Race for Hope DC 2011

Let's take a break from my over eager efforts in my new kitchen to back track to what we did the weekend after we moved.

Every year, my family participates in the Brain Tumor Society's Race for Hope DC. This year, my bestest best friend who always comes wasn't able to make it and my brother and sister-in-law got tangled up elsewhere. Next year everyone will be in. It's a great cause, and we do it annually in honor of my Uncle Eddy, my stepdad's older brother, who died after a long, hearty battle with brain cancer. Brain tumors strike people of all ages, so you see survivors and fighters from elderly to infant. And there is nothing I have better to do on any given Sunday but contribute an hour and three miles to awareness and research to find a cure.

So there we were in DC at early time thirty ready to put in 5k for a cure.

My parents getting ready. My stepdad runs every year and has to wait around for us while we come in at just under or over an hour walking.

Yay for smiles... OMG hubs makes me laugh in this picture... My mom is wearing a hat that we had made in honor of Uncle Eddy a couple of years back. It says "Fitz's Flyers."

The starting line approaches!! Look at all those people! We were in good company, that's for true!

The Capital building looks over our efforts.

The Washington Monument down on the other side of the Mall. We had a new route this year, it was good to see some new sites.

Me and the boy in front of the Capital. BF has lived here his whole life, and me for more than half of mine at this point, and DC is kind of just... there to us. It is pretty much a background to our lives, the monuments are just...there, where they've always been. I don't remember the last time I went into the District just to sight see... I took this opportunity to get a hubby/wifey piccy here. But I'm thinking there may be some old fashioned touring in our future. Something not involving hockey or art, my usual reasons for being in the District.

So there you have it, a nice break from all the craziness, a yearly tradition that we look forward to, and something good to come of it.

Besty (you know who you are) - I know you really wanted to go this year, but you had a good reason and I know you'll be there next year and the year after. We did miss you though, and I can't wait to get you and G & K back out to see the new route!! Loves!

I'm out like sauerkraut!

Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies with Mexican Hot Chocolate Icing (dude, yum)

For Cinqo de Mayo, our office decided to have a potluck. True to form, I volunteered for dessert. I found a recipe online for Mexican brownies. For some reason, it just wasn’t enough. I wanted some icing… something awesomey chocolatey and spicy. Cue the Mexican hot chocolate icing… Yuuum. 

You can find this recipe for the Mexican Brownies where I did, here.

Ingredients!

1 box Betty Crocker fudge brownie mix (I'm sure you could use any one, but I used this and it rawked)
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

 - Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease mini muffin pans THOROUGHLY with no paper liners. 

- Mix all ingredients together

*drool face*

- Bake mini brownies for about 10-13 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center has moist crumbs clinging to it. 

There is a note on my recipe: don't wait for the toothpick to come out clean. If there is wet batter on the brownie, bake for another minute or two. If you overcook them you will get the dreaded brick brownie. And nobody wants that.

Just these brownies would have been enough. The cinnamon and almond added so much to the fudgie brownies. Oh. Em. Gee. So freakin tastey.

I let them cool forever. Mostly because I was trying to spread them out over a week night or two so I didn't overload myself after work, but also because I was planning on putting icing on them so they needed to be completely cool to avoid the whole melty icing thing.


I think I got the recipe for the icing at Epicurious, so I'm linking you to that. If this is your recipe, speak up. If not, hit the print button.

I always get my ingredients together before starting a recipe... especially when baking. For one, it makes me feel like I'm on a cooking show and I get to put pictures of them on my blog. On the other hand, it helps to make sure you don't over-measure into your batter while it's spinning. Saves time, too. You also know that you've got everything in there. To recap, 1, makes me feel special. 2, peace of mind. Moving on...

1 8oz package cream cheese, room temperature (do yourself a favor and remember to take this out before you go to make the icing. I always forget with cream cheese and butter. It really screws up your baking mojo)
1/2 (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature (see aside above)
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinammon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
3 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted

Cream the cream cheese and butter together thoroughly. Add the chili powder and cinnamon and mix to incorporate.

Add the salt, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar.

So... yeah, sifted confectioners' sugar, right? Using a gift certificate from the wedding, I got myself a sifter because I didn't have anything except a freaking colander to sift flour and sugar. So, Ms. Martha came to the rescue:

So, I filled it and set myself down to press the thing over and over again and get a nice, fluffy snow-like pile of sweet stuff.

Except... THE DAMN THING DIDN'T WORK!

I think it was broken, I don't know if I can return it or not... but in the meantime I had a freaking BATTLE with my powdered sugar to get it out of this thing and into the stupid colander. And then tap it out. Sugary, powdery goodness everywhere! And one frustrated baker...

EVERY. WHERE. GAH!

Anyway, add the stupid sugar and stuff.

Then melt your chocolate. I prefer to do it in a double boiler (that's what she said)... I don't like to use to microwave unless I have to.  And chocolate can be very fickle, I'd rather have control of my heat and my stirring.

And into the mixer this yummy, velvety melted chocolate goes.

This is where the recipe says that add more confectioner's sugar a little at a time if you need it thickened. I didn't. And there was also no FREAKIN WAY I WAS SIFTING ANYMORE DAMN SUGAR.

I did add more chocolate though, I felt that the cream cheese taste was overwhelming and there wasn't a really chocolate flavor.

But good... holy crap delicious.

Now to get my yum on my nom... to make yummy nommings... my weapon of choice:

Martha Stewart cookie gun! Can also be used to pipe icing and inject icing into things. Of this baby is gonna get a lot of use. I was a little skeptical on how it would work, being a gun instead of a piping bag. But it turned out to work perfectly... I never had very much luck with piping bags. I, obviously, need heavier artillery.

My victims:

And my first failure (if you don't count Battle Powdered Sugar):

OK... so... LOL... at first I didn't know what I was doing so i tried to just glob it on there. When I figured out how the icing came out of the gun and whatnot, I eventually got it down to single little swirl that looked pretty dang awesome if I do say so myself.

Couldn't be happier really with how they turned out. They tasted as good as they looked, and the crowd was as impressed as I was flabbergasted that I had actually created something that looked real.


And although they were freaking fantastic, I had some changes to the icing and only the icing. I love cream cheese icing as much as the next girl, but I wanted something much more... spicy and chocolatey and all that junk. Next time, I would cut back on the cream cheese and throw in some more chocolate and chili powder. We'll see how that goes. In order to remember things like this, I always make notes on my recipes so I remember.

Now this post would be over except it's not. This icing recipe made a TON. Way more than I needed for my little guys. So I decided to make a 2nd batch of cupcakes for Mother's Day dinner.

Except, they failed. For some god forsaken reason, the brownies refused to pop out of my mini cupcake tins. RE-Freaking-fused. No matter what I did... bake them longer, let them cool longer, tried greasing with both Crisco and Olive Oil... nothing worked and they just kept falling apart. I don't think I did anything different... the brownies tasted the same, just weren't holding together at all.

I almost ran out of time, so in a last act of desperation, I made one big brownie for my mother-in-law, injected it with the icing (yay cookie gun) and plopped some on top. For everyone else, I still had some of the other whole cupcakes so I got rid of them shared the goodness at my brother-in-law's house.

I took the crumbled brownies and remaining icing and put them in the fridge for another project. But that's another story to be told another time... Make these brownies, they're awesome. But watch the confectioners' sugar....

One house, please.

May 12, 2011

If you don’t get my Futurama reference, is the title still funny? You tell me.

Well, we made it. Actually we made it some ungodly number of weeks ago and I am just now getting to even loading the pictures (of which there are few of the whole moving part) off my camera. And this is the first of four drafts that have pictures but no words as of yet (remedying this as we speak).

Oh, bizzity-boy has it been crazy! We moved on April 22 and just now, May 12, it is starting to feel like a home instead of boxville. I’ve gotten used to cooking in a kitchen with some room and it is certainly nice to have enough space to even imagine entertaining. We’re still not completely moved in or settled, but we are living again. We’ve gotten to the point where not only can we figure out what we want to do with our house, but we can actually get started on some projects.

In the interest of getting this post up sometime this millennia sooner rather than later, I won’t get ahead of myself. Let’s backtrack to closing and moving.

Closing on the house was really, easy peasy. We were set to close on Friday and by the week before all our closing docs were straight with the bank. They told me they would let me know the amount I needed for closing costs so that I could go get a certified check from the bank.

When I hadn’t heard from them on Wednesday, I started to get a little worried. I had already taken a half-day on Friday and I wasn’t going to have time any day but Thursday at lunch to get the check. I emailed my loan officer and asked her if they knew. She emailed the closing department. And… we waited.

By about 5:00 Wednesday, my answer was: “Your documents are still with the closing department. They have not been released.”

Quoi? How does that help? And what does it mean?

By Thursday at noon, still nothing. My loan officer was emailing and emailing and still they kept telling us that our HUD form had still not been released. Close of business on Thursday and I still had no bank check.

My boss promised that she would let me go to the bank on Friday because she knew I had no choice. Thank goodness for small miracles.

I had the amount by around 9:00am on Friday and I rushed to the bank and rushed back.

And then my loan officer called me and told me they gave me the wrong amount. Seriously. No joke. What a cluster.

Luckily they let me write a personal check for the rest of the money. I say luckily for them because I was about to unload an entire box-filled-apartment’s worth of a whoop ass on them if they screwed up my closing.

So we got in, we signed a bunch, and we got out. Keys and all. And, actually, went back to the apartment because we still had stuff to get packed. We were still emptying stuff from the apartment until about a day before our lease was up, one complete week after closing.

Anywho, eventually Hubs and I grabbed a load of clothes and headed over for some bubbly and some breathing in the awesome time. 

Hubbers, contemplating the awesome.

We have a banister!!

(Seriously, how cute is this guy? Playoff beard and all!)

My kitch! Oh how I love her!

Our clothes were the first things in. It was nice not to have to worry about them making the trip on Saturday and then getting them in before the work week. Foresight FTW!

Me on the stairs (duh)

You can see the china hutch that we bought with the house there I the corner. 

BF took advantage of the open space (AND NO DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBORS!!!) to do some impromptu skateboarding in our living room. 

An awful picture of Jacob, our door knocker.

Can you guess where he got his name?

Remember, I’m super clever so this will be a hard one.

I told you there were few. The rest are of us at the apartment filled with boxes and I’m tired of looking at them. From here, we visit baking land, renovation land, and philanthropy. Lots more to come!

I need to update my profile now, since we are homeowners now and I have more space and inspiration and projects to do. So, say goodbye to the old stuff… the Shorts are moving up!