can’t be a true Southerner without using old oil.

Trust me.

I grew up in LA…Lower Alabama…where we taking frying seriously.

Of course, the downside is that I walked into the band meeting smelling like I’d just pulled a shift at McDonald’s.

Whatever.

My family had been fed.

Next thing you know, I’ll be laying a nest full of eggs.

Cluck, cluck.

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Pride Goeth Before the Blood

Posted on June 25, 2010 by auburnchick

Sometimes, you have to learn things the hard way.

Last night, my lesson was about humility.

Let me show you the tool of said lesson…

Are you starting to cringe yet?

Yeah.  You should be.

Let me tell you the story.

I had selected an innocent little recipe to cook for dinner.  One of the ingredients called for was a chopped onion.

Rather than get out my handy-dandy chopper, which does the work for me, I opted for the butcher knife, pictured above.  I don’t always like how my chopper chops, and I figured it would be a quick chop anyhow.

So, I began chopping.

As I chopped, I had this little conversation with myself:

“Oh AuburnChick, look at your chopping technique.  What great form you have.  Obviously all of those nights you’ve spent sitting on the couch watching Food Network have actually rubbed off.  You’re chopping like a REAL cook.”

Yeah, I really was saying those things to myself.  I mean, I had even watched World’s Worst Cook, a “reality” cooking show in which two professional chefs transformed horrible cooks into chefs worthy of presenting meals to food critics.  One of the first things the bad cooks learned how to do was use their knives properly.

Anyhoo, I digress.

I continued my chopping, a contented smile on my face.

And then I felt it.

A slice.

Through my skin.

Ugh.

See, this is not a new thing for me.  I am accident prone.

I figured it was one of the normal cuts…a small slice that doesn’t go too far…just far enough to draw a little blood.

When I looked down, that’s what I thought I saw.

I pulled at the cut a bit, seeing how deeply I’d cut.

Guys, I didn’t slice my finger.  I chopped a small piece of skin off…

Oh yeah.  Pretty icky, eh?

About the time I figured out what I’d really done, the pain set in, as did the release of blood.

Thank goodness I was standing next to the sink.

I called for the Mr.  I knew I wouldn’t be getting stitches or anything, but I needed someone to console me and get out the bandaids.

I got myself cleaned up  and the wound bandaged.

I resumed my chopping, and nearly got my thumb in the process.  Thank goodness I have long fingernails, because that is the only thing that stopped the knife from going through.

Ugh.

AuburnChick should not be allowed to play with knives.

Seriously.

I think I make a good case for hiring a cook – except that we don’t have the money for it.

Oh, and for the record, I never did find the hunk of skin I chopped off.  I suspect it went into the pot along with the onions.

Oh well.  What’s a little more protein?

heehee

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

A New Member of the Family

Posted on January 18, 2010 by auburnchick

I’d like to present the newest member of the AuburnChick family…

Bet you expected an animal of some sort, eh?

Heehee.

Seriously, though, I did get your attention, didn’t I?

Heehee.

But seriously, you guys know how distraught I was at the demise of my former crock pot.  I even sang a funeral dirge about it.

After much pondering, consulting, and shopping around, I finally decided on the Hamilton Beach crock pot…

For one thing, this is a 6 quart pot.  My other one was only three quarts.

It’s technology-fancy too.  Just look at the control panel…

It even has an Enter button!  LOL

It came with a meat probe, so if recipe directions say to cook something to a particular temperature, I can, and the crock pot will automatically turn to warm when the meat reaches the temperature I set…

This pot also came with a nifty little spoon/spoon rest built into the lid.  Don’t you just love that?!

Plus, and this might be my favorite little bonus thing about it…it has clamps so that I can secure the lid if I want to travel with it!!

Can you say, NO MORE SPILLED CHILI?!!  Hence, no more car mats that resemble someone’s having puked on them.

Oh, and did I mention that the ceramic pot lifts out for easier cleaning?  Tres cool!

Now, I have to tell you that I have really missed having a crock pot.  Every time I tried to plan a meal, I had to throw out my ideas because everything required my much-loved appliance.

It was with much enthusiasm that I pulled the newest member out of the cabinet today.  I don’t believe in waiting to use new gadgets.  Open them and use them, for heaven’s sake!!

Tonight’s dinner was Spicy Asian Chicken…one of Rooster’s favorite meals.

Using the instruction manual (I am so nerdy that I actually enjoy reading techno mumbo jumbo), I set the cooking mode to manual, which allowed me to select High, Lo, or Warm (I set it to Lo and changed it to Warm when I was making final dinner preparations)…

Then, it made the loveliest sound…

A three-second beep.

Music to my ears!  My old crock pot didn’t ever sing to me, except to go Plop when it busted.

Oh yeah, I’m happy.  My family appears to be happy as well, as evidenced by the way they chomped down their dinner!

Welcome to the family, Big C (i.e. Big Crock Pot).  May we enjoy a long and joyful relationship.

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments »

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