Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Pecan Cake

I wanted to make a dessert for St. Patrick's Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage. I flipped through some recipes I cut out of Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living magazines and found this one for Pecan Cake with Rum Frosting.




This cake wasn't the one I was looking for, but I came across it first and it sounded so good. I know the second picture sucks, but this was the best of the individual piece pictures I took and I wanted to show a view of the actual cake since I kept the cake in the pan for transport and serving. I stuck to the recipe as written with the exception of dyeing the frosting green to be festive and having to bake it slightly longer than suggested. It must have been the glass pan's fault it took extra time.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tonight on Turner Classic Movies...

A while ago, my cable package got rid of CMT and added TCM. I just about never watched the country channel but have watched a lot of the movie channel.

I'll be watching tonight starting at 8:00 PM. There is a special called, "Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood" about animator/director Chuck Jones after which they are playing classic Warner Brothers cartoons like "One Froggy Evening" and "What's Opera Doc?" The special reruns at 10:30pm and is followed by "The Phantom Tollbooth," which Jones directed.

If you need to know more about Jones before committing yourself to this evening, check out his website.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Peanut Butter Cookies


I thought these cookies looked so cute on the baking sheet, all nice and lined up. I didn't use the Jif recipe this time. I like the Jif recipe better because they have a soft and chewy texture, but these are a safer choice to take to a party because they aren't too soft or too crisp. They held up well throughout the week, too. The first batch I made were so successful that I made another batch a few days later.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Glaze

These pictures are kind of ugly, but the cake was delicious.



Chocolate cake, faux ganache filling, strawberry glaze. This cake had to replace the one I wanted to make when I couldn't find a recipe that I liked. I wanted a chocolate cake with a fudge filling, topped with a strawberry glaze. Ideally, this would have been a Bundt cake. Unfortunately, the only from scratch recipes I could find involved nuts and the birthday boy doesn't like nuts so it wouldn't work. The strawberry glaze was a little thin and spread a bit more than I wanted, but that was because I added a few extra strawberries to make it pinker.