Quick but Delicious Pizzas

As I've said before, due to my mother's upbringing, I am a strict believer in making everything from scratch. (Except brownies, I still think good boxed brownies and scratch brownies taste virtually the same)

However, I also know that everyone is busy, including me, and making everything from scratch just does not work for every day living. There are days when you come home from work and have an hour to make something eat and leave the house again. Those days require something quick.  For those days, I usually turn to Trader Joe's which thankfully is near me. They have great stuff. I love them. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, though I'm very sorry for you, you can get the ingredients for this meal at the grocery store or a local farmer's market.

For a quick but tasty meal, I sometimes will make pizza with Trader Joe's (or the grocery store's) pre-made dough.

First, I roll out the dough onto my oiled pizza pan. Then I brush the dough with a mixture of 2 crushed garlic cloves and about 3 tbsp of olive oil. Then I'll coat the pizza with whatever "sauce" I want.
Either homemade pizza sauce:

(to make sauce, empty a can of crushed tomatoes into a sauce pan with some crushed garlic, a little cayenne pepper, a touch of olive oil, some basil (fresh or dried), a dash of salt and pepper and about two tsp of sugar. Simmer until it's thickened, about 15 minutes.)


Then coat the pizza with shredded mozzarella and Parmesan and possibly a little pepperoni or crumbled cooked sausage or cooked onions or chopped, cooked pancetta for a little bacon flavor...

OR


I'll spread about a cup of ricotta cheese all over the pizza after the garlic olive oil and then either dot the pizza with broccoli florets and cover with mozzarella or cover the pizza with slices of tomatoes and then mozzarella or my newest favorite is mozzarella and Parmesan with slices of roasted red peppers and onions.

Cook the pizza for about 20 minutes at 350. Another thing I'll do sometimes right after the pizza comes out of the oven is to sprinkle it with a little fresh arugula and some hot sauce and then slice it.

So good...and so fast...and super easy.

Cannoli Cupcakes

Last month, I made a cake and cupcake tower for a friend's bridal shower. The detailed post of the cake is here. I was asked to make 48 cupcakes, half would be my standard chocolate recipe (here) and the other half would be cannoli cupcakes. I've never made cannoli cupcakes, I've never even made cannolis so I was a little nervous. I mean, I love a good cannoli but cannoli cream on top of a cupcake? I just didn't know if that would work or be appetizing if it did.  I was very very wrong.

The internet is full of cannoli cupcake recipes. So apparently, this is a flavor of cupcake that the rest of the world is familiar with and that I inexplicably totally missed. After much research, I decided that there wasn't a recipe that I loved from start to finish so I adapted a bunch and made my own.

I liked the idea of having the cannoli cream as filling for the cupcake instead of as icing. I just couldn't see a dollop of cannoli cream sitting sweetly on top of a cupcake without moving. And with the richness of the cream on the inside, I thought that simple, fresh, ordinary, slightly-sweetened whipped cream would be the best icing.

For the cake, I adapted my favorite white cake from King Arthur Flour. Here it goes:

Cake:
2 cups sugar
3 1/4 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cups milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a stand mixer, combine sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add butter and beat at low speed until the mixture looks sandy.  Add milk and vanilla. Mix for about a minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl after to make sure it’s all incorporated.

Add eggs one at a time with the mixer running on low speed. Continue scraping down the sides of the bowl too.

After last egg, add mini chocolate chips and beat for about 30 seconds.

Fill each cupcake liner with 1/4 cup batter and bake for 20 - 25 minutes.

When cupcakes have completely cooled, hollow out the center. I used this nifty little $3 tool from Bed Bath and beyond

but it can be done with a spoon too. Fill each cupcake with Cannoli Cream (recipe below)

Cannoli Cream:

16 oz tub of Ricotta
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 mini chocolate chips








Top each cupcake with whipped cream so that the hole is covered.

Whipped Cream

1 pint heavy cream
3 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Sprinkle each cupcake with mini chocolate chips.

If you are going to eat these within a couple of hours, keep them in a container in a cooled place. If any longer, I recommend refrigeration.

Bridal Shower Cake: Autumn Tree and Cupcakes

Sorry it's been so long. I haven't been idle but I've gotten myself very into crafting lately and have let it completely take over my free time.

Prior to my latest crafting obsession, I was asked to make a cake for a friend's bridal shower. The hostesses of said shower wanted an autumn leafy theme and decided that they wanted a small round cake with cupcakes underneath. Totally do-able. Then they told me the rest. They wanted me to build a tree to sit on top of the cake with a few leaves attached to it and then have leaves all over the cupcakes as if they had fallen off the tree and landed on the cupcakes.

I read somewhere that you should never say you can't do something. Say yes, accept the job and then figure out how to do it later. I don't know if this is an acceptable motto if one wants to live a stress-free life but I followed the advice anyhow.

For the tree, I decided that cereal treats and fondant would probably be the best but it needed something to make it sturdy. So I took a small dowel and wrapped it in wire to make each branch off of the tree and the roots at the bottom. Then I wrapped the whole thing in copious amounts of aluminum foil and made sure that it stood up on its own.

About a month before the shower, I made a trial tree. It took me a few hours from start to finish but basically went without a hitch. Therefore, I concluded that everything would go swimmingly. 

The day before the shower, I packed up all my baking stuff and headed to Mama's for the use of the huge kitchen. First I made all the cupcakes; 24 chocolate (recipe here) and 24 cannoli cream (recipe to come in following post) and then the cake. That was completed quickly enough and without any issues. On to the tree...

Unfortunately, the tree refused to cooperate. This time the cereal treats would not stick to the foil no matter what I did. The stupid tree was made and re-made at least four times and I was very close to angrily throwing the entire thing into my mother's pond. Here it should be noted that my mother should get a medal for most problem-solving patient mother. Without her, that tree would have been in the pond.

Her idea was to wrap the tree in paper towel which we sealed with melted chocolate and corn syrup and then wrap it with the cereal treats. The cereal treats stuck to the paper towel and then we wrapped the whole thing in fondant. Appetizing it is not but it worked! **insert deep sigh of relief**

When the tree was finally finished, we placed it carefully on a plate, wrapped it in plastic wrap and packed it very carefully in a large plastic bin surrounded by crumpled newspaper. With the bin and six containers of unfrosted cupcakes, I headed to the site of the shower. Fortunately, I was able to leave all the cake and assembly necessities at the shower site the night before.

The day of the shower, I assembled the whole cake tower. Tree placed on top of cake ... hold breath while letting go... and, blessed relief, it stayed standing!! Then onto the decorating, which is the most fun part of anything. Some frosting grass and flowers added to it made it really feel like a tree in a meadow.

Oh, I forgot, I also discovered the joys of working with gum paste. Gum paste is like edible clay. It is so much fun to work with. Using gum paste, tinted with food colouring, I made autumn leaves, flowers and two little lovebirds in a nest for the top of the tree.

The quarter is for size comparison. It did not go on the cake.

Nesting birdies

And Voila!

I am very glad that I said yes to this project and that my friends gave me such a challenge. Without their challenging me, I don't know if I would have ever thought of doing this. Thanks to them... and Mama of course.

* I have to just say that the tree was supposed to have six branches, three major branches and three small ones off of the major ones. I forgot to add the three small branches and I cannot tell you how irritating that is to me every time I look at a picture of the tree. Just for me, so I can sleep at night, try to imagine it with six branches. Thanks