Chocolate Cake Catastrophe!

Moist Chocolate Cake
2 cups of sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup baking cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup strong brewed coffee
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon confectioners sugar

In a large mixing bowl, combine the first six ingredients. Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk,oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes (batter will be thin.) Pour into a greased and floured 10-in. fluted tube pan. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Dust with confectioners' sugar.

This is my absolute favorite cake of all time, and my favorite dessert for that matter. This is the cake my mom always makes me for my birthday! I have seen it made many times and I have actually helped make it a couple of those. You would think that helping cook the cake before would have given me the upper edge on the whole experience, but NO...

CHOCOLATE GOODIES
The ingredients for the chocolate cake are very simple. The only thing I didn't have in my apartment was buttermilk and I also had to make a small pot of coffee. Other than that it is such an easy recipe for such a delicious cake. It is usually meant to be cooked in a 10 in. fluted tube pan but my roommate wanted her birthday cake to be "heart shaped". First lesson I can share here is to not cook a cake in a pan other than the pan that the recipe calls for. There was a specific reason why this cake is done in a fluted pan, and I didn't even think about it.

COOKING UP CAKES
I know I have said It is such a simple recipe, and it really is! I felt like I was done mixing it up in no time. I just got out my giant mixing bowl and started off with the first 6 dry ingredients. Then
I added in the rest of the wet ingredients. Nothing tricky or complicated and even I knew what everything was! I didn't even need a mixer and I just stirred it up with a spoon until there were no clumps. The batter will be very runny, but that is why the cake is so moist and yummy. Voila! That's all for the batter! I greased up my heart shaped tins until they were dripping with Pam and then poured the batter evenly into both of them. Then I popped them in the oven on 350° for 45 minutes. Easy as pie! Wait, easy as cake!

BAKING? SIMPLE?
I almost had myself fooled there for a second. I thought this was going to be easy. I should have known something was going to go terribly wrong. About 25 minutes into the baking time I smelled an awful burnt chocolate smell filling our whole apartment. I ran to the oven to find chocolate spilling out all around the heart tins and all around the edges were burning. The center of the cakes were hardly cooked and the outer rings were burned to a crisp. I should have known that I couldn't cook this cake in a heart shape flat pan but I didn't even think about it. There was also too much batter in both heart pans for the cake to cook evenly and it needed a different temperature and cook time to cook it right. When I took both cakes out of the oven I let them cool for a long time since they were barely even cooked. When I went to flip the first one out of the tin it got completely stuck and the middle uncooked part stayed in the tin and the rest fell out. It was destroyed. There was no resemblance to a heart what so ever. The second heart was my last shot, and this was the less exploded heart. I flipped it over very slowly, patted it on the back and then a heart actually came out! There were some missing pieces to the heart but it was good enough to make a birthday cake out of. The lesson I learned here was to cook in what the recipe calls for. Though mainly I learned not to let my friends get choosy, even if it is their birthday.

DECORATING THIS DISASTER
As we know I will no longer be making icing, so for this cake I used the store bought kind. If it was up to me there would not have been any icing on the cake since this chocolate cake is supposed to be made icing free. Once again the lesson to be learned, choosy friends ruin food. This cake would normally be a plain moist chocolate cake, and it is delicious. Without the mess ups and heart shapes it is a great cake for beginners to try. If you are a chocolate cake nut like me, this one's for you.







Extra Special Caution:
Do not leave cakes in the oven to hide them. It may or may not result in your roommate's parents turning on the oven to preheat it thus melting the cake and making the fire alarm go off. Then your cake will be unreadable and look like goo. (See photo on left.)




THIS GETS VOTED BIRTHDAY SCUM.

A SURF AND TURF ANNIVERSARY

Mashed Potatoes
5-6 Potatoes
1 1/2 sticks butter
1/2 cup milk
3 Tbsp sour cream
1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese
salt
pepper
cajun seasoning
garlic seasoning


Filet Mignon In 1 2 3
garlic salt
cajun seasoning
steak seasoning (interchangeable with the flavoring you prefer)
pepper
1 Filet
olive oil


Simple Spicy Tilapia
olive oil
butter
cajun seasoning
1 tilapia filet


That's all you need! It's so easy, and I thought cooking was supposed to be hard...

The fish in the fish recipe can really be interchangeable with any fish that you enjoy. In my boyfriend and I's case we really like tilapia so that is the fish I picked up at the grocery store. You could also pick whatever meat is your favorite to put in place of the filet mignon. These are the simplest forms of how to cook a piece of fish or a piece of meat and perfect for beginner cookers. Like me! The seasonings vary, depending on how much you want on that particular dish. Mashed potatoes are a great side dish to a lot of meals so I thought those would make a great thing for me to learn how to cook, too. As I go on I will be more specific on how I cooked my meal and how I messed it up.

DINNER DELISH or DINNER DISASTER
For my boyfriend and I's anniversary I thought I would try and cook the dinner this time. He is a very good cook and cooks for me all the time, it is kind of embarrassing that I have never cooked for him. I really hope that me cooking this meal doesn't make this our last anniversary. At least I don't have to make anything heart shaped.

FILET MIGNON
First I covered the filets in olive oil and then covered them with the seasonings on top and bottom. I sprinkled the seasonings just lightly and enough to get the taste that I desire. Once those were seasoned I started to heat up the skillet. I needed to make sure and get the skillet really hot. Once it was hot enough I melted butter on the bottom of the skillet to cook the steak in. When the butter was melted and bubbling I threw the steaks on. I cooked each side for about a minute total and then turned the power down lower. Then I started to cook it slower and pay close attention until it was slightly pink in the center like I like it. I can tell that cooking steak is going to take a lot of practice to get it down to perfection. Depending on how big or small the steak is will also determine how long to cook it. Be careful of the seasonings you pick. The steak seasoning I got to put on my steak had fennel in it which I cannot stand. I can taste it in anything and it completely ruined my steak.


TILAPIA
I began with the fish by covering the filets with olive oil and then covering them in a spicy cajun seasoning. Once the fish were drenched in seasoning, I started up the skillet. Like the steak, I made the skillet very hot. I covered the bottom with olive oil and once it got hotter I melted butter all over the bottom too. Once it started popping I threw on the fish. I just cooked it by eying it, once one side looked blackened I flipped it over. When I started on the other side I turned down the heat some and then waited till I thought it looked blackened enough for me. Depending on the thickness of fish you would need to cook it longer or shorter. It really took no time at all!

MASHED POTATOES
First with the potatoes I had to clean them and peel them. Then I had to cut them up and boil them in a big pot of water. I knew they were done cooking once I could stick my fork through them easily in the pot. I drained the water out and then got to mashing. Throughout the mashing process is when I got to add all the good stuff. Adding the milk first makes them easier to mash and mix in the other things. I added too much milk and I ended up not liking the potatoes because I don't like when mashed potatoes are too "fluffy". So I would suggest less milk to people who don't like their potatoes too fluffy. After the milk I added the butter and sour cream. I shook the seasonings all over the top of the potatoes and I thought that made for a very nice taste. I added the cheese last so the potatoes would be nice and hot and it would melt fast. I stirred the potatoes all up together and that was it! They would have been excellent had they not been so fluffy.


VOTED ANNIVERSARY YUM BY ONE!
Yes, we are still together and my cooking did not cause a breakup.

Strawberry Cupcake Surprise!

Strawberry Cupcake Recipe
White Cake Mix
3 oz. Strawberry Jello
2 Tablespoons Oil

1 1/3 Cup Water

3 Eggs
10 oz. Frozen Sweetened Strawberries

Combine these ingredients and then add a thawed and drained package of frozen strawberries. Save the juice. Bake according to the directions of the cake mix.
Top with Icing made from 1 box of 10x sugar, 1 stick of butter, and enough strawberry juice to make smooth. Beat to fluff at high speed of mixer.

GROCERY GOODIES
This is actually a strawberry cake recipe of one of my best friend's mom that she made for me on my birthday but since it was so incredibly delicious I decided to pick this as my first challenge. I was actually expecting it to be very hard considering it was such a yummy cake, but it turned out to be a much more simple recipe.

First off, I started by going to the grocery store and getting all the ingredients I needed for birthday goodies I was planning on cooking. I had a lot of them all ready in the apartment thanks to my cooking roommates, definitely no thanks to me. Since I know nothing about cooking I spent most of the time picking out the ingredients on the phone with my mom, it's embarrassing I know. I even asked how much 3 oz. of Jello was, I then looked at the box and realized that all the boxes of Jello are 3 oz. It took me about 15 minutes searching through the frozen strawberries trying to find 10 oz. I could find 8 oz. and 16 oz. and then I didn't know how I would ever be able to measure out 10 oz. with my pathetic cooking mind. Then right in front of my face I saw a 10 oz. package of sweetened frozen strawberries. So have no fear there is a 10 oz pack out there, Birds Eye frozen strawberries in "delicious syrup".
When I went down the aisle to get "10 times sugar", of course I had no clue what that meant. "Sugar times 10 of what?" My mom just laughed at me and told me that 10x sugar was powdered sugar or confectioners sugar and I would need a whole box to make frosting. Well now that I had all my ingredients it was time to get cupcaking!

COOKIN' UP CUPCAKES
I started by getting out all the ingredients I was going to be using and by getting out the mixer to put them all in. I also got out other bowls to keep on the side to mix things in. I preheated the oven so it would be nice and toasty for my cupcakes when it was time. First I mixed all the dry ingredients in the mixer together, and I mixed the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. It is a good idea to crack the eggs in another separate bowl and not straight in with your wet ingredients so shell doesn't get in it. I learned this the hard way. I started to crack my eggs straight into my water and oil and got pieces of shell all in it and had to fish it out with a spoon. The next two eggs I cracked into a separate bowl and then added them in with the oil and water. That worked out much better. Next I added my wet ingredients into the mixer with my dry and turned on the mixer at a nice "cake speed". Then it was time to add in the strawberries. I had them sitting out so they had defrosted some but I still had to microwave them for a little while. I put them in a bowl completely unwrapped in the microwave and did them on defrost for about a minute. They were still pretty frozen so I kept doing 30 second increments. Once they got mushy, but not too mushy, I took them out. I used a colander with a bowl under it to save the juice. I chopped them up in the colander and the bowl being under it saved all the "delicious" juice for the frosting later. I'm sure something smaller or with more tiny holes would have been better but we didn't have such a thing in our apartment. Once they were all chopped up and I had enough juice I added them into the batter and turned the mixer back on. When it was all mixed together and smooth looking I turned off the mixer and decided it was time to put in the cupcake liners! Once the tin was all lined I started to pour in the batter.

Here is where I made a mistake. This recipe made a lot of batter, since it was meant for a big cake, and I only had one cupcake tin. The tin only made 12 cupcakes at a time. I should have gotten a bigger cupcake tin or two cupcake tins. Especially since I was making them for a lot of people I didn't plan well enough ahead. So I had to keep doing rounds of cupcakes, once one was done I would stick another one in and wait around for it. It was just very time consuming. On the bright side I got to decorate while the others were in the oven!

Yes, I decorated with icing and sprinkles. Never again will I eat strawberry icing or use sprinkles. I don't even like icing and If I have a cake I like them icing free. So while I am making this icing I am getting it ALL OVER my hands and having to lick it off every second because I don't want to waste anymore paper towels. Remember I am a college student. I did enjoy this icing when I had it in a small dose, but I don't think I will be eating it again anytime soon. I suggest mixing all the strawberry juice you have left into the frosting, the more the merrier. The sprinkles also made a huge mess everywhere but they sure looked cute! Decorating the cupcakes was by far the best part of cooking the cupcakes and they turned out delicious! That was the vote of the birthday girl herself, and of many other taste testers I had try the cupcakes.

THIS GETS VOTED BIRTHDAY YUM!