Our Life In The Desert » Photography

Kitchen Experiment: Texas Sheet Cake

Brandy — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:00:06 +0000

Actually being from Texas, I grew up eating Texas sheet cake, so I knew going into this, that the recipe had some pretty big boots to fill.

It came sort of close – but you know what they say about mama’s cooking – you can come close, but it’ll never taste the same.

Don’t get me wrong, the cake did not disappoint. It’s delicious, it’s just not the same cake that mom makes, so I have a hard time calling it a true Texas sheet cake.

Texas Sheet Cake Ingredients

Prep: 20 min. | Cook: 35 min. | Servings: 24

2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flower
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 8 oz. container of sour cream
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup butter
¼ cups unsweetened cocoa

Preheat your oven to 325.

In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, baking soda and salt. After combined, stir sour cream and lightly beaten eggs, then set aside.

In a heavy sauce pan, melt butter over medium heat. Once melted, whisk in 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa. Bring the a boil, whisking constantly.

Once the cocoa mixture has been brought to a boil, remove from heat and stir into the sour cream mixture.

Pour batter into a lightly greased 15X10 Jelly Roll pan. (¹see my notes regarding this)

Bake at 325 for 35-30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Once you’ve removed the cake from the oven, you can prepare the Fudge frosting, which is quick and easy.

Fudge Frosting Ingredients

Prep: 10 min. | Cook: 5 min. | Servings: 2 cups

½ Cup of Butter
1/3 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa
1/3 Cup of Milk
1 – 16oz package of powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Stir together the first three ingredients in a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes or until butter is melted. Cook, stiring constantly, an additional 2 minutes, or until slightly thickened. ² Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla at medium high speed with an electric mixer, until smooth.

Once you’ve finished mixing the frosting, spread evenly over warm cake.

¹ Good luck getting all that batter into a jelly roll pan – unless, of course, a jelly roll pan means something different to you. Where I’m from (Did I mention, Texas, where we make these on jelly roll pans?) a jelly roll pan is about half as tall as a cake pan, maybe a bit shorter. I tried going the jelly roll pan route – but it was all the way to the tip top and I knew, besides not having room for the frosting, it’d bake over the sides if I baked it like that. So, I transferred the batter to a normal cake pan and baked it there. End result? Less mess . Since my cake pan is 15X10, it shouldn’t have made much of a difference in terms of finished product.

² We stirred and stirred and couldn’t get the butter, milk and cocoa to mix together well – so I just threw the powdered sugar and vanilla in there and went to town with my hand mixer. End result? Of the two pieces of this entire project (cake and frosting) my frosting actually tastes just like moms – so I can’t have screwed it up *to* bad.

Final comments:

It’s good – I actually like it better than the Red Velvet cake, which was good – but it was more of a ‘fussy cake’ good – where this is a Saturday afternoon, throw it together and eat it after a meatloaf sandwich good. I’d like to get a larger pan, so I can see if it turns out better when cooked more as a ‘sheet cake’ rather than as a sheet cake recipe cooked in a cake pan. We also put nuts on top of ours back home, so I might give that a whirl.

Alternate Texas Peanut Butter sheet cake option:

This is untested in my kitchen, so I don’t have any comments or feedback.

Substitute 1½ cups of creamy peanut butter and ½ cup of buttermilk for sour cream. Proceed with recipe as directed, increasing bake time to 30-35 minutes.

It actually sounds pretty good, so I might give it a try.

You can view the few shots we took of our Kitchen Experiment on Flickr in the Texas Sheet Cake set.

I really don’t have anything to say…

Brandy — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:11:53 +0000

Today would normally be my day for Kitchen Experiments, but I woke up feeling sort of dodgy and I wanted to do anything but stay in the house, so John and I packed it up and went on a whirlwind tour of southern Maricopa County and northern Pinal County with camera in hand.

Let’s face it, I was really just trying to avoid working on the blog. Yes, I know it’s still in a state of disarray and all of the old posts will continue to be that way, because unlike this post, the photos in those posts were hosted off-site because of some server permissions I was to lazy to get worked out. Don’t worry, they’re worked out now

I did finally decide to buy the Thesis theme and while I’d love to say I’m going to get right to work on customizing it – let’s face it, it’s probably not going to happen. Don’t worry, I’ve already reached out to some really wonderful professionals who do fantastic Thesis customization work.

Anyway, our travels through the desert did result in a few really great photos. You can check out the nine shots that made the cut on Flickr, in the Desert Set.

I’m exhausted – but I promise to do the Kitchen Experiment tomorrow – I really want some Texas Sheet Cake

(I mostly wrote this post because I’ve been screwing with the settings and I want to see what the post will look like. So, how do you like that, Guinea Pig?)

Homemade Red Velvet Cake – AKA Heaven on a plate

Brandy — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:25:48 +0000

When I first saw this recipe at work, I knew I had to try it. Being from the south, Red Velvet Cake is a staple – it’s one of my all-time favorite cakes to eat and since most of the cakes I eat either come from a box or come from a bakery, I was anxious about making my very first homemade Red Velvet Cake.

I’ll admit, in advance, I’m no cake decorator. I’d love to be able to make beautiful cakes to share with my friends and family – but they’re just going to have to settle for ugly cakes that taste like heaven.

So, without further ado – Red Velvet Cake, from scratch:

Red Velvet Cake

Prep: 15 Minutes | Bake: 18 – 20 Minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup of butter, softened
2 ½ cups of sugar
6 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 (8-oz.) container of sour cream
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 (1-oz.) bottles of red food coloring
1 ½ recipes 5-Cup Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe below)

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Beat butter, at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition.

2. Stir together flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Add to butter mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Stir in vanilla; stir in red food coloring. Spoon cake batter into 3 greased and floured 8-inch round pans.

3. Bake at 350° for 18 to 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Remove from pans to wire racks, and cool completely (about 1 hour)

4. Spread 5-Cup Cream Cheese Frosting between layers and on the top and sides of cake.

Note: Try as I might, I could NOT find an 8-in Round Cake Pan – so I ended up using three 9-inch pans. It seemed to work fine. This is a LOT of not-real-wet ingredients to mix together. It’d be great if you could get someone to help you pour them in as you use your hand mixer to slower mix it all together. It took closer to 28 minutes for my cakes to cook.

5-Cup Cream Cheese Fosting

Prep: 10 Minutes

Ingredients:

2 (8-oz) packages of cream cheese, softened
½ cup butter, softened
1 (32-0z) packaged of powdered sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat cream cheese and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until fluffy. Stir in vanilla.

Note: Again, I suggest you get some help adding the sugar while you mix. It took a while – again, this is a lot of dry/not real moist ingredients to mix.

I’ve decided – I’m going to try to make a series of these kitchen experiments – I enjoy it. Also? Y should know – I started writing this post before I even tried the cake. I knew it was going to be good – I wasn’t sure how good though. I edited the title of this post to give you a better indication.

Final Thoughts: It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I’d love a stand mixer, I think that might make it easier. The cake? It’s divine. It’s a very ‘thick’ cake, almost like a pound cake, but it is amazing. The icing is, well, the icing. When you’re used to boxed cake and $1 icing from the baking aisle – it doesn’t take much to top it. I will definitely make it again.

A Rare Sunday List Post

Brandy — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:28:10 +0000

Yay! List Post! Woo Hoo!

How about that weather, huh? Man, if you live in the valley, you saw a rare phenomena on Saturday – that wet stuff falling from the sky, it’s called rain. Don’t be afraid.
After much hard work, I think I might finally be able to put one of my client jobs to bed. That feels damn good.
I woke up early yesterday, because the cable guy was coming. He came, fixed the problem and then left. Two hours later my cable was out again. We called him, he came back, fixed it and so far, it’s working fine. *fingers crossed*
I think one of the new trees we planted in the backyard is dying. That makes me sad
I went to the Mesa Car Show on Saturday – the weather was perfect. Here is my favorite shot from Saturday (click to make larger):

The subject was beautiful – it was painted my very favorite color of gray/blue – I got tons of pictures, but I really liked this one a lot.
I ended up in the hospital last night again. My nose started bleeding for no reason – and naturally, I couldn’t get it to stop.
Today, I had a headache for the better part of the day – but because I spent yesterday at the car show when I should have been working…I had to work anyway – I know, that’s what I get LOL.
I really love the voice of the singer in the band The Great Divide – to bad they didn’t make it – I really like them a lot.
The old man made dinner tonight, because I’ve spent the day locked up in my home office. I should do that more often – that was good dinner.

That’s really all I have today – my brain is so numb, I can hardly function – so I should cut out now, before I start singing some old Jimmy Buffett song…

My Favorite Picture: It’s More Than You Can See

Brandy — Wed, 26 May 2010 13:34:34 +0000

One of the real disadvantages to being my age and not being a ‘mommy-blogger’ is all the neat contests they have, that I’d really like to participate in and even win. So often, the contests center around being the mother of a young child or the blogger on a blog with hundreds of mommy-blog followers, which automatically disqualifies me.

But not this time.

The $100 Question over at BlogHer.com was asked by @FireMom this week.

She asks, “Will you show me your favorite photo that you’ve taken?”

This seemed easy enough – I have a few. The all time favorite photo that I’ve taken is almost 15 years old (my son will be 16 this year) – it’s an old picture-on-film-taken-to-the-drugstore-to-be-developed type picture, so I needed to scan it for this post.

My Dad and My Son, 1995

When my son was born, he was the first grandchild, thus the ability to turn my dad to mush by simply standing next to him on the couch. What you can’t see in the picture is the tears in his eyes when he turned to me and said, “man I love this boy” (except, we’re from Texas, so it sounded more like, “Mayun, I luuuuvvv this Bowee”)

This day and that picture holds more than just memories of my son and my dad celebrating his first birthday. Behind the camera, I’m wearing a big poofy shirt over jeans to conceal my 2nd unplanned pregnancy from the prying eyes of the gossip mongers in my family.

Minutes after this picture was taken, my dad had tears in his eyes for another reason – I was standing outside with him, telling him I was pregnant. He was uncharacteristically kind and understanding – I’d purposefully planned to tell him on the kids birthday – to sort of take some of the edge off.

This picture is my favorite picture and the best one I’ve taken because it shows so much more than you can see. When I look at it, I see the emotion of the day, so much so, that I can’t even leave the picture out on display.

This Post is All Over The Place

Brandy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:36:03 +0000

I haven’t felt like blogging – I’ve been sick the last few days and work has just taken all of my energy, not that I’ve had any or anything.

I figured, while I don’t really have enough to make a whole blog post – I do have some tidbits I can share.

The old man and I decided to make a day out of driving up to Globe, AZ and taking some shots along the way. I took about 125 pictures, most of which were not very great – but I came away with a few that I really liked. I’ll share those now:

Flowers with a Cactus Skelly

Yellow Flowers - to bad about the power lines =(

The next one isn’t’ really a photo we took during our trek. Actually I think I took it the next day, while Henry and I were vegging out on the bed watching Law & Order – typically the cats run for the hills when they see I’ve grabbed the big black torture device – but Henry was quite the subject – he let me take two whole pictures before he tried to rip my eyeballs out and use them for playthings.

Henry, King of The House

Aside from the journey out to Globe, this weekend was fairly peaceful. It rained on Sunday and I got sick – I stayed sick until Tuesday afternoon, give or take.
The HVAC guy came out to look at our AC unit and do the ‘annual maintenance’ – our AC is going out – I’ll be putting up a Paypal “Donate” button soon – because I’ll be darned if I know where we’re going to get the money to make that happen.
I have a toothache in one of the teeth I had filled in November. I’m going to be very much not happy if I have to get this filling dug out and redone after less than six months. I’m going to be very much not happy if I have to pay them one red cent when I go back to find out what the dealio is.
I seem to have this cycle where I sleep like a baby for a few weeks, then I sleep like crap for a few weeks. This week is one of the crappy weeks. I wake up 3-5 times a night like I’ve overslept the alarm and I have to get ready to be some place in the next ten minutes. Waking up like that makes it really hard to get back to sleep.
I woke up yellow this morning. I went to the lab and then emailed my Dr.
I have some older (3 years?) Levi jeans in my closet that I really want to get back in to. I don’t think it’d take a whole lot – I actually tried them on this morning and while I wasn’t even close to buttoning them – I was able to get them over my baby-birthing hips.
I am considering getting the “Permanent non-surgical birth control” – but I am always scared of trying something like that, because it doesn’t seem like it’s been around long enough to know what the long term effects are…but getting pregnant would be a disaster for me.
Did you know that if you took a needle and placed it, softly, on the top of the water in a bowl without disturbing the water, so the need floats, it will act as a compass and point north? I didn’t either – don’t feel stupid.
The kid has lost his third Cell Phone. It took me 30 minutes to cancel the service last night – that’s 20 minutes longer than it should have taken, in my opinion.
I am eligible for an upgrade of my cell phone (iPhone 3g to iPhone 3gS) – but I don’t know if I’m going to stay with AT&T. Plus, the old man says I really should use my current iPhone until it dies – it randomly vibrates from time to time for no reason – so I wonder if it’s getting close?
Spring break is next week. I really wish I was made of money, so we could take a vacation or something.
I hate when I don’t have a book to read before bed. I really do need to get to the book store. Last night I started reading a book called “Baby Markets” – its about adoption, infertility treatments and the like – basically about the commercialization of starting a family if you have to use ‘alternative means’ – I felt like after the first few pages, I was reading a text book. It didn’t really flow all that well.
People send me all kinds of books to read/review at work – “Baby Markets” was one. I don’t think they’d be happy if I wrote, “By page two, I was going ACK ACK ACK! WHAT THE CRAP IS THIS!?”
I once got a book from someone where the first page, which was really only half a page, had the F word 8 times. (Since this is a mostly “Mature G” rated blog I do try not to curse, because I know several of my readers appreciate that I don’t) Eight times seems excessive to me. I’m not totally innocent when it comes to using curse words – my dad, literally, was a sailor – then when he got out of the Navy, he became a truck driver – I’ve really heard it all (and then some) – but 8 F words…no.
It’s been fairly cold here. Cold as in 44-50 in the morning. Now, I realize that’s not really cold – after all, I did live in the Chicago area for four years – but it’s cold for AZ and darn cold when you don’t really have a suitable coat (parka, snow suit, etc).
I turn the heater on in my car on the way to work and run the vents on ‘cool’ on the way home. Funny, huh?

That’s all I got…this turned out to be longer than I thought. I’m going to bed….please do let me know if you’d like to donate to the “I think I will die without an AC this summer” fund.

Rockin The New Camera

Brandy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:30:39 +0000

So, I got a new camera. It’s awesome. I’ve always hated taking pictures, because regardless of how well I thought they turned out, they always left something to be desired. So, I figured, if I was going to take some pictures, I might try taking them on a camera that doesn’t suck.

So, here are a few of the shots I’ve taken over the last few days. Feel free to click on them to make them larger:

Valentine Orchid

Stars & Horseshoes

Single Orchid Bloom

The First Photo: A bush

Bamboo Charcoal Soap