Love Of Oats

A blog dedicated to balancing a healthy and fun life… with oats!

Monthly Archives: April 2010

Indulgent

I realized it’s been a week since the Great American Bake Sale (in support of Share Our Strength) and I never got to share my thoughts on the delicious desserts that I indulged in this week!

The first thing I enjoyed was the vegan cinnamon peanut butter blondie!  As I type this, I’m still having dreams about this blondie… it had the perfect moistness that you want out of a blondie and the peanut butter frosting was amazing!  I definitely am going to attempt recreating this in the near future…

Next up, was this amazing hazelnut biscotti… It was super crunchy, like good biscotti should be, and I loved the extra crunch from the hazelnuts… Plus the faint hint of oranges was also an unexpected but delicious combination… Luckily, there were 6 in the package, and I still have 3 left to savor :)

Finally, the whoopie pie… Baker E sure does know how to make me drool!!!  I was eyeing these up all day during the Bake Sale, so there was quite a lot of self-imposed hype… and I have to say, these did not disappoint AT ALL… although everything that I purchased was delish – this was my favorite, probably because I am a die-hard chocolate gal… I loved the outer cookies with chocolate chips and the rich cream filing… I split this with Bill and he was a huge fan!

Hmmm… maybe now I’ll go sneak another biscotti before dinner ;)

Bucket List – Task One

After a weekend of viewing glorious treats and delish creations, I decided that it was time to create a Bucket List… for baking that is…

There are so many times that I think… “someday, I want to try to bake “xyz”…”, but then I forget about it or loose some of that inspiration and decide its too difficult or intimidating for me to attempt… Well, my hope is that by creating a Baking Bucket List (still in draft form but I will post & share!), I will be constantly reminded of what I want to challenge myself to bake or make and hopefully I will not lose my inspiration for doing so either!

That being said, I came up with this idea on Sunday afternoon and decided that I should try to tackle one of the items on my list:  homemade buttercream icing…

Yeah, I know it is sad that I have never made icing from scratch… So I decided to give it a whirl Sunday after dinner… the funny thing was that I had nothing to icing, so after my icing was made and a few taste tests were done, I whipped together some mini carrot cake cupcakes and frosted those babies up…

Homemade Buttercream Icing

(Frosts 24 mini cupcakes + 6 jumbo cupcakes; or enough for 12 large cupcakes with some leftover for tasting!)

  • 1 stick of butter, at room temperature
  • 3 cups of confectioners sugar, sifted
  • 1 T vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp of cinnamon*

Cream together, with electric mixer, the softened butter and 2 cups of confectioners sugar. 

Add in vanilla extract, cinnamon and sift in the 3rd cup of confectioners sugar.  Mix again well until everything is combined.  If you are adding in food coloring, this would be the time to do it.  Be careful not to overmix; icing should be fluffy.  Let icing sit for an hour in the fridge.  Take out 20 minutes prior to frosting so that the icing can soften at room temperature.  I felt this worked best because it was still cold but not too firm either.

*Note:  I added in the cinnamon for a twist on normal icing, but normally you could omit this.  I just love my cinnamon!  I am going to experiment with different flavors and combinations in the future, but for my first attempt I just wanted to stick to the basics.

 

Lesson Learned:

If you are like me and were intimidated by the thought of making your own icing, don’t be!  Seriously, it was super easy to make, tasted WAY better than from a can, and it’s free of preservatives and full of ingredients that you are familiar with!  And seriously, what’s better than real food… especially in dessert form!!

What are you guys “afraid” of baking or making?  Am I the only one that was scared of icing :)