Posts Tagged ‘cream cheese’

Watch out, I’m getting all trendy and 21st century on you. Which is awfully pathetic, because we’re a good 10 years into the 21st century.

Sugar Duchess is now on Facebook!

I would be tickled pink if you hopped on over there and became a fan. Or Like. Or whatever it is you do on Facebook these days. It’ll be a party. Honest. Actually, friends, I’m feelin’ a little insecure about this whole fan business, and I’ll feel pretty darn silly if I only get one fan, and it’s my mom. Oh wait, my mom isn’t on Facebook.

Now, here’s the deal. Twitter. . . I’ve been having Twitter thoughts, but I need a little input. Worth it? Or waste of time? Any of you Twitter Kool-Aid drinkers out there want to give me a yea or nay?

Third item of business: These truffle pops.

My husband and some coworkers recently had a “Return of the Jedi” party, because two of them had never seen it. And as we all know, party = treats.

I had made cake pops for them before, so they were requesting cake pops again. I looked at my schedule and decided Oreo pops would be more prudent.

After all, these pops:

A) Come together quickly, no oven required, with only

B) Three ingredients. And one of them is cream cheese. And one of them is Oreos. And one of them is chocolate. You still with me?

C) And they’re bite-sized.

D) This is a no-brainer.

Oreo Truffle Pops

adapted from Bakerella

Ingredients:

1 (1 lb. 1 oz) package of Oreos, minus about 6-8 cookies

1 (8 oz.) package of cream cheese, softened to room temperature

Dipping chocolate

Directions:

Crush the Oreos (including the creme filling) in a food processor until finely ground. Or place them in a heavy duty bag and very finely crush them with a rolling pin. Cream together the Oreo crumbs with the softened cream cheese until completely blended. You may want to use your fingers.

Form into 1″ balls and place on a wax paper-covered baking sheet. Gently poke a sucker stick down into each ball. Freeze for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, melt your chocolate in a double boiler, or as directed on the package.

For the next step, only remove one ball from the freezer at a time. Dip it into the melted chocolate, lightly tap off the excess, and place it on another wax paper-covered baking sheet to dry.

Let the balls cool on the wax paper for at least 1 hour before very gently peeling them off.

Drizzle with white chocolate coating or decorate as desired.

Remember November?

Neither do I. It’s all kind of a giant blur of roast turkey, wedding cake, and contractions.

And pomegranate juice. The lovely people over at POM Wonderful contacted me and sent a case of pomegranate juice accompanied by more facts and figures than I have fingers and toes to count. Bottom line: This stuff is insanely good for you. To say the least. (Mosey on over to their site, and I’ll let them handle all the physiological nitty-gritty.)

So, I gathered a handful of recipes, placed my juice in the fridge, and told my husband not to drink it, because, hey, I had big plans. But that night, we decided to open just one of the little bottles of juice. Just one. Just to try it out. Surely I wouldn’t need all 12 bottles for baking, right?

And that’s how it started. Every couple of days we would buckle, and another little bottle would disappear from the fridge, and I would shave down my list of pomegranate recipes. At last we were left with one bottle. One little bottle of pomegranate juice, sitting all by his lonesome.

My husband asked me several times if he could just go ahead and drink it. No. Are you sure? Yes. Please? No. Part of it? No.

That was two months ago. Two months that little bottle has been sitting in the fridge. Two months my husband has been pestering me to let him finish it off. Two months I have said no, and secretly wondered when I would get around to it.

Valentines Day. That’s when I would get around to it. Here we are, two months later.

So, Happy Valentines Day! I brought you pink cupcakes. Last Valentines Day I brought you pink cupcakes too, but they weren’t as cute, and the photography was embarrassing. And I didn’t bother including any recipes. This time around I’m doing it up right.

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes

2 cups sugar

3-1/4 cups flour

2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, room temperature

1-1/4 cup milk, room temperature

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with papers.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the butter and beat until mixture looks sandy. Combine the milk and vanilla and add to the flour mixture all at once. Add the vegetable oil, and mix at low speed just until incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each egg. Scrape the sides of the bowl again and beat the mixture on low for 30 seconds.

Transfer the batter to the cupcake papers, filling about 2/3 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Remove the muffin tin from the oven and place the cupcakes on a rack to cool. Make sure cupcakes are cooled completely before frosting them.

POM Cream Cheese Frosting

adapted from www.pomwonderful.com

1-1/2 cups Pomegranate juice

4 oz. butter, room temperature

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

14 oz. powdered sugar

Directions:

In a small saucepan, reduce the pomegranate juice, over low heat, down to 3 fl. oz. Allow to cool.

Place butter and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl and cream together until soft and fluffy. Turn the speed down to low and slowly add the powdered sugar and pomegranate juice reduction. Mix until the sugar is fully incorporated.

Place icing into a piping bag with a round or star tip, and decorate cupcakes.

Anne of Green Gables? Anne of Avonlea? You know what I’m talking about, right?

Seven hours (seven hours!) of romantic red-headed fun, culminating in a glorious final five minutes, when Gilbert (after 7 whole hours, poor boy) finally wins Anne’s love. And then there’s a sweet little 2-second kiss, and then the credits roll. Lovely!

Right before Gilbert goes in for the kill, Anne spouts out a little gem of wisdom that has become a sort of credo for me: “It’s not what the world holds for you, it’s what you bring to it.”

So, can I get a little personal here? Okay. We just moved. We bought a wonderful little house in Orem, Utah. And we love it here. Moving by itself is pretty taxing, but when you add third-trimester pregnancy and a curious toddler into the equation… well, heh. Yeah, taxing.

I’ve been thinking about Anne lately. Surely… surely… being worn out isn’t all that’s in store for me as I transition to a new home and finish the end of this pregnancy. I don’t want to sit around and let circumstances happen. Part of the beauty of life is that we have the power to act, not be acted upon. Anne could back me up here.

This is why I put together a loaf of braided bread in the middle of a stressful week — lest you think I’m crazy. I may not have control over my little boy’s bloody nose, or the spiders in our new basement, or the Braxton-Hicks, or the piano movers forgetting to give back the apartment key and then going off to Disneyland (good one, guys).

But bread! Yes! I can bring a pretty loaf of delicious bread into my world. So life is sweet.

This bread actually comes together much faster than you’d think. So, no intimidation allowed. I used SAF Instant Yeast. It’s a different animal than active dry yeast, which is what most people use. So, be aware of that. Instant yeast is slightly more expensive, but you don’t need to proof it first, and it only needs to rise once before baking. I don’t have to tell you that that’s awesome.

Apricot Cheese Braid

Adapted from The Taste of Home Baking Book

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon SAF instant yeast

1/2 cup lukewarm milk

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 Tablespoons sugar

1 egg

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 - 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup apricot preserves

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 Tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup turbinado sugar

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, combine the yeast, milk, butter, sugar, egg, salt, and 1/2 cup of the flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to form a soft dough, and knead until it’s smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. You may need to grease your hands for this.

Roll the dough out into a 15- by 9-inch rectangle. Place on a greased baking sheet. Spread the cream cheese filling lengthwise down the center third of the rectangle. Spread the apricot preserves evenly on top of the cream cheese.

On each long side, cut 1-inch width strips, about 1/2 inch from the filling. Starting at one end, fold alternating strips at an angle across the filling. Seal the ends. Cover and let rise in a slightly warm place until doubled in size (about 30-40 minutes).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush the bread gently with milk, and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely before slicing. Store in the refrigerator.