Blogs about recipes from Pew Pew Laser Blog

Fudgy Chocolate Frosting.

Here's the recipe I used for frosting the cupcakes I made for the our work for the 48 Hour Film Project. It's a tasty frosting, but very gooey and sticky. Consider yourself warned.

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup baking cocoa
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• dash of salt
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all of the above ingredients over low heat until combined. Then heat to boiling, stirring frequently. Boil for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, and then cool for 30 minutes.

This recipe is originally from Betty Crocker's Big Red Cookbook. Betty and company are kind enough to provide nutritional information:

• Serving Size: About 1 1/2 tablespoons
• Calories: 125 (Calories from Fat: 25)
• Fat: 3g (Saturated fat: 2g)
• Cholesterol: 10mg
• Sodium: 65mg
• Carbohydrate: 24g (Dietary Fiber: 1g)
• Protein: 1g

Pew Pew Laser Recipes.

I made a very subtle change to the site last week that probably went unnoticed. I added a recipes section and put a link near the top of the page. There, you'll find recipes for my famous Peanut Blossoms, as well other things that I like to eat. Enjoy!

Irish Soda Bread.

I made this Irish Soda Bread from Beard on Bread to go with our homemade lentil soup this weekend. I've always used the white variation rather than the standard wheat bread - since generally I don't have wheat flour on hand.

This recipe is pretty fast, easy, and very forgiving. Here's the complete recipe for the white variation:

Irish Soda Bread (White)

Preheat oven to 375°. Butter an 8-inch cake pan or cookie sheet.

• 4 cups ap flour
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon 2x baking powder
• 1 1/2 - 2 cups buttermilk

Combine dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add just "enough buttermilk to to make a soft dough, similar in quality to biscuit dough but firm enough to hold its shape. Knead on a lightly floured board for 2 or 3 minutes, until quite smooth and velvety."

Form into a round loaf and place on baking pan/sheet. Cut a cross on the top of the loaf with floured knife. Bake oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the loaf is nicely browned and sounds hollow.

The quoting above is directly from Beard. Bread-making is an inherently fidgety business - the amount flour needed often depends on the humidity of the air. But Beard's recipes can be very persnickety. I've cut out the bit where he instructs you how and how not to slice your Irish Soda Bread.

For this recipe, you may need to add just the minimum amount of buttermilk, or add more flour. You're looking for dough that's thicker than cake batter; ideally it should form into a ball. With my my stand mixer's dough hook, the dough was much wetter and stickier than hand-kneaded previous efforts. In fact, I feared my machine assisted dough would be a failure, but it still came out as bread after baking. (I suspect that the mixer's sticky dough was due to not allowing enough time for the flour to absorb the buttermilk.) Anyhow, give this recipe a try - it's a pretty good beginner's bread recipe.

1 comment(s).

Frosting.

My mom said the frosting I put on those cupcakes was good, and so I promised I'd post the recipe for that too. Here goes:

• 1/2 pound cream cheese, room temp
• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
• 4 oz bittersweet baking chocolate, melted
• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla

Start slowly and mix it all together, for about 7 minutes. This yielded more than enough frosting for my 2 dozen cupcakes, though I tend to frost lightly. (I've found that I can microwave the chocolate on low speed in a ramekin. This is much easier than fashioning a double boiler.)

Chocolate Cupcakes.

I made more cupcakes this weekend. These were follow-on cupcakes to the batch that I made for the husband to take along while working with his 48 hour film festival team. (Alas, the film is not available on-line for a while yet.) My cupcakes were apparently much enjoyed by the film cast and crew; even though I substituted one cup of hot water for the coffee called for by the recipe.

Since I had a bunch of frosting left over, I decided to try the cupcakes again, this time with the coffee. The with-coffee cupcakes were better - noticeably larger and fluffier. Here is the recipe that I used, taken from Caprial's Desserts, by Caprial Pence and Melissa Carey.

• 12 ounces flour (that's 3 cups to some of you)
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Whisk these.

• 1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
• 1/2 cups buttermilk

Mix these into the above, until well blended.

• 3 eggs

Mix into the above, one at at time.

• 1/2 cups freshly brewed hot coffee
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Mix into the above; low speed.

For medium sized cupcakes, bake at 350° for about 20 minutes (use a toothpick). I got about 28 cupcakes out of this.

2 comment(s).