Amy Scott's Thoughts

I feel momentum after Monday night’s soup success. I thought I would share with you some of other projects from this week. As promised Tuesday night was cake pop night. I have officially decided that I don’t like making cake pops. These turned out just fine, but really the whole process is just a little too much for me. I would prefer to make cupcakes. I think once I get to the candy melt part cake pops lose their fun factor. It’s a slow process to dip them all and make sure all the excess drips off so it doesn’t run and make a mess. I did learn from my mistakes and made the cake pops about half the size of my last attempt. This made for less casualties and helped the candy melts go a lot farther. I took these cake pops to my class last night and they were a hit. The only problem is that I have a lot them left over and I know I don’t need to eat them myself. Oh temptation… I will say no. I hope!

Chocolate Cake Pops with Cream Cheese Frosting

Tonight I had the joy of making dinner again. Oh yeah, two homemade dinners in one week! I must be like Martha Stewart or something! Just kidding. I guess I made waffles on Tuesday, but that was from a mix, so we’ll call it semi-homemade. I’m trying to make my food and not just microwave it (or pour a bowl of cereal and call it dinner). The menu this evening was Sausage and Ricotta Stuffed Jumbo Shells. They were so tasty. I’ll be honest and admit that tonight was a team effort. My hubby cooked up the meat and we both stuffed the shells together. I’m not trying to prove myself so I was perfectly fine working side by side in the kitchen. Stuffed shells is something I’ve always wanted to try, but never have. Once again, Food Network Magazine was the inspiration. I didn’t follow their recipe, but they had stuffed shells featured in an article and the picture looked so good I had to get jumbo shells when I went grocery shopping. Totally worth it!

Yummy Stuffed Shells

I’m not sure what tomorrow holds. No cooking/baking plans yet. I’m thinking Saturday might be a cookie day. The great thing about trying new recipes this week is that I’m learning cooking isn’t impossible. I’m sure I will fail and succeed in the kitchen, but the more I try the more comfortable I will become with the whole cooking process. It’s not 1950, but there is something nice in my head about making dinner – at least once or twice a week. For the other days, there is cereal! :)

Bubble, Bubble!

If you guessed my hubby, Jeremy, you would be right about every other day off the week, but… NOT TODAY! Today I made soup for the first time – completely by myself! I’m pretty proud right now! You  have to realize that I have next to no cooking skills. Every year I tell myself that this is the year I’m going to start cooking dinner. I’m really good at Kraft Mac and Cheese and anything you empty from a box and put in the oven. However, to me that doesn’t really count.

I loved getting Food Network Magazine over the last year. It was a Christmas gift in 2011. This year I decide that I couldn’t live without it, so I subscribed for three more years. I know that three years is a long time, but it was the best deal for the price. I usually make one thing a month from the magazine and it’s usually the best looking dessert that catches my eye. While the key-lime cheesecake bars will probably be next, something else looked good too. Okay, a lot of things looked good. It was the cheese edition! How could it not? I stopped to ponder making their Apple-Cheddar Soup with Bacon. It sounded like a great flavor combination that reminded me of going out for fondue. This Friday, I made sure to add the ingredients to our shopping list.

Apple-Cheddar Soup with Bacon!

While the directions say it should take 40 minutes, it took me about an hour. I crisped up some bacon in the pot. I chopped up the onion, apples and potato. I stirred frequently to make sure that nothing burned. I added the liquid ingredients and then the cheese! This was my first time making soup, but it was also my first time using the stick blender. Very educational.

Normally when I cook, I feel like the food wins – not in a yummy tasty way, but in a it conquers me kind of way. I’m always stressed about does that look cooked all the way through, should it smell like that, should it look like that. I’m always second guessing myself. You should take that as a sign that I really care for those who are going to eat it. No food poisoning on my watch.  Surprisingly, everything went as plan and nothing caught me off guard. Hurray!

I sprinkled some bacon on the top of the bowl and took a thick slice of bread for dipping because to me bread and soup are made me to dipped together. It was tasty! Jeremy gave me his approval and so far we’re both still standing! Woo hoo! Success! For those of you who make soup from scratch all the time, don’t mock. This is a baby step in the right direction for me. I’m trying to discover other uses for my kitchen besides baking. But speaking of baking, I’ll be heading back into the kitchen to make a sheet cake later this evening. I’m going to attempt cake pops take two tomorrow night. I think I’ve learned from my mistakes so hopefully my second attempt will turn out better then the first. I learned the hard way in the cake pop world that size really does matter!

I find that baking reminds me that I am human. The kitchen seems to bring out my flaws like no other. I mentioned yesterday that I was going to experiment with cake pops today, but I guess you should have the whole story. It only seems fair. Tuesday night had the brilliant idea to make red velvet mini bundt cakes with cream cheese frosting glaze. I’ve used my mini bundt pan a couple of times with no incident so I didn’t expect what happened. Despite my best efforts, the red velvet cake mix wanted to stick to the pan. Once I was finish with this baking project, I decided that they weren’t fit for serving my girls on Wednesday night.

The reason I decided to make cake pops was I had saved the remains of the red velvet cake. It was in the perfect condition to be turned into a cake pops. Everything started off great today. I added my cream cheese frosting to the cake crumbles and it combined well. The next step is where my problem lies… I used too big of a baking scoop to form my cake balls. It’s so hard to judge in my hand if they were too big, but yes, they were. Probably two sizes too big. In the end I ended up making giant cake pops. This choice was no without its cake pop tragedy.  About 8 of them didn’t make it. They fell a part while dipping. The ones that did survive turned out well. I think that if I did it again, I would know what to do and what not to do. So yes, I will admit that these aren’t perfect… but neither am I! And that’s okay!

Giant Red Velvet Cake Pops