Witness my childhood beliefs take a nose-dive

Some of my favorite things are the show Unsolved Mysteries, creature-sightings and other outlandish theories.

I started this post because I just found a great website about the 2012 Apocalypse theories. Lots of articles and suppositions to browse through.

I can't say that I believe in most conspiracies, alien sightings, end-times predictions, but I find these mysteries and the people who consider them all to be very fascinating.

That said, I do firmly believe that:

Dinosaurs still live today, even if on a small scale in the depths of jungles and the ocean.

The Loch Ness Monster is a dinosaur.

And here's where my internet browsing debunked all my reasoning behind those beliefs. And I couldn't stop it!

I get most of my information about dinosaurs from Dr. Kent Hovind, a creationist who I saw speak in a week-long lecture series at a church in Chattanooga, TN when I was a little girl. My parents bought the videos of these talks, and I studied them religiously in my formative years.

Clearly, it makes perfect sense that the flood explains much of our world's geography, and that Noah brought little dinosaurs on the ark. Apparently, there was a water canopy surrounding the earth in the atmosphere that shielded the earth from harmful rays and provided optimal temperate climate for the dinos to grow. This canopy broke to cause the flood, and thereafter the dinos couldn't grow as large and were eventually mostly killed off by dragon slayers. (Hence, stories of firebreathing dragons are true, too.) It fits together perfectly when he's the only one talking, for sure.

I guess my confidence in Dr. Hovind was first shaken started while I was going to school at Virginia Tech, on one fateful night when I was seriously disillusioned after hearing Dr Hovind speak at a creation-evolution debate.

He is, in fact, a bit of a jerk. Also his theories are definitely not as sound as I once thought them to be.

And according to a quick google search, he is actually currently serving a ten year prison sentance for some rather bizarre white-collar crimes that mostly include tax evasion. Also (my, this is degrading quickly) he believes some rather outlandish conspiracies about our government, the ones that may be true but I'd rather not consider.

So Kent Hovind is not the scientific genius I once believed him to be. It appears a lot of people really dislike him and he's rather a fraud. It's strange because his voice still sounds so familiar, and it still kind of reminds me of kermit the frog.

Here's his ministry's slightly delusional POV.

And here's wikipedia's take.

and here we have freehovind.com

this is a site that debunks many of Hovind's theories.

All that said, I still really like the idea of dinosaurs surviving. I may have to go try to prove their existence myself. Look for more internet proof to come on The Fox Fix!

Is this a random thing to post on a baking blog? Perhaps. Have I lost all credibility? You tell me.

Beer Bread

This bread is the perfect fall-type bread, the ideal companion to soups of a hearty nature. I have thank my best friend Leah's family for introducing me to this sweet, springy loaf.

Also, it's easy. Did I mention that part? So simple, it's just....

3 cups flour

3 t baking powder

1 t salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 bottle of your fave beer (miller highlife is good)

Mix it all together and pour into a greased loaf pan, then bake at 350 for 30-45 min. It will be light golden brown. Enjoy!

I love this bread with White Turkey Chili and with Butternut Squash soup. (Recipes to come). Make it for your meal tonight; it will become a staple in your diet.

Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake

Would you like to impress people with your amazing cheezecake skillz? Here is your chance.

This is the kind of dessert that causes people to moan in ecstasy and sit with their eyes glazed over long after the plate is scraped clean. It doesn't last long at the restaurant, which is ironic, because I made it because cheesecake stays fresh longer than fruity desserts. In fact, some cheesecakes even improve with age. However, we'll probably never know if that's true about this cake, because people simply won't allow it to live that long.

Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake

recipe adapted from recipezaar.

Crust:

I mixed about 1 cup Graham Cracker crumbs with 1/4-1/2 cup cocoa powder and 1/4 cup or so sugar, then melted a 1/2 stick+ of butter and mixed that in as well. (sorry, I wasn't really measuring at this point. follow your heart when it comes to the crust. you can even use oreos or teddi grahams, and some recipes suggest processing peanuts in with the cookie crumbs.) Press the mixture into the bottom and sides of a 9-in springform pan and refrigerate while you make the filling.

Also, preheat to 275.

Filling:

2 lbs cream cheese, softened. (4 8oz packages)

5 eggs, room temperature

1.5 cups firmly packed brown sugar (I only had .5 cup brown sugar, so I also used .5 cup white sugar and .5 cup dark brown sugar. I figured it evened it out.)

1 cup smooth peanut butter

.5 cup whipping cream or heavy cream

1 t vanilla extract

12 Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, roughly chopped.

Using a mixer, beat the cream cheese til smooth. Add the eggs one by one, blending thoroughly between each. Add sugar, peanut butter, cream and vanilla, and blend well. Stir in the PB cups and pour into the chilled crust.

Prepare a water bath, so the water comes an inch up the sides of the pan. Bake at 275 for 1.5 hrs or until only the middle jiggles slightly. Let cool inside the oven, turned off, with the door cracked open.

Topping:

The original recipe calls for a sour cream topping made from 3 oz sour cream and .5 cup sugar and a dash of vanilla. It's good, I tried it on the first version of this cheesecake I made. However, this time I decided it needed more chocolate to balance out the PB, so I made chocolate ganache and poured it over the top of the cheesecake before chilling.

Heat 3/4 cup heavy cream until bubbly around the edges, then mix in 1-1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, letting stand for a minute before stirring smooth.

Let the cheesecake chill for a few hours, or preferably overnight before serving. Sprinkle Chopped PB cups on top of the ganache for garnish.

Lisa Michele's Levain Cookies

This will eventually be a post about Levain's chocolate cookies and the many attempts to make them, but first I am going to share my experience of New York City's food with you.

When I lived in New York City in the spring, I explored the city through bakeries. I'd hear or read about some fantastic bakery, then set off the first chance I got, even if it meant changing trains 5 times because of closed lines and walking 3 miles in the rain and venturing absurdly far off my beaten path. One pivotal afternoon, I sat on the floor of Barnes and Noble. (in NYC, the B and N's don't have comfy chairs to lounge in. The only chairs there are at Starbucks, and they patrol those, making sure you are actively sipping an expensive drink. They don't want to encourage loitering, I suppose.)

Anyway, I found a book called (I think) Gourmet in NYC, and it listed fantastic food according to parts of the city (Upper West Side, Chinatown, Brooklyn, the Village, etc). It featured not only bakeries, but chocolate specialty stores, butchers, cheese shops and ice cream parlors. I sat on the floor and carefully copied places and locations into the notebook I carried with me everywhere. I referenced this list often, determined to seek out these notable eateries. I focused mostly on the bakeries, with occasional side trips to the chocolate, ice cream and of course, Rice to Riches (for rice pudding in any flavor you can dream.)

I think my most ridiculous trip involved taking the train to another train to a bus and then walking through Redhook, Brooklyn just to taste the wares of Baked and of Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pie. (totally worth it- Baked has amazing cookies and very creative brownies like stout brownies. and at Steve's I sampled frozen chocolate dipped key lime pie on a stick.

And I wondered why my wedding body was slow in coming.)

I loved Redhook. It is on the water and has a lonely feeling I didn't experience anywhere else in crowded NY. While there, I stumbled upon the Waterfront Museum, run by a man who restored an old tugboat, and now lives there with his family. They put on circuses in the summer and open up their home for tours a couple days a week.

I had to walk a very long way to find a train back to the inhabited portions of the city. I know I was stumbling around wide-eyed with my nose stuck in my Not-For-Tourists map and info book. (A must for anyone new to the city.)

Anyway, I told you that to tell you this: Probably the most famous cookies in NYC can be found at Levain Bakery on the Upper West Side. They have Chocolate Chip Walnut, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter, Oatmeal Raisin, and Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip, and these cookies are MASSIVE. And DIVINE. A nice way to spend the afternoon is to take the train to Levain, then walk over a few blocks and park yourself and a book at Strawberry Fields in Central Park to munch away.

When I got back to Virginia in May, I was struck with a hankerin for these delicious cookies, and in searching the internet, I found several recipes which satisfied my craving for huge almost raw in the middle cookies. The Levain website even has a page dedicated to the many knock-off recipes out there. (I guess they are that confident that no one will crack their secret recipe.)

Today, I followed two of these recipes, one for the Chocolate chip Walnut, and one for the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. They are both good, but I love the chocolate PB a bit more than I love the walnut. (as a rule, I hate nuts in cookies, but these are good.)

Here are the links to the recipe and recipe from the blog Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives.

And here are the cookies at the restaurant:

If you are interested, here are some other food locales that I would highly recommend (I was in NYC about 4 months):

Magnolia Bakery (greenwich village)

Absolute Bagels (upper ws)

Max and Mina's Icecream (queens)

Australian Homemade (icecream and gelato) (east village)

Donut Plant (lower es)

Amy's Bread (midtown)

Grom (gelato) (upper ws)

Hungarian Pastry Shop (upper ws)

Junior's Restaurant (cheesecake) (brooklyn)

Grimaldi's Pizza (bklyn)

Di Fara Pizza (ah-mazing) (bklyn)

Brooklyn Icecream Factory (bklyn)

Angelica Kitchen (vegan restaurant, and AMAZING even to non-vegans. I am definitely non-vegan.) (300 E 12th)

Smokejoint (BBQ) (bklyn)

Other places to go:

Brooklyn Flea Market

Prospect Park

Brooklyn Bridge/Grimauldi's

free nights at the art museums (Brooklyn Museum, MAD Museum, Queens Museum, Moma, Whitney, the Met) (some are free all the time)

MetroNorth to DiaBeacon

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Coney Island (pure ridiculousness)

I heard a lot about governor's island, but I never went.

Kahlua Cupcakes

I am proud of this combination. However, I used my fail-proof chocolate cupcakes from Martha, and they failed. I used brown sugar instead of white, but that may not have been the only thing I did wrong.

First make Chocolate Cupcakes. If you want, you could add some kahlua to the batter.

Second, make Chocolate Coffee Ganache for the filling.

Heat 1 cup cream on the stove. Add 2 T coffee and let steep for 5 minutes or so. Use a coffee filter or a fine sieve to strain out the coffee grains. Heat the cream again, and add 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips or chopped. Let sit for a minute or two, then stir til smooth.

Use a small round cookie cutter to cut holes in the tops of the cooled cupcakes. Save the pieces that come out. Put about a tablespoon of chocolate filling in each hole, then replace the cupcake cap.

Next, make icing using 2 stick softened unsalted butter. Pour in 2+ tablespoons Kahlua. Add powdered sugar, a little at a time, until preferred sweetness and consistancy. (Between a 1/2 pound and a pound.) I used food coloring to make mine orange for halloween.

Harry Potter Halloween Party!!!

(not our kitchen)

Quite possibly the best party of my life.

It all started because I found a recipe for treacle tart, which always sounded delicious in the books. I started thinking...Harry Potter Food....Harry Potter Party....

Plus, I love a chance to get ridiculously excited about HP, tease my hair and don my bodysuit. PLUS, everyone else dressed up too. We had a Snape, Narcissa, Lucious, Krum, Hermione, Harry, Neville, Dobby, Hagrid, Trelawney, Rita Skeeter, Voldemort, Padma, Luna, Goyle, etc. I was Buckbeak the Hippogriff.

The menu:

Pumpkin Pasties

Treacle Tart

White Pumpkin Cheeseball

Cauldron Cakes

Spinach Dip

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Assorted gummy slugs, mushrooms, bears and worms

Reeses Peanut Butter Pumpkins

We tried to make Butterbeer with a combination of apple cider, caramel, fresh squeezed orange juice and cream. It tasted good, but it didn't taste like butterbeer. Have to keep experimenting.

We used puff pastry and pie dough for the pumpkin pasties with a pumpkin pocket pie mold from Williams-Sonoma, and this recipe for pumpkin filling.

Treacle Tart is kind of like pecan pie without the pecans, and the secret ingredient is "Golden Syrup."

The white pumpkin cheeseball is SPECtacular. A real hit, and I'm not usually one for cheeseballs. Recipe from Southern Living.

The cauldron cakes were just chocolate cupcakes

The Spinach Dip was from Martha

The Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins are the same from a earlier blog entry.

Some choice photos from the night:

Hippogriff, minus the wings that I definitely spent too much time on.

Voldemort, killing a cupcake.

Hagrid, Lucius and Dobby

Goyle getting Harry

Eric wearing my beak

Neville with his love fern.

Prof Trelawney, duh.

Pumpkin Flan

This recipe was from a Rachel Ray mag. It pretty much tastes like pumpkin pie. The only thing flan-like was the caramel on the bottom; it didn't have the flanny texture I love...

So if for some reason you're hank'rin for a crust-less pumpkin pie, this is your recipe.

http://www.rachaelraymag.com/Recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipes/mucho-gusto-latin-recipes/Pumpkin-Flan