homemade chocolate buttercream frosting

I’m a pretty low-key when it comes to birthday celebrations.  I like to keep it simple.  Party of three, please:  Me + Husband + Kiddo.  It’s all good that way.  They took me to dinner, bought me a couple of gifts, and we ate cake; the cake they baked and of which I was tasked with frosting.

Frosting my own birthday cake is not offensive to me in the least.   Being asked to do so insures I don’t have to eat store-bought frosting, and I get to play with butter and sugar and cocoa.  What’s not to like about that?.

This recipe is a staple…tried and true.  Everyone has these stock items in their pantry and they go together in less time than it would take to run to the grocery store for one of those gritty, over-priced, pre-packaged frosting containers.  The quantity easily frosts a 9 x 13 sheet cake, or 24 cupcakes.  For a round layer cake, I might bump up the ingredients a bit to allow for frosting between layers.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 6 Tbsp butter, softened
• 2 2/3 c confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 c cocoa, unsweetened
• 1/3 cup milk (I use 1%)
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Place butter in a bowl and beat until creamy.
2. Add sugar and cocoa, mixing well.
3. Stir in milk in portions, stirring each time.
4. Add vanilla.
5. Spread on cooled cake or other items needing frosting.
6. Lick the bowl.

pumpkin chocolate chip squares

So, yesterday I spent too much time reading news and scanning the Twitter feed re: the current state of affairs in Washington D.C.  I’m a fiscal conservative.  Borrowing money to pay your bills is ludicrous.  You wouldn’t run your household budget that way, so why is it ok for the government to spend like a passel of reckless teenagers with a stolen ATM card??  (I’d refer you to the recent glitch in the welfare EBT system in which recipients of government-funded, i.e., my tax dollars, debit cards went on a spending spree…knowing full well their cards did NOT have balances to support their spending).  Get it?

Well, enough of that.  After an overload of (more) bad news out of our nation’s capital, I shut down (ha ha…no pun intended) the internet and headed to the kitchen to bake.  With ingredients I bought with hard-earned money contained within our monthly household budget.  Get it?

Oh, never mind.  Just bake these.  They’re yummy and perfect for fall – pumpkin, pumpkin spice, vanilla, and chocolate.  Good stuff.  Good stuff.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Squares (adapted from Martha Stewart)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
• 1/2 Tbsp pumpkin-pie spice*
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• dash salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 5/8 cup sugar (weighed on a kitchen scale = .625 ounces)
• 1/2 large egg (approx 1 Tbsp and 1 1/2 tsp)**
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 6 ounces chocolate chips (I used a combination of white and semi-sweet)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spray bottom of 8 x 8 baking pan with Pam Non-Stick Baking Spray
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, pie spice, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
4. With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium-high speed until smooth; beat in egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in pumpkin puree (mixture may appear curdled). Reduce speed to low, and mix in dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Bake until edges begin to pull away from sides of pan and a toothpick inserted in center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached.  Approximately 30 – 35 minutes. Cool completely in pan.

*Pumpkin Pie Spice is easy to make at home:  Combine 1 Tbsp cinnamon, 2 tsp ground ginger, and 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

**I halved this recipe which created the dilemma of halving an egg.  A typical large egg contains about 2 Tbsp egg white and 1 Tbsp yolk.  So, to half the egg, you’ll need 1 1/2 Tbsp of whipped egg (1 Tbsp + 1 1/2 tsp).

***Baker’s Notes:  First, the original recipe called for chocolate chips.  I’m not a huge fan of white chocolate, but I had a partial bag I wanted to use up, so I divided the 6 ounces into half white chocolate, half semi-sweet.  The end result?  Perfect way to eat white chocolate.  You can’t even really taste the difference.  Secondly, because I halved the recipe, I ended up baking in an 8 x 8 pan rather than the 9 x 13.  Watch the baking time.  I pulled them the first time at 30 minutes, but quickly reconsidered because they’re much thicker.  Last, the one thing I might add to give this recipe a little more punch (not that they’re not delicious), is cayenne pepper.  Heat and chocolate and pumpkin.  Triple threat!!

the perfect steak

We’re meat eaters in these parts, and, because our weather is suitable for grilling nine months a year (twelve if you’re a real diehard), we throw meat on the grill A LOT!  To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t always a griller.  Some of that was probably by virtue of the fact I spent the vast majority of my life in a climate where the grilling season was much, much, much shorter.  The other part was probably pure intimidation: the fear of not really knowing when the meat was done, or worse, the fear of cooking a nice piece of meat until it was mostly inedible shoe leather.

Over time, I’ve put aside those fears and do a lot of my cooking outside on the grill.  Thankfully, I’ve yet to produce anything remotely like shoe leather.  But I’ve always wondered if there was a better way to do steaks in order to retain even more of their natural moisture, yet still get beautiful grill marks that turn edible in to art!

If you’re from The Valley (Phoenix and beyond), or you’re planning to visit Phoenix, there’s a place you need to put on your “must eat” list: Tarbell’s Restaurant at 32nd and Camelback.  Mark Tarbell is an amazing chef and the food is spectacular.  As well as running the restaurant that bears his name, Mark also puts out the occasional video in a series called Kitchen Conversations.  They’re generally short (5 minutes or so) tutorials on various dining topics, from grilling and searing, to wine storage.  The video embedded below is one Mark posted back in September and will forever change how you prepare steak on the grill.  Take a few minutes and watch, if you can, then fire up the grill and your oven to cook steaks to perfection.  Enjoy!