Mini Pumpkin Filo Pies

A while back we talked about spectacular failures. That feeling you get when you realize your house smells like a broken fire extinguisher factory. The moment when you look at the garbage can and think, "no one has to know I even attempted this". Websites like Pinterest and Brit & Co give us access to anything. We convince ourselves that we can turn large men's shirts into cute little dresses. We live in this crafty delusion where if we can just get our hands on 59878 buttons we could make a really, really awesome lamp.

And I fall for it every time.

Make Crepes at Home!

For four years I lived in North Philadelphia, dredging up and down Broad Street pretending like I was totally comfortable living in the city. We all know (or I think we can all assume) that I am not the most subtle person you've ever met, so trying to act cool and urbany was just not my style. I always came up out of the subway stairs ready to roundhouse somebody. I paid for that Vera Bradley bag myself mister, keep your hands off.

When you move from rural to urban everyone wants to sit you down and tell you about the dangers of society. This is fairly warranted, but the drama that people pump into it is far more scary than anything you'll probably see on campus. When I went to orientation at Temple they told us not to wear lanyards with our keys around our necks because people would come up from behind and choke us. The more they talked, the more I couldn't help but wonder why I had chosen a school that had so many stranglers on campus. 

Keys were better left in your pocket, or better yet - your largest key was better left in ready position in your right hand so you could stab someone quick if you had to. 

Super Bowl Breakdown

As I mentioned in last week's post, this post is going to veer off in another weird direction. Nothing too weird and uncomfortable, just another post that doesn't necessarily only involve desserts. I know, I'm going to give you a minute to get it out of your system. Don't worry, it took me a minute.

The reason for all the veering is the big game. The big dance. The superest of bowls, and the best excuse you'll have until next Christmas to eat with reckless abandon. My family was never huge fans of football, but we always got together to watch the super bowl. Most of the time it started off with some kind of civilized meal; some angel hair pasta if we were at my aunt and uncle's. But as soon as the plates hit the dishwasher it was junk food o'clock. I'm talking foods that are best left to fingers, desserts that had the words "muddy" and "addicting" right in the title. My aunt (who I've mentioned before here) has always been a whiz at producing desserts that everyone wants to inhale, so this was her super bowl. I also remember a time when my Gramma let my sister and I run wild in her kitchen, which resulted in a cake that sort of resembled a football field but looked more like a green monster with the words bronco written in M&M's melting off one end. I know there's a picture of it somewhere..

Spiced Pear Upside Down Cake

Sometime this past week a mystery magazine showed up. It was Taste of Home, and I have no idea how it got here. Nobody does. At least, nobody is telling me. I ended up paging through it and found this recipe for Spiced Pear Upside Down Cake. It sounds hard, anything upside down sounds difficult, but it was really easy. I made it for dessert for a dinner party we had Saturday night, and people seemed to love it. The topping is amazing, and the pears are a really nice surprise. (that sounded kind of pretentious, but it's true!)

I would highly recommend it, so here's the recipe:

Prep time: 25 minutes

Bakes for: 35 minutes + 10 minutes to cool

Makes: 9 servings

Ingredients:

-1/2 cup melted butter

-1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

-1/4 cup packed brown sugar

-2 large pears, peeled and sliced

-1/2 cup of softened butter

-1/3 cup of sugar

-1 egg

-1/3 cup of molasses

-1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

-3/4 tsp. of ground ginger

-3/4 tsp. of ground cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. of salt

-1/2 tsp. of baking powder

-1/4 tsp. of baking soda

-1/2 cup of warm water

Pour melted butter into a 9 inch square baking pan. 

[i only had an 8x8, but it worked fine]

Sprinkle the chopped walnuts and brown sugar mixture over the butter.

Put the sliced pears over the walnuts/brown sugar. The recipe calls for two whole pears, but this was only one. I could have double layered them, but I wasn't sure how the pears would cook if there were two layers.

Cream the soft butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Then beat in the egg and molasses. Combine the flour, ginger, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and baking soda and alternatively add that to the mixture with the warm water. Then spread the batter over the pears.

 Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. I baked mine for around 37 mins, and it was perfect.

Cool for 10 minutes and then flip it over onto a serving plate. For some reason, my cake had this weird fault line in it, but you couldn't tell once it was flipped.

 See? 

And finishing touches- warmed up with vanilla bean ice cream <3

Not a bad recipe, and definitely easy to make. Super fast too. Thank you to the mystery person who delivered the magazine! 

Source: Taste of Home Magazine, Feb/March 2011 Issue

Web: http://www.tasteofhome.com/

Submitted by: Lisa Varner, Charleston South Carolina

First blog! Banana Cupcakes with Honey Cinnamon Icing

Welcome to my new blog, Yeah I'd Bake That! It's a blog about baking and love. But mostly about baking. Actually, all about baking. 

Be forewarned, I have no professional experience and no baking education, I just really like to do it. My problem is that I have no one to really bake for, no proper audience (and certainly not a house filled with children to eat it all) so I thought this might be a better venue. I'll still have to make people eat my baked goods, but this feels like a better outlet. I find the majority of my recipes online, so my plan is to highlight interesting recipes, photos of the process, and things I would like to bake but haven't yet. I'm open to challenges, so if you have something you'd like to see in particular, just let me know.

Now that we've gotten the exposition out of the way, let the first post begin.

For my very first blog entry, I'm starting with a ringer. Technically, or from my standpoint, you can't really go wrong with a recipe from Martha Stewart's website. Of all the ones I've made, the following one was definitely the easiest. It also helped that I had several bananas that had seen their day and were ready to serve their final purpose.

I found the recipe on Martha's site here. The cupcakes were super easy to make, and definitely didn't take very long. I do have to warn you that if you try them out - don't expect a sweet cupcake; these are almost passable for breakfast. The cupcake is banana based, and the icing is a mixture of honey and cinnamon. The icing is sweet, so it makes up for it.  

You can get the full list of ingredients and good stuff here: http://www.marthastewart.com/283233/banana-cupcakes-with-honey-cinnamon-fros

But here's a breakdown of how I made them:

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

The recipe calls for 4 ripe, ultra smashed bananas.

You'll need to make a well in the center of the bowl to mix together the butter, mashed bananas, eggs, and vanilla. You'll need to start folding in the flour mixture, but only a little bit at a time.

So it looks like this!

Divide the batter into lined muffin cups. When I made them, I got exactly 12.

My cupcakes were in for about 25 minutes.

I made the icing (only powdered sugar, butter, honey and cinnamon) in the mixer. I was a little short on the sugar, but it  didn't seem to matter.

On her website, the icing was white, but mine came out a lighter color of brown.

Since I had cleared my house of bananas, I couldn't top each individual cupcake with a banana slice like the site suggests. Instead, I sprinkled them all with cinnamon. Not too shabby right?