Mocha Toffee Ice Cream

Previously I've mentioned how difficult it is to bake during the summer. Well it's true! We don't have air conditioning in our house--save for a window installment in the bedroom for comfortable sleeping--and when it's hot outside the last thing I want to do is make it hotter inside.

So that, paired with the fact that May was colossally busy (I should have known!), my "May Flours" mission was an absolute flop. There, I admitted it. I do, however, have several flours waiting at home for me to turn into some gluten-free wonderfulness, and as soon as I find a day where the house isn't a sauna, they're all yours babies!

In the meantime, I've been using my ice cream maker as modestly as I can, (read: it's a epic struggle against making ice cream every single day), and so far out of the three kinds of ice cream I've made, Mocha Toffee is the best.

This recipe is super easy to make since you don't have to temper eggs; just combine the ingredients, chill, and put into the ice cream maker!

I made it special for my BBQ guests over the May-24 weekend, and again when my lovely friend Jax flew from the West for a visit. I knew she'd love it, because one of our bonding activities in university was to get together late at night for study-break mochas!

Jax enjoys the crunchy toffee bits and smooth coffee chocolate flavour of my Mocha Toffee Ice Cream. Food porn!

Thanks to Cuisinart, from whom I yoinked this recipe. I'm a devoted fan!

Mars Bar Biscuits

I have a coworker from Northern Ireland (or, "NornIrn", the way her brogue curls around it) who brought in some Mars Bar Biscuits to work one day. After tasting one, my reaction was akin to this:


As she explains it, they're super-popular all over Ireland, and they're ridiculously easy to make. Although they're a Rice Krispie-based treat, they're easier to make than Rice Krispie squares, if you can believe it! Special bonus: you can very easily make this recipe Gluten-Free/Celiac safe*! You can find gluten-free/Celiac safe Krispies at any health food store, like Noah's here in Toronto.

*Although you'd think Rice Krispies are gluten-free since they are rice, they contain Malt (a barley derivative) which is not recommended for those with Celiac disease.

Step 1: Melt 4 Mars Bars together with 4oz butter. Melt on low heat JUST until all the big lumps are gone. Don't over-cook the mixture or you will carmelize your sugar and your bars will be hard instead of chewy. Trust me on this.

Step 2: Scale out 4oz of Rice Krispies, which you will weigh on your super-awesome digital scale. If you do not own a digital scale, well, what are you waiting for? Go! Right now. I'll wait.
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*plays Jeopardy music in head*
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Did you get one? Good. You are now super-awesome just for owning one. Your baking life has just gotten infinitely better, my friend.

Anyway.

Mix the 4oz of Rice Krispies into the melted Mars Bar/butter mixture. Dump the mixture into an 8x8 pan and smooth it out using a spatula.

Step 4: Melt 1 package of Hershey's Milk Chocolate chips (in the microwave or over a double boiler) and smooth them over the surface of your Krispies, like this:

Put them in the fridge to cool and solidify, but make sure you take them out of the fridge at least half an hour before you wish to cut them or the chocolate will crack. Cut them as large or small as you want, but I usually cut 5x5 which gives you over 2 dozen bars. They're smaller, but they pack a delicious punch.

Trust me on this, unless your friends hate chocolate (and why are you friends with those people anyway?), they will LOVE LOVE LOVE these. That is, if you don't eat the whole pan by yourself first!

Thanks to Barb for the easiest no-bake recipe I've ever used!

Cookie related cuteness

OMG you guys, it's a widdle iddy biddy cutie cookie kitty! *dies*

So, it's totally hard to bake when it's hot out. I've been making a lot of ice cream lately though!

Yikes.

Between my vacation, and the big BBQ on the long weekend, and now my friend Jaclyn coming to visit, May--as always--has been a whirlwind!

I've baked some goodies, but haven't gotten around to posting them yet...but they're coming! I promise!

May Flours: Cake Flour

I know I'm starting out with a commonly-used flour, but I HAD to for my entry into CupCakeCamp Toronto!

From the Wheat flour Wikipedia entry:

Cake flour is a finely milled white flour made from soft wheat. It has very low protein content, between 8% and 10%, making it suitable for soft-textured cakes and cookies. The higher protein content of other flours would make the cakes tough. Highly sifted cake flours may require different volume amounts in recipes than all-purpose flour.

I heard of an amazing recipe in the BakeBakeBake Livejournal community called "Woody's Luxury Lemon Cake". Adapted from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, this amazing cake combined white chocolate and lemon to make what sounded like a mind-blowing taste experience. I picked this monster cookbook up from the library and set to work on converting this recipe into mini-cupcakes for CupCakeCamp.

I won't post this copyrighted recipe in my blog, but let me assure you that based on this recipe alone, I will be spending the $50 to buy this book. It was a white chocolate cake with lemon zest, filled with homemade lemon curd, and topped with a buttercream made out of a white chocolate vanilla bean custard base mixed with some of the lemon curd OMG YUM.

I'm not going to lie, this was a complicated recipe. It wasn't difficult, but it was process-heavy and thus time-consuming. When it came time to decorate, I was far too tired to cut out, paint and hand-detail 4-dozen tiny fondant lemons like I'd intended, so I tossed a few gold dragees on each and sprinkled them with edible/non-toxic 24 karat gold dust. They sure looked luxurious after that!

I was a planner and volunteer for the event, so I spent most of my time in the back room at CupCakeCamp plating cupcakes, separating out and labeling samples of each to be judged, and helping to organize people and tasks. However, I was able to take a few breaks from the back room and come out and serve cupcakes, as well as present the ones that I made. I was happy to say that mine flew off the trays pretty quickly; not only were they rather fetching looking, but people were super impressed that these cupcakes were covered in real gold!

I was quite surprised and pleased to win the award of "Most Impressive Amateur", and accepted my prize with a giddy combination of jumping and spinning. I never win ANYTHING, so it was kind of awesome. In the prize bag I got a copy of Hello Cupcake!, some Wall-E cupcake liners, a 4-section shaker of Wilton sprinkles in different colours and shapes, and a necklace with a cupcake pendant! I'm wearing it right now, and it's totally cute.

Check out this slideshow of other people's photos. Other than the first two I took during and after the decorating process, I wasn't able to take any pics of my own at the event because I was in the back, but other attendees and bakers took some photos of my cupcakes so I yoinked them and compiled them below:

Sweet success!

April Showers Bring May Flours

Luckily, we haven't had *too* many showers this April, and other than a few cold spurts it's been LOVELY weather. That means it's hard to want to stay inside and bake, so I'll give myself another task to keep me focused:

April Showers Bring May Flours

I do love a good pun.

So! In May I intend to bake several recipes using different kinds of flours, mostly ones that I've never used before. This means I'll end up with some gluten-free baked goods--which, again--I've not really done.

How exciting!

I will be away on vacation to Puerto Plata from May 7-14, so that will knock a week out of the running. Don't worry; the manfella and I will be eating and drinking our faces off and having a grand old time, but before I leave and when I come back there will be baked goods a-plenty, starting with...

CUPCAKECAMP TORONTO 2010!

Stay tuned, kittens.

News!

March may be over, but this blog has just gotten started!

In Food Bank news: the current total raised so far is $500! That's double the original goal. While I am so very pleased with the generous donations from my personal network, the Food Bank is still in desperate need right now. They've fallen 3% short of their fundraising goal, even after extending their Spring Challenge until today. Unfortunately, during and since the recent market tumble, people have been donating less but needing the Food Bank more. I urge you to reach deep into your pockets or, failing that, your cupboards and make an effort give something to this very worthy organization. I still have cookies available if you want to give to the Food Bank and get something back!

In other news: I have had a very excellent April so far. I've gotten past a major work deadline, I've been healthy as a horse, I've been getting in fabulous shape by working out every day and seeing my trainer twice a week, I've reconnected with friends I didn't see in March, and in 3 weeks I'm off on a week-long vacation to Puerto Plata with my manfella. I've even baked a little! I've been cutting back immensely on my sugar intake (3:00pm jitters + bikini season = eat less sugar!) so when I had to bring dessert to a board games party in Aurora last weekend, I made No Added Sugar Piña Colada Mini Cheesecakes. Blog post with recipe and photos forthcoming!

In the meantime, I've got so many ideas for my next "project" that I can barely decide! I may launch something in May (despite being absent for a week) and continue to blog whatever I bake in the meantime. It's hard though, because both the manfella and I are trying to lose weight, but I want to keep baking! Guess what friends in real life, random goodies may be forthcoming.

One of the next things I'll be baking is iambaker's awesome sugar cookies for my Big Bunch. I got to meet my new Little last weekend, and she is a terrific kid. I figure I'll bake up a bunch (har!) of cookies, make up icing and pre-bag it, then we can all ice cookies as a group.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that there are still many Ms. Adventures in Baking to be had, so keep coming back for more!