PB Empanadas

I hada Tupperware party a few weeks ago and made these yummy empandas with a recipe I found on Pillsbury's website. I made them with a Tupperware Empanada press (also caled a piergoi or pastie press, depending on your cuisine of choice)

The following is the recipe as I made them:

Ingredients:

1/2 roll refrigarator  pb cookie dough
4oz softened cream cheese
2 refrigarator pie crusts
1 egg, beaten
3/4 bag of pb chips
3/4 bag of semi sweet choc chips
3 tablespoons Crisco

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix together the cookie dough and cream cheese until smooth and set aside.
2. Unroll pie cruss and cut into circles with either the empanda press or round cookie cutter.
3. Place tablespoon cookie dough on circle and crimp cut.
4. Fold in half and crimp closed, brush with beaten egg.
5. Bake 12-16 minutes. Let cool in pan, 2 minutes and then transfer to wire rack for 15.
6. Melt pb chips and 1.5 tablespoons crisco in the microwave, stir well. Dip half of empananda in the pb mixture. Let harden and then repeat the process with the chocolate chips.

These got rave reviews. One girl said the soft cookie inside was almost like cake. These are definitely worth a shot!

PS: I'm still concocting a recipe for my "Rachel" cupcakes.

Dulce...just like me!

For the most recent baking challenge Rachel suggested that I produce a cupcake that I thought would be worth of being called "The Luisa". This took a great deal of thought, and I threw around a significant number of ingredients that I thought needed to be included into "The Luisa"...caramel, peanut butter, chocolate, coconut, strawberries...everything was game! It was difficult to come up with a way to incorporate all of these things into one cupcake. But then I stumbled upon this great Dulce de Leche Cupcakes recipe and I knew it was just perfect. If you've never had Dulce de Leche before, the taste is similar to caramel but thicker, with a creamy, milk like consistency. It's one of my favorite flavors, and it was just simple enough but with enough of a kick in the frosting to feel like something I could proudly feel like I could call my own. I added some sliced strawberries and honey on top to spruce it up a bit. The recipe was simple enough but I would recommend cutting the frosting recipe in half, there was more than enough left over. Also, I think it would have been fun to use some strawberries in the batter, or mini chocolate chips..maybe next time!

Pumpkin, Flan, Tres Leches!

Sooo after months and months of procrastinating I'm FINALLY posting a response to my challenge of incorporating pumpkin into one of my baking recipes. But to make up for my lateness, I'll also through in a little blogging about two other baking tasks I took on over the winter break: Cheese Flan and Tres Leches!

For my pumpkin challenge I actually did two recipes: I made Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread (a choice inspired by my professor, who is a wonderful baker and makes the bread with extra large chocolate chunks) as well as Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Brown Sugar Buttercream, I recipe I found on this website called My Kitchen Addiction. I sadly forgot to take pictures of the cupcakes but they were amazing, especially if you like the texture of the brown sugar in the icing. I made these for the girls in my classes and they were a hit! I'll include some pictures of the Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread, the recipe found on My Baking Addiction. I think the bread was especially great to make during the cold weather season because the combination of the pumpking and chocolate chips is divine, and it makes for an easy treat to heat up in the microwave with some coffee or milk. Best idea ever!

So as an added extra I'll share some pictures of two other treats that I made over winter break: The Cheese Flan that my boyfriend's mother showed us how to make while I was in college, and that is my go to dessert ever since, as well as my first attempt at making Tres Leches Cake.

Okay, so the Cheese Flan has become a pretty easy dessert for me to make after having made it so many times...but the Tres Leches was a very different story. I followed a recipe found at Sazon Boricua, which is a great resource for authentic Puerto Rican dishes. Tres Leches has always carried the reputation of begin a difficult cake to make, and I finally understand why. If you don't take the cake out of the oven, poke holes evenly in the cake and pour the milk mixture immediately while the cake is still warm, the cake won't soak up the liquid and will only be moist on the surface. This is exactly what happened to me! So remember that this cake is known for being super moist and thus you need to be prepared to add the milk mixture as soon as it's done baking. Another issue was with the icing; despite asking my boyfriend to use his superhuman strength to beat the egg whites into a creamy frosting, you could still taste too much of the sugar. The cake did taste pretty good, but this challenge isn't over yet! Now that I know what to be particularly watch out for I can't wait to try it again.

Rach, your next challenge is simply to make something green for St. Patrick's Day! I sent you some options, so let me know what you pick and I can't wait to see what you turn out!

Ooey Gooey Rocky Road Cookies

My most recent challenge was to make something rocky road inspired. I searched many recipes and found quite a few ideas that looked tasty but I could not get the recipe that Lu suggested out of my head. So I made them.

I used this recipe from the always excellent Fifteen Spatulas  as a guideline and subsituted the almonds for hazelnuts. I also chopped up regular sized marshmallows instead of buying minis.

However, I forgot that I was out of parchment paper until after I baked the cookies. The first pan went on the Silipat and on the second pan I absentmindedly put down wax paper. I didn't realize my mistake until after I had baked the cookies and had to try prying them off the pan! Whoops.

I ended up with glob shaped cookies but they tasted great!