Dad's Birthday, plus a couple recipes

One of dad's favorite foods is German Chocolate Cake frosting, except, he doesn't eat chocolate. He hasn't eaten chocolate for years, it bothers his stomach. So for his birthday, which we celebrated last weekend, I made him cupcakes that were yellow cake mix and then homemade pecan/coconut frosting--the frosting that traditionally goes on German Chocolate Cake.

I'd never made that frosting from scratch before, so a little bit of a new adventure for me. Here's the recipe I used--note, this is not an original recipe, I pulled it off another website, I didn't not retain which one.

German Chocolate Cake frosting--just the frosting

I just gotta say about this frosting, wow it's good. You could frost an old hiking boot with this stuff and it would taste good. You could make up a batch and carry it around using it as currency it's so good. Seriously, I'm pretty sure if you took maybe 4 of these frosted cupcakes, you could get someone to trade you for a tank of gas, just a suggestion...

3 egg yolks
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup pecan pieces
1 1/3 cups shredded sweetened coconut

combine the egg yolks, milk and sugar in a sauce pan and cook over low heat. Stir constantly until thickened. Ok, on this step, I swear it never looked thicker to me. I waited until it was boiling even while I was stirring, then let it boil a little while, then decided it was long enough. I kept track, I stirred and cooked it for about 12 minutes straight. I think it's a good thing to cook it longer vs. shorter because I watched it get a little darker which just makes that brown sugar flavor richer.
Then remove from heat and stir in pecans and coconut.

Let cool to room temperature before frosting the also cooled cupcakes.

BTW, for the cupcakes, I just used one yellow cake mix with 1 cup of soy milk and mixed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes, then baked at 350 for 24 minutes. It made 12 cupcakes.

New recipe--Tangerine Spinach

Do you buy the giant boxes of tangerines, or clementines, or mandarin oranges that come out in the winter? They are the new little ones that are really easy to peel and usually don't have any seeds. They are yummy, but I probably didn't need 6 lbs of them.

So looking at my fruit bowl that had been completely overtaken with these cute little "I want to be an orange when I grow up" creatures, I decided to use one in my dinner.

So here's the recipe I came up with:

Tangerine Spinach

Any citrus that is vaguely related the tangerine would work in this recipe. The quantities below served two adults, one who really likes veggies (me) and one who is admittedly ambivalent to them (my S.O.).

The S.O. did say he really liked it. The tangerines made the spinach suddenly special or fancy. The flavors went together really well, and it is very pretty to serve. This would make a great side with any asian dish like teriyaki tofu over rice, but it isn't too asian-ee in flavor. It would go well with bbq'd skewer, or any meal really that needs a quick green side to round it out.

1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
1 tangerine peeled and separated into it's little natural sections
1 bag of baby spinach (sold with the bagged salads)
2 Tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds

Put the oils in a medium frying pan over medium/low heat and saute the tangerine sections for 3 or 4 minutes, a couple minutes on each side. Dump in the bag of spinach in the pan. The spinach will slowly wilt down. I used tongs to grab the mass of spinach and rotate it top to bottom a few times until everything was evenly wilted. While you are tossing it, be rough with the tangerine sections, fork them, or tong them, so some of their juices mix in with the rest of the spinach. Sprinkle generously with the sesame seeds and serve immediately--this does hold up well in the oven on very low if the rest of your dinner isn't quite ready.

Sliced almonds would work instead of sesame seeds too.

New recipe--Carmelized Pear Skillet Cake

I promised an elegant fate for the Harry & David pears, here is how I used one last night.

Carmelized Pear Skillet Cake
Oh wow, this cake is good. The juice from the pears mixes with the sugar and butter and creates a beautiful natural caramel sauce. This cake tastes as good as it looks. Once you make this, you'll come up with reasons to have potlucks so you can share this with friends.

1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 large pear, sliced very thin, at least 26 slices

1 yellow cake mix
1 cup soy milk or regular milk

Preheat oven at 350.
You are going to cook the whole cake in the skillet that you use on the stove, so start with a 12 inch skillet.

Melt the butter over medium/low heat, add the brown sugar and cook for about a minute. Arrange the pears over the butter/sugar in a pretty circular pattern. Use more pear slices vs. less, it's ok if they overlap. The more pears you use, the prettier the top looks later.

Lower the heat to just barely above "low" and let it cook while you mix the batter. Mix the soy milk and cake mix for 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Remove the skillet from heat. Spoon the batter carefully over the pears, trying to not disturb your pear pattern. You want the batter to cover the pears, maybe leaving just a little bit showing around the edges. The batter will spread some during baking.

Bake for 24 - 26 minutes, the top (soon to be the bottom) will be slightly browned.

The hardest part of this recipe is finding a platter big enough to hold this cake. I used one of those plastic party platters that's about 18 inches across.

When the skillet is cool enough to handle, put the platter over the pan and flip the whole cake onto the platter. If some pears are left in the pan, pull them out and arrange them in the blank spaces.

Serve same day if possible. This cake looks & tastes nice the next day as well, but because of the fruit, is really best fresh.

I heart Harry & David

And apparently they heart me too. I've received the fruit of the month club for several years, my mom gets it for me for Christmas every year.

When I received this giant box and the note on the outside, that basically says "we love you and want you to have a much bigger more expensive package this month..."I was initially dubious. I've received "replacement" packages from them in the past and it was a box of shortbread cookies or something--lame when you are expecting a whole pineapple, or 5 fresh nectarines.

So I opened the box and here's what I found--boo hoo...


Summer sausage is only so exciting to a vegetarian, and I don't want candy and cheese from Harry & David, I want FRUIT! But then I kept digging and found these--yeah!!!

So in the end it was a great surprise and much bigger than the normal little box of pears I would have received. I wonder what the real reason was for them sending me all this stuff, leftovers from a slow holiday season? That's ok with me.

I'm going to try an upside down pear cake, so the fate of a couple of those pears is hopefully an elegant one.

BTW, the movie night bars were a HUGE success. Maybe the second best reception ever, second only to the chocolate crinkle cookies.

New recipe--Movie Night Bars

I have two potlucks today, so a great excuse to try another new recipe. This recipe I call:

Movie Night Bars

1 chocolate cake mix
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup of Hershey's Syrup
1 cup of broken (not crushed) pretzels
about 1 1/2 cups of popped popcorn
about 1/2 cup Milk Duds candy

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Melt the stick of butter and mix it with the cake mix. It'll be dry and crumbly. Press the mixture into a greased 13 x 9 pan. Add the Hershey's Syrup, spreading evenly-ish over the mixture.




Then add the popcorn and pretzels evenly over the mix. The MilkDuds' placement is key because they will melt and hold the pretzels and popcorn to the bar when it is complete, so place them evenly across the whole mess, trying to sit them kind of on top of or right up against the pretzels and popcorn.

Bake for 18 - 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Let cool almost completely before removing from pan. These need to set up before they will act like a bar. If you try to eat them warm, you'll have to use a spoon, they won't hold their own weight.

So now the dilemma, which potluck do I take them to...
Well, I have a chocolate potluck at work today at 3pm, and an Odd Tuesday potluck tonight (friends have a potluck at their house every Tuesday that is an odd number date). I brought some Truffles and other chocolates that I got for Christmas that I don't want in the house for the 3pm one today. I think I'll save the bars for tonight. I'll let you know how they are received.

Welcome to my blog

I've been writing a cookbook for three years now, I'm hoping to finalize it in the next couple of months and then work on getting it published. The working title is "Rootbeer Cupcakes." It'll be about 50 or so baking recipes. This blog will include some recipes from that cookbook as well as recipes for another cookbook I'm considering, plus simply chronicle food as it relates to my life.

I'm a vegetarian and what I would call an adventurous cook. I'm a big fan of food overall, our relationship is a positive one. The recipes posted here are my original creations unless I state otherwise. Of course with the Internet and 6.7 billion people on the planet, I don't know how many truly original thoughts are left, but my recipes are not directly/consciously copied from anywhere else.

I'll have lots of recipes, plus successes, failures, even the occasional disaster, which is just fun for the whole family.