Baking With Unicorns

a baking adventure

That’s a Wrap!

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… and here we are. The year two thousand seventeen. SEVENTEEN!
I have fond memories of heading into Y2K. My parent’s basement was fully stocked with non-perishable supplies. Any zombie apocalypse buff would have been envious of the preparedness.
How are we 17 years beyond that moment in time?

Mind. Blown.

Last we met, it was towards the end of August I believe. We have all of September, October, November, and December to cover. Because EVERYONE is doing it, and I have been meaning to write a post for a while, let’s do a really short, end of this unicorn’s year photo montage.

September: My friend, Vitaly, and I completed our first century bike ride with BikeMS. Our longest ride during training was only about 70 miles, but we killed it! And it killed me. My legs were so sore!img_4217
I also went to a conference on Parkinson disease, in Portland OR to present some work. This is Parky the Racoon. The mascot of the conference (anyone else feel a little bit awkward about this?)img_2872

October: The dearest of flowers in my life, Rose, and I sent to Costa Rica for a much needed vacation filled with R&R…. except without much of the first R. We went adventuring!img_2922
Waterfall jumping.img_2944
Parasailing.img_2990
Rafting.img_2926
Hiking.img_2908img_2978

And of course, pampering.img_2989
I also completed a Spartan Beast in Seattle.img_3077

November: Another race in Boston. This was in Fenway stadium.img_3169
And completed my trifecta of Spartan races for the year. Bam!!img_3366

December: I got a bed! An actual, honest to god, queen sized bed! (i.e. I have a guest room! Come visit!)img_3256img_3264
To top it all off, I completed part II of the qualifying exam for my PhD program. WOOT!img_3341

And done.
That’s my fast and furious update. Skipped a few things, left out a few parts. But that’s the gist. All in all, it’s been a fantastic end of the year. And I’m looking forward to this next year. Despite what happens in national and international politics, this unicorn will be doing his best to continue to bake, race, have fun, and spread as much glitter and rainbows as unicornly possible.img_3356

Let’s start this year’s baking off with a recipe that is simple, easy, and delicious. I first encountered these delights when in NYC. My roommate at the time liked to make them. Then I made them over the holidays and loved them. And now that I’m home, I thought I would make them again with a few modifications. Enjoy!

Skillet Biscuits
Inspired by this

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 stick butter
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1-2 sprigs rosemary
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup water

img_33571. Preheat oven to 425 degrees and butter cast iron skillet. Don’t have a cast iron skillet? Neither do I. So I just used an 8×8 Pyrex. Seems to have done the trick. Butter everywhere!

2. Place all dry ingredients, rosemary, and butter (cut into 8ths) into a food processor and chop till butter has been minced and no large chunks remain. Then place this mixture into a medium sized bowl. img_3359

3. Add heavy cream and water and stir ingredients together. I find the dough to be sticky but crumbly. Once it feels like the stirring is doing nothing useful, scrape off spoon, wash your hands, dry your hands, then use your hands to mix the dough into a ball. (why heavy cream and water? cuz I was out of milk)

4. Divide dough ball into halves. Then quarter each half. Place the 8 pieces in the pan, however your lil heart desires. Once satisfied with your artistic arrangement, place the skillet/dish in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. I like the tops to be golden brown-ish.

5. Serve these little biscuits with more butter (cuz why not?) and perhaps some preserves or whatever else you enjoy with your buttery carbs.

Happy Eating! And Happy 2017!img_3364img_3361

TURTLE! nom nom

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Bonjour!
Happy end of August! I don’t know about where you’re at, but apparently the end of August in St Louis is just a scorching, humid mess of a time…. so pretty much like the rest of the summer here. Granted, I cannot hate on the weather too much. I have been hard at work, training in this weather for various races, and I think that training in this weather has prepared me well. I ran in a Spartan Super (8 miles, 25 obstacles) in mid August in the Boston area. Local racers were complaining about the heat, but I felt like it was a beautiful day with little humidity. The race felt like a walk in a park… a walk that had alot of mud, heavy lifting, climbing, and fire, but a walk none the less. This race was SO much fun that I have since signed up for 2 more races, one in Seattle and another in Boston. If I successfully complete those two races, I have the Trifeca- 3 Spartan races, 1 year, 1 of each level (Sprint, Super, and Beast). Here’s hoping I don’t die (and if anyone wants to join me, all you have to do is ask!). My victory pose:IMG_2798

But since it is the end of August, it also means classes have started back up. Thankfully, I’m not really taking any classes. But I will be TA-ing for a neuroscience course. Poor kids. They have no idea how unhelpful I am likely to be with all their questions about action potentials, neuroanatomy, and reflexes. But I’ll do my best, and perhaps just bake them conciliatory cookies for after their exams.IMG_2817

The end of August also means that alot of people in my life have birthdays. Like, and oddly disproportionate amount. Surprisingly, I have managed to not bake at all for any of the birthdays that I have attended, however my friend asked me to help her bake for her friend’s birthday. Clearly, I had no choice but to oblige her. Any excuse to bake!! Plus, I had just been on Pintrest and seen a recipe for a Turtle Cheesecake. Now, I’m not much for Turtle anything, unless it’s the lil reptile sauntering around the dessert or careening through the sea, but it sounded interesting and the Pinterest post made it look pretty (I’m a sucker for shiny things).

I forwarded to recipe to Reshma (the friend in need), having not looked at it at all. She wrote backing asking if she needed to get all the stuff, and at first I thought “F^!@, did I send a really hard recipe?” Luckily, it’s not too difficult of a recipe, and doesn’t actually require you to do too much to make it a “Turtle” cheesecake. Just buy some sauce and some nuts and BAM! insta-turtle! So, the following is the recipe, and how it all went down. All photos of food are courtesy of Miss Reshma herself (and all alcohol imbibed during the baking is courtesy of Mr. Vitaly, Reshma’s manfriend and my teammate for an upcoming Bike MS 100 mile ride)

TURTLE TURTLE TURTLE CHEESECAKE!IMG_2819
graciously snatched from here!

Ingredients:
CRUST
1 1/2 packages of graham crackers (We used regular)
1/3 cup melted butter

FILLING
24oz  cream cheese (room temp)
14oz (1 can) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
Juice from 1 lemon
1 tbsp vanilla
6oz chocolate chipsIMG_2822

TOPPING
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping
1/2 cup hot fudge ice cream topping
1/4 cup chopped pecans

  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees and prepare your cheesecake pan (9″ spring form pan is what we used). By “prepare” I mean maybe throw down some parchment paper like we did so that it was easier to slide out of the pan when done.
  2. Crush, mangle and crumble the graham crackers into a semi-fine powder. We had some chunks in ours still. This probably can be done in a food processor, but it’s messier if you do it by hand. Then add in the melted butter and stir it all around. Press the crumbled crackers into the prepared pan, forming the base as well as the wall, ~ 1 1/2 inches up the sides. I think ours was ~ 1/4 inch thick. Once done, place the crust in the IMG_2833fridge to let it cool down and solidify a bit.
  3. Stir cream cheese with condensed milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Try to make it as smooth and creamy as possible. We had a few tiny chunks (pea sized?) in our batter. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Then add in the lemon juice and stir some more!
  4. Melt the chocolate chips (we used milk chocolate, but I would suggest dark or semisweet in the future). Remove 1 cup of the cream cheese batter and add to the melted chocolate (removed from heat). Stir, stir, stir.
  5. Take your cooled crust out of the fridge. Pour about 1/2 the remaining cream cheese batter into the crust. Then add the chocolate batter. Gently, without tearing up the crust underneath, swirl the two batters together (this isn’t necessary, and let’s be IMG_2829honest, no one is looking at the swirl pattern when their stuffing their faces with cheesecake). Then add on the rest of the cream cheese batter. I admit, for this step, we cut it pretty damn close. Our crust was barely high enough to contain the batter.
  6. Gently place the pan into your preheated oven and bake for 75-90 minutes. We took about 93 minutes. Because we were still enjoying Vitaly’s beverages, once the cake was finished, we turned the oven off, but left the cake in the oven to cook a lil bit more.
  7. Next, Reshma took the cake home because it was for the next day and I have no idea what she did with it after, but here’s what I suspect happened:
    Place cake in fridge until you’re ready to serve. Take it out. Drizzle chocolate sauce on the cake. Drizzle caramel sauce on the cake. Sprinkle chocolate chips and pecans on cake. Take cake to party, remove from pan. Let birthday boy eat a large portion and share the rest with everyone else at the party. WOOT!IMG_2835

P.S. MUSIC! How could I forget until the end to add in my musical joys of the current moment? Near epic fail on my part. But here’s what I’m jamming to these days;

Hold Each Other- by A Great Big World
Adorable! ugh!

Bombshell- by Ashley Monroe
I love her voice. Love it. And I like the video interpretation.

Simple and Sweet

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Alright, let’s get this post started.
First, it’s been a whirlwind of a semester at school. So much work! But also so much learning! From hierarchical linear modeling to fun new yoga poses, it’s been a lovely couple of months. So lovely that I haven’t been baking much (except for celebratory brownies now and then). With summer here, maybe that will change. *fingers crossed!*

While my baking may not have been advancing forward, my YouTube lists have been ever growing. It’s a constant search for music that I can play in yoga classes or boot camps. Current top picks:

Breath and Sound by Tom Goss

Hurts (Remix) By Mika

Also, to quickly respond to an email from my dad, I think I’m managing to clock enough time “Outside Upside Down”:
IMG_2516
I was helping my friend set up for her new yoga studio (CONGRATULATIONS JAMIE!!). The rug you see was a goodwill find, and, while clean, needed some stain cover up. What better way than with blue paint? After tackling that job, clearly we needed a brief photo session.

Okay, now for the baking. This pie comes from the need to bake up some kind of delight that is easy and can be made with simple ingredients. We were having a going away party for some people in my lab, so our lab meeting was turned into a potluck lunch. I clearly signed up to bake a dessert, but come Sunday morning, I realized I had no idea what I was going to bake and had little time to figure it out, so with some googling around the interwebs, I found this super simple recipe that sounded pretty good. I sent the recipe to my friend Liz. She’s a self professed lover of pie, and so I trusted her opinion. She said she wanted to eat it all now, so I took that as a good sign. Now, without further adieu, here’s the recipe:

IMG_2499Sugar Milk Pie
Idea comes from this!

Pie Crust:
1/2 cup chilled butter
1 1/2 cup flour
Small handful of sugar
2 Tbsp chilled Grand Marnier
4-5 Tbsp ice water

IMG_2500Filling:
2 cup heavy whipping cream
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

IMG_2503The Crust:

  1. Chop butter into small cubes. Then add in flour and sugar. Taking your handy dandy fork in hand, begin to press the butter through the tines of the fork, effectively using it as a pastry cutter (I’ve actually never managed to get a pastry cutter to work properly). Keep forking away at the butter/flour combo until you achieve a course grain (about 5 minutes).IMG_2506
  2. Add in the Grand Marnier and 3-4 tbsp of ice water. Mix around with the fork. Maybe add some more water. I find that about half of the “dough” comes together because of the liquids. Then I use my hands to mush the rest of the crumbs into the dough ball. If you add too much liquid, the crust wont be flaky and tends to be rude to work with.
  3. Once you have a ball of dough, wrap it in plastic and chill in fridge for an hour… or in my case, as long as it takes to go get some heavy whipping cream, have and awkward conversation with your doorman about strip clubs, and eat some cheese and crackers.

IMG_2508The Filling:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  2. Super simple: Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl with a whisk!
    Next time I make this, I may try to add in a bit more flour to thicken it a bit more. Perhaps a half cup in total…

Put it Together:IMG_2514

  1. Roll out your pie crust on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness. I tend to do a couple rolls, shift the dough around a bit, reflour everything, and roll some more. Helps ensure the dough doesn’t stick to the counter. I used a 9″ pie pan.
  2. Transfer the dough to your pie pan. Remove any extra crust around the edges
  3. Pour the filling into the pie pan and carefully transfer to the oven.
  4. Now, the original recipe called for a 40-45 minute bake time. I did not do this… I baked it about about 65-70 minutes. I was just waiting for a toothpick to come out relatively clean once I pierced the filling (at 40 minutes, it was still liquid). So… go with you instinct. Once it cools down, the filling will gel up.
  5. Once it’s out the oven, I chilled it overnight and then served it to my lab at lunch the next day. It was gone within an hour!
    (yes, we’re a super classy lab with  plastic knives for cutting and red plates for serving)IMG_2513

Happy Autumn

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Happy Autumn, Everyone!!!

It’s my favorite time of year. Leaves are changing to beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges, and the temperature sits at a comfortable hoodie level. I also love the sound of leaves crunching under my boots as I make my way to school. And biking is perfect because you don’t show up at your destination looking like a sweaty mess (not that that has ever stopped me).

This autumn has been filled with classes, brains, and yoga. I’m actually enjoying my classes for the most part. Turns out when you kinda understand what’s going on, the material isn’t so bad. Who knew? The brains are coming along, one voxel at a time. And the yoga is great right now. I’m having a blast leading my boot camp at the yoga studio, and then teaching a heated vinyasa class as well as a slow flow class. All the students are so much fun. Even though they glare at me as I make them hold a plank for balance on one leg for too long, I know they are glaring with love. *gulp*
All this teaching also means I’m constantly surfing around for new music. My latest find is this:

What can I say? I’m a sucker for some Kelly Clarkson. And I’m a sucker for a duet. The song has a single verse that gets repeated the entire song, but it’s catchy and I find myself rocking out to it far more than I would like to admit… (maybe it’s playing right now… maybe…)IMG_2027

Quickly back to yoga: I taught my boot camp on Halloween, so clearly I needed to dress up. Sadly, I’m fresh out of drill sergeant costumes, but I did have my “sexy cop” outfit from my Jeerleading days. So pulled that out of the closet and had some fun getting my students ready for the zombie apocalypse by having them do many burpees and lunge kicks. (if you can’t tell, I’m posing with Jane Fonda). Needless to say, my students were ready to take on the hoards of creatures roaming St Louis streets last night. (and yes, I was one of the creatures roaming around the central west end… guess what I was!)

IMG_2033Autumn also means delicious comfort foods like pumpkin pie, warm apple cider, and roasted root veggies. Delicious! But, this post’s recipe has none of those. Nope. This recipe was chosen because of a memory of when I baked mini cupcakes for my brother’s Latin class during their midterm exam. IMG_2037Sadly, I have NO idea what I baked for that class. I just have a vague memory of it being spicy and may have had carrots or apples in the mix… Anyway, I wanted to try to make a spice cupcake again, so I did! And because pinterest has been showing me lots of caramel frosting recipes, clearly the spice cupcake needed caramel frosting. I didn’t know how the combo would work out, but I think it turned out pretty deliciously. At least, people said they were good. Then again, they may have been biased cuz they know me and I was standing right there when they ate it… whatever!

Autumn Spice Cupcake with Caramel Frosting
cupcake recipe from this
frosting recipe from this

Cupcake Ingredients:IMG_2019
1/4 cup of butter (half a stick)
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cup of flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt (or two)
1/2 cup of milk
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon fresh ginger (grated)
2 teaspoon vanilla

Frosting Ingredients:IMG_2023
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
~2 cups powdered sugar

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a 12 cup cupcake pan with cupcake papers or whatever you like to use for your cupcakes.
  2. Combine sugar and butter in a bowl and mix until it resembles course crumbs. Then add in the two eggs and beat to your hearts delight.IMG_2028
  3. In a separate small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and dry spices. Then add half of the flour mixture to butter mixture. Add in fresh ginger, vanilla, and milk. Combine loosely and then add in rest of the flour mixture. Stir until completely mixed together.
  4. Divide batter into prepared cupcake pan and bake for 16 minutes (or until toothpick comes out clean). Let cool while you prepare the frosting.IMG_2029
  5. For the frosting, melt butter in saucepan. Add in brown sugar and bring to a soft boil, stirring constantly to prevent burning. Then add in the milk and bring back to soft boil for ~2 minutes, still stirring constantly. The sauce should still be fairly runny. Let cool for 30 minutes.
  6. Once butter/brown sugar has cooled, add in 1 cup of confectioner sugar and combine completely. Then add in some more until desired frosting consistency is achieved. I did a total of 2 cups, but wish I had only done 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 cups. My frosting, as you can see, was rather thick and crumbly. Still tasty but more of a fudge in the end.
  7. Frost those cupcakes with as much frosting as you want! I had extra that’s currently in my fridge still…. not sure what I’ll be doing with it…
  8. EATALLOFTHEMBEFOREANYONEELSECAN!IMG_2031