A lesson in buttercream

Ok I'm done stalling kittens lets get down to it. Today I am going to talk about the most common frosting you will see. 90 percent of cupcakes will be topped with a buttercream. It is very sweet and easily dyed and piped. Around here we like a lighter more whipped frosting that I will do next week but for now we are creaming some butter.

I'm pretty sure that stain is chocolate but I'm not willing to test that theory.

Look how easy that bitch is! As long as you have any kind of mechanical mixer (of the arms of a Greek deity) you can make this frosting. It's four ingredients that I keep in my kitchen at all times. First things first, you can pretty much always tell that you are making a buttercream when the first thing you do is cream some butter. And before any of you start, no it doesn't have to be butter. The first time I ever made a frosting it was crisco based (with mint) and it was almost 10 years ago in a Gourmet Cooking class I took. It's where I learned to make a rose out of frosting, a skill I have never used since. Ok, I'm rambling time for a picture.

classy!

After the butter and the sugar, you just need to add whatever flavor you want and milk it until you get the right texture. You might notice that in that picture there is very little frosting. This caused me much distress after I started using it and realized that I didn't even have enough to cover half my cookies. The lesson in all of this is don't make half a batch unless you want to wind up crying on the floor. So after doing that and starting from scratch to make it all over again you end up with something that looks wonderfully tasty. 

Pink is the tastiest color

I made it strawberry because that sounded damn good, and it totally was. I really wanted to pipe the frosting onto the cookies but didn't have enough. I used a butter knife and some pink sprinkles to make it look as pretty as possible. I did not the best job, which is sad because I've made this before. I promise next week there will be no hysterics as I bring you my favorite frosting of all time. What could it be?! Oh hold on I almost forgot...

Cookies!

For my favorite thing of the week, I went back to youtube. I found this awesome channel packed full of show tunes in a bunch of different languages. Have you ever wondered what rent would sound like in Hungarian? Or perhaps what a group of Brazilians sounds like singing Sondheim? Well wonder no more because all your answers are right there. Notable mentions: "The Circle of Life" in Japanese and "We Both Reached for the Gun" in Dutch.

Sugar cookies, you're the one!

Welcome back to my kitchen, all my whiskers-in-training. This Saturday is my mother-in-laws birthday and because I'm not one of those people who hate their spouses mom, I made her cookies. I have attempted to make sugar cookies in the past and I can't say I was pleased. After all the mixing, cooling, rolling, cookie cuttering and baking, I was left with sad, thin stars with burnt edges. I was determined not to let that happen again. I used this recipe mostly because it needed no refrigeration or rolling pins. I will give you a quick rundown of my experience with it but there's not much I can add about it. The blog I found it on was cute, easy to print, had great pictures and was hilarious. In short, I think I hate that bitch. Why you gotta make me look bad! In contrast to all of that, I am going to start with this picture.

Eww

That is what the first step looks like. You aren't going to see that in any of those fancy pictures. Really though, why would you want too. That is unsalted butter and vegetable shortening. I am strongly urging you not to taste it. It's probably gross. You add sugar to that which apparently makes it edible and according to my husband "not bad." After that you mix the vanilla and eggs. I have more graphic pictures of these stages but I cant' in good conscience show you those. I'll just skip to the part where it looks like cookies. 

Yay it looks like food!

The source material then says to scoop them out with a rounded tablespoon onto the parchment paper. To that I said that I "don't give a hot damn!" and used my Little melon baller looking mother fucker. She also said it's supposed to make 26 cookies and I ended up with around 34 so....whoops. Then bake them for around 8 minutes and let it stay on the hot baking sheet to get the bottoms a little browner, then cool.  

A winner is me!

There you go friends, a sugar cookie recipe that even I can't screw up. Tomorrow I will tell you all about the adventure in buttercream. It...didn't go great. To wrap things up I leave you with my favorite thing for this week which is this random meme from two years ago. Yes two years ago, yes it's still my favorite thing, that is how amazing it is.  That's all for today kittens, tune in tomorrow! Same internet time, Same internet channel!

Back from the Dead: Part 2

Welcome back, my wonderful whiskers! It's finally November, a month of turkeys and parades and month long holidays! I might not have any of the first two things, but I am proud to introduce you to No-Bake November! It's totally the coolest holiday that I just invented right now. All this month I will be focusing on non baked goods, specifically frostings. Just to clarify, I will be baking this month. I mean, I have to have something to put the frosting on. And if it turns out interesting in any way then you will get a special Thursday quick blog. So do you remember yesterday when I said I made ganache for the first time? Let me tell you all about it!

Hey it's this guy again!

As an introduction, I want to say that I picked the easiest recipe I could find. I wanted to learn some basics before going crazy. I used this recipe because it had only two ingredients and it looked exactly like what I wanted to top my cheesecakes with. All you really need is 12 oz of chocolate and a cup of heavy whipping cream, which took me forever to find at the store. I used semi-sweet chocolate chunks because I already had that. 

This looks more right

You start by bringing the cream to a boil and then immediately removing it from heat. I used a fucking huge pot so I added a little more cream to compensate from what would get stuck to the sides. Also I kept the heat probably a little lower than I probably needed too. Yes it took forever but I didn't scorch it and that's rare for me. Once it hits a noticeable boil, pour it right on top of the chocolate. The tricky part is making sure you stir it enough so that everything melts equally but not so much that it starts to whip.

Unless you are into that kinda thing

I somehow found the exact right stirring equation because it looked and tasted great. I used my little melon baller looking mother fucker to spoon it onto the cheesecakes. Then I shook them around less gently then I should have, to make it even on top. Pop them in the fridge for a few hours and baby, you've got a stew going. 

Mmm, stew

I had lots of ideas for what to put on top of them to make it prettier but in the end, what's prettier than ganache. It's got a surface so shiny you can almost watch yourself eat it. I would suggest doing that too because it's a memory you are going to want to keep for a lifetime. Adding to the list of favorite things I have this week is Jacksmith. It's a flipline game similar to all the papa's cooking games except you make weapons and then fight with them.