May the road rise to meet you, may the sun always be at your back, may you always have a Milk Stout Cupcake, especially during a leprechaun attack.

Slainte’!

Which is Gaelic for “sure has been a long time since I have posted anything at all because even tho I have a plethora of back-logged goodies to share with you the burn out was pretty bad but hope you are well!” Or something to that effect.

I already explained my lack of desire and general malaise in posting as of late. And there have been a few times I thought Hell YEAH! I am ready – I am back. But every time I would start, I would stop, frustrated and pissed off at food and foodies in general. I feel no further explanation is necessary. I know that most of you are probably nodding your heads in agreement. It happens. We didn’t stop cooking, or eating, or drinking, partying, enjoying, laughing and living. Honestly, I think that was what I needed. What we needed.

I can’t come back however, without something special and sinful and crazy and full of awesome and CHOCOLATE and BOOOOOOZZE!

So an Irish blessing for you. (No I am NOT Irish, but I am a Chicago girl, and in some mystical way, that means I am Irish by association.) “May those who love us, love us; & those who don’t, may God turn their hearts; & if He can’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping.”

And with out further ado:

New Holland Dragon’s Milk Milk Stout Cupcakes with Frangelico & Nutella Cream Cheese Frosting.

Let’s start with the secret cupcake ingredients:

3/4 c of butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 bottle milk stout
1 1/4 c 60% bitter sweet cacao chocolate chips ( I used Ghirardelli because I could…)
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
3/4 c cake flour
1 c sugar
2/3 brown sugar
1/2 t salt
2 t baking soda
1 c yogurt
2 eggs

The difficult steps to awesomeness…

Preheat oven to 350°

Melt butter over low heat, taking care not to burn. Pour in the bottle of milk stout, blend well. Add in the chocolate chips, stir till melted. Remove from heat and let cool.

In the bowl of your kitchen aid or mixing bowl, combine flours, sugars, baking soda and salt.

In another bowl combine the yogurt and eggs.

With your kitchen aid on low, add the yogurt and eggs to the flour until blended. Pour in the cooled chocolate stout syrup and mix till well incorporated.

Pour into prepared cupcake pan (cupcake papers work rather well with these, no spraying needed) and bake for 18-22 minutes. Let cool for a couple of minutes, then remove from pan and let cool on a wire rack.

Let cupcakes cool completely before you frost with:

Super Incredible Awesome Frangelico Nutella Cream Cheese Frosting of INSANITY!

8 oz cream cheese, softened
2/3 c powdered sugar
3 T Frangelico
3 T Nutella
1/4 c heavy whipping cream

Blend everything together super well. I mean whip the shit out of it. It will get all fluffy and airy and perfect.

Refrigerate for 1 hr.

Pipe onto cupcakes.

Hide in spare bedroom and eat every last effin’ one.

Leave comments of gratitude and homage that I am BACK and rocking your taste-buds.

While everyone was eating turkey and the normal stuffing we were enjoying this for thanksgiving.

We had planned on making this just for lunch and then dragging leftovers over to parent’s house for dinner.  However; the big problem was the parents were sick so no thanksgiving meal for us (which is ok in my book since i am ehh on turkey anyways).

We were originally hoping to throw some crawfish into the mixture but finding that proved to be a pain in the butt so crab worked better (notice that is crab with a c not a k).

I really wish I could ramble on about something cool and pointless but I am still a little freezing cold from having to scrape my freaking windows this morning and deal with every freaking moron who apparently has forgot how to drive in snow (notice how everyone who drives slower than you is a moron and those who drive faster than you are idiots?)

Anyways enough rambling more recipe and more work………

For this recipe you will need:

• 1 onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 9 TB of butter (relax it is winter you have until winter to burn it off.
• 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
• 1 cup of beer (we used Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome Ale)
• 1 cup of cream
• 1.5 cups of whole milk
• 3 cups of cheese (we used 2 cups of sharp cheddar and 1 cup of fontina)
• 2 TB of dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper
• Cup or so of shredded crab (really can you have to much crab?)
• 1 cup of breadcrumbs
• 8 ounces (1 box) of cooked macaroni

Steps for success:

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
• In a separate skillet melt a TB of butter and add in the onion and cook until softened.  Add in the garlic and cook until fragrant.  Remove from heat and set aside.
• In a medium sauce pan add in the remaining 8 TB of butter and when it is liquidy add in the 1/2 cup of flour.  Whisk until it is golden brown (about 3-5 minutes).
• Add in the cup of beer and bring to a boil for a couple of minutes.
• Lower the heat to medium and add in the cream/milk and heat until barely boiling.
• Add in the cheese a handful at a time and stir until melted.  Do not add more cheese until the previous handful has been melted.
• Add in the Dijon, crab, and onion/garlic mixture.
• Taste and adjust with salt and pepper (I am betting you need about a teaspoon of pepper).  Bonus points would also be awarded if you decide you need some heat and add in a pinch of cayenne.
• Stir in the macaroni.
• Butter up a 9×9 dish and pour the mixture in that.
• Top with the breadcrumbs and throw in the 450 degree for 10-12 minutes.
• Lower the heat to 350 and loosely cover the mixture with foil.  Continue to cook until heated through (about 25-30 minutes).

Serve and enjoy!

Hi there! Miss me?

It has been a couple of weeks huh? Well like Jeff said we have been pretty busy with a few projects we have in the works. And to be honest. I was just plain burnt out. Six weeks of over doing our cooking-ability for that FoodBuzz competition really wiped me/us. Wow, contests like that just are NOT for me. In case you missed it. We were eliminated after round six. We were disappointed and a little confused because we didn’t realize there was a sandwich and POM requirement that round. Damn. Did that sound petty? I didn’t mean for it to. Regardless. We were eliminated. But in that same time learned something pretty freaking cool about us.

We buck trends and snub food snobbery and do what we are best at. Being us.

See that post that got us eliminated was seen by a new friend and business associate who told us that the Bells Two Hearted Ale Chili was the most amazing recipe he ever saw and he has a few INCREDIBLE ideas for us and OH EM GEE you guys are like the most awesome cooking couple in the universe!!! Okay. I embellish a bit. He never said “oh em gee”. But it was in that instance we realized something.

We stayed real. We don’t and didn’t use ingredients we weren’t familiar with or that cost a bundle or that were trendy and popular just to prove a point. We stayed true to ourselves. We continue to cook what we like to eat – not really worrying about who will disagree with our taste loves or taunt us with anonymous comments of spite. Plus we also found out we are slightly obsessed with craft beer. I don’t just mean love to drink it I mean love the whole concept of it. The way it pairs with the kind of food we like to eat, they way it tastes – actually HAS taste, the way you can cook with it! (You have noticed a plethora of food recipes with beer/cider showing up on this site during the contest right?) And nothing screams US like good food and cold beer. At the end of the day we are still just two food loving freaks named Jeff and Heather. (Unless I am standing on the left then we are Heather and Jeff.)

Speaking of recipes with beer/cider. During our run we made this AMAZING dessert that would just be PERFECT for Thanksgiving. It is easy. And amazingly tasty.

This is the time of year when witches cast magic spells and the walking dead mingle among the living. It is a time for delicious treats, and tricky TRICKS. One of the nastiest tricksters of them all, is the pumpkin.

Seemingly innocent, these burnt hue evil doers wreck havoc on your neighbors porches, in your once beautiful garden… and IN OUR PIES! We can’t just allow this to happen. WE WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS ATROCITY! And I know just how to take care of them.

Like any diabolical creature, you cannot just sit idly by while they grow bigger in numbers and in size. And the proper weapons must be used to rid us of their EVIL! Can’t attack without KNOWLEDGE! What happens if you set fire to a zombie? YOU HAVE A FLAMING ZOMBIE RUNNING AFTER YOU! Don’t make that mistake with the PUMPKIN! I have been studying and documenting the baneful malignant squash for some time now. And have just the solution.

YOU CAN RUN YOU PERNICIOUS PUMPKINS – But you CAN NOT hide…

First things first. Grab the nasty PIE PUMPKINS from their safe beds, rip the cocky little stem hats from their noggins and split them down their centers.

Remove the thready organs and pumpkin roe. (You can save the roe (seeds) for a salty roasted snack…)

Lightly coat its repugnant meaty tissue with some peanut oil and flip so the foul flesh side is up.

NOW! We must act quickly! SLIDE the PAN of chopped up PUMPKIN of DOOM into a terribly hot FURNACE OF HELL-TITUDE (an oven pre-heated to 325° will do the trick) and SLAM the door closed.

Breathe deep my friend, but do not relax, your job is not yet finished. You must wait for at minimum of one hour for the calamitous gourd to submit. Only then will it be safe to remove them from the fire. Note: you MUST under ALL CIRCUMSTANCES ignore their SCREAMS and PLEAS for compassion. They will eat your eyeballs out of your HEAD if you open the oven any sooner then ONE HOUR!

Once you remove the pumpkin from the fire, you must let it sit and cool off a bit. It will be insanely pissed off at this point and might try and BURN you with its venom.

Once cool, drag a 3 to 4 pronged metal instrument of skinning (perhaps a fork or grapefruit spoon…) across its warm tissue to remove it from its flesh. Yes, it will smell very good at this point but do not be lured into its trap. It uses a “fresh baked pie” smell to lull you into a false sense of security. Don’t fall for it.

Once you have removed all the meat from the flesh, take it and put it into a whirly-gig of blade and sword!!

Or maybe a food processor. Which-ever is more convenient for you.

Cover the processor and CHOP away at the corrupt squash meat till a nice puree has formed. You may need to add a touch of water to help this process along. Add little bits slowly so it doesn’t spit it back at you.

Once you have achieved that rancorous puree, pour it into a cheese cloth lined sieve to strain out any poisonous liquids that remain.

Wrap and squeeze gently yet with enough force to show it that YOU are BOSS and YOU do NOT MESS AROUND!

Let it sit like this for about 30 minutes, wrapping it a little tighter ever so often.

Then make haste and jar or bag and freeze the petulant pumpkin puree till you decide a use for it.

Now go, friends, and share this wealth of knowledge I have given you and STAND TALL against PUMPKIN TYRANNY!

Oh by the way… if you haven’t voted for Me and Jeff in the MOST INSANE BLOGGER EVAHHHHHHHH… then you better. Or I’ll send the Squash Squad after you…

Alright. I know you are as perplexed as we are by our ability to capture attention and hold it as long as we have during this rat race of a competition… but here we are again. Moving along with 71 select others to the 5th round in this crazy Foodie challenge. Thanks for your votes & thanks for your confidence in us to teach you something. (Fools… I mean YAY YOU!) I will get to the how do I get this smell of smoke out of everything we own emails asap.

We should admit, when we looked and saw that the next exciting episode of FoodBlog: The quest for the Golden Spatula consisted of making our very own take on pizza our heads exploded. See, I hail from the pizza mecca of North America: Chicago. (And for those of you that just said “ummm don’t you mean New York?” Bite me.) I am the epitome of a pizza snob. My father worked in a pizza joint when I was a child and pizza was a daily part of my life. The smell of oregano and pepperoni make me swoon. It is hard for me to find pizza that I reaaaaalllly like. Fast forward to now. I find myself living in North East Indiana. In the city where Jeff has lived HIS ENTIRE LIFE. In the SECOND biggest city in Indiana, yet to me it SCREAMS rural. Sigh, what a girl won’t do for a boy and love… Sorry, where was I? Good pizza here is as rare as unicorns and leprechauns. There is some good stuff, but, well, it is NOT Chicago. SORRY BUT IT IS NOT!!! (Are you rolling your eyes at me? Please refer back to the previous direction to “Bite Me”.) Thing is? We both LOOOOOOVE Pizza. L O V E.

So, we asked our friends. “If you could have a chef come to your house and make you whatever kind of pizza you like what would it be.” You see, we were looking for a smidgen of direction. Yeah… we got stuff like “all pineapple” and “3 inches of melted cheese” and “how about like every different type of sausage you can find?” Jeff and I just stared at each other blankly. And we thought our friends would be of help. SILLY SILLY FOOD BLOGGERS!!!

Then it hit me. That all these simple laughable answers we were getting all had one thing in common. EXCESS. Pure unadulterated EXCESS. 23 pounds of 117 different types of cheeses on some crispy thick crust would have likely put us all in the hospital with gastronomical distress, but we would have been very very happy. Then Jeff reminded me of the first “pizza” we ever made together. It was a little over a year ago, and it utilized the focaccia recipe from the Bread Bakers Apprentice book and consisted of all the onions we could get our hands on. (See photo below) It was DIVINE. I called it our French Onion pizza. It was gone as soon as we took it out of the oven. It was excessive, and amazing, and with a few changes, a few additions and a few more pounds of onions… would be perfect.

It being OCTOBER my onion choices were slightly limited, but with a little hunting I was able to round up 6 different types (in 6 different pounds):

Six livres six oignon pizza Francais l’oignon… ** (Loosely translated: 6 pounds of 6 onions French onion pizza)

**Correction (Because I am SO not French…): Six livres de six oignons: pizza française à l’oignon.* – Thanks Marie!

3 # of white onions
1 # of brown onions
1/2 # of Vidalia onions
1/2 # of Cipollini onions
1/4 # of Italian red onions
and
3/4 # of shallots

And like before we used the focaccia recipe (half actually) from the BBA, or Bread Bakers Apprentice bread book. However I used extra olive oil because I added the amount for the WHOLE recipe. I have BBAD (Bread Bakers Attention Deficiency…).

The dough was ready and waiting for me (pressed out nice and thin in a 11 x 17″ baking pan, and lightly brushed with olive oil), so I set out that afternoon to cut up all 6 pounds of onions and get them a-sweating. Apparently I was so moved by Jeff’s ability to remember that special time in our lives when we first met and MADE our original French Onion pizza because I BAWLED the entire time I was slicing. Sigh…

Anyway, I heated a couple T of canola oil and a half stick of butter in heavy bottomed stock pot and added in all the onions. Stirred well to coat the onions, and covered the pot. Set the heat on med low and let it go for about 3 hours or so, stirring every 20 minutes. The smell was divine. The onions drastically reduced and turned a beautiful golden color. MUST resist the urge to eat every single one.

Then I removed the lid and added 2 beef bullion cubes and about half a bottle of beer. Beer was actually not part of the original plan (Ha ha ha – I made it sound like we had an actual plan… ) but I was drinking one while working my ass off in the kitchen and I was too lazy to get a cup of water. At this point I also added a pinch or two of fresh thyme and rosemary, salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Cooked it down till about half the liquid evaporated, then removed from the heat to cool. Once slightly cooled, moved it to a glass bowl, covered and set it in the fridge.

Oh I also fried up a pound and a half of diced thick cut bacon.

And shredded about 12 oz of Gruyere cheese.

And checked my cholesterol. (180. Okay. We’re good.)

And waited patiently for Jeff to get home and our friends to come over…

and had another beer.

THEN FINALLY IT WAS TIME!

We preheated the oven to 500° and finished prepping the pizza.

In a food processor, we pulsed to process the onions till a chunky sauce was formed. (About 5 seconds). I spread the sauce over the dough and then took the WHOLE POUND AND A HALF of bacon (or whatever was left from my abusive bacon snacking…) and spread it evenly over the sauce. Topped it with a thick layer of cheese and stuck it in the hot oven for 10 minutes. Then we reduced the oven to 400° and baked it till the cheese was golden brown and bubbly. Removed, sliced and served immediately because it is too much fun to watch our friends make those “OH HOLY HELL MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE” faces.

It was the perfect pizza.

Oh and be glad you are seeing THAT photo because Jeff took the WHOLE pizza from the hording masses while I held them off with the pizza cutter.

It was gone in under 6.3 seconds.

It was THAT Good.

So if we have tickled your taste buds in any way, shape or form… or maybe you just have not had enough coffee yet and you are willing to cast your vote for just about anyone at this moment. Click below and throw us a vote for Super Foodie! Look at it this way… if you do you are probably standing out from the crowd…

~

*Carl Sandburg, American poet