Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler Pie [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler Pie, was chosen by Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures. She's always helpful and in two of the same groups I am in!

This was a definite hit with my Circle K friends. They dove in and ate the pie within a couple of minutes. I swear whenever I bring things to the meeting, they are gone in a few minutes.

Instead of using fresh strawberries, I used some fresh strawberries that I had cut up and frozen. They were on sale a couple of weeks ago and I thought that I would not be able to make a grocery trip before making this pie so I decided to go that that route, but also because they were on sale! I also used a frozen pie crust! I KNOW! I just don't have the kind of time to make pies crusts. I'll try harder next time we make a pie crust. In addition to those two, I decided to go with a cocoa topping instead of the biscuits as suggested by Melissa. I had some left over cocoa strudel from my mini cocoa strudel cheesecakes so I decided to top the pie with that strudel.

It was so delicious. The strawberry and chocolate is such a great combination! I hope everyone else enjoyed it as well. I still don't know the exact flavor of rhubarb, but I would definitely make this pie again!

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

PS I got my Secret Baker's gift. Thanks to Lisa S. for the wonderful apple cake. It was delicious!

Mini Cocoa Strudel Cheesecake

Apparently all my friends seem to be born in April. Or perhaps, I just know lots of people born in this month, but this is one of the birthday dinner parties that I went to...and let's just say I probably gained a couple pounds from all this eating...just for dinner.

Anyways, back to the baking. I made these Cocoa Strudel Cheesecake Bars into cupcake form. Since I had made a half batch of Oreo Fudge Bars...or as the birthday boy liked to call them, Oreo Orgasms, I had left over condensed milk that I used in these.

But let's talk about the cocoa strudel cheesecake instead. It was really delicious.

Cocoa Cheesecake Streusel Bars

adapted from My Baking Adventures

7/8 cup flour
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 c natural cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
7 oz. sweetened condensed milk [half of a can]
1/2 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Place 12 cupcake liners in a cupcake pan.
Combine flour, sugar, and cocoa in a large bowl and then cut in the butter until crumbly and rather dry. [I used my hands, it's just a lot easier. I melted the butter in the microwave for about 30 seconds to melt it only a little bit and then used my hands to mix everything together.]
Press a tablespoon of the mixture into each cupcake liner.
Bake the crust for about 10 minutes.

Beat cream cheese until fluffy and then gradually beat in condensed milk until smooth.

Add egg and vanilla.

Place 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture over crust.

Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of the strudel mixture over cream cheese mixture.

Bake 15 minutes until bubbly.

Sprinkle chocolate chips over top as soon as you remove from oven. [I put three chocolate chips on each. Like 2 and then 1 for 21!]

Chill thoroughly.

WARNING.

THE FOLLOWING PICTURES ARE WHAT WE HAD TO EAT FOR BIRTHDAY DINNER.

LET THE FATTINESS COMMENCE.

[I apologize for the quality of the pictures. I was using a friend's camera...and also everyone was so hungry. We all just wanted to eat.]Thank you to Brandon's parents for a wonderful dinner!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRANDON!

[I'm on the bottom right corner!]

Mango Bread with Cinnamon-Rum-Strawberry Glaze [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Sweet Potato Bread with Cinnamon-Rum-Orange Glaze, was chosen by Lorelei of Mermaid Sweets. I instead made it with Mangoes and Strawberry.

I ended up using canned mangoes found in the grocery store. At first, I thought they tasted a bit weird out of the can, but it tasted fine when it came out of the oven.

I first pureed one can of mangoes and the other can, I chopped up and put it into the batter itself. It gave it two different ways of getting mango.

As for the glaze on top, I made it with strawberry juice and Puerto Rican rum. It was pretty good except for the fact the glaze was kind of too sticky or something. It was great regardless.

I had made this and Thin Mint cupcakes for the Bake sale. The next couple [or a lot] of pictures are from the Bake Sale on Saturday! Enjoy. [we made $1650 for charity!]

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Cream-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes [msc]

This cupcake has got to be one of the more complicated ones for me.

I didn't have marshmallow fluff and so I had to melt down marshmallows for it, but somehow, it just didn't turn out . But it go onto the cupcake and into the cupcake. I got some cool pictures of me putting the cream into the cupcake.

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The cupcake was pretty good itself - I had tried it. The whole cupcake was average I suppose with the average marshmallow creme.

Sorry for the super short post, I'm super busy this week. It's like showcase week [where my friend in Taiko performed Wednesday and then another friend in a dance group is on Friday]. This weekend is also the Bake Sale!

The recipe for this month's Cupcake Club is found on pages 133 of Martha Stewart's Cupcake book. Thanks to Jess from Cookbook Habit for choosing this.

PS. each comment you leave me will be $.25 donated towards Share Our Strength until Friday April 16th at 11:59pm PST.

Chocolate Malted Layer Cake [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Chocolate Malted Layer Cake, was chosen by Nicole of Sweet Tooth. This was such a wonderful pick. My friends loved it immensely.

I brought them to my son's first committee meeting. Now, if you're wondering why I have a family at 20 and my son's old enough to have committee meetings, you're right. I'm not old enough to have kids that old. It would be quite weird in a normal family to have your kids be about 2 years younger than you...and some kids older, but alas, that's Circle K for you.

So the family system as I'm sure I have explained before is a way to get members to come out more often to things and my "husband" and I try to make things as fun as possible. We go out to eat and explore Berkeley as much as possible. We try to bring personal aspect to the club where you can bond with people within your family [and outside] but it brings the club to a smaller level where people can feel comfortable with.

While on the topic of community service, I try to do as much as I can without ruining my time for school and what not. One project that I have taken on is the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale happening in 1 week. I know that other SMSers are baking for their state and part of the country, but I wanted to promote the one I will be baking for.

If you are in the Bay Area, please come out and support us!
I will be making Thin Mint cupcakes and next week's SMS. I may be making even more so come out and support the cause!

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

PS. Starting at Sunday [4/11/10 at 12:00am PST], for each comment I get, I will donate $.25 to Share our Strength. I will count all the comments until 11:59 Friday 4/16/10. Being a college student, I will not be donating over $100. SORRY!

Pumpkin Butterscotch Chip Cookies

These cookies were for another one of the many committee banquets I have been participating in.

I have so many extra cans of pumpkin puree when I stocked up for the "shortage" of pumpkin puree, but now I do have lots of extras. I have at least 3 cans of the huge Libby pumpkin cans at home including 2 and half here with me in Berkeley.

Although it is not the fall anymore, I thought the flavors of pumpkin could be quite interesting on a sunny spring day. So I started looking through various bookmarked and starred recipes. I had quite a few that used pumpkin puree. After I narrowed down my choices to only pumpkin choices, I had to find a recipe that only used 1 egg since that's all I had in the house. [note to self: I need more eggs] I found the perfect recipe after a couple minutes of searching.

Pumpkin Butterscotch Chip Cookies
[adapted from My Baking Addiction]
Ingredients:
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup medium brown sugar [but any brown sugar will work]
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup butterscotch chips

Method:
1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg.
2. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt.
3. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
4. Add vanilla and chocolate chips.
5. Drop by spoonful on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

Pecan Shortbread Cookies [sms...err smw]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Pecan Shortbread Cookies, was chosen by Lara of The Lab.

Okay, I know its Wednesday and not Sunday anymore, but I promise I have a good reason to why this didn't get made until Sunday.

First, I wanted to make them Saturday, but my roommate had a birthday party that lasted until about 12 and I didn't feel like baking that night
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So Sunday, I make the cheesecake bars, but then I realized that I didn't have the coconut needed for the topping for the bars. Being lazy, I actually never got to that part, but I hope you enjoy my cheesecake bars and I will make those girl scout cookie cheese cake bars eventually! I promise!

I made these with walnuts instead of pecans...well because that's all the nuts I had here! I hope my roommates and friends at Circle K enjoyed them!

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Surprise Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

I made these wonderful cupcakes for a committee banquet I was at last week.

My inspiration was this picture:

My friend had posted this picture to my facebook and I was interested in making these since they seemed like would be fun to make.

I decided to make this as easy as possible for me: white box mix and some food coloring.

I also did my filling of cupcakes two ways.
First way, I wanted the outsides of the cupcake to look like that picture so I made sure that the batter that I layered was towards the outside of the cupcake liner.

Second way, I made it easier for myself by just layering the batters on top of each other through the middle.

They both turned out pretty crazy looking from the top. I thought I had messed or something because the tops were so colorful and not JUST the red on top.

The insides were gorgeous though.

I decided to top them with canned frosting [I KNOW, I HAD A MIDTERM SOON] and some rainbow nonpareils.