Read The Directions Carefully

Here comes another "bad" from Carrie's Kitchen

Yesterday we were having some friends over for dinner.  They have a sweet little four year old girl who loves the color pink almost as much as me.  I had told her that when she came over to eat with us I would make her pink cupcakes.  I am always looking for a reason to use my mixer!

I had decided that I was going to use a recipe from my America's Test Kitchen Cookbook.  I have never made anything out of that book that we haven't loved.

I made the yellow cake with no issues at all.  The cupcakes baked and came out perfect!

Then came the icing....The recipe had many steps.  I was making essentially a French Buttercream.  It is meant to be more of a whipped icing or even a meringue.  There were a few things this recipe called for that I had never done.

The first step was to whip your eggs until nice and fluffy.  While that is doing its thing you were to bring corn syrup and sugar to a boil.  I had never done this and didn't realize how fast that stuff would cool and how hard it got upon cooling.  Luckily I was able to add it to my egg mixture before that took place.

Adding this VERY hot liquid to your egg mixture is what cooks the eggs to the point of killing off all the bad bacteria.

Everything was still going great.  I continued on adding in the vanilla and other incredients.  It still looked like it was working fine..  The final step is adding in your room temprature butter a little at a time and letting it fluff.  It being room temperature is very important.  If it's to hard it won't incorporate.

This is where it started to look funny.  It never really got to that silky smooth point that I was waiting for.  I gave it a test taste and it tasted great...so why wouldn't it thicken up....I went ahead and finished the instructions and began to ice my cupcakes.  The icing was very runny but did stay on the cake.  I thought okay well maybe it will harden as it sits....

Our company cam and we finished diner.  It was time for the cupcakes and I was very nervous.  Why would I make a brand new recipe and then serve it to people other than Chris and the boys?  Everyone had a cupcake and complimented me but I still feel something is wrong with the icing....

This continued to bug me.  After our company left I got the cookbook back out and read the recipe over and over again.  I had done everything like it said.  What went wrong?

And then I saw it.....one little word in the ingredients that I missed.  I had used 6 large eggs.  The recipe said to use 6 large egg YOLKS!  Who knew that those eggs whites could cause me so many issues.

The moral of this story is to read your directions VERY carefully.  Read them again...and again and make sure your doing everything right.

The other lesson learned is to practice new recipes before you invite friends over to eat it!  I'm just thankful it tasted okay!  Thank you to M, K, and A for being so nice about my cupcake FAIL!  I will have you over again soon and make the icing the right way.

Here is a picture of the finished cupcakes.

My New Toy

I hate that it has been so long sine I've posted.  I have not had the time to cook anything cool or do any kind of blogging in the past few months!  I hope everyone had a great Christmas and that your new year is starting off perfect!  I wanted to share a gift I got for Christmas.  I have been talking for years about getting a stand mixer and I finally got one.  I love it!  I ended up getting the KithenAid Pro 500.  I went with the metal color so that when I eventually get my perfect kitchen it will match my stainless appliances.

This mixer is awesome!  I baked a cake and made buttercream icing from a recipe book that came in the box.  I was not impressed with either recipe so I'm still looking for that perfect cake and icing recipe.  If you have one I would love for you to share it with me!  I am going to have so much fun baking.   This week I am going to try a different recipe for a yellow cake with simple buttercream icing.  I am going to be using the recipe from America's Test Kitchen and I will blog about how it turns out!!

So for your enjoyment (or maybe just mine) here are some pictures of my new favorite kitchen appliance. 

The next picture is the cake that I made....Everything turned out but the cake was a little dry for my liking and all I could taste was the shortening.  The buttercream was pretty good but I know there are better recipes out there!

If your ever in the area, stop by and let's bake together!

Texas Size Burgers

One thing we love to do here in Cotterville is cook out on the grill!  We do this year round.  We have been known to fire up the grill when it's 105 outside and when its 30 outside.  The only time we put our plans off is if there is rain, which does not happen that often in Texas.  My husband Chris is a great grill master!!

Over the years I have tried many different things when making burgers.  We have played with the seasonings and how we pattie them.  We've adjusted the amount of meat we use and how big or thick we make the patties.  We have also gone from charcoal to gas and then back to charcoal.  We have gone through at least four grills.  Finally after 8 years , I think I'm happy with how I make them.

Let's start with the basics.  After using many different grills Chris has found his love.  We purchased a Weber and will NEVER own another brand of grill. (Disclaimer: Weber has no idea I'm writing this.  I am not being paid to advertise for them.)

Another must have if using charcoal (which why would you ever use gas...) is a charcoal starter.  This is very important because you can use the charcoal without having to use lighter fluid.  Lighter fluid greatly alters the taste of your food!

How it works is you fill the  container with charcoal and place either newspaper or wax underneath to light.   Make sure you have the starter sitting on a flat surface and when you go to empty the coals into the grill you use extreme care.  The starter is metal and gets VERY hot!  When you go to pour the coals out there will be some sparks that fly up so make sure the kiddos aren't around.

So now that we have the grill getting ready, it's time to patty the burgers.

I have never gone out and bought a hamburger press.  I don't really see the point when i have two very capable hands.  Some people mix in the seasonings with the meat and then patty the burgers.  I don't do this. 

I purchase one of the prepackaged meat rolls.  The three or five pound.  You can get very lean meat even in the tubes.  I cut the paper off and leave the meat in it's nice tight roll.  I then use a very sharp knife and slice the roll into equal portions.  Then using the palm of my hand I gently flatten out each portion.  Because the roll was round to begin with, this makes for nice big round burgers.  You can make them as thick or thin as you want.  One important note is that meat shrinks while cooking, so be sure to make your patties a little bit larger than the bun.  

I then use a little seasoned salt and some Worcestershire sauce. (some do not have the sauce of them, I ran out!)  That is all there is to it.  They are very easy to make and VERY yummy to eat!

This picture is the done patties all ready for the grill.  I would tell you the cooking process but grilling out is not my area.  Chris does that and I ask no questions about how it is done!  

Giant Cupcake

Recently I purchases a giant cupcake pan that I had seen online and was very excited to give it a shot!! Let's just say it was a learning experience.  I promised you when I started this blog that I would show you the good, the bad and the ugly of my kitchen adventures.  This would have to be one of the UGLY!  I can't call it bad because it tasted great.....So what happened?

To this make cupcake you only need one regular boxed cake.  The family voted that they wanted a strawberry coke so that is what we had. This pan was SUPER easy to use.  I got it out of the box, rinsed it in hot soapy water, dried it off, and sprayed it with some cooking spray.  I prepared the cake as directed and followed the cooking time.

The cakes turned out great and I set out to decorate them.  My goal was to make a cupcake for us to eat while we watched the Texas Longhorns football game.  I purchases some whipped icing and decided I would dye some of it orange.  All that went well, it wasn't until I tried to put the icing in the pasty bag and decorate that it all went wrong.  The whipped icing was WAY to thin.  Every design I tired to make just dripped right off the cake.  Here are a few pictures.....

Another thing I did was opt to not ice the bottom.  Next time, I might attempt to ice that as well.

This one shows you the size comparison.  It's a pretty good sized cupcake!!

OHH! It was so messy.....

Once I cut into it all was well because it tasted great and didn't last long.

So what did I learn?  To make this you need a thick icing.  I am going to try to make my own next time.  The options are endless for what you can do with this!! I plan on making many more giant cupcakes!!

Easy Chicken Spaghetti

This recipe is another one that came to me from Tasty Kitchen.  Chris and I have been looking for healthier recipes that don't involve grease and red meat.  Don't get me wrong, I still love grease and red meat, but my body doesn't react to it like it did years ago.  It all goes to my hips!

I have heard many of my friends talk about having chicken spaghetti and it is something I have never tried. I wasn't really sure what was even in it, other than chicken and spaghetti, so I started looking around at different ways to make it.

This recipe is very simple!  Here is what you will need.

3-4 Boneless skinless chicken breast
4 Tbs olive oil
4 Tbs butter (ok...I said it was a little healthier, baby steps...)
3 cloves garlic, minced  (or as much as you like)
2 Tbs Italian Seasoning
16 oz Pasta of your choice.  We like the thicker pasta, so I used Linguine

Here is what you do.

Start off by heating up the olive oil in a skillet.  Add the chicken and cook until done.

To your chicken, stir in the butter, garlic, and Italian Seasoning.  Then add your chicken broth and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes.  This just give the chicken time to grab up all those yummy flavors!

The next step I debated on what to do.  The recipe I used simply says to toss the chicken with the pasta.  It doesn't say whether to drain the chicken or pour the chicken and the juice in with the pasta. So I did the second one.  The sauce was in no way thick, but I thought it was necessary for flavoring of the pasta.  I think I did the right thing!

To serve, I used a slotted spoon and put a generous amount of the chicken spaghetti on a plate and put just a very small amount of the "sauce" on top.  I served it with a salad and garlic bread.  This was a huge hit with everyone in the family!

Chris made the comment that the pasta would be great without the chicken and as a side to a nice juicy steak. (Yet again, baby steps)  We may have to give that a try.  I think to accomplish this, you would just make the sauce mixture and allow it to simmer until warm, then toss it in with your pasta.

I know that many of you make chicken spaghetti in a very different way. Most everyone I talked to asked if I was using Ro'tel in mine...I would love to try a recipe like that.

Please share your chicken spaghetti recipe with me.


The original recipe I used can be found here.