No TWD

This is one of the craziest weeks of the semester, so I haven't had time to make the Arborio rice pudding for this week's TWD. As of next week I should have had the time to get back on track. Plus, the Two-fer pie looks delishus.

entertainment

I don't know if any of you have seen the Shiba Inu puppy live feed that is quickly becoming the next Rick Roll, but it's strangely fascinating. Everyone loves puppies.

Stream videos at Ustream

Rugggggelach

For this week's Tuesday with Dorie we made Rugelach cookies, chosen by Grace of Piggy's Cooking Journal. I'd never made cookies like this before, likely because it looks complicated. In reality, it's not complicated at all but just takes patience. This recipe especially allows for creativity with the filling, which I enjoyed.

I was hesitant about mixing my dough in the food processor because as you can see it's tinyyy. Fortunately it all fit and the dough came together very quickly and easily. I may now be a convert to this method.

Rolling the dough into "circles" became rolling them into something that is hopefully not a square. I chose to go ahead and cut the dough before I put any of the toppings on it and I think that was a good choice - it was a lot simpler to roll them up when I was ready for that.

Here are the pre-baked cookies. I did a different flavor for each pan: apricot preserves, pecans, cranberries, and a little cardamom added with the cinnamon for one; red currant jelly (couldn't find the raspberry), pecans, and semi-sweet chocolate bits.

Finished product! These are absolutely delicious. I am especially impressed by the dough - it's so flaky and good. A definite sign of approval was that my 14 year-old brother couldn't decide if he liked the fruity one or the chocolate ones better. Also I ate about 6 of them after they came out of the oven. Tasty tasty!

unfortunately....

I cannot stop eating my rugelach.

TWD - Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

When I saw the recipe selection for this weeks was chocolate cupcakes I inwardly groaned. I think this is the third time in a month I have made cupcakes but I figured since this is my first TWD post I sort of had to make them. At least I could make these sort of Halloweeny. :)

Off we go:
Mix mix mix...I've found that the warmer zone on my oven is good for speeding butter to room temperature if I forget to set it out earlier, which is pretty much always.

The batter was nice and light and tasted awesome.

Here they are out of the oven...had I read the P's and Q's I would have seen that many people were having problems with dryness and baked for a shorter period of time. I did 22 minutes on the dot, but I probably should have checked them earlier.

This wasn't a great week for innovation in Megan-land since really I was baking these as stress relief and so I just stuck with Dorie's glaze, using semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet. It was a very rich glaze but tasty.

And here I exhausted my creative brain cells for the day by using the awesome Halloween sprinkles that were in the cabinet.


The verdict:
Mine were a little dry, there's no getting around it. Probably if I had done what others did and added a second whole egg instead of the yolk, or baked for less time they would have turned out ok. Still, they were very edible...I just wanted a glass of milk with them!

Thanks to Clara for picking a fun recipe!

Oh well

I'm realizing that in joining TWD, I'm really going to have to up my exercise routine. And by that I mean start one...

Dusting off the old blog...

I decided to make use of my space here and use it for Tuesdays with Dorie posts or anything else that seems relevant. So, as soon as my book arrives, we're off! (Hopefully Tuesday next, with the Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes)