Carrot Cake Cheesecake

Long time no post. Sorry guys! Being at school with no kitchen really takes a toll on being able to post my recipes. But big news! We just got an apartment...with a kitchen! Here's what it looks like...



I can't wait to cook in it! But anyway, Paula Deen was having a recipe contest using Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Which got me thinking...what could I make up with cream cheese? Here's what I came up with. Carrot Cake Cheesecake. I took some of Paula Deen's tricks and applied them to my recipe. The bottom crust is a carrot cake mix and the cheesecake part is made with carrot baby food. Sneaky sneaky ;)

Ingredients
-3 (8 oz) packages of cream cheese
-1 tablespoon cinnamon
-1 jar carrot baby food
-1 and 1/2 cups brown sugar
-3 eggs
-1/4 cup heavy cream
-1 tablespoon vanilla

Carrot Filling
-2 grated carrots
-1/2 cup brown sugar
-2 tablespoons melted butter

Crust
-1 box carrot cake mix
-1 stick butter
-1 egg

Directions
1) Mix the crust ingredients and press into the bottom of a 9 inch springform pan
2) With a mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth
3) Beat in the rest of the ingredients (make sure you add the eggs one at a time)
4) In a small bowl, mix together the carrot filling (carrots, brown sugar, and butter) until completely incorporated
5) Now you have a choice. You can either mix this into the cheesecake batter OR you can pour half the batter into the pan and then pour the carrot mixture in the middle of the cheesecake and add the rest of the batter on top.
6) Pour all the batter into the pan
7) Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes until the top is golden brown and it's not completely jiggly
8) When the cake is done, slide a knife around the outside edge to loosen it from the pan (prevents cracking)
9) Put the cake back in the oven but turn the oven off. Leave the cheesecake in the oven with the oven off for an hour. (also prevents cracking by not shocking the cake with the temperature difference)

Peanut Butter Layer Cake

Here are some cakes that I did for the bake sale last week. They were already accounted for before the bake sale even started so I really didn't sell these AT the bake sale. It's a peanut butter layer cake with a crunchy peanut butter cream cheese icing. I figured that icing the same cake the same way twice would be boring so I mixed it up. So yeah, same cake, same frosting, different way of decorating.



To frost/decorate the reese's cake....
1) Frost the top of the bottom layer and put the other cake on top
2) Frost a thin layer of frosting on the entire cake to help seal in the crumbs
3) Apply a thicker, more decorative layer of frosting to the entire cake
4) This cake is roughly frosted for texture
5) Crush Reese's cups and scoop and press them onto the side of the cake

To frost/decorate the line-ey cake
1) Follow the first 3 steps of the other cake's directions
2) While applying the decorative layer, dip your offset spatula (or whatever you are using to frost the cake) in milk (i'm sure water would work fine too)
**This creates the "smooth look" of the frosting
3) Once you've frosted the whole cake smoothly, melt chocolate bark and scoop into a ziploc bag
4) Snip the very very teeny tiny end of the bag off
5) Gently start squeezing the bag over the cake going side to side
6) Every once in a while, stop, turn the cake, and begin squeezing the bag again (to get lines going in different directions




Ingredients
-2 cups AP flour
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-1 cup creamy peanut butter
-1 stick butter or margarine (softened)
-1 cup granulated sugar
-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
-2 large eggs
-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
-3/4 cup milk
-peanut butter cream cheese frosting
*1 stick butter or margarine (softened)
*1 cup crunchy peanut butter
*1 package (3 oz) cream cheese(softened)
*1 tsp vanilla
*2 cups powdered sugar
*3 tbls milk

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 (9 in) baking rounds.
2) In a medium bowl, stir together flour and baking powder
3) In a large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat peanut butter, butter and both sugars for 3 minutes or until creamy.
4) Add eggs one at a time, beating well after eah addition. Beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low.
5) Add flour mixture alternatedly with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
6) Turn batter into prepared pans and spread evenly. Bake 20-30 minutes or until toothpick into the center comes out clean.
7) Cool cake completely in pan on wire rack.

Frosting Directions
1) In a lagre bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat softened butter, peanut butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until smooth ad fluffy.
2) Add powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons milk. Beat until blended. Increase speed to medium-high and beat for 2 minutes or until fluffy; adding remaining milk as needed for desired consistency.


*****Some things I will do differently next time
1) Double the recipe and make 4 layers...the cake was kind of short
2) Frost the cake as SOON as it is cool (the cake dries out really fast so you need to seal in the moisture asap)...it was hard to frost it when it needed to be because of all the other baking I was doing at the time.

Honey Bourbon Brown Sugar Pound Cake

Well guys, it's official. I have successfully made my FIRST pound cake. I was really super nervous because I know that it is really easy to mess up. I found this recipe out of a huge Good Housekeeping cookbook that I ordered online (I needed books to keep me from spending hours online looking at recipes...it was getting slightly ridiculous). This pound cake sounded really good and it involved cooking with (GASP) alcohol! (which was intriguing). I gave my dad the grocery list which included a trip to the ABC store (he said he hoped that someone from church saw him so that he could tell them that he was buying whiskey for his underage daughter) haha. It turned out splendidly...dare I say perfect. :) At the bake sale, one man bought a piece from me. I was really nervous because apparently he is a pound cake EXPERT. He came back to the bake sale to ask me how I made it because he actually thought it was GOOD! Yay! Victory!

Honey Bourbon Brown Sugar Pound Cake
Ingredients
-3 cups All-Purpose flour
-3/4 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp baking soda
-3/4 cup milk
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-4 tablespoons honey bourbon
-1 and 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
-1/2 cup granulated sugar
-1 cup butter (2 sticks) softened ***do not use margarine
-5 large eggs

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour tube pan
2) In a medium bowl, stirl together flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.
3) In another bowl, mix milk, vanilla, and bourbon.
4) In a large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat brown sugar, sugar, and butter
5) Increase speed to high and beat until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a timem beating well after each addition. Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture alternately with milk mixture beginning and ending with flour mixture, scraping bowl occasionally with rubber spatula.
6) Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 1 hour 20 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched with finger and toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.
7) Cool in pan 10 minutes. Loosen cake from side and center of pan. Remove from pan, place on wire rack over waxed paper.



***There is an optional glaze that is brushed over the cake when the cake is still warm. I didn't use it because the cake was too darn good already :) but here is how you make it.

Ingredients
-2 tablespoons orange juice
-1/3 cup sugar
-2 tablespoons bourbon

Directions
1) In a small bowl, combine orange juice, sugar, and bourbon.
2) Brush mixture all over warm cake.
3) Cool completely.

Hershey Bar Cake

This recipe actually comes from the lady who does my hair...Kristene. She loves making this cake and I'm glad she does...and I'm glad she gives out the recipe :) It's a layered chocolate cake that uses 3 bars of Hershey's chocolate. Yummy!

Ingredients
-One box of milk chocolate cake mix (any chocolate box mix will do)
-1 small box of instant vanilla pudding
-3 eggs
-1 cup self rising flour
-1 cup of oil
-1 and 1/2 cups milk

Hershey bar Frosting
-8 ounce tub of cream cheese (room temperature)
-1 cup of 10x powdered sugar
-12 ounce container of cool whip
-1/2 cup of pecans (optional)
-3 Hershey bars or mini hershey kisses

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 325
2) Prepare 2 round cake pans with non stick spray then,
pour batter into pans and bake on 325 degrees for about 25 minutes
3) Let cool

Frosting Directions
1) Mix frosting
2) Break up or shave one of the chocolate bars in the frosting in to little pieces
3) Frost cake and place hershey squares on top of cake sticking out for an awesome cake
4) Keep in refrigerator
5) Even better the following day

Dump Cake

Following my last post for Pineapple Upside Down Biscuits, I decided to share my mom's recipe for Cherry-Pineapple Dump Cake. For those of you who have had this stuff, you know it's addicting. I LOVE this stuff. The best part is...there's a reason it's called "dump cake"...you just dump it all together :)

Ingredients
-1 can (16 oz.) crushed pineapple
-1 can (20 oz.) cherry pie filling
-1 pkg. yellow cake mix
-1/2 - 2/3 c. chopped nuts
-1/2 c. butter

Directions
1) Grease 9x13 pan
2) Dump in pineapple with juice, spreading evenly
3) Pour cherry pie filling over pineapple, spreading evenly
4) Add dry cake mix evenly over fruit
5) Add nuts
6) Drizzle melted butter over top
7) Do not mix
8) Bake 350 degrees for 1 hour

Cake-In-A-Cup

Happy Birthday Courtney (20 candles) :)




Happy Birthday Courtney!!! My prayer leader/friend, Courtney, turned 20 today! To celebrate, I wanted to make her a cake but seeing as how the extent of my culinary equipment is a microwave, I had to improvise...thus the "cake-in-a-cup". This is a really cute cake that bakes in the microwave in 2 minutes. You just put all the ingredients together in a coffee mug and go to town!

Ingredients
-1/2 cup cake mix
-1 egg white
-1 tablespoon oil
-1 tablespoon water
-cooking spray
-frosting

Directions
1) Spray the inside of a coffee mug with non-stick cooking spray
2) Mix ingredients together in the mug
3) Microwave on high for 2 minutes
4) Cool
5) Frost

Mint Chocolate Layer Cake

^ This is what it's "supposed" to look like ^
This is something I tried because I was bored. I have never really been a layered cake maker (I just didn't think I could pull it off). But since I was home alone one day, I decided that it wouldn't hurt to try it. I thought the cake was super good! I am always a sucker for anything mint chocolate...really....anything. It wasn't the prettiest frosting job because I tried to frost it when it was still warm---btw, don't do that. But it's still a great cake.

Ingredients
-1/2 cup butter, softened
-1 and 3/4 cups sugar
-3 eggs
-4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-3/4 cup milk
-1/2 cup water
-1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
-3/4 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon salt

FILLING:
-1 cup heavy whipping cream
-3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
-1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
-3 to 4 drops green food coloring, optional

ICING:
-1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
-1/4 cup butter
-1/3 cup evaporated milk
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1 and 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions
1) Line two greased 9-in. round baking pans with waxed paper. Grease and flour the paper; set aside.
2) In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
3) Beat in chocolate and vanilla.
4) Combine milk and water.
5) Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk mixture.
6) Pour into prepared pans.
7) Bake at 350° for 24-28 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.
8) For filling, in a small bowl, beat the cream until it begins to thicken. Add confectioners' sugar and extract; beat until stiff peaks form. Beat in food coloring if desired.
9) Place one cake layer on a serving plate; spread with filling. top with second cake.
10) For icing, in a microwave-safe bowl, melt chips and butter; stir until smooth. Cool slightly.
11) Beat in evaporated milk and vanilla.
12) Gradually beat in confectioners' sugar.
13) Frost and decorate cake. Chill 2 hours before slicing.

Gooey Butter Cake

This is probably one of my favorite recipes ever. This is #2 on the Paula Deen site's "top ten". Mrs. Deen sure knew what she was doing (yes, I am obsessed with this woman). This is a dessert for a VERY special occasion because not only is is 412 calories per serving but it also calls for 2 sticks of butter (surprise surprise) and 1 whole box of powdered sugar. But that's what makes it mmmm mmm gooooood! The last time I made this, I don't even think I got a piece because it went so fast. YUM! (I will also mention that this heavenly confection comes in chocolate and pumpkin too :) yay! just google it)

Ingredients
Cake:
-1 (18.25 oz) package yellow cake mix
-8 tablespoons butter (melted)
-1 egg

Filling:
-1 (8 oz) package cream cheese
-2 eggs
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-8 tablespoons butter (melted)
-1 (16 oz) box powdered sugar

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 350
2) Combine the cake mix, egg, and stick of butter with an electric mixer until well combined, then pat the mixture into the bottom of a greased 13 X 9 baking dish
3) In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth
4) Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter and beat until smooth
5) Add the powdered sugar and mix well
6) Pour over the mixture in the pan and bake for 40-50 minutes (center should be gooey--do not overbake)

Cake Balls

This is something that I tried that was another one of those "woah, that's cool...I gotta try that" recipes. And I was sure glad I did. I brought some back to school for my roommate, Allison, to taste-test. They didn't last long. They are super easy to make and leave PLENTY of room to be creative. You can mix and match whatever flavors you want to. I personally did funfetti/cream cheese/white chocolate. 1) because I think funfetti is God's gift to the world and 2) because we had it at home and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store. But you definitely could do pretty much whatever you wanted to with these little things! Chocolate cake/strawberry frosting/chocolate coating....red velvet/cream cheese/white chocoate...chocolate/peanut butter frosting/ melted reese's coating...you get the point.

Ingredients
-1 box of your favorite cake mix (prepare as directed)
-1 can of your favorite frosting
-1 (3 oz) bar of your favorite flavor of confectioners coating

Directions
1) Prepare cake as directed and let cool
2) Crumble cake and mix with frosting
3) Using a melon baller (or your hands), form the cake mixture into balls
4) Dip the balls in the melted confectioners coating
5) Place them on wax paper to dry

Chocolate Eclair Cake

My Uncle Derek is the mayor of Westminster, South Carolina. So, we don't get to see my cousins that often. But when we do get to go down, I am always hoping that my cousin, Marley, will make Eclair Cake. This stuff is ADDICTING! I made this in my dorm room for a nursing presentation because guess what! NO OVEN NECCESSARY!

Ingredients

-2 (3.5 oz) packages instant french vanilla pudding

-1 (8 oz) tub whipped cream

-3 cups milk

-1 (16 oz) box graham crackers

-1 (16 oz) container chocolate frosting

Directions

1) Make french vanilla pudding as the box says to

2) Fold in the entire tub of whipped cream

3) In the bottom of a 13 X 9 pan, layer graham crackers, then the pudding mixture

4) Repeat as many layers as neccessary to end up with a layer of graham crackers on top

5) Heat up the chocolate frosting in the microwave until thin and pour over the top layer

6) Refridgerate overnight