Miscellaneous Cookery

I haven't been good about keeping up with the recipes I've been trying. I haven't even been making note of them, so I'm certain I've forgotten several. Apparently, though, I try new recipes constantly (I honestly did not know this about myself until I started paying attention), so I'm not worried about reaching my goal of 40.

Still, there are a couple of which I have photos, and those are less abundant around my house, so here you go.

Will's birthday party had a "Transformers" theme, which will not come as a surprise to any of you who know him. The kid is obsessed. We decided to make Transformers cookies for the party favor bags. I found cookie cutters shaped like a truck and a car at a cute website, and we made the cookies two weeks ahead and froze them.

The day before the party I attempted Royal Icing for the first time. It has heretofore existed in my life as only an intimidating, hypothetical substance. I'm not sure why...maybe because it required the purchase of meringue powder? But anything I read about baking and decorating mentioned it as though anyone familiar with a kitchen should be all over it. (Baking expert: "You can simply use Royal Icing for this part of the process." Me: "Oh, yeah. Totally. Royal Icing.")

Here is what I learned.

• Meringue powder is not scary and can be purchased at such non-gourmet establishments as Wal-Mart.
• Royal Icing is easy to make and is very shiny in its sitting-in-the-bowl state, which made me happy for some reason.
• It pipes like a DREAM. Oh my goodness, SO much easier than the vanilla icing I used on the gingerbread men.
• It dries beautifully and would probably lead to fewer maimed-looking gingerbread men. This is, I think, the point of Royal Icing.

See? Shiny.

So we piped outlines of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee (in their vehicle forms, of course) onto the cookies.
Be gentle. I am not a professional.

Anyhow, now the photojournalism falls apart. The pre-party frenzy began to build, and I never managed to get pictures of the fully decorated cookies. I used a new cookie glaze recipe that turned out GREAT. Nice flavor, vibrant color, dried smooth and super-shiny. (I like shiny things, apparently.) So Bumblebee got a fresh coat of yellow paint, and Optimus Prime got...let's see...I think it was a red cab and a blue stripe on his trailer. They both got black tires (even the black was vibrant and convincing!). The non-stripe portion of Prime's trailer was supposed to be white, but it got stupid late and I never got around to it. To my knowledge, no one boycotted the party in the wake of this oversight.

The other recipe experiment was for the filling between the layers of the cake. I tried a whipped chocolate ganache, about which I have the following to say:

Oh. My. Gosh.

Now, I'm a dark chocolate fan, so those of you who swing the direction of milk chocolate might not be as enthralled as I was, but from where I sit, this was...I...I have no words.

I had two 9x13 layers, and I slathered the ganache generously between them. In the end, though, I still had almost half the recipe left over, and it's sitting in my freezer now, taunting me. (This stuff is NOT good for you.) We frosted the outside with my go-to wedding buttercream and jazzed it all up a la Transformers. No pics of the ganache (sorry), but I do have one of the cake itself, which I will post here on the theory that a picture is better than no picture.
Prime is made of rolled fondant which I had to tint myself (which left me feeling like I had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome for days). The flames and the letters are piped buttercream. Will loved it, and the cake tasted outstanding. Win.

Only one more pic lying around: the scones. I had buttermilk left over from the Devil's Food Cookies I made for the Super Bowl, so I started trying buttermilk recipes from the Weight Watchers website. I found one for Three Berry Scones, which I made in kind of a hurry and took to my early-Saturday-morning Bible Study.
They turned out pretty nice, and, at 3 points each, they were a reasonable indulgence. I brought the leftovers home, where my kids totally did not get the concept ("It's sort of between a biscuit and a muffin. Please don't whine about gourmet food."), so I ended up eating half a scone toasted with a little butter every morning for like a week. I'm not complaining.

For the record, I've also tried the following recently:

• Southern-Style Oven-Fried Chicken. Without question the best version of this genre I've ever tried. Actually crisped up the way it's supposed to.
  
• Banana-Oatmeal Bread. Hearty and yummy. Not quite as sweet as your average banana bread.
• Spicy BBQ Meatballs. I de-spiced them a little for my fussy kids, who still found the barbecue sauce a little too zesty. For normal humans, they're nice.
• Banana Softies. Somewhere between a cookie and a mini-muffin. These were a hit, even though I left out the chocolate chips the recipe calls for. Not as good the second day, though.
  
• Parmesan Mashed Potatoes. Another buttermilk experiment...well-received.

I know there have been more, but that will have to do for now. Every time I sit down to do some blogging I get all involved and stay here like four times longer than I should. You people are far, far too engaging, it seems. Work on that.