The Last Suppers

Although Saint Patrick’s Day is often deemed one of the most fun holidays of a college student’s career, I didn’t get the chance to celebrate it last year! I’m sure you’re wondering how that’s possible since I come across as so fun and exciting. Let me explain: last year I had to fly out early (like 5AM early) the following morning to interview for the company which turned out to be the one I interned for and subsequently accepted a full-time position with. Some of my friends tried to convince that it made more sense to just stay out all night and sleep it off on the plane. Based on how important that morning turned out to be, I’m pretty glad I didn’t heed their advice.

To make up for last year, and to celebrate the fact that I can now legally participate fully in this holiday that really doesn’t even pretend to stand for anything other than partying (perhaps also gold and the color green?), I wanted to do something special. I somehow stumbled upon these and thought they were the perfect St. Patty’s day treat! I was so excited in fact, that I even made a special trip to the supermarket to ensure I had the appropriate ingredients, since as we’ve learned recipes aren’t really suggestions as much as explicit instructions. I was pretty proud of myself – I even splurged the extra 62 cents to buy baking soda instead of trying to substitute with some proportion of baking powder as I’d done in previous baking endeavors. Of course, I would be lying if I said I followed the recipe exactly – I was perusing the baking aisle for what felt like forever in search of bittersweet chocolate. I found some Godiva bars but they were really expensive and I couldn’t figure out how I’d chop them up. After googling it (thank heavens for smartphones!) I came to the conclusion that I’d be fine with using some semisweet, and so – for under $20! – I was ready to make some St. Patty’s Day magic!

Can you say health nut?

It was a pretty ambitious endeavor since I needed to make the cupcake batter, the filling, and the frosting. I decided that since the filling needed to cool, I would start with that. I started heating up the cream and got the chocolate ready in another bowl. I simultaneously started mixing together the dry components of the cupcake batter because I’m all about efficiency. Once the cream heated up I combined it with the chocolate and then added in the other components, making sure to test the Bailey’s before adding it in (just to make sure it was still good of course!) Once it was a smooth consistency I put it in the fridge to cool down and set a timer for ten minutes so I would remember to stir it.

I almost just started eating it right out of the bowl, but I somehow maintained self control. You're welcome to those of you who tried them.

While my filling was cooling it seemed appropriate to start working on its surroundings so I popped open my bottle of Guinness and got started. I had opted to buy one big bottle rather than a six pack of little bottles – this gave me the opportunity to casually enjoy the rest of it after I poured the one cup required to make the cupcakes out. It really made the whole experience more pleasant. As per usual, I proved that I am > an electric mixer as I was able to create the smooth consistency that the recipe called for without the aid of one. (We had an electric mixer last year but it literally starting smoking while we were trying to make frosting one time so I’ve been a little wary of them ever since.) After doing a terrible job of evenly distributing the batter (I was a little overeager at first and so they got progressively smaller as I went on), I popped them in the oven and felt accomplished…until I realized that when since I was baking something not out of a box that I actually still had a lot more left to do.

I filled the first tray so high that I was only able to fill half of the second tray. With Robyn's help I did some readjusting which just made a big mess and incredibly uneven sizes...worth it.

Ever ambitious, I took the 17 minutes I had while the giant cupcakes baked to try to make some frosting. (It actually ended up taking 22 minutes to bake the first tray – I overfilled the little cupcake holders by 5 whole minutes! I’m not sure how minutes translate to batter per cup but I feel as though I was pretty off. Oops.) The frosting is sadly, where I hit my first snag. The recipe recommended that I combine the sugar and butter with the butter at room temperature using my electric mixer. I cut up the butter and put it in the microwave for a few seconds and tried to do my best mixer impression to no avail. As I got more and more desperate the powdered sugar seemed to keep jumping out of the bowl and landing everywhere. I decided to try to melt the butter a little more even though (1) the bowl it was all in was not microwaveable and (2) I feel like microwaving sugar is weird. Sadly, taking these risks did me no good (although I didn’t end up with any melted bowls so I guess things could have been worse). I was starting to get pretty bummed when I decided I should just go ahead and add the Bailey’s even though the recipe told me to wait. It turned out the frosting just needed a little liquid to hold it all together! After putting nearly all my muscle into it (it was, after all, my workout for the day) I ended up mixing everything together into something that could likely pass as frosting.

A little thick but still delicious.

By this time the cupcakes were out, cooled, and ready to be filled! Obviously I didn’t have any sort of device for filling them, so I turned back to the website I got the recipe from and employed Annie’s clever tactics for how to fill cupcakes when you don’t have all the fancy tools. I used a paring knife to cut a cylinder out of each cupcake, spooned a bit of pudding in the whole, chopped off the top of the cylinder, placed it back on top and ate the bite-sized remainder!

Just workin' that paring knife like the pro that I am.

Sneaky filling!

You can hardly even tell they've been tampered with!

I successfully filled and frosted all of my cupcakes. I had tried each other the individual components (obviously) but the ultimate test still needed to be done – how would they taste all together?! Luckily, we had a couple of friends over after dinner but before the event where the cupcakes were making their debut. We all agreed that they were fantastic. I was so impressed with myself – probably unnecessarily so. They ended up taking me about 3 and half hours but their deliciousness definitely made it worth it.

It almost looks too good to be true, right?

...And you thought the last picture looked good! Just check out that filling!

Why not just go for real Irish car bombs?

1. These are super tasty.
2. You can eat them at your leisure – no fear of them curdling.
3. You get to drink the leftovers.
4. Chocolate.
5. It’s a three and a half hour break from whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing (i.e. writing blog posts)
6. As we’ve seen throughout the semester, food brings people together!

My roommate and I fashion ourselves domestic. We make nearly all of our meals at home (granted, most of them are frozen), and I am consistently proud of how good they taste. (I’ve been know to exclaim “We are so good at dinner!” midway through every meal we have.) Baking, however, is my true “expertise.” I’ve been the go-to dessert maker for holidays and family gatherings since I could remember. I’ve made everything from brownies, cookies, cakes, and fudge, to more complicated things like banana and pumpkin breads, and the delicious “Death by Chocolate.”

Sorry for enticing you with this picture since I'm not actually going to tell you how to make it.

Now that your mouths are watering and I’ve hopefully earned your trust as a baker – I can send you some recommendations from various family members that will only be slightly biased in my favor if you still need convincing – I assume you will find yourselves as shocked as I did when Lindsay and I had several recent baking attempts go terribly awry! You might be wondering “how could this have possibly happened?” It all started one ambitious afternoon…

Several months ago, for my birthday, my mom had bought a book titled “One Dough, 100 Cookies,” the implication being either that it would be easier and cheaper for me to have the same basic ingredients lying around while still allowing me variety, or that I’m not competent enough to maneuver my way around too many different recipes. Either way, Lindsay and I immediately picked out the cookie we wanted to bake, and then got right to baking it…four months later. I happened to be looking for a way to put off doing work. Living in an apartment complete with a kitchen offers one many opportunities to do so, and I try my best to take full advantage. We went for the cookies that had Nutella in them, because when one has an excuse to purchase Nutella, one does not pass it up. Unfortunately, I forgot the vanilla. I had also halved the sugar and used oil in lieu of butter – a technique my aunt often employs. She’s relatively new to the baking world (she has nothing on my 21 years of experience) but she is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to cookies, so I rarely hesitate to take her advice, especially when it comes to making cookies healthier without sacrificing any noticeable amount of taste. All of these modifications combined however, led to a somewhat bitter cookie. Luckily, we were able to compensate by adding unreasonable amounts of Nutella to each cookie, but we were pretty disappointed with our overall performance. Back to the drawing board, as they say.

Cut to several weeks later – we had recovered from our initial failure and were hungry enough to try again. We had some chocolate chips and M&Ms lying around and decided it was time to prove we could come out of the kitchen victorious. We went back to our handy, dandy book, and decided to keep things simple. We would just make the basic dough, add M&Ms and Chocolate chips, and voila – something delicious would happen. Learning from past mistakes, I added the vanilla straight away. I was pretty sure that my aunt’s advice was still valid though, so I again tried to make the cookies a bit healthier. (We are, after all, going on a cruise for spring break which is right around the corner.) My favorite part of baking is testing the dough out before putting it in the oven. It is 100% worth the risk of salmonella. I got myself excited, took a bite, and had to double check that I hadn’t just accidentally scooped directly from our bag of flour instead of the mixing bowl. They were terrible and not sweet at all. Maybe, we reasoned, it does need all of the sugar and we added another ¾ of a cup. Still gross. Okay, maybe the consistency’s wrong. We added some butter. I guess a little more couldn’t hurt…We ended up adding more butter and sugar than the original recipe required – making the cookies even unhealthier than intended – before we realized that this “basic cookie recipe” was no sugar cookie recipe, as we had expected. It tasted a bit off because (aside from the fact that the proportions were now terribly unbalanced) they were a shortbread-ish recipe, and not intended to be made without the additional ingredients required for any of the 100 cookie varieties. We half-heartedly baked part of the dough, and begrudgingly ate it over the course of the next few days, because we’re good sports like that, but we were ready to retire “One dough, 100 Cookies,” at least for a little while.

100 cookies? More like 100 heartbreaks.

Next time we wanted to bake, we didn’t trust ourselves to our own devices and bought pre-made dough. It’s not even possible to screw this up, right? Wrong. We decided to slice the dough instead of roll it into balls because we didn’t want to get our hands all greasy, and only had a few minutes before Jeopardy! started. We ended up with cookie slivers. They were impossibly thin, although definitely the most delicious cookie we’d made to date. (Sad, but true.)

We had just about given up when Sunday night came along. We wanted dessert but were unable to go out and buy something because it was cold and snowy outside, and as you might imagine, the stinkin’ Lincoln is not a big fan of snow. Lindsay tentatively suggested we make cookies. Dare we? I wondered, but then I thought of how much I would love a delicious cookie and knew that we must. We found the recipe on the side of our bag of Target brand (Market Pantry) sugar. Double Chocolate Chip.

Target: once again solving all of my life's toughest problems.

We meticulously measured, poured, and mixed, following the recipe to the T. Halving the sugar and cutting out the butter were no longer an option – I was willing to sacrifice health for perfection. We didn’t have an electric mixer – would we make it?! I mixed and mixed with all of my might, and Lindsay put in a few good stirs as well.

Electric mixers have got nothin' on me.

I tried the dough and could hardly stop myself from diving in again; this was what baking should feel like. We preheated the oven and were ready to ball up our cookies and put them in. We went to scoop them out of the bowl and…what? They had a consistency like frosting – they got all over our hands and were too sticky to be rolled into balls. WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO OFFEND YOU BAKING GODS? Luckily, I knew that if this delicious goo failed to cook, I would definitely eat it out of the bowl over the course of the next several days, but we decided to try to cook them anyway. I used what I thought was an innovative spooning method and eventually filled a cookie tray with ball-like blobs.

Questionable.

And then, suddenly, was the moment of truth. We paced the kitchen in trepidation for the length of the grueling cook time. We pulled them out and were surprised to find they had formed into somewhat round-shaped cookies!!!

Mmm, they look like cookies!

Since we know that looks aren’t everything, it was time for the taste test. Ooey, gooey, and delicious. Thank you, Target, for enabling me to feel like a winner again – it just goes to show you, just because the third try’s not the charm doesn’t mean the fourth one won’t be.

Don't you want a bite?

What have we learned? Baking is more of a science and less of an art than I had previously hoped.