A little bit twisted...

Well, Gertrude officially decided to punish me for my lack of attentiveness to her and this blog lately.  Other than using Gertrude to make roasted sweet potatoes (aka. the staple of my diet), I have had very little time to do anything except for running and studying for the last few weeks.... Luckily, I am FINALLY on spring break. And that means Gertrude and I are reunited.

On Sunday night I wanted to make something, but I didn't really feel like going to the store because I had just gone a few hours earlier and spent wayyyyy too much money.  Whenever I don't feel like going to the store to buy ingredients for a new recipe, I end up making some sort of bread product.  I didn't feel like making just bread though, so I settled on soft pretzels!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mall-Pretzels/Detail.aspx

I loosely followed the above recipe with a few modifications:

1)I tried to make them healthy, so I substituted whole wheat flour for all-purpose flour
2) I accidentally put 2 cups of water into the dough (instead of 1.5).  The 2 cups of water was for the part when you dip the pretzels in baking soda with water! woops.... Didn't really seem to matter though.
3) I used my bread machine on the dough cycle because I accepted my inability to make dough.

Unfortunately, Gertrude decided NOT to cooperate.  Because the pretzels are fairly large, I had to do two batches.  I was very unhappy to see that the bottoms of the entire first batch were black... great, thanks Gertrude.  I also did not have any parchment paper, so that could have been part of the problem (I guess I shouldn't blame it allllll on Getrude).  Anyways, I took the burnt ones out and put the new batch in.  As I was waiting for the second batch to cook, I decided to try and scape off the black bottoms of the first batch because I thought the pretzels were salvageable.   I was surprisingly successful at this scraping effort, and as I was sitting there all pleased with my ability to save the pretzels, I realized I had forgotten about the batch in the oven.... big mistake.  Those ones were all black on the bottom and I pretty much gave up on trying to save them.

So, I ended up covering my six salvaged pretzels with melted butter with cinnamon sugar.... I put a fairly generous amount on to make up for the fact they may still taste a bit burnt.  Luckily they were pretty good...

Cake Cake Cake Cake Cake...

            It has been a long while since I blogged last.  While I would rather bake all day than study DNA replication or biochemical pathways,  in my life as a student-athlete, the word student comes first.... followed very closely by athlete.  Baker is sadly little bit behind (though I would love to call myself an athlete-baker-student).  Anyways, it took my lovely roommate's 21st birthday to break my baking drought. 

           Whenever I make a birthday cake, I do my very best to personalize the cake for the specific person. The recipient in this case  is a wonderful girl who loves to wear..... flannel! The idea of a flannel themed cake seems like a challenge I was willing to take on, especially with the help of my trusty sidekick (check out her blog at http://craftcoma.wordpress.com/).  Equipped with my new "Dessert decorator plus" (sounds legit, right?), I was ready go. 

          I had a bit of a busy weekend, so I was a bit lazy and used a boxed cake mix.  However, to make myself feel better for my lack of creativity, I decided to add some extra stuff to the cake to make it better.    I followed this recipe to a Tee and put the batter in two 9 inch pans: http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dessert/the-best-chocolate-cake.html.  Note the name of the recipe is "THE BEST chocolate cake".  It means it.  Seriously, the cake was amazing.  It turned out absolutely perfect.  I have found that spring-form pans also work wonders for turning out perfectly shaped cakes that do not require surgury afterwards. 

         For the frosting, I just used (cough* cough* doubled) the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gale-gand/quick-vanilla-buttercream-frosting-recipe/index.html.  I used half and half instead of heavy cream.... you know, a low fat version :)..... NOT.  The decoration of the cake was the fun part.  As I wandered the mystical candy aisle at the grocery store, I was inspired by licorice.  I hadn't quite put it together in my head yet, but I knew I was getting somewhere and decided to make the purchase.   I was not quite sure about my roommate's stance on black licorice, so I deciced that the twizzlers would play the starring role in the cake.  After some serious help from Ms. Craft Coma, we created the masterpiece: 

 The twizzlers made the cake a bit hard to cut, but it was worth it.  What is the eagle, you may ask?? Don't worry about it. Until next time!!