G is for Gingerbread House

I did it!  I successfully baked my own gingerbread house pieces, whipped up my own royal frosting, used an authentic piping bag (as opposed to the ziploc variety), and decorated a little Candy Land dream all by myself!  This was on my goal list and now I can put a big fat check mark next to this accomplishment.  I see no need for the store-bought kits now, although my years of using the gingerbread kit from Michaels probably prepared me for this moment.  Honestly, this kitchen craft wasn't too difficult;  it just took a lot of time.     

I had an incredible amount of candy to work with since my students decorated their own gingerbread houses on our last day of school before break.  Even if I'd sent home a bag of candy with each child, I would've still had leftovers because a kindergarten teacher donated a dozen half bags of candy to our cause as well.  Wow!  The kids worked hard to calculate gingerbread budgets and "bought" their candy from me to decorate their houses.  One student's grandmother sent in precious little gingerbread men that the kids put in their yards.  I manned a sprinkle and coconut snow station in the classroom and told the class that they could only eat a piece of candy when they heard a bell ring.  They demonstrated wonderful self control!  Granted, some of them sighed and groaned when their hands were coated with frosting and I wouldn't let them lick it off, but I probably would've responded in the same way if I were in their shoes.  I wish you could've heard the cheers each time I rang the official candy bell.  Those kids have never been so happy to pop a marshmallow or a gum drop in their mouths!  Any guesses on how many pieces of candy I let them eat before I loaded them on the bus with their candy-coated creations?  Three.  Just three.  Aren't I a grinch?!  

Thank goodness no one was there to ring a candy bell in my kitchen!  I licked a little bit of frosting off my fingers.  I ate a few sour straws.  I munched on mini candy canes.  I may have polished off the rest of the mini M&Ms...and I had a blast!    

To create my confectionary abode, I used a Pampered Chef stoneware gingerbread house mold (circa 1992) from my mother-in-law.  It came with directions and recipes and a reusable piping bag with interchangeable tips.  I'll share the recipe, but understand that this dough was dry and crumbly and had to be tightly packed into the stoneware mold.  This gingerbread recipe is not for rolling out and cutting or shaping the pieces of the house.  After baking for 20 minutes, the pieces came out without a hitch and I was able to glue all the sides of the house together without any serious crumbles or cracks.                    

Gingerbread Base

from Pampered Chef

3 c. flour

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. butter, softened

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. molasses

1 egg yolk

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Lightly grease mold with vegetable oil spray.  Blot out excess oil with a paper towel.  Set aside.  Combine flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt.  Set aside.  In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar at high speed until light and fluffy.  Add molasses and egg yolk and beat until smooth.  Gradually add flour mixture and continue to beat until dough is thoroughly combined.  Dough will be stiff and slightly dry.  Gather dough into a large ball.  Press half of dough firmly into greased mold.  Wrap remaining dough in plastic wrap to prevent further drying.  Level off back of dough in mold using a serrated knife.  Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.  Place a cooling rack over surface of mold.  Flip mold and cooling rack together to unfold house pieces directly onto the rack.  Let mold cool completely before refilling and baking with the second half of the dough.  Lightly grease mold again before refilling.  

Royal Icing

This sticky icing acts as the mortar to hold the house together.  

3 c. powdered sugar

2 egg whites

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar

Place all ingredients in a non-plastic mixing bowl.  Beat on high speed with mixer until frosting is glossy and holds peaks, about 5 minutes.  This frosting dries very quickly, so cover the bowl with plastic wrap when not being used.  Frosting can be tinted with food color if desired.      

G is for "Gobs"

Grandmothers teach us all sorts of lessons about how to behave, how to play, and how to learn.  My paternal grandmother taught me how to enjoy the little things in life.  She made me appreciative for things like warm buttery toast, a corn maze, a hand-written note, and the great potential in a deck of cards.  She modeled humility and selflessness.  She valued friendship and love over any material object and showed us how to put family first.  She could put together an expansive Thanksgiving feast for twenty while laughing away in the kitchen.  And let me just add that if canning were an Olympic sport, she'd have a lot of gold medals.  For the homemade bread, the potato salad, the savory venison sandwich spread, and the myriad of desserts, I must get my hands on her recipe box!          

Sadly, my beloved Grandma passed away after a serious stroke during the last week in August.  She spent her last five years in a wheel chair at a nursing home, but she didn't let these obstacles hold her back.  She was the president of the residents committee, visited with loved ones daily, wrote letters regularly, and remained eternally optimistic.  She was a strong, admirable woman and lived a happy, fulfilling life.  

I've cried all over my keyboard just typing these two paragraphs because I can barely begin to explain how much I will miss my Grandma.  I can, however, bake.  Sometimes when words escape me, my mind is racing, and my emotions are running rampant, I find it very comforting to spend a while in the kitchen.  

This week I made one of my Grandma's most famous desserts: gobs.  You may know them better as whoopie pies, but to me and my cousins, they will always be gobs.  Grandma made these treats for us every summer and stored them in the chilly coal bin in the basement.  My brother and I would emerge from the basement with a gob in our grasp and Grandma would pour us big glasses of milk.  We ate those sticky sandwiches while sitting next to her on the glider out on the front porch.  It was unforgettable.      

   

Grandma Diehl's Gobs

1 c. cocoa

1/2 c. hot water

1 c. butter

2 c. sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

4 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Mix together all the ingredients in a mixer.  Grease cookie sheets and drop mixture in equally sized blobs.  Take the back of a spoon, dipped in hot water, and smooth each clump out.  Bake 7-9 minutes at 350 F.  Cool the gob pieces and ice with white frosting or vanilla ice cream to make little chocolate sandwiches.  You can sprinkle a bit of salt on top of them if you like.  Freezes well.  Makes about 30 gobs.

Grandma's Vanilla Icing

2 c. confectioner's sugar

1/2 c. butter, room temperature

1 tsp. vanilla

milk

Mix together in a mixer with enough milk to make a consistency like cake frosting.  Add milk 1 Tbsp. at a time.          

F is for French Toast Cupcakes

I got the iPad 2!  I really have it!  For my birthday (and Christmas and maybe Easter and the 4th of July too), Peter bought me the latest Apple toy and I am loving it!  Everything looks more beautiful on the iPad--even my work email and my online bank account.  What I like most about the iPad so far is an app called FlipBoard.  FlipBoard turns all my favorite blogs into an easy-to-read digital magazine, so I've been catching up on blogs I haven't read in a long time.  Not to mention, I'm on spring break now for the next week, so I have a lot of free time to immerse myself in cooking blogs, entertaining ideas, DIY projects, and spring fashions.  Jealous?

My 26th birthday was March 31st and it has been an awfully special week.  To start, the iPad came in the mail and Peter preloaded it with apps and my photos and bookmarks and music and all that good stuff.  I feel like a kid with a brand new shiny toy;  I hate to put it down!  Secondly, Peter took me to see a Cirque du Soleil show, Alegria, and that blew me away.  It was phenomenal!  My coworkers made my birthday very special by making cupcakes for my class, taking me out for lunch, and generally helping out to make my school day low-key and fun.  My friend Cynthia baked me a glorious lemon curd cake of my dreams and I'll be sharing that in a blog post later.  My friend Nicci spent her Friday off with me to take me out for lunch at Hamilton's, snack on cupcakes from Crazy Cakes, sip champagne, and walk on the Rivanna trail.  Lastly, my mom and grandma took me shopping in Richmond to get a new suitcase and a new springy outfit for my trip to New York this week.  Can it get much better than all this?!

Yes.  Why, yes it can!  Sometimes you can create a little birthday magic for yourself and I needed a special occasion to make these very special cupcakes.  Using the Big Oven app on the new iPad, I baked up a batch of very tasty French Toast cupcakes and I frosted them with cinnamon cream cheese frosting.  Who were the recipients of these delicious treats?  Why, my favorite group of eight-year-olds!  With frosting and raw sugar sprinkles all over their faces, they thanked me profusely and proclaimed, "It's like breakfast!" and "These are the best!"  So, there you have it folks.  Authentic, honest reviews!  These are very very very good cupcakes.

French Toast Cupcakes        
adapted from Big Oven

1 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1 c. sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
2 tsp. maple syrup or extract
1/2 c. milk

Preheat your oven to 350.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a small bowl.  In your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until smooth.  Add the eggs one at a time.  Whisk in the maple syrup and then add the flour mixture and milk by alternating small amounts of each.  Beat until smooth.  Pour the batter into prepared muffin cups or mini muffin cups.  Bake 12-14 minutes in mini cups and 20-24 minutes in regular-sized muffin cups.  They should be light golden brown and the tops spring back when touched.  Let the cupcakes cool a few minutes in the pan and then move them to a cooling rack.  Frost the cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 pkg. cream cheese or neufchatel at room temperature
4 Tbsp. butter at room temperature
1-2 Tbsp. milk or cream
3 c. confectioner's sugar, sifted
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

In your mixer, blend the cream cheese and butter  on low speed.  Add the confectioner's sugar a little at a time, blending well after each addition.  Add the milk in small amounts until your frosting is a desired consistency.  Add the cinnamon and turn up the speed on your mixer until the frosting is fluffy.