Monday, November 30, 2020

Recipe: Easy Pumpkin Roll

Image found here

'Tis the season for all-things-pumpkin (we're not quite yet to the all-things-peppermint stage yet). Of course my family and I enjoyed pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, but we had bought several cans of pureed pumpkin, so there was plenty more where that came from. I made a pumpkin roll with a friend several years ago (here's that recipe), and I thought I'd give it another go, this time with this recipe from the Cookies & Cups blog

Ingredients:

·         3 large eggs

·         2/3 cup pumpkin puree (like Libby’s)

·         1 cup light brown sugar

·         2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

·         1 teaspoon vanilla extract

·         1 teaspoon baking soda

·         1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

·         3/4 cup all purpose flour

Filling

·         6 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

·         1/4 cup butter, room temperature

·         1 2/3 cup powdered sugar

·         1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Make the Pumpkin Cake

Prepare oven and tools: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 10×15- inch jelly roll pan with parchment paper, leaving about an inch of extra parchment at the ends, for easy removal. Very lightly coat the parchment with nonstick spray. Set aside.

Combine wet ingredients: In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add in the eggs and mix on medium until lightly beaten. Add in the pumpkin, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla, baking soda, and salt and mix for 1 minute until smooth.

Add dry ingredients: Turn mixer to low and add in the flour, mixing for 30 seconds, or until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Bake: Spread the batter into the prepared pan evenly. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cake is set and a toothpick comes out clean. As soon as the cake comes out, while hot, lift the cake out of the pan using the parchment paper and place on a heat safe surface.

Roll: Leaving the parchment paper on the cake, roll it up carefully starting with the narrow end, placing it on a wire rack seam-side down to cool completely.

Make the Pumpkin Roll Filling

While the cake is cooling, prepare the filling. In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment mix the cream cheese and butter together for 1 minute on medium speed until smooth. Add in the powdered sugar and vanilla and mix for another minute until creamy, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Assemble the Pumpkin Roll

Unroll cake & add filling: When your cake is cooled, carefully unroll it. Using an offset spatula, spread your cream cheese filling evenly onto the cake, leaving 1- inch around the edges.

Roll cake back up: Now carefully roll the cake back up tightly, but pull the parchment paper away from the cake as you do so. Once you have it rolled up, place it on a baking sheet or serving dish, cover airtight and place in to the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or until ready to serve.

We had run out of brown sugar when we made our pumpkin pie, so for this recipe I just used regular granulated sugar. But it certainly didn't impact the taste! I did have some issues with cracking in the cake (see pictures below), but your stomach and taste-buds don't know the difference! I would call this a success!



Friday, November 13, 2020

Unicorn Cake Mix Cookies

So, this is what they're supposed to look like. Image found here.

I had a bag of unicorn chocolate chips, and I wanted to use them somehow. I thought about making cookies, and when I saw this recipe on the Sugar Dish blog using cake mix, I thought it would be pretty easy. 

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
  • ¾ cup packed light brown sugar
  • ¾ cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 1¾ cups all purpose flour
  • 3 1/4 ounces white cake mix
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 (10 ounce bag) Unicorn Pink & Blue Swirled Vanilla Chips

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. In a large bowl beat together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat until just combined.
  3. Mix in the flour, cake mix, baking powder, and salt. Continue mixing until the dough *just* comes together.
  4. Stir in most of the Unicorn Chips, reserving about 1/4 cup to top the cookies before they go in the oven. Don't over-mix.
  5. About a tablespoon at a time, portion the dough out onto an ungreased baking sheet, spacing the cookies about 2" apart. Add a few chips to the top of each cookie.
  6. Bake for 9-11 mins (9 minutes is always perfect for me). Your cookies might look slightly under-cooked - it's ok!!! They are done. Over baking takes away the chewy texture.
  7. Let them cool for a few minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

Now, if you have read any of my other baking blog posts, you know that I frequently change up the ingredients, adding or subtracting as I like. I did it this time, but it was a BIG fail. Instead of trying to calculate the number of cups 3.25 ounces of cake mix equals (and be left with a lot of cake mix), I just scrapped the rest of the dry ingredients and JUST used 2.5 cups of cake mix. Well, that didn't work:

Very flat, underdone, puddle cookies

I tried to salvage them by using a cookie cutter to make cute unicorn shapes (my roommate's idea):


But when I tried to scrape them off the pan, the undersides were still completely wet. The cookies completely fell apart, so now I have a container full of half-baked cookie bits that I'm trying to figure out what to do with. So far, all I can think of is putting it on top of ice cream. I hate to let food go to waste! Any other ideas?

What do I do... with this?

I did bake the second sheet of cookies for a little longer, so those came out as actual round cookies. But they are past golden-brown, and so they're a little crunchier than I would like my cookies. 

One unicorn made it out... just barely.

Bummer! I'll follow the recipe a little more closely next time.