Strawberry cream puffs

So I last posted a fabulous German Chocolate cake that I made for dessert night. My husband made cream puffs! These airy little things are filled with my absolute favorite thing....home made strawberry whipped cream! I seriously could just sit with the whole bowl and eat it all by its self!

What you need (puffs from Chow.com)

Puffs
8 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into 8 pieces
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup water, plus more as needed
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 cup flour
4 eggs at room temperature.


What to do
Heat oven to 425° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Heat butter, milk, 1/2 cup water, sugar, and salt in a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat until the butter has melted and there is a slight boil. Reduce to low and add all of the flour, stir well until fully incorporated. Cook and stir constantly until the dough forms a smooth single ball. about 5 minutes.

Transfer to your mixing bowl and let cool for 5 minutes. Beat each egg one at a time, making sure its well mixed with each egg. Do this process until the mixture is smooth and sticky, about 4 minutes.

Transfer dough to a large zip lock bag or a pipping bag. Pipe 12 small round mounds on your baking sheet about 2 inches wide spaced about 1 1/2 inches apart.

Dip your finger in some water and smooth the top of each mound. Place the baking sheet in the oven and reduce the heat to 350° and bake for 45-50 minutes. Do not open the door at all until at least the 45 minutes has passed. Cool on a wire rack and poke a small hole with a tooth pick in each one to let the steam out.

Cream
1 pint heavy whipping cream
Strawberry preserves (amount done by your taste)
1 teaspoon sugar

Whip cream in your stand mixer on high speed until soft peaks. Lower your speed and add your preserves until you are happy with flavor and texture.

Cut tops off of puffs and pipe in cream top with other puff half and dust with powdered sugar.

German Chocolate Cake

So this is my first ever layered cake!! And I must say I am very proud of myself. I first looked at the recipe and was like "Omg this is going to be hard". To my surprise it wasn't! I made it for a dessert night that I had with some friends we all brought a yummy dessert and pigged out in our pjs you must do it sometime!!


I think even just the cake part with out the German filling is a great chocolate cake base so light and fluffy!

German Chocolate Cake (Found at Country Living)


Cake
1/2 cups boiling water
4oz German's chocolate by Bakers chopped
2 cups flour
1/4 cup Cocoa
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup softened unsalted butter
4 eggs separated
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 cup buttermilk

Filling
1 cup sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/3 cups flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Favorite Chocolate frosting ( I cheated and used a store bought one)


Directions
Preheat oven to 350° and grease and flour 3 cake pans and set aside. In heat proof bowl pour boiling water over chopped chocolate and stir until smooth. In a medium bowl combined the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. In your stand mixer beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy about 2 minutes. Mix in the egg yolks one at a time until well incorporated. Put speed on low and mix in the melted chocolate and vanilla.  Add flour mixture by thirds  alternating with the buttermilk ending with the flour, Set to the side. In another bowl beat egg whites until soft peaks, fold 1/2 cup of egg whites gently into the chocolate mixture. Fold in remaining egg whites

Divide batter evenly between cake pans and bake for 30-35 min. Let cool in pan for 15 min then remove and cool on wire wrack until completely cool.

While cooling in the pans mix your sugar, evaporated milk, butter, egg yolks and vanilla in a medium sauce pan and cook over medium heat constantly stirring for about 10 minutes until thickened. Stir in your coconut and pecans and transfer to a bowl. Stirring occasionally let cool to room temperature and then assemble your cake.

One layer of cake topped with 1/3 filling, cake, 1/3 filling / cake. Lightly cover whole cake in a layer of frosting and top with left over filling.

Almond Joy Milk Shake

Its Halloween time so I know you all have a bag of candy you already finished that was supposed to be for trick or treaters! Well if you like Almond Joys and already finished the bag can I suggest this quick milk shake? Its yummy and tastes just like the candy!!!

What you need for 2 milk shakes ( I never said you had to share fyi)

1/2 cup toasted coconut
1/4 cup toasted almonds ( I used slivered almonds and toasted them)
3 scoops chocolate ice cream
3 scoops vanilla ice cream
3/4-1 cup milk depending on how thick you want your milk shake


In a mini food processor ( a big one will be fine but mini is the perfect size for this) chop up your coconut and almonds until fine

 

In your blender poor in your milk, ice creams, and almond mixture blend until you are happy. Poor into a glass top with some coconut and almonds and enjoy.

Wow I was short and to the point on this one. Its called the baby went to bed and mommy needs something fast and yummy dessert!

Now if you think this looks yummy and want to continue your candy flavored milk shake dance why not check out my friend Veronica's Candy Corn Milk shake over at MorningNooNight!! Oh and I hear that if she reached 500 facebook likes soon she will have a holiday themed giveaway!!!!

Corn Flake French toast

So when your baby gets a cold, the cat scratches her face, then she bruises her face with a toy, and you have the same cold you forget that you had a blog planned. Pictures were taken food tasted great but your mind just forgets. Oh by the way all those things happened to my poor baby in a matter of like 3 days, my 9 month old looks like she got in a playground brawl. Its sad and makes me want to cry every time I look at her sweet face.

But anyways about the food!! My husband went to Seattle for a job interview before we moved to San Diego and ordered corn flake french toast and ever since when he hears or sees french toast he asked when I was going to make it for him at home so I finally did. Now I went all out for him and even made yummy bread just for this in the bread maker the night before, but whatever bread you would normally use for french toast in your house will work great too.

For the bread I used This Brioche recipe found at Food.com.

Ingredients for bread
1 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 3/4 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons bread flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons water
8 tablespoons butter cut into single tablespoons

Add all ingredients to your bread machine in the recommended order except the butter. Put the butter in 1 tablespoon at a time 10 minutes before the end of the first kneading session. For my machine the first session is only 10 minutes so I let it mix some then started adding the butter 1 tablespoon at a time letting it mix well between the additions. I put my machine on the the basic light setting.

When its finished open your machine but leave your loaf in and let cool for 20 minutes before removing.


Now for the yummy part!!!!

Corn flake french toast!

About 3 cups cornflakes curshed
1 tablespoon sugar
4 eggs (I do one egg per slice of bread)
Cinnamon
Bread slices


Mix your eggs and and cinnamon in one bowl and in another your conflakes and sugar.

Dip your bread slices in the egg and the press lightly in to the cornflakes on both sides.

Fry up on a griddle or in a hot pan and enjoy with some butter and warm syrup!!

Pumpkin snickerdoodle with caramel center

Fall weather seems to finally have hit the San Diego area! Its been wonderful to have cool weather and rain. Makes me want to crank up the crock pot and bake with pumpkin. So that's exactly what I did! Last fall I made some yummy pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies that I never got around to blogging (pregnancy brain all the way). So this year my friend sent  me a text and said you have to make the pumpkin snickerdoodles and put caramel in the center!! OMG one of her best ideas ever!!! Here are these uber yummy fall cookies!


The cookie recipe came from A Bitchen Kitchen (haha I love the name). 

For the cookies:
3 3/4 cups flour1/2 teaspoon salt1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature1 cup sugar



1/2 cup dark brown sugar1 cup pumpkin puree1 large egg2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Caramel candies

For the coating
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (she uses ginger)

In a medium bowl combine your dry ingredients and whisk together. In your stand mixer cream together the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add your pumkpkin  and mix well before adding your egg and vanilla. Slowly mix in your dry ingredients. Cover and store in your fridge for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350°

Take about 2 1/2 tablespoons of your mix and form a ball around a caramel candy. Bake for 10-12 minutes. If you want to eat a cookie say the next day and want the center gooey again a quick 10 seconds in the microwave does the trick! 

Pumpkin bread with cream cheese filling

When I think fall and baking I always think pumpkin! There are always fun things to do with pumpkin all over the internet. So for this bread I actually couldn't find a bread that had the kind of filling I wanted baked in so I had to get creative which to be honest scares me! I like following recipes to an exact but over time I am learning to stretch my creative baking wings.

Here is the bread very easy by the way

Bread
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie)


Preheat oven to 350°
Butter and flour a bread pan.

In a large bowl mix together flour baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg with a whisk.
In a mixing bowl mix together sugar and butter until creamy.  Add eggs one at a time and vanilla. Slowly add in the flour mixture. By hand mix in the pumpkin and make sure its well combined.


Filling
12 oz room temperature cream cheese. I like the 1/3 less fat cream cheese just because it starts out softer.
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla

Poor half of your bread mix into your floured bread pan.

Top with your cream cheese filling. The top off with the rest of your bread mix and spread out.

 (almost forgot a picture of the cream cheese step!)

Bake for 55-65 minutes. Let stand in the bread pan for 15-20 min. Take a knife and run along the edges.

Enjoy this little yummy treat!!

Halloween Link party!!!

Everyone can always use a few more ideas for Halloween, right?

We thought it would be fun to put together a Halloween Round up of all our favorite crafts, recipes, DIY projects, etc. and share them with our wonderful readers.

We also thought it would be fun to host a Halloween Link Party to let all of you share your wonderful ideas too.

This Spookctacular event is being hosted by four lovely ladies so your links will also be shared on four wonderful blogs.

     Crafts, Cakes, and Cats                                     Michelle's Tasty Creations

     Facebook Page                                                  Facebook Page

     Pinterest                                                               Twitter

                                                                                    Pinterest

     Hot Eats and Cool Reads                                  MorningNooNight
     Facebook Page                                                   Facebook Page
     Twitter                                                                   Pinterest
     Pinterest                                                                               

Here's what your hostesses have been up to this past week or two ~

~Starting with the top left we have ~

Melted Witches & Pumpkin Cupcakes from: Crafts, Cakes, & Cats

Halloween Surprise Cake from: MorningNooNight

Halloween Advent Calender from: MorningNooNight

Halloween Skeleton Bones from: Hot Eats and Cool Reads

Fun Halloween Pudding Parfait's from: Hot Eats and Cool Reads

Candy Corn Vases from: Michelle's Tasty Creations

Spooky Banner from: Crafts, Cakes, and Cats

Rice Krispy Pumpkins from: Michelle's Tasty Creations

Classic Caramel Apples from: MorningNooNight

Halloween Wreath from: Crafts, Cakes, and Cats

~ Now let's see what you've been up to ~

~A few things to remember~

Please only link up Halloween/Fall recipes, crafts, DIY, tutorials, printables, etc that YOU have created.
Please don't link up any Etsy shops, giveaways, or other link parties.
By linking to this party you give us permission to share your post on our blogs and other social media.
Please share this party by linking back to us in your post or by adding this party to your party page.
Be sure to stop by and visit a few of the other blogs that have posted; we all love to see sweet comments.