Baked Elephant Ears That Turned Into Fritters

My friends and I are total goofballs. We decided to throw a party for Elephant Appreciation Day.

And, yes, I DID make those myself.

We learned much about elephants during the party. Did you know elephants bury their dead herd mates? And they mourn them.

Basically, elephants are sweethearts.

Anyway, I was going to make baked elephant ears (funnel cakes) for the party, and I found a decent looking recipe online.

These are not going to be elephant ears. These will be what I decided to call imitation fritters. They will be delicious nonetheless, but not elephant ears.

I decided to do baked elephant ears because I don't own a deep fryer (who does!?!).

Here's what you'll need;

1 package yeast

1/4 cup warm water

4 cups flour

1 tsps salt

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

1 cup sour cream

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 tsps vanilla

1 cups sugar

1 tsps cinnamon

First thing you want to do is get yourself a big ol' bowl. Get the yeast and water, and dissolve the yeast in water.

This weirded me out a little bit. The yeast kind of sticks to the bottom of the bowl, but you just have to keep stirring with a spoon until it's completely blended with the water.

This was my first time working with yeast, so I was learning as I went.

Once the yeast is dissolved, add in the flour, salt, butter, sour cream, eggs, and vanilla.

By the way, here are some, in my opinion, slightly beaten eggs. I wondered if you really needed to slightly beat them or if this website was just messing with me.

And there is the hodge-podge of ingredients thus far.

Beat that until smooth. It'll probably take a while.

Cover that up with a damp paper towel and leave it in the fridge for two hours.

EXCITEMENT!

I was so bored. Thankfully my friends showed up and we did dumb teenager things while we waited.

*2 hours later*

Okay. Get out that dough. Now mix the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar, but currently I have a Ziploc bag of sugar and cinnamon in my cabinet that may very well never find a use. You will not need 2 cups of sugar. I advise you use one.

Once that is mixed up, start sprinkling it all over your dough. Don't even bother with a whisk or electric mixer or anything along the lines of that.

                                                                         Yep.

So do that until you think you have enough in there. I would use about half of it.

The recipe then called for me to use a rolling pin to smooth out the dough on a board. 

Well I may have somehow messed something up in the process of making the dough, because after about two seconds it was obvious that that wasn't going to happen.

I've learned that sometimes in cooking you just have to throw your hands up and say, "Whatevs."

This was one of those times.

So this is what I did instead.

I sprayed cooking spray in a pan and just started ripping the dough into junks and placing it on there.

Then I sprinkled a bunch of the cinnamon-sugar on the dough.

I popped it in the oven at 350 for roughly 20 minutes (you can tell if it's done by if it's mushy or not).

It was delicious. It tasted like a sweet bread. I loved it, personally. It was a little time consuming, but well worth it the waiting.

If you try this out or any of the other recipes I have done, let me know in the comments how it worked out :)

Oh, and thanks for checking out my blog. You should see the faces I make when I see how many page views I have :D! (And the number isn't big at all either.)

"Healthy" Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Oatmeal cookies are my favorite type of cookie. They are by far the easiest cookie to make. They almost always stay the same shape while baking, except for a little spreading. And if you do them correctly, they are fluffy and gooey and just amazing.

Unfortunately, to acheive that fluffiness, you often need an entire cup of butter. This is equal to two sticks.

I am not a wasteful person. Whenever I cook, I make sure I have enough just for the meal, so there aren't any leftovers. I hate using a bunch of one thing in a recipe. Also, butter isn't very good for you (obvious statement of the year). So, I decided to try using a substitute for butter this time.

I have not had a ton of luck with substitutes before. I made key lime bars once, and used a combination of salt and I think vegetable oil to substitute for butter. When I combined the salt and vegetable oil with the batter, it started bubbling like a science experiment. The key lime bars didn't turn out too well.

But I really did not want to use two entire sticks of butter for some cookies, so substitutes it is.

Right here and now, I'm telling you to just use the butter. It's gonna' save you a whole lotta' heartbreak.

Here's what you need;

2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups old  fashioned oats

1 tsps baking soda

1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon

1 tsps pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsps salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1 tsps vanilla extract

First thing you want to do is preheat your oven to 350 and line a cookie sheet with wax aper.

Mix the flour, oats, baking soda, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon. In a bowl, just so we're clear.

Yummy :)

In a seperate bowl, mix the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. 

I used vegetable oil as a substitute for the butter, so mine looks different.

Mix in the pumpkin and egg with the butter, brown sugar, and sugar, then mix.

Appetizing.

Mix in the flour mixture.

I was reading through the recipe, and suddenly, I saw two words that got me more excited than I am on Christmas morning.

"Get creative."

OOOHHHH YEEEAAAHHHH!!!!!!!

My family loves almonds, so, pumpkin oatmeal ALMOND cookies!!!!!

I got a couple bags of almonds and crushed them up.

I would get salted almonds for cookies, because non-seasoned almonds actually taste sweet.

Little tip, I put them in little baggies and use a rolling pin to crush them up.

Use the tip of the rolling pin to crush them up even more.

Then put whatever you decided to put in the mix into it.

Mix it up, then put the mixture on the cookie sheet in rounded table spoons.

I find it  troublesome when a recipe calls for a rounded tablespoon. Your definition of rounded and my definintion of rounded could be on two opposite ends of the rounded spectrum. Also, I find that when I get a "rounded tablespoon" it is equivalent to two tablespoons :/

But anyway, rounded tablespoon.

Again, I HIGHLY suggest just using the butter. Yours will look different (perhaps more delicious).

Put them in the oven for 13 minutes, pull them out, and bam-shazzam, yummy cookies :)

These, sadly, are what mine looked like.

Not very pretty, but they sure do look "healthy".

Oh, and here's a little laugh for you. I figured the wax paper wasn't really doing anything, so I decided to just do a batch without it.

The wax paper was important.
 

But the boys thought they were still delicious.

All in all, I call this a half success. Maybe I didn't get high scores in the pretty category, but they tasted good. In the end, that's better than nothing!

Pumpkin Roll

So, for my first adventure in baking (for the blog), I decided to do something that looked completely out of my range of skills and incredibly involved. I looked to Pinterest, and found something that looked just complicated enough for my purpose. A pumpkin roll with a cream cheese filling. I cracked my knuckles, rolled my neck, and said "Challenge accepted".

That is what it is supposed to look like. I have never done something like this.

So I headed to the store for the ingredients. You need;

3/4 cup flour (NOT self rising)

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon (but I like to use extra)

1 1/2 teaspoons ginger

1/2 teaspoons salt

6 large eggs

1/3 cup granulated sugar (which I learned is just a fancy way of saying 'not powdered sugar, sugar')

1/3 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup pureed pumpkin (mushed up pumpkin in a can)

1 pack of cream cheese

3/4 cup powdered sugar, and then more for sprinkling when it's done

3 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon syrup

Also, some 'parchment paper', and a 15x 16 inch, thin pan. It said a jelly roll pan, but I didn't know what that was, so seeing the tube-like structure of the pumpkin roll I assumed this would be a really long and skinny bread pan. My mom was so confused when I kept going up and down the aisles looking for a 15 inch metal tube.

In reality, it looks like this.

And I'm pretty cheap, so I just got an aluminum one and it worked fine. 

First, I preheated the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Then spray the pan with some cooking spray and spread some parchment paper on it. I also have no idea what that is supposed to be, so I'm going to take a not-so-educated guess and say that this is parchment paper.

Spray the parchment, or wax, paper with the cooking spray and set it aside.

Next you want to mix the flour,  cinnamon, ginger, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt in a bowl.

Like that.

Listen, I'm about to give you a tip that I wish this recipe would have given me before I started. Go out and buy yourself an egg separator. I guess this website just assumed I had a spare egg separator lying around . Not the case. I have never been in a kitchen where the person had an egg separator. Not even my grandmother, who has been baking and cooking for 60 years, has an egg separator.

This little gadget's purpose is to separate the egg whites from the yolks. As previously stated, I don't have one of these. So, I improvised.

A small hand strainer and a bowl.

This unfortunately didn't work out very well.

I was left with one option.

Don't worry, my hands were clean.

This was very disgusting. I will be investing in an egg separator soon.

Separate all of the eggs, but don't throw away the whites. I almost did. You'll need them later.

Put the yolks in a mixing bowl. Then add the granulated sugar and the brown sugar.

Mix it until well blended. I advise you use an electric mixer, but hey, it's your life. If you feel like whisking it by hand, be my guest.

It should look like that.

Then add your 3/4 cup pumpkin and mix that in.

Add your dry ingredients. Mix that business up.

Here come the egg whites! Mix those and 1/4 teaspoon salt together and add it in.

Warning; the egg white/salt combination is not going to smell nor look pretty.

I felt extremely hesitant to put that chicken-vomit looking substance in my creation. Do it no matter how disgusting it is.

Just to prepare you for what it will look like.

The recipe said to mix those two together until they were "stiff, but not dry".

I was so confused. What do you mean "dry"? It is a liquid substance. Unless the mixing makes it evaporate at an alarming rate, I don't think it will be dry.

But anyway, I just did mine until it was bubbly and then thought, "Well, there you go".

Then mix that in with the other bowl and make sure they're nice and blended.

The insrtuctions said to mix it in in 3 additions. Whatever. Just pour the whole thing in there and go to town on it.

Pour the finished batter into your pan and pop it into the oven for 15 minutes.

Okay, I'm going to sound like a complete idiot right now. It said to get a clean kitchen towel and dust it with powdered sugar. Thing is, we don't have a kitchen towel. We have dish towels and wash clothes, but I didn't think those would cut it.

So I proceeded to go and get a clean bathroom towel from the dryer and spread it over my counter top, then put powdered sugar on it.

At that moment my mom came in and was like "No, just, no."

She said I should just use wax paper with powdered sugar on it. That seemed to make a lot more sense.

15 minutes later, the bread is ready.

GENTLY lift it out of the pan by the edges of the wax paper. Then flip it wax paper side up onto the counter where your wax paper with powdered sugar is. It should be a wax paper and pumpkin bread sandwich.

You can't see it, but there's wax paper on top of it too.

GENTLY peel off the wax paper on top. Be very careful or it will pull of some of the bread too.

Leave that aside. Now onto the filling.

Mix the butter, cream cheese, syrup, vanilla extract and the 3/4 cup powdered sugar in a bowl. Again, an electric beater is recommended.

Mix it until it is smooth and spreadable.

Not melted butter smooth, but this is good enough.

I think you know what comes next.

 

Spread the filling all over the bread, make sure you get the edges too.

Sorry for the picture quality, my mom was taking the pictures at this point and was flipping back and forth from the camera to the different apps on my iPod.

Now, here it gets involved.

You want to get the edge of the pumpkin roll and start rolling it

Be sure you pull the wax paper back every few inches so that none will get in the roll.

It's inevitable that this thing is going to crack. Especially when you first start rolling. But hey, I'm not Gordon Ramsey, this isn't "Top Chef" or whichever of the five shows he hosts. I'm just trying not to burn down my house at this point.

The cracking will minimize as you keep rolling. Again, make sure no wax paper is getting in the roll.

And there's the end result. Not exactly like the picture, but pretty darn close, if I do say so myself.

So I am pretty proud of myself. I didn't ruin it! And it actually tastes DIVINE! I will definitely be making this again.

Yay! So, there's my first baking adventure! I hope you enjoyed it :)