Happy Nondeminational Winter Holiday, Everyone!

It's that time of year again. For those of you that are familiar with a calendar, you know that I'm talking about Christmas. If I were to say that I look forward to the festivities all year, I'd be lying. I'm going to be blunt here for a moment, the holidays bring out the worst in people. The fact that I've spent the last eight Decembers working in retail may have something to do with that, but that's neither here nor there. In addition to retail hell, if you're a student, you also know Christmas as the brief period of time between soul-crushing finals and the disappointment you feel when you see your final grades.

But because I'm not completely Scrooge McDuck (yet), I'm still able to find a little joy in some parts of the holidays. For those of you that don't know me very well, that slight glimmer of happiness is Ghirardelli's peppermint bark. In any and all forms. My obsession first started off a few years ago when the undisclosed craft store with a male's name at which I worked started carrying the chocolate bars. The chocolate au naturel was my gateway drug. The next year the bars just didn't cut it, so I tried Haagen Daz's Peppermint Bark ice cream. This year, instead of injecting it straight into my veins, I thought I should make an incarnation of my own. Naturally, it was going to be in the form of a cupcake, because it's the one baked good that I seem to get right on a consistent basis. The special occasion? My College Students in Broadcasting club's last meeting/holiday party/white elephant gift exchange.

The Filling

I found it difficult to not eat the entire bag by myself.

For a week, I racked my brain trying to figure out the anatomy of this cupcake. The flavors were already outlined for me: white chocolate, milk chocolate, and peppermint candy pieces. Of course I had to use Ghirardelli chocolate in this recipe, otherwise it would just be wrong. I had the what, just not the how. In true PPC fashion, I finally decided to incorporate the milk chocolate in a ganache to fill the centers of the cupcakes. Ganache, is there no better word in the English language? I don't know about you, but for me there isn't. It takes me back to last December when Kyle and I first started dating and I told him about my pipe dream of competing on Food Network's Cupcake Wars. Naturally, he had no idea what I was talking about, so I searched on YouTube for a clip to show him and we discovered that someone had uploaded seasons worth of full episodes. His attention wavered after getting the basic concept of the show, but his interest was piqued we started betting on the outcome of the competitions and I lost my pants. I digress, but the point of me telling this tale is that ganache is quite a popular cupcake staple on that program. Being a male, Kyle also had no idea what ganache was, so when he asked and I told him that it was basically just chocolate, his response was: "then why don't they just say chocolate?" What a silly boy.

Batch one, full of so much hope. 

The Cake
It was obvious to me that the peppermint flavor was going to be incorporated in the cake batter. After what seemed like a lifetime of cooling, the cupcakes were cored and ready to be filled. Now, it's not often that I fail in the kitchen. Well, that was a blatant lie. I'm still not quite sure what I screwed up here. Maybe the chocolate hadn't cooled off enough. Maybe I cored too much of the cupcake. Either way, the cakes soaked up the ganache filling like some sort of foil wrapped sponge. Luckily it was the magical Garbage Day Eve, so I was able to toss my failures into the compost bin and start anew. It all seemed to work out for the best though, because while waiting for the second batch to bake, I ate the remnants (or "cupcake holes") of the rejects. I have to say, butter and peppermint aren't exactly two flavors I'd like to combine ever again. On attempt number two, I decided to try a new recipe that called for more milk and (a lot) less butter. I think I might actually have a new go-to recipe. The cupcakes taste just as good, but as an added bonus, they have that muffin top that I always strive for. I don't think I'll ever get to say that again. This time around, I decided to not chance having to make a third batch and scrapped the ganache filling.

The Legend

A nice photo before the peppermint candy pieces melted.

The frosting is my favorite part of this cake. It's a slight deviation from the regular buttercream that I usually whip up, substituting half of the powdered sugar with melted white chocolate. It made a frosting that had a hint of white chocolate without being to cloyingly sweet. The problem was that I was still missing an element, the milk chocolate. At this point, it was getting late and I was almost out of chocolate (no thanks to me for eating some from the bag by itself), so I decided to just melt it and spoon it over the frosting as a decorative, yet delicious, garnish. A fistful of peppermint candy pieces thrown on top, and these beauties were ready for the party.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of my cakes making their debut, but people seemed to like them. I came in with what I like to call a "PPC dozen" (it was two dozen, minus two that I had eaten on the way there. Don't judge me, it's a long drive to San Francisco in traffic) and left with none. I'd say that my classmates liked them as much as I did, so I'm calling it a success.

"There's No Such Thing as Too Much Chocolate"

First, I feel like I should explain my long period of absence before jumping back into things. As you may or may not know, I'm a tired college student that uses baking as a way to stay sane during the semester. Unfortunately, sometimes my school-workload can get overwhelming and leave me with little time for anything else. Really, it was my own fault for taking five classes. But what can I say, I want to graduate in a timely manner.

Um, okay, this is either flour or cocaine. I can't recall which.

Lucky for me, it's now June and I have a few weeks before I start summer classes so I can go through my backlog of blog fodder. I'm all for keeping things in chronological order, so I'll start off my return with some chocolate cupcakes. Don't ask me how I remember this, but I made these during spring break. That was in March. Again, it's now June. I don't know if you're as adept with a calendar as I am, but you can see that some time has passed between the making of the cakes and now.

With that being said, I don't entirely remember how I made these cupcakes. I have several photos on my phone detailing the process, but it's like reading the assembly directions for a piece of Ikea furniture. You can see the progression, but anything more detailed than cheap plywood equals bookshelf (or in this case, flour equals cake) is a stab in the dark. It's not surprising that I can't remember the finer details of what went wrong making these, but I guess the important part is that I remember why I made them.

I made them for my "little sister" Ashley.

Ashley in her natural habitat.

We started as coworkers, but now we're family

Instead, we go to the beach together. We drool over cakes in Costco, and go on bicycle rides in Walmart in the middle of the night. She purchases KFC at 10 o'clock at night right before they close just so we can eat it in a CVS parking lot by our house. She listens to me complain about my neurosis (the latest example of this was not even five minutes ago). Best of all, she understands me even when everyone else doesn't. I get all of the perks of having a younger sister, without actually having a younger sister. She's one of my best friends and I consider myself very lucky for having met her.

Ashley notices a lack of cake
I've known Ashley for about two years now, and she's grown to be the little sister I never had. Since we're not actually related, I never had to live with her. Because I don't live with her, I haven't experienced the sibling rivalry that sisters usually have: she doesn't borrow my clothes, she doesn't hog the bathroom when I'm running late in the morning, and she doesn't try to murder me while I'm sleeping.

Here we are at the world's saddest pumpkin patch.

Before I met Kyle, the spoils of my baking efforts were delivered to my coworkers. Almost every weekend there were a dozen or two cupcakes sitting in the back of the office waiting to be devoured by everyone. After meeting Kyle last September, all of my cakes made their way over to his house so they could be eaten by his roommates. Ashley was the first to notice the decline in baked goods, and she definitely didn't let it slide. To make it up to her, I told her that when I had the time, I'd make something specifically for her. When asked what she would like, her response was simply "there's no such thing as too much chocolate."

The frosting looks.. not so appealing here.

Some months went by and finally I was graced with the presence of spring break. With that small taste of freedom, I made Ashley her chocolate overload cupcakes. The premise of creating a satisfying cake for her was simple: cram as much chocolate as I could into one cupcake liner. I settled on a chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding topped with a chocolate buttercream frosting. I noticed I had some Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips left in my pantry from some previous project, so I threw some of those on top as well (four on each cake, for those keeping track of my neurosis). As usual, everything down to the pudding was made from scratch. I go to great lengths to inject sugar into the veins of people I love.

Usually I hate making chocolate cake because it always comes out too dry or too dense like a brownie. But for her, I was determined to make it work. Again, I'm not sure how I did it, or what recipe I used, but I think I found the right combination of ingredients. It's just my luck that I forgot to write it down and several months passed. I'm afraid it's lost in the ether now.

Accidental Biscuits and Bourbon, Bourbon, Bourbon.

I vaguely mentioned in my last post that my cooking skills leave much to be desired. A quick recap for those with short term memory loss: a while ago, I told my dude a story of how inept I am in the kitchen (with the exception of baking). That led to him asking me to bake him something. Since I know you're all curious about what I had told him, it was the story of what I now refer to as "accidental biscuits."

Surprise! It's biscuits
Whenever I tell people I can't cook, the reaction I get is always something along the lines of "didn't your mom teach you how to cook?" If you've ever tried her cooking, you'd know that she did and I'm paying for it every day.

In my adult life, I always managed to con someone into making dinner for me. They always obliged, although I'll freely admit it was probably out of pity. Unfortunately for me, a few months ago I found myself without a personal chef and had to fend for myself. Inspired and hungry one evening, I fired up the Google machine and came across a recipe for chicken in a white wine sauce. It met all of my criteria: it seemed simple enough and I already had all the ingredients in my pantry.

I managed to slice the mushrooms without cutting myself, I dredged the chicken in flour without making a (horrible) mess, and I didn't instantly burn the chicken when I put it in the frying pan. All was going (relatively) well until I had to add the wine and broth to the chicken and mushroom mixture. That's when the biscuits happened. Instead of creating a nice coat on the chicken, the liquid washed the chicken clean and combined with the flour to create little floury nuggets of chicken residue.

I'm not quite sure if I didn't have all purpose flour, or if I just didn't want to go out to the garage to check (I'm going to be honest, this is more likely), but I figured since I had self-rising flour in the kitchen, I'd use that to dredge the chicken instead. With as much baking as I do, I really should have known better. But the chicken tasted fine sans biscuit blobs, so I'm still calling it a success.

Mixie doing a whirl. Yes, I named my mixer.

Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man
The reason I bought the self rising flour is because my go-to cupcake recipe calls for it in lieu of all-purpose. I usually just mix my own with some baking powder, but one day I thought I'd splurge and purchase some fancy flour, mostly because I make this cake quite frequently. My style of baking is usually this simple cake with a special filling or frosting. I'm into accessorizing.

This particular cupcake is another one from the Kyle Fyles. When I need inspiration, I can always count on my guy to be there with a resounding "bourbon." And what goes better with bourbon (besides bad decisions) than peaches?

I admit I may have gone a bit overboard with the booze on this one. For the filling I made a peach bourbon cobbler, a bourbon caramel sauce for drizzling over the top, and instead of the vanilla in the frosting, I added more bourbon.

That's it, just soak up the flavor of the butter.

The inspiration came to me suddenly when I was shopping for powdered sugar in Lucky. Unfortunately I forgot that peaches aren't exactly in season in February, so I had to do something I vowed I'd never do: use ingredients from a can.

Whoever said you can't tell the difference between canned and fresh fruit is a filthy liar. I wouldn't go as far to say that they tasted terrible, but they definitely didn't taste like peaches that didn't just take an aluminum hibernation. Luckily copious amounts of butter and bourbon hid the unsatisfactory taste of the fruit, though I'm sure it wasn't as good as it could have been.

As always, I had some left over after filling the dozen cakes I made. I'm not entirely sure what happened to the excess cobbler mixture, but I really hope it met met its demise in the compost bin. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I will never bake anything with boxed or canned ingredients.

Liquid gold, bubbling in the pot. 

If you pronounce it car-mul, you're wrong
Without a doubt, my favorite component of this cake was the bourbon caramel sauce.

To me, caramel is its own food group. In addition to eating caramel, I also love making it. Surprisingly, even with my infatuation, this is only the second time I've ever made it. The first time was when I made Twox bars a couple years ago, but that's a story for another time.

Maybe one of the reasons I enjoy making caramel so much is that it requires a level of concentration that I usually don't possess. I have the attention span of a hummingbird (I'm simultaneously browsing imgur while writing this), but sugar work is delicate and finicky. Look away for two seconds, and you have a pot of burnt sugar water. The satisfaction of getting it right is why I do this. That and I get to eat a whole pot of caramel after. But definitely mostly for the satisfaction.

I'm still grappling with the frosting matrix

Not pictured: the five naked cakes.

Like I previously mentioned, I always end up with way more frosting than I need. In my last adventure in baking, I had enough to top two dozen cupcakes even though I only made one dozen.

This time I said it was going to be different, we were going to make it work. Using my superior skills in logic, I deduced that cutting the recipe in half would yield just enough for the twelve cupcakes that I had made. I painstakingly beat the butter in my mixing bowl, slowly added the powdered sugar, and gingerly poured in the bourbon. I got out my piping supplies and delicately scooped the frosting into the bag.

I barely had enough to top seven cupcakes. I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with me (the list goes on), but apparently there's no place for my logic in baking. It's alright though, I haven't given up yet. I will outsmart you eventually, frosting. Mark my words, I will outsmart you.

I Was a Patsy

Yes, that's a Barney sweatshirt. Don't judge me.

When I was a child, I dreamed of owning an Easy Bake Oven. At the time, nothing was more magical to me than a small box with a light bulb inside. Miniature cakes, tiny cookies, the possibilities were endless for a toddler with a well-developed sweet tooth. Christmas of 1992, my parents decided to give 4-year-old me the little plastic deathtrap and I've been baking (and burning myself) ever since.

At 25, nothing is more magical to me than a large box with a light bulb inside. Of course, there are heating coils and actual functioning buttons on this box, but the point remains the same: my favorite toy has been, and always will be, my oven. But I don't want there to be any misconceptions, I am nowhere near a baking expert. I am self-taught and have never had any sort of formal instruction (and that becomes painfully obvious at times). It's pretty much guaranteed that I'll end up with flour crusted to my clothing and literal egg on my face. But that's mainly why I started this blog. My recipes aren't particularly interesting, but my exploits always seem to garner laughs. I aim to entertain, not educate. I want you to laugh with me, even though I may not always be laughing.

Now that I've told you the story of my life (slightly embarrassing photo included), I can fast forward 21 years. There I am in all my pasty glory. That handsome man to my left is my beau, Kyle. We have a lot of things in common: we like the same type of music, we like to binge watch television sitcoms on Netflix, and we always have a snarky comment or pun for every occasion. We even have similar names (you can't spell Kelly without Kyle.. and an another L). We have a lot in common, except for our taste in beverages.

Team K: Kyle and Kelly.

A few months ago, I mentioned to him that my cooking skills are virtually nonexistent, but my saving grace is that I could bake a decent cupcake. He asked me to make him "an adult pastry" (and after asking "in flavor.. or shape?") I knew exactly what to make. Like any typical (half) Irish dude, he has an affinity for whiskey. I don't drink, but I'm a terrible enabler, especially when it involves sugar. Therefore, it only made sense to make an Irish Car Bomb cupcake. What better way to appeal to someone than to offend his heritage? Luckily my guy is not one of delicate sensibilities. Plus I'm pretty sure he zoned out into euphoria after he heard me say "it has a whiskey.." If he had been listening to my entire spiel, he would have heard me say "it's a Guinness chocolate cupcake with a Jameson chocolate ganache filling, and it's topped with Baileys vanilla buttercream."

The cored cupcakes.

Let the games begin
As always, I started with the cake. I already had all of the ingredients on hand except for the Guinness, which is apparently a pretty important ingredient in a Guinness cake. Who would have thought? I made it my mission to purchase as little booze as possible, but much like my cooking endeavors, nothing ever turns out. I searched high and low (which was really only a Lucky and a Bevmo before I gave up), but I could only find the beer in four packs. It was especially unfortunate when I got home and decided to take a swig of the swill before pouring it into my mixing bowl. It's been a few months, so I can't remember my exact reaction, but what I can recall is that I said something along the lines of "people actually drink this?" I don't know why anyone would want to drink one can, let alone four. Must be a marketing ploy. Luckily, if you leave beer in the refrigerator for long enough, it magically disappears. Funny how that works. I will say that the cakes did not taste like beer after coming out of the oven. Thank the confectionary gods for that.

The following day, I made the ganache. I probably should have started with this instead of the cakes since it needed some serious refrigeration time to turn from chocolate whiskey soup into a decadent pudding. I would say this is pertinent information for next time, but I rarely ever bake something more than once, so, uh.. "the more you know," I guess.

Drinking on the job, for shame.

For this undertaking, I enlisted the help of my baking assistant, Giraffe Whisk(ey. Sorry, I couldn't resist). He was helpful for all of five minutes, then he got into the Jameson, and productivity took a nosedive. I quickly banished him to the sink or else I wouldn't have any whiskey left for the filling. The recipe I used had your standard ganache staples: one cup of chocolate chips and one cup of heavy whipping cream, as well as two tablespoons of Jameson. After combining all the ingredients, I took a sample and determined that it tasted great. As I previously mentioned, I don't drink. I dislike the bitter flavors of alcohol, so if I thought it was fine, there wasn't enough whiskey. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I dumped the entire bottle in the bowl of chocolate. The ganache now had a bitter edge that I didn't quite appreciate, and I knew instantly it was perfect. The recipe said the mixture would set up in 30 minutes, so I popped the bowl into the refrigerator and started working on the frosting. I checked back half an hour later to discover the ganache was still soupy. Adding eight times more booze than I was supposed to may have had something to do with that. Possibly. We can never be sure.

The finished product, ready for consumption.

It took a few hours, but eventually the ganache did firm up nicely. Luckily the frosting didn't give me any trouble (other than making it rain powdered sugar when I turned on my mixer. Happens every single time). The process of making the cupcake topping was relatively simple. My go-to is a basic buttercream (butter, powdered sugar, milk and vanilla), so I just substituted the vanilla and milk for Baileys. I'm not going to lie, I could eat the frosting just by itself. And I did.

For some reason, I always underestimate the amount of powdered sugar I need to make the appropriate amount of frosting. The recipe says two cups, but after two cups the frosting still tastes like straight butter. I probably end up using about four cups, which might explain why I end up with a giant tub of frosting just for 12 measly cupcakes. The obvious answer is to cut back the amount of butter, but that's too easy. Because I never learn, there's a Ziplock bag full of this delicious concoction sitting in my refrigerator still, but I'm okay with that. Soon, frosting, soon.