Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses: Perfect for a Decorating Party

Since I moved into my house I have worked really hard to build my own traditions in my home. (After all, why should it be only the married and the parents among us that get to celebrate and build?)  One of those traditions is family Christmas Eve at my house.  The others are entertainments at my house for friends: a Halloween party and a holiday, gingerbread decorating party.  

The main issue with the gingerbread party is having houses (or other stuctures) for people to decorate.  I've tried baking them and I've bought tiny village kits to put together.  Both are good options, but the first is time consuming and the second can be expensive.  This year I decided to go with a 3rd option: making houses from graham crackers.  Still takes *some* time, but it was really affordable and made houses of a nice size for decorating.  

Here's how I did it....

Each house requires about 6.5 full-sheet graham crackers.  (Probably more, though, due to the chance of breakage while working.)

For each house, cut 2 of the crackers like this:

Then you will have main pieces like this:

Make a batch of royal icing and then load it into a frosting bag with the tip cut off.

Pipe frosting along two sides of one cracker:

Stand up the crackers on edge and attach a side wall piece:

Attach the other side wall piece:

Pipe frosting on the other long wall piece and attach it:

When frosting is partially set up, pipe frosting along cut edges of the side walls and the top of the long walls:

Put roof piece on, and repeat on other side. If your graham crackers are like mine, you'll have a space at the top where the roof doesn't meet:

To fill it in, frosting-glue two partial cracker-quarters (you might have to cut one to make it a bit shorter:

Also, you may want to frosting-glue the house down to a piece of foam core from the beginning.  It not only helps with stability but also gives a "lawn" for decorating!  

  

This year's graham crackers were really awesome!

  

Candy Glass: Perfect for Halloween cupcakes. Or anytime (I guess?)

Every year there is a charity bake sale and raffle at my work to celebrate Halloween.  Just so you know, this is probably my single favorite day of work in the entire calendar year.  OK.  Not probably.  It is *definitely* my favorite day!

I always make things for the bake sale that are a little bit over-the-top because I figure that:

1. Each one can be priced higher and thus make more money
2. People might want to buy something they can't make themselves
3. I make it a challenge and I get to try things out that I would never, ever make for just myself

In the past 5 years I've made all kinds of things, including chocolate cupcakes topped with tiny chocolate "dead" trees looming over a cookie gravestone and a molded chocolate coffin filled with white chocolate skulls.  In other words, I go a little bit crazy.

This year I wanted to make something different than ever before.  Looking around online, I found lots of people with photos of bloody cupcakes stabbed with broken candy glass. Heck, even Martha Stewart had a version.

Note: Tons of people not making these cupcakes also had instructions for the glass.  Weirdly, most of them were for blue glass and they were related to theme parties for either Disney's Frozen or Breaking Bad.  (Pretty much on opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum, huh?)    

I decided in making my cupcakes that a few things were really important, and most of them had to do with the candy glass.  (I'll talk about the cupcake manufacture in another post, promise.)  I wanted my glass to be flavored, not just sugar.  Because plain-sugar flavor isn't that interesting.  I also wanted it to be brown.  Both because it would show up better against the frosting and because clear glass could be from all kinds of things, but brown is probably from some kind of bottle.  It's nice to have a story behind my cupcakes, but nobody says that has to be a classy story, right?

Anyway, candy glass turned out to be pretty easy to make.  The vital part is the candy thermometer...or if you are me, the awesome thermometer-spatula that you got as a gift!

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup water
• optional: 1 to 2 tsp. flavoring (I used coffee)
• optional: food coloring

Instructions

1. Spray a 13 x 9 jelly roll or cake pan with PAM spray.  No, like REALLY spray it.  
2. Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pan and heat over a medium-high heat.
       
3. Stir until sugar is dissolved and mixture starts to boil.
   
4. Once the mixture is boiling, stop stirring.
   
5. If you want to color/flavor, add now and the bubbles will work to distribute it without stirring.  (I added about 1 tsp coffee flavor extract at this time and it worked to color as well.)
   
6. As soon as the mixture hits 300 degrees, take the pan off the heat.
     
7. Let it sit for just a few seconds while it stops boiling.  (This probably isn't a great idea, but I added another tsp. of coffee extract at this time and stirred it in.  It foamed up pretty good for a few seconds, but ultimately worked.)
      
8. Pour the mixture out into prepared pan.
   
9. Let candy sit until completely hardened and cooled.  At least a few hours.
   
10. Break up the candy.  I used the metal end of a kitchen spoon, because it was small and I wanted shards.  If you are looking to make smaller pieces of candy, you might want to use a mallet or something with a larger surface area.  

And here are the cupcakes, stabbed with glass but before the "blood" was added.  Yeah, you're right.  They look WAY cooler when they are "bleeding!"

Caramel Apple Sangria: Perfect for a Fall gathering

Whenever I have people over in quantity--I hesitate to call what I do "entertaining"--I like to have a thematically-appropriate alcoholic beverage.  Sometimes that is a recipe for a mixed drink, but this Halloween I did the mixing in advance.  The recipe was pretty popular, so it might go into my go-to rotation.  This would be great for a party, a brunch, or, if you live somewhere that is not super-cold, a fall-time BBQ.    

• 1 bottle of apple cider (I used the spiced apple cider from Trader Joe's)
• 1 bottle of white wine (I used Trader Joe's cheap Pinot Grigio)
• 1 cup Caramel-flavored vodka plus more if you like.  (I'll be honest, I added a couple more "glugs" when I made mine)
• Cut up apples and/or pears

Chill all ingredients, dump them into a serving container, and stir together.  (Personally, I used a cool beverage dispenser with a stand.  The photo on this entry is after many a cup had already been poured!)  Serve cold and/or over ice.

Also, I added some club soda to my cup, to make it a bit more of a refreshing drink and to cut some of the sweetness.

Revisting the Magical, Surprise-Inside Bundt Cake: Halloween 2016 edition

In January of this year I posted the instructions for a "surprise" bundt cake: it looks chocolate from the outside, but when you slice into it, it has swirls of color.  This week I made another surprise cake, this time for my annual Halloween gathering.  It was devil's food on the outside, had three colors of vanilla cake in the middle (orange, green, and purple), and was finished off with a chocolate fudge frosting drizzle and orange, green, and purple sprinkles.

The cake was a big hit!  Delicious and pretty....this might be my new go-to, bring-to-everything type of cake!

Surprise Cake: Rainbow/Sunset/Tie-Dye on the Inside Cake

I was looking for easy but fancy cakes to make for events at the end of 2015 (my annual gingerbread party, the work holiday potluck lunch, and a co-worker's retirement day) and my first thought was "bundt cakes are always fancy!"  That might sound silly, since it is only a difference in pan shape, but you would be amazed how often I have had people ooh and aah over a regular cake-mix cake made in a bundt pan.  

And then I thought about cakes that look plain, but have a surprise inside.  After all: who doesn't love a surprise inside?!  (I think that the great unknown of prizes-in-cereal-boxes when we were kids makes this statement true for pretty much everyone in my generation....)  Since I was looking for something easy that also uses a regular pan and equipment, a lot of the "surprise" cakes that are out there in places like Pinterest weren't really the right fit.  However, the idea of a tie-dye or rainbow cake was perfect.  I found several sets of instructions that used only one batch of cake batter, including one for a Christmas wreath cake from Betty Crocker.  But then I found this Halloween version that uses 1 3/4 batches of cake batter, and is chocolate on the outside and vanilla on the inside.  Since the finished cake is bigger, it seemed perfect for special events.  

I used the basic idea of the Halloween cake, but made it my own.  I made one Christmas one that was chocolate outside and red, green, and white vanilla on the inside.  Then I used white and green vanilla drizzle and Christmas colored sprinkles on top.  It was pretty nifty.  

The one pictured below was for my co-worker's last day at work before she retired.  I made it with pink, orange, and yellow: sunset colors.  The drizzle on top was milk chocolate frosting and it was pretty darn amazing!

Obviously, you could use whatever flavors and colors you want, but here are the instructions, with my notes:

Ingredients:

• 1 box white cake mix
• 1 box chocolate cake mix: I used chocolate-fudge for the one pictured here 
• Water, oil, and eggs as called for on the 2 cake mix boxes: I used the egg-whites-only option for the white cake so the colors would be as true as possible
• Food coloring
• Can of frosting: I used milk chocolate

Cake Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees (or the temperature called for on the cake mix boxes)
2. Grease bundt cake pan well. I used Pam spray to quickly and easily get into all the grooves.
3. Mix up your cake mixes (in separate bowls, obviously)  according to the directions on the boxes.
      
4. Separate the white cake batter into smaller bowls
   
5. Color white cake batter. I made three colors in even amounts, but you could also leave one white or have one color be "bigger" than the others.
   
6. Take out about 1/4 of chocolate batter (1 to 1 1/4 cups?) and set aside.  You will not use this batter.  (Using all the batter from 2 mixes would probably overflow the pan.  1 3/4 mixes makes for a really, really full standard bundt cake pan.)
7. Pour about 2/3 of the remaining chocolate batter in prepared pan
8. Spoon one color of vanilla batter into pan, carefully adding it just to the middle.  This means that--as much as possible--leave a visible line of chocolate batter around the outside and around the middle.
   NOTE: As you spoon the batter in a ring, the batter-in-total will seek a balance.  This means that the chocolate batter will rise on the outside and around the middle, ensuring that the outside of the finished cake will be even chocolate.  
   
9. One at a time, spoon in the other colors on top of the first one.  Do not stir the colors together or try to mix them!!
     
10. Pour the rest of the chocolate batter on top and smooth it over the colors.
    
11. Bake cake, following bundt cake directions, until a cake tester comes out clean.  It might take a bit longer than a normal bundt cake, but probably not much more. 
12. Let cool for a few minutes, then shake pan to loosen cake and turn it out on a plate to cool entirely.  When on a plate, cake should look completely chocolate on the outside.
    
    

Drizzle Instructions:

1. When cake is completely cool, spoon some of frosting into a microwave-safe bowl.  
2. Heat for a very short period of time.  Try 8 or 12 seconds at first.
3. Stir to get a smooth, drizzle-able consistency (heat a few seconds more if needed)
4. Take spoon and drizzle at will!
   
5. Be prepared for people to gasp when you cut the first piece of cake!
   
   

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

 One of the great things about fall and winter gatherings is that you can fix warming foods...things that you couldn't dare serve in the middle of summer because the idea of turning on the oven in a house full of people in the heat is just unthinkable.

After I moved into my townhouse, I decided that I needed to start some traditions for my new home.  Since I have a deep and abiding love of all things Halloween, I have held a Halloween party for friends for the past two years.  One of the main dishes that I've served both years is an autumn soup.  It can be left to warm on the stove or in a crock pot, and people can eat more or less of it whenever they want.  Plus, there are so many hearty vegetarian options that it makes preparations for a diverse group of people much, much easier!

This year's soup was a butternut squash-apple variety and the recipe came from (though I'm a bit sad to admit it) Martha Stewart's online presence.  It was really good, simple to make, and warm both in temperature and from spices.  Also, the ingredients are the perfect fall produce combo and the recipe is really quite healthy.

I did not follow Martha's serving instructions, which included a fussy garnish of diced apples and jalapeno slices.  Instead I served it with some optional sour cream and AMAZING pumpkin-cornbread croutons that I got at Trader Joe's.

Seriously, these are the greatest and most unique croutons of all time.  It is like someone took the perfect fall day and somehow transformed it into crouton form.  Am I enamored?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Do I count on ever seeing these croutons in a store again?  No.  Of course not.  Trader Joe's discontinue everything that I truly love!

By the way, what follows is double the size of the original recipe.  So, if you don't want quite so much soup, this version should half down really well.  

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 medium onions/1 large onion, diced
• 2 butternut squash (about 4 pounds), peeled, seeded, and chopped
• 8 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (I used Haralsons and Galas, I think) 
• 4 tsp coarse salt
• 3 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 4 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
• 5 cups water, plus more if needed

Directions 

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. 
2. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until it begins to soften (about 4 minutes) 
3. Add squash and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft (about 10 to 12 minutes) 
4. Add apples, salt, cumin, coriander, ginger, cayenne, black pepper, stock, and just enough water to cover everything.  
5. Bring to a boil. 
6. Reduce to a simmer and cook until vegetables are very soft (about 30 minutes)
7. Puree in batches in a blender until smooth and return to saucepan. 
8. Heat over low, adding more water if the soup is too thick.   
9. Serve with croutons and/or a dollop of sour cream.