Hit by a Pitch

For some mysterious reason, I’m kind of obsessed with red velvet cake. I’ve only had it a few times and was never all that impressed with it because it doesn’t really taste like anything. I decided that making red velvet cupcakes that actually taste like something would be my baking project for January.

I hit up google and found this Smitten Kitchen recipe, which seemed good because she shared my issues with red velvet cake. Then I clicked the “adapted from” link to check out The New York Times red velvet cake recipe, which is exactly the same, word for word. (I noticed the same thing with her pineapple upside-down cake recipe, which, aside from omitting the cardamom, is an exact copy of the Gourmet recipe.) I thought it wasn’t cool to copy a recipe word for word, even if you link the original. What’s up with that?

Anyway, I followed the Times recipe exactly but for switching cake for cupcakes and using cupcake liners instead of butter and made the following high-altitude adjustments: decrease sugar to 1 1/2 cups plus 3 tablespoons and decrease baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons. I used this creamy vanilla frosting, which was kind of a lot of work but really good. Don’t cut this recipe in half — it didn’t result in the tragedy some commenters indicated but it wasn’t enough frosting. Also I recommend beating everything for longer than the recipe says — just a minute or two for the butter and butter and sugar and a good 5 minutes more at the end. The sugar granules went away after the 15-minute (exactly!) refrigeration.

So, if you’re in the market for good red velvet cake and coordinating frosting recipes, there you go!

Although I’m a child of the 70s, I’d somehow gotten this far in life without ever having pineapple upside-down cake. Weird, right?

When I realized it was the perfect dessert for a New Year’s Eve celebration that included 70s-friendly fondue, I figured I’d make a pineapple upside-down cake. It was very easy and very good! I used this recipe, with the following changes: (1) decrease cardamom to 1/2 teaspoon; (2) use canned pineapple rings because we couldn’t find a pineapple that was ripe at the last minute — canned pineapple also provides the juice, so that’s cool; (3) adjust for high altitude — decrease baking powder to 1 1/2 teaspoons and decrease sugar (in cake, not topping) to 3/4 cup; (4) use spiced rum because that’s what we had; and (5) sprinkle cake with rum after the kids get their slices.

Everybody had seconds, so I think that means the cake was a hit. I’ll definitely be making it again.

Also, if you were wondering, yes, toddlers like fondue as much as they like messing with the fondue skewer things. (Recipe here — we omitted the cherry brandy, because who has cherry brandy sitting around and who wants to buy cherry brandy just to have a tablespoon to put in the cheese fondue you make once every 10 or so years.)

Also, happy new year!!

So, about that cake I made for my birthday. It was the best cake I’ve ever had in my life. At least I’m pretty sure it was. I can’t recall a cake I’ve ever had that was better than this one.

I followed this recipe for Chocolate Stout Cake pretty much exactly (I did not use Dutch-process cocoa powder because I was too lazy to make a trip just to get it and made my usual altitude adjustments, which here mean decreasing sugar to 1 1/2 cups and decreasing baking soda to 1 1/8 teaspoons). I generously buttered a nonstick bundt pan and sprinkled it with cocoa powder. After the cake cooled for a while, I picked up the pan and shook it, kind of vertically? Does that make sense? When I felt the cake move and heard it “thunk,” I could tell it wasn’t going to stick. I kept it in the pan, tightly covered with tin foil, overnight and frosted it the next day.

The most important thing about what I did is as follows: I used really good stout (as I mentioned the other day, Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout (if you get a bomber of this, there’s enough for the cake and for the baker to drink some and share with a friend)). I highly recommend using a very good, very strong stout. Even with this super-rich beer, the stout flavor was pretty subtle.

This cake was even better than the fancy chocolate cake I made one time that required like $40 worth of chocolate. It’s moist and delicious without being so rich that you feel like you’re going to explode after eating it. Ben and I liked it so much I’m making it again to bring to our Christmas festivities tomorrow. Mmmmm, Yeti cake.

Usually when I want peanut butter cookies, I bust out Ye Olde Mom’s Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe, which as all recipes of the Ye Olde Mom’s Series, was written on an index card in the days when I dotted my is (Okay, that’s just hard. I know it’s not correct to apostrophe i’s, but if you don’t, it looks like I’m saying “is.”) with circles. Also I insisted that “@” meant “about” and didn’t really capitalize. (I think that’s why, to this day, I have no patience for people who don’t capitalize. Come on, man, that’s for high school, early college at the latest if you fancy yourself the second coming of e.e. cummings or some shit.)

This is probably the same peanut butter cookie recipe everybody in the world has had since the dawn of time, except those people who make the peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses on them, which are very good but if you ask me don’t really need the kisses.

This time, I wanted a peanut butter cookie that reflects my new obsession with putting peanut butter in my oatmeal, so I guess that would be peanut butter oatmeal cookies. I turned to Chef Google and found something that sounded awesome: “Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies.” The description did not disappoint: “These cookies contain peanut butter and oatmeal.” My midwestern sensibilities appreciate the adequate summary.

The recipe is here. I followed it but:

• I used 1 cup softened butter and 1/2 cup shortening. (My “I don’t bake with shortening!” stance has been softened by the delicious pie crust shortening makes.)
• I made the following high-altitude alterations: reduced sugar to 1 1/2 cup and reduced baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoon; this worked well for this recipe.
• I used my cookie scooper, which is larger than a teaspoon.
• I was very half-assed about flattening the dough with a fork.
• I preferred a baking time of 11 minutes instead of 12. Oops, never mind. The next day, the cookies baked for 12 minutes tasted better.
• I put the dough in the refrigerator between batches to firm it up.

These are good! They’re not too sweet and they’re not as heavy as regular peanut butter cookies. The shortening gives them a hint of flakiness, which is kind of awesome. They taste a little healthier than regular peanut butter cookies (not saying they are, but they taste like it, but not in a bad way). I’ll be adding them to my dessert arsenal for sure!

Back in the day, I did really exciting things on Saturday nights. Since high school, I always had to be out and about at the current place to be. It wasn’t just going out, either — it was also getting ready to go out. It took hours to do makeup and hair and to figure out exactly the right outfit to wear. (I suspect I used up my lifetime allotment of hours spent giving a shit about this stuff, which is why I don’t bother with it much now.)

Now, I couldn’t really give a shit about Saturday night. Don’t worry — it’s not just because I have a kid. I gave up on caring about Saturday night years ago, when I realized I was just as happy sitting on the couch watching Forensic Files (don’t worry — I’m not quite that lame any more) as I was going to a club (ugh) or bar. Honestly, I think that’s part of why I decided I wanted to have a kid. I was tired of going to bars. I know that sounds kind of, I don’t know, flippant? But that’s kind of how it was. Maybe for people who aren’t born wanting to have kids, eventually, they run out of other things to do and they get tired of going to bars and then say what the hell let’s have a kid. I know a few other people who have admitted that it happens this way. I suspect these people, more often than not, turn out to be relatively content parents because they’re going into it with few expectations, but that’s a story for another day.

Our Saturdays now are unexciting and domestic. I usually pretend to be asleep while Ben gets up and makes coffee, feeds the animals, and gets Soren changed and eating breakfast. Don’t worry — it gets much more exciting (I lie). Eventually, we roll out to do the grocery shopping (Super Target, King Soopers, beer store). We get home and have lunch and/or naps and then clean the house (I dust, Ben vacuums, and we take turns cleaning the bathroom). Saturdays are usually dedicated to doing all the shit we have to do. (The odd result is that Sunday, a day I’ve spent most of my life dreading, is now kind of my favorite because we don’t have work to do and usually spend most of the day doing fun stuff.)

The fun part of Saturday is that it’s almost always officially Pizza Nite (sorry for the unnecessary capital letters and cutesy spelling of “night” — I kind of have to) (“officially” means that more often than not, we also have pizza on other days). On almost every Saturday evening, we order pizza or, less often, Ben makes pizza. (On rare occasions, I can convince Ben to order Thai food, which I could eat every day but Ben finds the lack of cheese troubling.) Ben makes really good pizza. I keep bugging him to write down his recipe or at least dictate it to me like I’m some kind of 50s secretary so I can share it with you guys.

Our current favorite pizza in the world is pizza with fresh jalapenos, green chiles, and green peppers. We discovered this combination almost by accident one day at Woody’s Wood-Fired Pizza in Golden. I wanted to get the pizza with herbed olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, fresh spinach, roasted garlic, and feta and mozzarella cheeses. Ben, however, is a pizza republican and won’t consent to anything that doesn’t have red sauce. So we settled on all the pepper-type ingredients, and it turned out to be the best combination of pizza ingredients we’ve ever had, seriously. Even in Colorado, most pizza places don’t have green chiles as an ingredient option, which is tragic. And fresh jalapenos aren’t always an option, either.

And so it came to be that Ben made pizza tonight and it was really good. That’s probably the most exciting thing we did all day. And that’s cool.