Halloween Shenanigans

This year, Sally was invited to a Halloween party and what better way to celebrate than bringing fun Halloween treats?  Of course, Sally and I ended up with more of a gory finger food than the cutesy cupcakes you'd expect.  The recipe was for eyeballs... and while Sally with her medical knowledge proclaimed these to be "eyeballs on crack... with glaucoma," I proclaim them delicious.  And a great way to decorate your kitchen with bloody dishes in the sink and red fingerprints on the drawers.

Red Velvet Cake Eyeballs
adapted from The Cake Mistress, here
Ingredients
1 box of red velvet cake mix (or make your own cake)
1 can of cream cheese frosting (or make your own frosting*)
white chocolate (~16 oz.)
some M&Ms (about 50)
red food coloring (preferably gel)

1. Make the red velvet cake.
2. Let cake cool.  Make frosting if necessary.
3. Mix together cake and frosting.  Mixture will be quite gooey.
4. Roll into balls and place in fridge or freezer. Cool for at least 4 hours. Re-roll balls halfway through to get a more spherical and less lumpy shape.
5. Melt white chocolate (either in microwave or in double boiler).
6. Dip red velvet cake balls in chocolate.  Place M&M on top before chocolate cools.
7. Decorate with red food coloring after chocolate has cooled.

 step 4: re-rolling cake balls

*Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
1 pkg. Cream Cheese (8 oz.)
1/2 c. butter (1 stick)
2 to 3 cups powdered sugar

Mix the cream cheese and butter together (helps if they are at room temperature).  Then add the powdered sugar and mix until combined.

We apologize for our extended absence...

So Sally and I have not posted in a very long time. In fact, it's been over a year. But never fear, our kitchen has not been idle for the long duration... In fact, just to prove that Sally and I are not the lazy bums you thought we were, here are some pictures of things that were made over the last year:

Mini Cinnamon Muffins!

Red Velvet Cake! with Cream Cheese Frosting!

...cookies!

Neither Sally nor I can remember exactly what kind of cookies... only that they must have been pretty amazing for us to consider whipping out the camera to take pictures of them.

And just to prove we do eat real food (every now and then) and don't survive on cookies and cake alone, here's some nice healthy pasta and veggies for ya.

Raspberry Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce

Can't forget about the ice cream. Look at my attempts at an artsy photo - I should really leave that sort of thing up to Sally.

Well, there you have it. Sally and I are not lazy bums... just lazy bloggers. But hopefully we can fully redeem ourselves in the next year or so!

The Recipe Said Macaroons...

Hello faithful reader(s). Sally Scrumptialumptious and I offer our most sincere apologies for being so remiss in our posts of late. We promise you that all kinds of tasty concoctions have passed through our oven door (and into our tummies) over the past month and a half, including chocolate cinnamon cookies, guayaba and buttercream sponge cake, chocolate sugar ginger cookies, fortune cookies, and many more. It's just hard to type a blog post with flour on your fingers.

Anywho, summer is here, school's out, and last night Sally and I were feeling awfully sad and lonely. We decided that we needed something warm and gooey and sugary to fill up that big empty hole that this past semester had left in our hearts. After consulting various cookbooks, pantries, and frigidaires, we concluded that, as per usual, we didn't have key ingredients for the one cookie we craved the most -- macaroons.

Now, what makes a macaroon so goshdarn delectible is this: When you bite into it, the first texture you encounter is a sort of crunchy shell. Then, that crunch gives way to an ooey gooey feel-good center that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside. It's like warm, sugary bondo for the soul. As far as Sally and I can tell, the two basic kinds of macaroon are coconut and almond. Having neither coconut or almond, we had to get creative...

Sally's Pecan Chocolate Bondo Macaroons

1/2 c. white sugar
2 to 2-1/2 c. chopped pecans
1 oz. coarsley chopped semi-sweet baking chocolate
2 egg whites
splash of pure vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Bake for 17ish minutes at 325 degrees, rotating the pan halfway through.

We were delightfully surprised!! The cookies were yummy and very macaroon-like, with our only concern being that they seemed eager to fall apart. A bit longer in the oven and waiting for them to cool completely before removing them from the pan helped (what can we say...we were eager to taste them...), but perhaps chopping the pecans more finely would make a difference as well? We'll let you know.

Bake and comment! And remember, as Paula Deen always says, "Watch out for that goat, y'all!"

Signing off -- Sally and Co.

Oatmeal Cookies??

Sally and I were in the kitchen the other night when we realized we were both craving oatmeal. Not that mushy, healthy kind that lowers your cholesterol and comes in a bowl, but the chewy, delicious kind that's filled with fat and comes in a cookie.

Now, we all know that the best kind of oatmeal cookie comes on the bottom of the Quaker Oatmeal box top. The recipe, that is, not the cookie itself. That would be preposterous. However, upon surveying our rations, we were displeased to find that we had neither butter nor eggs.

Never ones to let a minor malfunction make us miss out on munchy madness, we decided to go ahead with our plans, substituting in various chemicals for the missing ingredients. (did I mention that Sally is a chemistry major?)

Just kidding. But we did substitute in Crisco for the butter and a combination of cornstarch and H2O for the eggs.

Here is the recipe, for your reference, noting our changes:

"Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies"
1/2 lbs. (2 sticks) butter --> we used 1 c. Crisco
1 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c. granulated sugar
2 eggs --> we used 1 T cornstarch and 3 T H2O per egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon (we ended up adding a bunch because it was a sprinkle top, so we couldn't actually measure...)
3 c. oats

Wait, 3 cups of oatmeal?? As Sally and I prepared to stir in the last ingredient, we discovered, to our utter surprise, that we only had 1-1/2 cups of said oatmeal. Whatever could we do?

Luckily, Sally came to the rescue with her Quaker Oats Oatmeal Squares cereal, which had been sitting under the counter for over a month. Let it be known that oatmeal and oatmeal squares are not the same thing. But we did not let this stop us, and proceeded to utilize this new ingredient.

The result? Well, they weren't oatmeal cookies, but we ate them anyway, as per our usual M.O. For some reason, the first batch came out sort of flat and chewy, with lace cookie-esque edges. To address this, Sally had the brilliant idea of moving the oven rack up a rung. Subsequent batches, while still not oatmeal cookies, were thicker and generally closer to what we had in mind when we set out on this adventure of the appetite. Pictures to follow.

Bake and comment! And remember, as Julia Child always says, "It's never too late to change careers!"

Signing off -- Sally and Co.

Welcome!

My friend, Sally Scumptialumptious, and I decided to start our very own baking blog. Sally and I have been baking separately for years, and only recently discovered our awesomely delicious chemistry together. The cramped kitchen may have had something to do with that.

Regardless of how this realization occurred, it soon became apparent that we needed to chronicle our confectionery campaign and chart its course to the...world. So without any further ado, welcome to Maggie Mo Bakes!

And remember, as Martha Stewart always says, "Insider trading is a-ok!"

Signing off -- Sally and Co.