Second on my list are these home-made Twix bars. I saw the recipe floating around awhile back, and had to try it. Wifey was also upset because our Halloween candy stash did not include Twix, so we made our own(Wifey helped with the caramel, she always thinks I’m going to burn my face off). These were AWESOME. Once they’re done, you have to chill them to firm them up, but when you take them out and let them sit for a bit, they get gooey and amazing. I salted one batch, which was good, but I should probably get some better salt for it. A for Twix Bars.
Tracks
I owe you guys a couple things. The first are these 3 Musketeer cupcakes. Technically, there’s one on top, the frosting is made out of 3 Musketeers, and there’s one baked inside as well, so it’s more like 9 Musketeers(hurr hurr). These were good! Very, very rich, but good. The cake was a little bit too weak, and crumbled any time you tried to bite it. A few of them even fell while in the oven. The frosting is made from melted 3 Musketeers and Marshmallow fluff. Let me tell you, it was a BITCH to work with. But the consistency came out a lot better than I thought it would. I made these for two reasons: 1) To get rid of our leftover Halloween Candy, and 2) to win at Cupcake Club. Cupcake Club is like a book club, but instead of reading books, we eat and judge cupcakes. Sadly, I took second place to a GLUTEN-FREE cupcake. SHAMEFUL. But these were still good! I give them a B-, as I think they would have worked better as mini cupcakes.
Stayed tuned, I’ve got more stuff coming!
This is the last thing I got for ya today, and I’m qualifying it as a fail, even though some of them survived.
You probably see these Pinata cookies circulating around back in May. The idea is super cute! Cookies that you bust open and there’s candy inside! How awesome is that! Where this recipe and idea goes wrong is logistics. I’m not talking about separating and dying dough, that wasn’t a bid deal, or even layering the colors. First of all, I don’t have a burro cookie cutter. I even looked at my local supply place - no dice. So the two cutters I have that would fit were penguins and dinosaurs. Great! So you have to cut the cookies immediately after they come out of the oven. Which is hard because 1). Soft cookies, 2). RIGHT OUT OF THE OVEN! METAL COOKIE CUTTERS CONDUCT HEAT! BURN YOUR FINGERPRINTS OFF! and 3). Because they’re already baked, anything that is delicate (like a dinosaur is going to crack as soon as they set. So none of the dinosaurs survived.
The other huge problem is that it takes THREE regular cookies to make ONE pinata cookie. My huge tray of penguins quickly got reduced to 4 Penguin Pinatas. Two whole nights of baking, and I only have 4 Penguin Pinata cookies to show for it, and technically it was only 3 because I busted one open to get that picture up there. So yes, very very cute and fun idea, realistically, very little payoff for tons of effort.
These cookies are so simple a concept, but so amazing. I actually remember the first time I got a chocolate chip cookie with m&ms in it. It was like angel kisses. That some genius science guy had thought to put candy in my cookie. WHO EVEN KNEW YOU DO THAT? These were real good.
These ones were made today. And while considerably easier than filled truffles, these rolled truffles were made the more difficult by the impending hurricane, and a snoring Vengelet strapped to my chest. Wifey helped with these too. We were originally going to use orange rind in the ganache, but I forgot to get it at the store in the throes of “OMG WHERE IZ THE TOILET PAPERZ AND BREAD?!?”. So Wifey had the good idea to look through Mama Venge’s bequeathed baking goods, and lo and behold, orange extract. 10 points to Ravenclaw! (Wifey is a Ravenclaw, NERD). So we ganache’d, and when we got to piping, they weren’t holding there shape very well, and flattened out a bit. So Wifey had the idea to roll to flat pieces together to make a spheroid(5 more points for Ravenclaw). These turned out looking great. The flavors are good, but I feel they needed a little extra oomph. Not sure what though.
B+ for orange dark chocolate truffles.
If you’ve ever been in the bakery section of a Giant(I spent 2 years working 3 different positions there-I’ve been around) then you’ve seen this pan of brownies. They always look super good, and then you get home, and they’re just kinda…meh. So i went looking for a frosted brownie recipe, and tried these out(I’m sorry I’ve misplaced the recipe at the moment). I tried to spice them up a bit with Dark Chocolate M&M’s, but they honestly reminded me exactly of the Giant variety- just meh. i think they have potential, but need more chocolatey flavor, less sugary flavor.
C for frosted brownies.
