belated egg nog cake

I am terribly late writing this entry, as I did not particularly care for the cake nor do I feel particularly strongly about egg nog.  I should have seen this apathy coming when I decided to make an egg nog dessert outside of the holiday season.  I love the holidays.  I have created very rigid guidelines about when I can start to enjoy myself about Christmas, otherwise my apartment would be filled with pine boughs all year round and I'd be listening to nothing but Christmas music.  Because that certainly does not happen.

I have been met with a lot of questioning when I have told people about how I made this cake coupled with the fact that I do not like egg nog.  For the record, I made it for someone who does, in fact, like egg nog.  This person has stared longingly at the egg nog in the refrigerated section of the grocery store since it arrived in mid-November (not egg nog season, thank you) and has put up with my scorn for his lack of holiday willpower.  I'm a terrible girlfriend.  To make up for this, I bought egg nog and decided to turn it into a cake.  This also allowed the extra egg nog to be sent home with him at no extra charge.  I am the best girlfriend.

As with all of the recipes that I find, I took a little artistic liberty.  All of the pictures on the website where I got it had it drizzled with custard and nicely shaped.  I drove all over town looking for a bundt pan to no avail, so mine was just a circular blob of cake.  I also didn't know how I felt about custard, so I made my own glaze that I poured over each slice.  I tried sprucing the cake up with some red sprinkles, but they just turned the cake pink over time.  The picture that you see to the left is not my cake, but this is what I want you to imagine my cake looked like.  Pretend it tasted good, too.



Egg Nog Cake
adapted from Allrecipes.com

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix (I used butter cake, this may have been a mistake)
• 2 cups egg nog
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

In a mixing bowl, combine the first five ingredients. Beat on low until moistened, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Pour into a greased and floured 12-cup fluted tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes; invert onto a wire rack. Remove from pan; cool completely. 

For glaze, combine egg nog with confectioners sugar and a dash of vanilla extract.  Mix with fork until smooth.  Pour over cake if you like mushy cake, as this is not actually a glaze.

macaroni and cheese

I have been thinking about baked macaroni and cheese now for weeks.  I have put it off or come up with excuses: I don't have a casserole dish, I can't find a good recipe, my grocery store doesn't sell cheese chunks in a bag.  I invited Ian* over for dinner last night and he picked macaroni and cheese over a "meat dish."  This worked out to my advantage as I had everything I needed already in the apartment.  It was like I was getting a free dinner!
* He plays a reoccurring role in these recipe recaps, as my motivation for cooking something other than cereal or pasta with old sauce on it for myself when I am alone is admittedly low.

Just kidding.  It was like I was getting dinner in exchange for an hour of manual labor and confusion.  Who knew macaroni and cheese took so much effort?  Can't I just throw a box of pasta into a pot of boiling water and toss in some cheese and some milk?  Doesn't a box of this stuff cost like 79cents?  I had already made a cake earlier in the day (recipe forthcoming) which means that a significant portion of my Saturday was taken up by preparing food.  How do people do this on a daily basis?  WHY do people do this on a daily basis?

I was already feeling vulnerable after the cake-making adventure, but I bucked up and put on my confident face.  This is macaroni and cheese.  How hard can this recipe be?  I gave it a once-over and immediately threw out some of the ingredients.  Onions in my macaroni and cheese?  Do I look like my grandmother?  No, thank you.  A bay leaf?  Honey, I don't even know what that is.  Clearly unimportant.  "Panko" bread crumbs?  That sounds like "Italian-Seasoned Stop & Shop brand Bread Crumbs" to me.

I'm not going to lie, I had to look up what tempering an egg was and I also sort of doubled the recipe but not really.  I wanted to use an entire box of macaroni instead of half a box so I roughly doubled everything else.  Except for milk.  The original recipe called for 3 cups, but I only really had 2 cups left.  Okay, that's a lie.  I had three but I wanted to save some for my cereal in the morning.  I really just made most of this recipe up.

Baked Macaroni & Cheese
Adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything who adapted it from Alton Brown

• 1lb of dry macaroni
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 tablespoon powdered mustard
•  2 cups milk
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 2 large eggs
• 1 package shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to taste. I used about 1 cup
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt 
• bread crumbs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large pot of boiling, extremely salted water cook the pasta to al dente.  Do not overcook it.  Drain pasta.
3. While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and mustard and keep it moving for about five minutes.  Make sure it's free of lumps. Stir in the milk and paprika. Simmer for ten minutes.  The original recipe says that "it will thicken, trust me."  Mine didn't.  In fact, it turned a weird brown color and smelled kind of like burning.  I feel that perhaps the bay leaf would have played some importance here.
4. Temper in the egg - I warmed it in a separate frying pan.  I put a handful of cheese into the warm egg and mixed it up until it became gooey.  I then threw this into the pot of drained pasta and mixed.
5. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese into the pasta and mix well.
6. Pour brownish butter/milk/mustard mixture into the pasta and mix.
7. Put pasta into a casserole dish.  I used a 9inch glass pyrex dish.
8. Top the pasta with remaining cheese and sprinkle on desired amount of bread crumbs.
9. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and rest for five to ten minutes before serving.  
10. Send half of it home with your boyfriend so it doesn't look like you are going to eat 5 pounds of pasta and cheese by yourself.

caramel bars

I have spent the last week and a half* rationing out these caramel bars, and we are down to the final four.  Last night, I sadly wrapped the remainders in tin foil for delivery and spent the rest of the evening going back and forth to the plate with crumbs on it, popping them into my mouth and shamefully ambling back to my bed.  Thank goodness I don't have roommates anymore.

My mother makes these every year for Christmas, and for some reason during the holidays it seems perfectly reasonable to shove handfuls into my mouth.  And one of every other cookie offered.  I think this year I might just cut to the chase and start eating sticks of butter rolled in brown sugar.

*  I know that I'm supposed to do one new recipe every week and I know this is only my second week and I have already failed.  In my defense, I haven't been feeling well and I made three new recipes last week.  If you're interested, I can certainly post the recipe for "half-eaten bowl of cereal" and "cold pitas with hummus."

Caramel Shortbread Squares

• 2/3 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 1 1/4 cups milk chocolate chips.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C).2. In a medium bowl, mix together 2/3 cup butter, white sugar, and flour until evenly crumbly. Press into a 9 inch square baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes.
2. After baking, I placed the shortbread into the freezer for about 10-20 minutes to cool.  If you do not do this, the caramel will separate from the shortbread later on.
3. In a 2 quart saucepan, combine 1/2 cup butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, and sweetened condensed milk. Bring to a boil. Continue to boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon for about 3 minutes. Pour over baked crust. Cool until it begins to firm.
4. Place chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat for 1 minute, then stir and continue to heat and stir at 20 second intervals until chocolate is melted and smooth. Pour chocolate over the caramel layer and spread evenly to cover completely. Chill. Cut into 1 inch squares. These need to be small because they are so rich.