There's a First Time for Everything.

Oh, the mess. The horrible, unbelievable, unholy bloody MESS.
I made Marshmallow Fondant today. It turned out...okay. But now I understand why most people just go out and buy the icky tasting Wilton stuff!

It seemed simple enough to make- first coat every last square inch of surface in your kitchen with a generous layer of vegetable shortening. Every. last. square. inch. Then you melt the marshmallows in a greased bowl in the microwave, and transfer using a greased spoon to your pre-greased mixer bowl with the pre-greased dough hook, and add icing sugar. . . and DO NOT TOUCH THE MARSHMALLOW STUFF! Oh, oh, ohhh.... whatever you do, don't touch the marshmallow stuff. sigh.

Then you mix it until it starts to do this-

No, I'm not showing you what's in the bowl. You don't want to see that.

Next time I do this, (like, when I forget what this time was like to clean up) I will not add all of the sugar at once. I measured everything out by weight, but there was clearly too much sugar. It all crumbled up except for the giant angry glob of Marshmallow Demon that had chemically bonded itself to the dough hook and was refusing to let go. Not enough shortening apparently!

Eventually, after I stopped panicking and running around the kitchen quacking like a rabid duck, I got something that looked like this.

And a whole bunch of crap that looked like this.

I messed around for awhile kneading in more shortening, and warming it in the microwave until it was at least sort of manageable... then threw it back in my poor mixer to add color. Next time (haha), I will add the color to the marshmallow demon before I add it to the sugar.

and then... after some more epic struggle against the beast... we have this. 

Ok, so definitely not Cake Boss material, but for Cake Sass- and a first try- It's bloody magnificent. 

Now. About the Cricut...

After about 2 hours of jacking around and swearing and smoking and experimenting, Tara, Sue and I successfully managed our first USABLE cut. It seems the secret to clean cuts on this beast, is roll it THIN, then FREEZE it solid, then start the cut AWAY from the edge with MEDIUM pressure on SLOW speed. I can understand how so many people got frustrated and returned these things, but I happened to have done enough homework about the CC, to know that only the patient survive. We survived :)

As far as first times go, I think it's great. And I'm sure it will be more fun next time now we have a bloody clue what we're working with!

Happy New Year from Hillbilly Grill and the Cake Sass crew :)

UPSIDE DOWN PEANUT BUTTER CUPS!

This is by far, one of my deadliest kitchen experiments EVER!

I had a craving for peanut butter cups- and it all went downhill from there.

All you need for this is
-parchment paper (tin foil would be ok)
-cookie sheet
-chocolate chips or melting wafers or baking chocolate
-good, gooey, unsweetened peanut butter
-icing sugar
-microwave (or double boiler if you want to make work for yourself)
-mixer (stand mixer is awesome, but hand beater is fine)

Add 1 cup of peanut butter and 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar to mixer. Beat on medium until the PB turns into a firm "thumpy" ball - yes I said thumpy- you want it to stick together and stop sticking to the bowl.
If you need to, add more sugar until you get the desired thumpiness.

I love that new word :) thumpy thumpy thumpy. My spell checker is having a cow.

In a microwave safe bowl or double boiler, melt about 2 cups of chocolate. If using a microwave, cook for short 15-20 second intervals... you can burn chocolate!

Line your cookie sheet with parchment paper or foil, and spoon small (twoonie sized) pools of melted chocolate onto the paper (about 2 tsp chocolate at a time)

Then, use a spoon to make balls of peanut butter mixture, about the size of a cherry. Use your hands if you need to, just don't get peanut butter on your digital camera (oops). The rounder the ball, the easier it is to put the top coat on.

I ended up having to melt a bit more chocolate to put the top on- it's better to start with not enough, otherwise you're left with a giant bowl full of melted chocolate with a spoon in it.... well I guess that's better...
Spoon chocolate over the top of the peanut butter, try to cover as much of the peanut butter as you can, but not with so much chocolate that it starts spreading onto the base.

Once they're all coated, pop the whole tray into the refrigerator- they should only take a few minutes to "set", and maybe 1/2 an hour to firm up the PB.

Package carefully and store in refrigerator- they'll get eaten LONG before they'll go bad! I used squares of parchment to separate them. You could use cupcake liners, but then you may as well have used them in the beginning and they wouldn't be upside down peanut butter cups now would they!

Enjoy!