Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Crazy Month of December

This month was crazy busy for us.  We had something going on every weekend.  We started the month out with a girl's Secret Santa party.

For the party, I decided to do a hot chocolate bar, which was an idea I found on Pinterest (duh.) Target had different flavors of marshmallows, so I bought chocolate mint and gingerbread, as well as regular marshmallows and peppermints.  I found the little green pails at Hobby Lobby and the chalkboard stickers on Etsy.  After the party, I put the labels on my flour, sugar, brown sugar, and coffee canisters.




 Here is Vanessa texting her husband on her iPhone using her new gloves that allow you to text without taking off your gloves.  She was pretty excited!


 Lauren got a Mario poster as one of her gifts.

The weekend after the Secret Santa party we had a Lord of the Rings marathon at my in-law's house.  The marathon has been a Keck family tradition for several years. I got to attend my first marathon only a couple months after Garrett and I had started dating. After I spent 14 hours in the Keck's living room, they knew I must be "the one!" I have no pictures to document the event, but it is pretty hard core.  This year we bought my father-in-law the movies on BluRay and a BluRay player so we got to watch the movies in top viewing quality. We started Fellowship of The Ring at 8:40am and finished Return of the King around 10:30pm. 

The next weekend was Christmas!  We started the celebrations at Garrett's grandparent's house were we had a Dirty Santa exchange with the extended family. The next day we went over to my in-laws house.  Check out the tree with the presents!




The day after Christmas was the most exciting part of the month for me!  My friend Brady from high school came to visit for 4 days. We actually weren't extremely close in high school until the end but we have been really good about keeping in touch ever since I moved to Oklahoma. He came down here for my wedding and now he is friends with my good friend Devin. Here is a picture of the 4 of us at Tapwerks in Bricktown. Having him here was a great way to finish off this crazy month!  Happy New Year everyone!




Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Festival of Lights!

Two weekends ago, I talked Garrett into driving me down to the Festival of Lights in Chickasha. I was having a rough week and Christmas lights always make me so happy!  Plus, it was pretty much the only lights display I hadn't already dragged Garrett to. Poor boy. Good thing I got major points for his Christmas present.
The drive was a little longer than I expected, but it was TOTALLY worth it.
The battery in our camera was dead (of course) so all these are phone pictures.  Hopefully they aren't too terrible.  Here are my favorite pictures!


This one was taken from the car window...







 This tree was freaking ginormous! It was awesome!















This church was at the exit of the park where the Festival was. I just thought it was cool. :)


I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!  I have the next week off work so be looking for more posts.  I still have to put up our girls Christmas party and I will be working on some of my 25 before 25 list during my break!


Wednesday, December 7, 2011

25 by 25 List

As promised, here is my "25 by 25" list.  It was actually really hard to think of 25 things that I could potentially do on my own.  I wanted to put things like "buy a house" but that is something that is kind of out of my control.  Let's just say that I'm not exactly the breadwinner of the family.

1. Successfully make French Toast.
The very first meal I made when Garrett and I got back from our honeymoon was French Toast.  It was completely terrible.  Burned on the outside but still gooey and raw egg-y on the inside. It was so disgusting. Of course, I was convinced that it was a sign I was going to be a terrible wife and not be able to feed my husband, so I have banned it from the house.  But, I really like French toast, so I want to learn how to make it!

2. See the Atlantic Ocean.
Somehow I have managed to visit Flordia twice, and I still haven't seen the Atlantic.

3. Grow a vegetable garden.
Granted, it will have to be one of those super small vegetable gardens that you grow in a wooden box or something, considering we don't have a yard, but I want to successfully grow something.  Garrett and I don't have the best track record of keeping things alive.  Our first fish, Hobbes, only lived 30 minutes. :/

4. Learn how to change a tire/jump a car.
Let's just say that if I ever get a flat while I'm on the highway, I'm totally screwed.

5. Go to an NFL game.  Preferably The Bears, but I'm not picky.

6. Open an Etsy shop.

7. Read through the entire Bible.

8. Cook all the way through a cookbook.  Even the weird recipes that have ingredients that I have never heard of.

9. Eat a weird food.  I'm probably the most predictable person in the world when it comes to food.  I get the same thing at Braums every single time.  The same soup at Panera. (If they are out of potato, I go somewhere else for lunch.) The same drink at Starbucks.  This "weird" food doesn't have to be snail butts or something like that, just something that I wouldn't normally eat.

10. Get back down to pre-engagement weight. 

11. Finally make a album/scrapbook of our wedding.

12. Watch a sunrise.  And not because I had to get up at the butt crack of dawn for work.

13. Clean out/organize the house.  For two people, we sure do have a lot of crap.  I blame the wedding.

14. Run a marathon.

15. Spend a night sleeping outside.

16. Don't buy new clothes for 6 months. (Something tells me that this will be Garrett's favorite.)

17. Make a theme cake.  Not just a regular old chocolate cake. A pirate ship cake, or something like that. 

18. Sew something.  I recently got my grandma's old sewing machine from my aunt.  My mother-in-law got it up and running, and now I'm itching to make some pajama pants.

19. Read the Naria books.  I've only listened to them on tape, and that was on family road trips when I was a teenager.  I hid my headphones under the hood of my hoodie and pretended to be asleep.  I was not big on family togetherness.

20. Travel to a state I have never been.  Preferably Massachusetts or New York. *cough cough* (I think my husband reads this ...)

21. Find somewhere to volunteer.  Church, Feed the Children, Christian Services, etc.

22. Get my husband to actually shave without having to nag him about it every day of my life. 
(This could potentially take my entire life.  If I can accomplish this in the next 14 months, I'm throwing a party.)

23. Start couponing.  Get that grocery budget cut down a little bit.

24. Start teaching piano to at least one person.

25. Go back to Colorado and climb a mountain.

I turn 25 in 2 days short of 14 months. Better get crackin!


Monday, December 5, 2011

Blogger's Block

Hello to my 9 readers.  Maybe you have noticed a lack of posts coming from this blog.  For some reason, I have not had a whole lot of motivation to blog lately.  I have still been baking, but I either:
1. Forget to take pictures
2. Take pictures and let them sit in my mobile album for days and then completely forget about them
3. Make something that I don't really feel is "blog worthy."  I mean, anyone can make chocolate chip cookies, right?

So, this blog is going to be changing a bit. There will still be recipes, but less deserts.  Best friend is complaining about Pinterest and this blog making him gain weight, and I am complaining too.  Therefore, the blog is getting a facelift.  It will still be called Keck's Cakes (yes, I realize I have only posted one cake, and it was a total failure) but only because I don't know how to change the title of the blog without completely making a new one, which just sounds like a lot of hassle. 

Coming soon to this blog ...

1. A 25 things to do before I'm 25 list.
2. Everything you can make with a food processor. Let me tell you, I have owned one for less than 2 weeks and I have used it 4 times.
3. More about me and my best friend.  We don't have the most exciting life, but I still love it.  I don't have the money to scrapbook, so I'm turning this blog into a scrapbook of sorts.  If you don't like reading about people who are madly in love with each other, maybe you should stop following me. Haha. But really.

I'm challenging myself to post at least once a week.  Keep me motivated, people!

Love,
Kenzie
















Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Caramel Stuffed Apple Cider Cookies

I went to Colorado last week for a friend's wedding, and while I was there, my mom found out I had a cooking blog.  She asked me to make the family something for desert.  I had recently seen this recipe on Pinterest that I wanted to try.  It is originally from a blog called "Scrambled Henfruit." Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this because my cell phone was dead and I didn't have my camera.
These are the perfect fall treat!



Ingredients
1 cup softened butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 box (7.4 oz) Alpine Spiced Apple Cider Instant Original Drink mix -not sugar free- all 10 packets (I found this in my grocery store near the hot chocolate mixes.)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups all purpose flour
1 bag Kraft Caramels (14 oz)

Preheat oven to 350.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.  Trust me, you need it!  
In a medium sized bowl, mix the butter, sugar, salt, and all 10 packages of Apple Cider mix.  Then beat in eggs, one at a time.  Next mix in the vanilla.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon.

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture.  Mix until the the dough is the consistency of normal cookie dough.  

Scoop out the cookie dough into balls that are about 1 Tablespoon.  Flatten each ball, and place one unwrapped square of caramel in the middle.  Cover the caramel with the cookie dough.  Make sure it is completely covered.  If it isn't, it will stick to the cookie sheet, and when you go to pick the cookies up, the caramel will completely fall out.  Trust me on this one. 
Bake cookies for 12 minutes.  Do not overcook!  It is hard to tell when these cookies are browning because the dough is already pretty brown, so be careful!
This makes about 3 dozen depending on how big you like your cookies.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

One of the current trending topics on Pinterest is Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries.  I looked up a recipe online and it wanted you to use Philadelphia Cheesecake Mix.  I knew that I could just make my own cheesecake mixture, with ingredients that I already had.
P.S. If you don't have Pinterest yet, but you like cooking DIY crafts, cloths, baby ideas, actually ideas for EVERYTHING under the planet, you seriously need to get an account.  

Anyways, the first thing you need to do is mix up some cheesecake mix!  You will just need one block of softened cream cheese (8oz), 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.  Once that is mixed up, put it in an icing bag, or just use a ziplock bag if you don't have one one of those.  Stuff all the mixture into one corner of the bag and cut off the corner. 

Next, cut the tops off of a box of strawberries.  Then, use the smallest, sharpest knife you have to hollow out the strawberries. 


Then, using your pastry bag, fill the hollow centers with cheesecake. 

The recipe I looked up on the website, wanted you to dip the tops in crushed up graham cracker so that it would actually seem like you were eating cheesecake.  I decided to make chocolate covered strawberries instead.  I just dunked the bottom of each strawberry in a bowl of melted chocolate chips.


Mmmmm....delicious. 



Peaches and Cream Muffins

I married a peaches lover.  I've always been kind of "meh" about peaches, until I discovered the Edmond Farmer's Market.  Now I can't get enough of them!  They are so delicious. They are a little more expensive than a grocery store, but taste 100 times better. We have been visiting the market once or twice a week to buy peaches.  I have made several peach pies already this summer, so today I decided to see what else I could make with them.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 a teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/2 a cup of sugar.

In a separate bowl mix together one egg, 1/4 cup of canola oil, 1/3 cup of milk, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.  Fold in 1 cup of diced peaches (about 1 large peach).

Line a muffin tin with cooking spray or cupcake holders.  I used cupcake holders because I can never seem to grease my muffin tin well enough, but next time I'm not going to use them.  The batter is very thick and sticky.  It sticks to the liners which makes it difficult to spoon batter evenly into them.


Anyways, fill each muffin holder 1/2 full with batter.

Next, mix together 4oz of cream cheese, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 1/4 tablespoon of cinnamon.  Spoon a small amount into each muffin tin.  




Cover the cream cheese with the rest of the batter.


Cook in a 400 degree oven for 17 minutes.

See how my cream cheese is really close to the top?  I put too much batter in the bottoms of the muffin tin, and then didn't have enough to cover up the cream cheese.  Oops. :)

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Chocolate Pudding Cake In A Jar

I have recently become obsessed with cooking things in a 4oz Mason Jar ... it's a perfect serving of something delicious and you don't have leftovers sitting on the counter begging you to eat them.

Mix 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of cocoa, and 2 teaspoons of baking powder together in a bowl.


Add 1/2 cup of milk, 1/4 cup of canola oil or melted butter, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla to the dry ingredients. 

Spray 6 4oz mason jars or ramekins with cooking spray, and then divide the batter equally between the 6 jars. 

Next, stir together 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 a cup of cocoa together in a small bowl.  Sprinkle evenly over the batter in the jars. 

Next, spoon 3 tablespoons of boiling water into each jar.  


Put the jars onto a cookie sheet and cook for 30-35 minutes in a 350 degree oven.  

Top with vanilla ice cream!






Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Bacon Meatballs

Yes, you read the title correctly. This is the recipe for bacon meatballs.
Best friend LOVES bacon. He actually loves the way it tastes, not just the awesome way it smells. (Best friend can't smell, by the way.)  So when I found this recipe for bacon meatballs, I knew I had to try them out.  The original recipe can be found on evilshenanigans.com, but I made a few modifications.

First, you will need a pound of bacon.  If you have a food processor, put the bacon in that after cutting it into one inch squares.  Process it until it looks like ground beef.  I don't have a food processor, so I just cut it with kitchen shears.  It definitely didn't look ground, but the pieces were small enough.  Just remember that you will eventually be rolling this up into a ball.

Mix the bacon with 6oz of ground beef, 8oz of ground Italian turkey (Walmart's version of Italian sausage),  1 egg, 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of paprika, 2 teaspoons of oregano, 1/2 a teaspoon of pepper, 2 torn up slices of bread, and 1/2 a cup of Parmesan cheese.  Honestly, the best way to mix this up is to just stick your hands in it.  Yes, it's as gross as it sounds.  Once it's all mixed up, roll the meat into one-two inch balls.  If you have a cookie dough scooper, it's just about the perfect size.

Next, wash your hands six bajillion times.

Next, put a few of the meatballs in a skillet on medium heat.  Cook until they are browned on all sides and then put the balls on a greased cookie sheet.  Cook for 10-15 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees.

We served ours on hoagie buns topped with our favorite spaghetti sauce and some Parmesan cheese.

I didn't take any pictures because, well, it's ground up meat.  It's not that pretty.  But these meatballs were seriously DELICIOUS.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Rhubarb Crisp

Yesterday, for the first time since moving to Oklahoma, I found rhubarb at the grocery store!  My mom used to make rhubarb crisp when I was a kid; we had some in our garden and we also had some growing wild in the field behind our neighborhood.  When I saw it at the store, I immediately texted my mom and asked her to send me her recipe.  

For those of you who are like the cashier at Crest and have no idea what rhubarb is, this is it:
I actually tried it raw last night - it's extremely sour.  I thought that it would be a lot like eating celery, but the texture is totally different.  Because rhubarb is so sour, most recipes containing rhubarb also call for a lot of sugar. :)

For rhubarb crisp, you will need 6 cups of chopped rhubarb.  You will have to buy 8-10 stalks.  Once it is chopped up, pour it into a shallow 6X10 baking dish.  
(I halved the recipe ... hence the smaller dish)

Then sprinkle 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon over the chopped rhubarb.

In a separate bowl, combine 6 tablespoons of butter, 3/4 of a cup of sugar, 3/4 of a cup of oats, and 3/4 of a cup of flour.  Work together until crumbly.  Pour over the rhubarb. 


Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  It's really good served with vanilla ice cream!






Monday, May 30, 2011

Garlic Cheese Herb Bread

First, buy a round loaf of bread.  Cut the bread horizontally and vertically, but don't cut all the way through the bottom. You want to be able to pull the pieces out. (Kind of like a blooming onion at Outback)
Take about 1/2 cup of pesto (which you can find in the spaghetti sauce aisle) and stuff all the cracks with it.

After you have stuffed the cracks with pesto, go back and fill all the cracks with mozzarella cheese.

Mix some melted butter and garlic salt together, and brush over the top of the bread.  Cook at 350 for 15-20 minutes.   mmmm...so delicious!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Mint Cookies!

I found a recipe for mint cookies online, and decided to try it out.  The original recipe is from squarebakery.blogspot.com.

You will need:
2 sticks of butter, melted
1/2 a cup of powdered sugar
3 teaspoons of peppermint oil, or 12 teaspoons of peppermint extract. (I only had 7...)
2 teaspoons of vanilla
2 1/4 cups of flour
A few drops of green food coloring (optional)

Combine the melted butter, powdered sugar, peppermint oil, vanilla, and food coloring in a medium sized bowl. 

Mix well. Make sure that there aren't any clumps of butter or powdered sugar. Then, stir in 2 1/4 cups of flour.  Mix well.


Drop teaspoonfuls of dough onto a greased cookie sheet. Cook at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Enjoy!

Friday, May 6, 2011

Kolache

When I was in 5th grade, we had to do a project about the country our family immigrated from. We put different things from our culture into our presentation and had to write a short paper about the country we were from. Then, when we were all done with our presentations, we had Immigration Day. We all got matched up in couples so that we would be "married." I got stuck with Cameron, the shortest boy in our class (story of my life), and we all went through Ellis Island (which coincidentally looked a lot like our school cafeteria), and at the end we all got a cup of tapioca pudding, because apparently that's what immigrants eat.  Anyways, I did my report on Czechoslovakia, and my Nana came over and taught my sister and I how to make kolache.
According to my mom we both hated it and she had to throw almost all of them out, but my Nana also apparently used prune jelly. No wonder we didn't like them.  I had some strawberry/rhubarb jelly in the fridge that I was looking for something to do with, and remembered that I could make kolache!  My dad doesn't have my Nana's recipe anymore, but I found one on tasteofhome.com.

A couple tips before you start:
You will need arm muscles that are more functional than a wet noodle and
This is extremely time consuming.

You will need:
2 1/4oz packages of dry active yeast
1/2 cup of sugar, divided
5-6 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 cups of warm milk (110 degrees)
4 egg yolks
1/4 cup of melted butter
1 beaten egg white
2 cups of canned fruit filling (I used jam.)

In small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in warm milk, let stand for 10 minutes.
In large bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, remaining sugar, egg yolks (JUST THE YOLK!), salt, butter, and the milk/yeast mixture. Mix until smooth. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough. (I ended up using a little over 5 cups of flour.)

Place dough on a floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. Add additional flour if necessary, it shouldn't be sticky at all.  FYI, you will look at the clock when your arms get tired, and you will still have a long time to go.
Place dough in a greased bowl, then turn it over so that the top and the bottom of the dough are both greased. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in a warm place for one hour. I just put the bowl on the stove and turned the stovetop light on, and that seemed to be warm enough.
After an hour, punch the dough down, cover, and wait another hour. (I wasn't joking about this being time consuming.)
Once it has risen again, roll out until dough is 1/2 an inch thick.  Cut dough using the opening of a glass.
Place on greased cookie sheet and let rise another 45 minutes.  Then make indentations on each one with your thumb (make them deep!) and fill each indentation with fruit filling.  Cook at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

I totally forgot to take pictures of this, but I did take one of the finished product ....
These are strawberry/rhubarb.  They are so delicious. There are 25 of them. If you are reading this, please come try one so I don't get fat.  I am a very, very happy Czech girl.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Jam Thumbprint Cookies


Last weekend, the weather was gorgeous and Megan and I were hanging out with nothing to do. So we went to the Farmer's Market!  As a kid, my mom used to make Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp a lot, and I loved it, so when I saw this ... 

I had to buy some!  Then I remembered that Garrett and I both hate toast, and therefore not much jelly is eaten at our house. Oops.

BUT, today, while looking through one of my favorite cooking websites, I found the recipe for these delicious cookies.

(P.S. this is not my recipe. It is from twopeasandtheirpod.com.  Their recipes are SO GOOD.)

The best part about these cookies is that they only take 4 ingredients, which you probably already have.

You will need:
1/4 of a cup of sugar, + 2 Tablespoons
2/3 of a cup of flour
4 tablespoons of melted butter

Mix the 1/4 cup of sugar and the butter together with a fork.
Next, add the flour. (I added a little water too, because the dough was super crumbly.)  At this point I had cookie dough all over my hands, so I skipped a couple steps worth of pictures.

Put the 2 Tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl.  Roll 1 inch balls of dough in the sugar, and put on a GREASED cookie sheet.  Then, using your thumb, push down the ball of dough so that there is a "well" in the cookies.


Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes.  Once they are done, leave them on the cookie sheet to cool. Before serving, spoon any kind of jam into the well of each cookie!  This makes 10 cookies, perfect for 2 people. Then, try not to eat them all before your best friend gets home from work. That's the tricky part.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Caramel Apple Cheesecake

Hi!  My name is Kenzie Keck, and about a year ago I started a blog called Keck's Cakes.  I have always loved baking, and when I got married, I finally had someone to help taste test all my recipes!  My husband encouraged me to start this blog.  Some of the recipes I make up on my own, and others I find on other baking websites or on Pinterest.
For now, this is a baking blog, but I plan to start adding dinner recipes instead of just deserts.  I also love crafting, so I hope to add some crafts to this blog soon!

This recipe for Caramel Apple Cheesecake is one of my own, and it has been a huge hit every time I have made it.  I have had several people ask for the recipe.  I hope you enjoy it as well!

First, crush 1 1/2 cups of cinnamon graham crackers.  With a fork mix in 1/4 a cup of sugar and 1/4 a cup of melted butter.  You may need to add more butter, it's really important that the crumbs stick together.  Press into a 9in springform pan all over the bottom and an inch or two up the sides. Bake the crust at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Next, melt 14oz of caramel squares (This part takes forever.  Luckily my husband volunteered to unwrap them ... and eat a lot of them).  If you buy a bag at the grocery store the bag will likely be 14 oz, so you will need to unwrap all of the caramels.  Melt these together with 2/3 of a cup of evaporated milk over medium high heat. 
Once melted, pour one cup (about half) of the caramel mixture on top of the graham cracker crust.  It should look like this ...

Next, using a mixer, mix together 2 8oz packages of low fat cream cheese, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 Tablespoon of flour and 2 eggs until the mixture is smooth and creamy. 


In a separate bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups of chopped, peeled apples, 1 tablespoon of flour, and 1/2 a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.  Chopping apples is also a great job for husbands or roommates. :) 

Combine the apples with the cream cheese mixture and pour into the crust. 

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.  Then, pour the leftover caramel mixture over the top (you may have to reheat it) and bake an additional ten minutes.  

You can cook this cheesecake in a water bath if you prefer.  All you do is put an inch of water into a baking pan and put the cheesecake in the water.  You definitely need to make sure that no water can get into your cheesecake pan.  Putting it in a water bath can reduce cracks in the top of your cheesecake.  I normally don't do this because usually I don't care about presentation, and this one has caramel on top, so you can't really see the cracks anyways.

Let cool for about 30 minutes and then refrigerate.  I left this one in the fridge for 5 hours. The best way to cut it is with a knife dipped in warm water, this way the caramel won't stick to the knife. This cheesecake was devoured before I had a chance to take a picture of the finished product!  It was delicious!

Enjoy!


Sunday, April 3, 2011

Fruit Tart? Torte? Not really sure.

You will need:
2 cans Pillsbury cresent roll dough OR pie crust dough
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of vanilla
Fruit of your choice.

I didn't have enough cresent roll dough, so I made a pie crust.  I used 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of vegetable shortening, and 1/2 a cup of water.
Use a fork to combine the flour and the shortening, then add water.
I just rolled out the dough onto a greased cookie sheet until the dough covered the entire cookie sheet.
Cook just the crust in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes.  Make sure to poke holes in the crust before cooking so that it doesn't bubble up.

While that is cooking, mix together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla.  Once the crust is out of the oven and cooled, spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the crust.

While I was making crust and icing, best friend was cutting up fruit!  Wal-mart had some amazingly delicious strawberries on sale, and I also found a ripe mango and some kiwi.

Put all the chopped fruit on top of the icing, and let chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

SO. DELICIOUS!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Cake Fail

Well a couple people had been giving me some grief about how my blog is called Keck's Cakes, but that I don't actually make cake.
Today, I was on a cooking website, and best friend noticed a picture of a pound cake and asked if I could make him one.  We had been in bed all morning ... and most of the afternoon watching TV, so I figured it would probably be good for us to get out of bed, and get some fresh air walking to Homeland to grab some butter and chocolate chips to put in the cake.

Here is the recipe that I used:

2 sticks of butter, softened
1/2 cup of vegetable shortening
1 cup milk
3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
1/2 teasp of vanilla
5 eggs
1/2 teasp of baking powder

First, cream the butter an shortening together.  Then add the sugar a little bit at a time, mixing well after each addition.  After the sugar is added, mix in the eggs and vanilla.  Then mix together the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl.  Rotate adding the milk and the flour mixture to the cake mixture, making sure that you finish up the rotation with the flour.

Add chocolate chips if you like them in your cake - trust me, it's good!  Cook in a bunt cake pan at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours.

Ok ... now to explain the title of this blog.
Something I did ... didn't work.  Maybe the fact I didn't notice that the recipe called for milk until I was pretty much done mixing the cake ... so therefore I pretty much skipped over the whole rotating flour and milk thing ... I have no idea.
Anyways, I poked a toothpick into the center after about an hour and fifteen minutes, and the toothpick came out clean.  So I let the cake cool for awhile, and then flipped it over onto a plate.  Well ... only the top half came out of the pan.  I KNOW that it's not because the cake pan wasn't greased well enough.  I floured the pan to make sure that the cake wouldn't stick! Also, it was pretty obvious that most of the cake wasn't cooked all the way through.
So best friend and I tried to "reconstruct" the cake and put it back in the oven for about another 20-25 minutes.  We took it out again, and flipped it onto a plate, and the cake was cooked all the way through, but still only half of the cake came out of the pan.  So ... we scraped the rest of the cake out of the pan and came up with this ....

Yeah ... it's not pretty, but we covered it up with cocoa, powdered sugar, and milky goodness (aka chocolate frosting.)

I decided that if I actually want to make this a legit baking blog, that I would go ahead and put my mistakes up here as well.

So, I'm going to sit back on my brand new couch, eat my cakey blob, and just thank my lucky stars that I didn't offer to bring it to my brother-in-law's wedding shower at church tomorrow .... which I was VERY close to doing.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Cookie dough stuffed brownies

First, you should know that this is not my own recipe; I got it from a recipe blog called The Picky Palate.

Ok, on to the recipe.

You will need:
A box of brownie mix
A batch of your favorite cookie dough (you can find my favorite cookie dough recipe here.  You could even use the mint chocolate chips like I did in that recipe, or use semi-sweet.
A mini-muffin tin
Cooking spray.

`First, prepare the brownie mix according to the package directions.  We used caramel swirl brownies because we already had some in the cabinet.



Then whip up a batch of cookie dough:
(or if you are lucky and your best friend is helping you, have them make one, and you can make the other in order to save time.)


Once you have both of those made, generously spray the muffin tin with cooking spray.  Put a small spoonful of brownie mix in each muffin cup, and then put a small pinch of cookie dough in the middle of  the brownie batter.


Then cook at 350 degrees for 18 minutes.
Let cool for 10-15 minutes before taking them out of the pan.


Enjoy the amazing goodness.

Side note: these are perfect for a 9pm snack while you and your best friend are watching Better Off Ted in the fort you just made in your living room ... :)